I hope you are doing well. With only a few weeks remaining in the fall term, planning is well underway for a healthy and safe spring semester. An important part of helping to protect the health of the Brown community and our neighbors in Providence is to ensure that students are enrolled in COVID-19 testing for the start of spring semester.

All students who will be in the Providence area for the spring must enter their arrival date (or, for graduate and medical students, when they will begin participating in Brown study, programming or other activities on campus) in MyBrown, by 11:59 pm EST on Sunday, Dec. 13, in order to initiate their COVID-19 testing in January. You will be able to select from a date range for your arrival; if you are not certain of your exact date, please select the earliest likely date range. Your testing will begin at that time.

Undergraduate students living in Brown-owned or Brown-leased housing (including the downtown hotel) will move in Jan. 9-12 and should choose this date range in MyBrown. Students living off campus need to plan their arrival to allow adequate time for quarantine per Rhode Island Department of Health guidelines — those in effect in January — in advance of the start of any in-person classes on Wednesday, Jan. 27 (provided that the Campus Activity Status allows for in-person instruction). Any student who is in the Providence area without participating in testing will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards and may be subject to discipline.

If you have questions about COVID-19 testing, email the Student Testing Call Center at studenttesting@brown.edu or call 401-863-6500. (Call Center staff will not be available between Dec. 18 and Jan. 4, when Brown offices are closed for Winter Break.) For additional resources, please consult the information on the Healthy Brown website, especially the information on the student testing page.

All students — including those who studied on campus in the fall — are also required to agree to the Student Commitment to COVID-19 Community Health and Safety Requirements (Student Commitment) for spring and to complete an online educational module by Monday, Jan. 4, 2021. You will receive a separate communication about the Student Commitment before Friday, Dec. 18.

Finally, please note that students living off campus will not be allowed on campus during the Quiet Period preceding the start of spring semester (Jan. 9-26, 2021) except to engage in required COVID-19 testing. The Quiet Period is a time of minimized contact among students on campus, and restricted interaction between on-campus students and the community beyond Brown. 

As a reminder, all plans are based on the best data and public health recommendations currently available. If there is any need to make changes to the plans outlined in this letter given a shift in public health conditions, we will be sure to provide updates as quickly as possible.  

If you have questions about the spring semester, please contact spring2021@brown.edu. 

Sincerely,

Koren Bakkegard
Associate Vice President for Campus Life