Students who recently arrived on campus can move into stage two of Quiet Period starting Jan. 23 at 6 a.m., according to a Thursday night email from Associate Vice President for Campus Life Vanessa Britto and Dean of Students Koren Bakkegard.
During stage two of Quiet Period, students may pick up meals from any on-campus dining location, gather in small groups with masks, exercise outdoors and order food using contactless delivery apps. Gatherings during stage two must be limited to five students, and “wearing a mask is required unless you are able to easily, continuously and measurably maintain social distancing of at least six feet,” according to the email.
In stage one, students were not allowed to gather for any reason and were only permitted to leave their residence halls for essential activities, which included picking up meals from an assigned dining hall, getting a COVID-19 test or picking up mail from Page-Robinson Hall.
“We know that the limitations in place during stage one can be challenging, and we appreciate your efforts to help protect our community’s health,” Britto and Bakkegard wrote.
The decision to enter into stage two of the Quiet Period was made by administrators based on the results of students’ first two COVID-19 tests, which were conducted “roughly four to five days after students’ arrival,” according to the Healthy Brown website. Most students moved into on-campus housing from Jan. 9 to 12, meaning stage two of the Quiet Period will begin nearly two weeks after the first students arrived for the spring semester.
From Jan. 9, when the first students moved in, to Jan. 19, the latest available testing data by press time, 55 positive cases among students and faculty have been identified by asymptomatic testing, according to the Healthy Brown COVID-19 Dashboard. Over the last seven days, asymptomatic testing has had a positivity rate of 0.2 percent.
While students will have more freedom in stage two of the Quiet Period, they will still be restricted from having “in-person contact with the community beyond Brown’s physical campus,” which includes all students living off-campus, according to the email.
Students housed at the Omni Hotel, River House and Chestnut Commons will not have access to on-campus dining halls until Jan. 27, and will have meals delivered in the interim.
Until the Quiet Period is over, students will not be allowed to go to the Brown Bookstore in person, though they have the option of ordering books online and having them delivered to Mail Services.
Ben Glickman was the 132nd editor-in-chief and president of The Brown Daily Herald. He previously served as a metro editor and oversaw the College Hill and Fox Point beat, in addition to writing and editing about city politics, COVID-19 and the 2020 election. He is the co-creator of the Bruno Brief, The Herald's first news podcast. In his free time, he is passionate about birds (also tweeting) and eating way too spicy food.
