Department(s):
COVID-19 ResourcesThe following message was sent to all WPI students and families August 17, 2021:
After months of planning and anticipation, we are ready and excited to welcome everyone back to campus. Having successfully worked together last year to keep our academic programs and campus experience in person, we will use the lessons we learned to move forward into and through another successful year.
As WPI continues to navigate the pandemic, we will keep the health and safety of our whole community as our top priority. For the 2021-2022 Academic Year, we have once again updated our Student Code of Conduct and our COVID Addendum to reflect both that commitment and our new realities.
While we all want to get back to normal, we must still be careful. Based upon the spread of COVID variants and the resulting implications to our now ever-changing realities, it’s become painfully clear that we must be careful in how we socialize in the age of COVID. Safeguarding our community is a shared responsibility, and we must all follow the guidelines to help protect each other. Students who violate these policies will proceed through the university’s Conduct System.
As we have said time and time again, we know that WPI students are intrinsically good people. Now, more than ever, we are counting on each of you to stay true to our values by stepping up and doing your part.
It’s OK to gather in small groups—preferably outdoors, distanced and masked—but large gatherings are a significant threat to our ability to stay together as a campus. Larger gatherings, where lots of people are in close quarters and unmasked, are proving to be the major driver of outbreaks on other campuses. Partygoers don’t just spread the virus to each other, but they also put roommates, classmates, and others at risk. Such spread leads to schools quickly changing course and reverting to online-only instruction and/or sending students home. We don’t want that to occur at WPI.
Thank you, welcome back, and best of luck in the new academic year!