Virginia’s Governor Urges Liberty U. to Tell Students to Stay Home – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Quoting Scripture, Gov. Ralph S. Northam of Virginia on Wednesday strongly urged Liberty University’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., to reconsider his decision to invite thousands of students to return to campus amid the state’s worsening coronavirus crisis.
“We appreciate that our colleges and universities are making accommodations for students with special cases, but that is very different from inviting students to leave their homes and come back to campus,” Northam said during a news conference about the state’s overnight spike in Covid-19 cases. As of Wednesday, Virginia had 391 diagnosed cases, up 101 in the past 24 hours, with at least 13 deaths.
By encouraging students to return to campus, Liberty, one of the nation’s largest and most prominent evangelical colleges, was adding to the mixed messages people are receiving about the severity of the crisis, the governor said.