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Freshmen move into UW housing under new coronavirus guidelines

Classes will be held mostly online and there are many changes that school administrators hope will stop the spread of the coronavirus.

SEATTLE — Tuesday marked move-in day for freshmen at the University of Washington. 

What is normally an exciting time for incoming students comes with a long list of changes intended to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

About half of UW’s freshmen class started moving into dorms on Tuesday. 

Incoming freshman Jordan Needham made sure she got masks and a nasal swab for a coronavirus test.

“I’ve got two masks, this one and another one,” Needham said. “I need to make sure I take care of myself and not put myself in situations where I’m able to get COVID." 

“I just wanted to have that college experience. I’m going to college and I want to make it feel like I’m going to college. I didn’t get the end of my senior year,” Needham said.

Classes will be online, social distancing and facemasks will be required. Testing and other health-screening measures are optional, though strongly encouraged.

“I think the approach that the university is taking is really well-vetted," said Pam Schreiber the Executive Director of Housing & Food Services for UW. "I think we’ve watched what’s happened at other universities and in those instances, in some of those cases, there is required testing sometimes twice a week and they haven’t necessarily changed the outcome." 

Outbreaks that happened off-campus and over the summer were wake up calls for the university.

In early July, the university reported nearly 140 coronavirus cases in students tied to Greek Row.

That spike influenced what this fall would look like.

RELATED: Coronavirus cases climb on UW's Greek row amid outbreak

“Our students are choosing to live in residence after careful consideration and after having enough time and enough information to really know what they were coming into,” Schreiber said.

Classes will be held mostly online and there are many changes that school administrators hope will stop the spread of the coronavirus.

RELATED: UW and WSU changing dorms in response to coronavirus

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