Good afternoon.
Welcome to East Carolina University for
our virtual program here today.
My name is Chris Stansbury. I'm the
Associate Vice Chancellor for the
Division of Student Affairs here at ECU.
This is another special Facebook edition
where we're going to try and answer
some of the most common questions that
are coming up. Now, for this program today,
we're going to be primarily sharing
information
that relates to the students that were
approved to stay on campus for the
remainder of the fall in the residence
halls
and also for some of those students that
are still in the community – we're going
to share some of the information they
may need to stay in contact with our
campus as it is
open. We have Bill McCartney who's the
Associate Vice Chancellor for Campus
Living,
as well as Erik Kneubuehl, who's the
Associate Vice Chancellor for Student
Involvement and Leadership. They'll be
joining me in just a little bit
and give you some additional information.
I want to
add a few things to, of important note –
all students should be getting
communication. They're gonna be getting
it through their ECU email account. We
say this repeatedly
because a lot of times that's where the
disconnect comes. So, make sure — parents
and family — as you're watching this
if there's information that you're
wondering about – make sure your student
is checking that ECU email account,
that's where we are sending it.
So, in short, there's a couple of things
and Bill's going to expand on this.
For the students staying in the
residence halls, they will be moving into
single rooms up on College Hill.
That information Bill is going to share
a little bit. Each student is also going
to get a COVID test prior to moving to
their new room. 
For these students that are currently in
quarantine or in
isolation during this time, Campus Living
is going to work with them on an
individual basis,
as well as with Student Health to
coordinate some of that.
Food wise, Todd Dining Hall is going to
stay up on the hill and there's going to
be some retail
options. Erik Kneubuehl's going to join us
in a little bit – he's going to talk about
some of the campus services that are
open and the facilities that will be
available
including some recreation options and
programs that are going to be available
too
and how to get connected even in a
virtual environment with some of our
clubs and organization.
I mentioned this at the front, ECU is
open.
Our campus is open. That means that our
services like Student Health,
the counseling center, Joyner Library,
Pirate Academic Success Center,
Dowdy Student Stores, Transit, dining.
They may have some reduced or adjusted
hours but our campus is open and
operating still here to serve our
students.
In some cases, for instance, counseling,
the counseling center is doing some
teletherapy, which gives our students an
extra option
in this virtual environment. Many of
those places are going to have,
their websites are going to be the best
place to go. They're going to have those
options that maybe even adjust from week
to week as we go through the semester so
I encourage you to check out their
websites.
Some of you are going to start to have
questions and have already had questions
about what are we going to do in the
spring.
That communication is going to come a
little bit later. Again, this primary part
of this program
is dealing with the residence hall
students that are staying for the rest
of the fall and some of our services
that are available. So, I'm going to step
aside. I'm going to turn it over to Bill
McCartney and he's going to give you
some of the Campus Living and Housing
information.
Bill.
Good afternoon. I have information that I
want to share and
and again as Chris mentioned, this is
specifically for those people who are
remaining with us on campus.
Here we are on Sunday and we've got
three different groups of people who
live, who are still with us and the first
group are those people who are still
with us, because they'll be moving out
today and some of those people
obviously will be coming home and living
with their families or maybe moving out
into the Greenville community
and so that that group will be leaving
us shortly which leaves us with the
other two groups.
The largest of that the group who
remains are those students who are
waiting to move into their new spaces on
College Hill.
We'll be having our students move into
Tyler Hall, Gateway East, Gateway West,
Jones Hall and/or Scott Hall. Scott Hall
is specifically for students
who are our student athletes as we're
creating a mini bubble for them so that
they can live together,
hopefully to be able to allow them to
have a greater chance
to stay healthy and be able to compete
in their fall sports and spring sports
as we go through the year.
The other buildings will be for general
students who have requested to stay on
campus.
So if you have a student who is wanting
to live with us for the rest of the fall
semester,
your student is staying in their current
room
through a week from...
this coming – excuse me, let me restate
that. They will be staying
in their current room until the
following weekend.
They will get instructions from us by
the end of the day on Thursday,
to, of where their new room is and
instructions on how to go about
moving into that space. We will be
providing
some transportation through ECU Transit
for those students who live in central
neighborhood
and on West End because it's a little
further away for them
to move up onto the Hill. Any of the
students who live on the Hill,
there will be moving assistance that
we'll have just like we do during
move-in or drop-off where you'll see
carts
available for people to use as they
would move over into their new space.
I would also say that families are
welcome to come and help their child
move as well. We would ask you again to
wear a mask if you're coming.
We're not placing a limit on who comes
from your from your family
to visit. We would just ask that all
those family members are masked when
they're assisting during this time
period.
Those students will get settled we think
very rapidly over the coming weekend
and be able to enjoy living in a single
room for the remainder of the semester.
So one of the questions we get quite
often is well how what how are you going
to make this assignment and so there's a
priority or a hierarchy to assignments
as we will make them.
Ideally, we want the student who lives on
the Hill to stay in their same space
that they already are, so we don't want
to have a student who lives in a room in
let's say Gateway East have to move to
another room unless it's absolutely
necessary.
The only reason that a student in either
the Gateways or Jones or Tyler would
have to move
is if they and their roommate both want
to stay –
one of those two students will have to
be relocated to a new room.
We're going to use our regular
assignment philosophy to do this.
So, if i'm in the room with another
person and we both want to stay,
the campus living staff will look at who
was the first person to apply for a room
who had the earliest application date
and that person will get to stay in the
room. The person with the later
application date
we will attempt to keep on the same
floor,
ideally, and in the same building, ideally,
and I keep saying ideally,
because, at this point in time, we're
still accepting applications for people
to stay with us
and we're not sure at this point what
our total number is so we're not quite
sure
how those assignments are are going to
play out through the course of the next
couple of days.
We will have those assignments ready
though by Thursday
and students will be notified on their
ECU email.
The third group of students are
those students who have tested positive
for COVID and
they are living with us in several
buildings as well as they're living
off campus at a couple of locations.
Those students will be transferring
into campus housing over the weekend of
the 13th and 14th
and 15th of September
and we will be then housing all of those
students
with a private room and a private bath
in College Hill suites.
And, so, any of the students who might be
ill and be quarantined or isolated
in their regular residence room now will
move over
a little bit earlier than that and the
students who are living off campus and
quarantined
will move over that weekend. So,
we will be using College Hill suites
with a single room, private bath
affair in order to be able to handle
those students
who need a place to stay until they are
healthy once again.
Once they're healthy, they'll have the
opportunity to either
go to their room, collect their
belongings and move home — if that's their
choice.
Although, we know that some of those
students are planning to stay on campus.
At that point,
they'll move out of College Hill suites,
collect their belongings and move into
their new assignment for the rest of the
fall semester.
Students who live in College Hill suites
will be treated
as we are treating all those students in
quarantine now. We'll be delivering meals
to them daily,
we'll be able to take care of their
needs in that sense but
the expectation is that they'll have a
relatively quiet life
living in College Hill suites until
they're healthy once again.
And on the housing front, the last piece
that we're getting lots of questions
about
is well what's going to happen for the
spring. And as we look at the spring.
we're making plans right now to,
to reopen the halls and to and
repopulate the campus under the
assumption that we'll be back in
face-to-face classes.
As we go about the planning process,
we're going to keep everyone who lived
in housing in the fall notified and
informed about
the process and what's going on. The
first of those
communications will happen in early October
and we'll be able to articulate
for people to process
at that point by which they would follow
it if they want to come back to campus.
When we reopen campus in the spring,
we will have given some priority to the
people who stay with us who will have a
first choice to be repositioned if they
want to move into other buildings or
back to where they came from
and then we'll be reassigning people who
have gone home
or gone to live somewhere else who still
want to come back to campus.
We believe as we go into the spring at
this point in time that will be
primarily single rooms
with some options available for people
who are mutual roommate requests who
still want to stay
as roommates and so that is our
preferred option that we're planning for
at this moment.
Obviously, the COVID virus is going to
determine our opening
and may influence those plans in the
meantime,
but we will keep you informed with that
message in October. We'll start the
assignment,
excuse me, the application process in
November and get the assignments out to
people in early December for arrival
back in January.
That's it for the housing front as we
look at it and so I want to introduce
Erik Kneubuehl who's going to talk about
facilities and campus services.
Thanks Bill. So, again my name is Erik
Kneubuehl. I'm with Student Involvement and
Leadership here in the Division of
Student Affairs at ECU
and it is always a great day to be a
Pirate.
I want to reiterate what Chris
Stansbury said earlier
is that we are not closed. Our facilities,
our services
are open and, as you'll start to
hear,
we're going to have a number of things
that are going to continue to open
in greater amounts as we move throughout
the fall semester and as we
are given guidance from the governor.
First, let's talk about our student
center. So, we have two fantastic student
centers –
one on the main campus and one on the
health sciences campus.
Our facility on the Health Sciences
campus includes a recreation center and
as you know
because of the limits of what we're
allowed to do right now with the
governor,
that gyms are required to be closed. So,
I'll talk about rec. services a little
later about what we're going to do,
but please note that that facility is
still open.
Both facilities, including the Main
Campus Student Center, are both
open and available for students, faculty
staff,
and visitors to come see the facility.
They are required to wear a mask
and you will socially distance at times
when you're in the buildings,
but please make sure you are able or you
know you're able to come and visit
anytime you want.
Know that we have some of the best wi-fi
on campus. These two new buildings are
state-of-the-art.
They were built very recently, they're
both of them are only a year and a half
old.
They have the best wi-fi found on campus
so,
if you're struggling with wi-fi in
apartments and other places,
please know that you can come to the
student center at any point pick up the
wi-fi,
take your classes and do other things
online, as well as gather
and see friends. Don't forget we have a
number of resources open throughout the
building.
We also have our game room open in the
Main Campus Student Center. We are doing
special things to socially distance with
our billiards tables
as well as um do some limited amounts
of gaming on our gaming machines,
but again they are open and they are
available to you so please stop by and
as the semester progresses,
and we hope that the COVID
pandemic kind of
flatlines, that we can start to hear
information from the state and the
governor to reopen and new things will
open up in the facilities. When we talk
about programming
advocacy, please note that these offices
are open too.
We have a number of centers in the Main
Campus Student Center
that are part of our Intercultural
Affairs department, our Women's Center,
our LGBT resource or our Center,
and our Ledonia Wright Cultural Center, as
well as our Civic
and Engagement Center – really important
in this election year.
These facilities are open and are
receiving guests throughout the day
so students and guests can come in and
talk to you staff in there
and find out about what great programs
are going on. There are a
number of virtual programs happening.
Right now,
they're very virtually focused and again
we're going to start in the next
week or two to include small in-person
programs
within limits of what the governor is
required. So,
there are a number of programs. Where you
find out about these programs
is a really simple website. You want to
go to engage.ecu.edu.
They will have a list of all of the
programs there and if you download 
the CORQ - C O R Q app,
the CORQ app, you will be able to instantly,
one touch, go right to the
list of events for ECU and see what events 
are both
virtual and in person and are starting
to occur. That's important,
that engage app, because one of the ways
we are encouraging students
that we always encourage but especially
when we're in this virtual environment
to engage,
is to engage within a student
organization. Find your community,
find your support network through
different student organizations. We have
over 500
at East Carolina University that are
both located on the Health Sciences
campus and the main
campus and for undergraduates and
graduate and professional students.
So, please make sure you visit engage,
keyword search, browse, look up different
organizations. They will also tell you
how to
contact the organization presidents and
get involved
and to get your community a little bit
smaller so you can get engaged in Pirate
Nation.
Rec centers. So, we've had a lot of
questions recently about our recreation
facilities — both indoor and outdoor.
Our indoor facilities are very limited
right now because we are not allowed to
open them. We have one on the Health
Science campus in our student center. We
have
our own student recreation center here
on the main campus.
We will look to revisit the opening of
those student centers once we get
approval from the governor,
but the great news is starting Monday, so
tomorrow, starting Monday –
Rec Services will start to offer outdoor
activities
at both outside our... outside the student
centers in grassy areas as well as at
our
two off-campus locations Blunt
Recreational Complex and the North Rec
recreational complex. Those
type of things that will be offered
will be yoga classes, pilates,
there'll be kickboxing, there'll be some
activities. We have
frisbee golf that we offer at the North
Rec facility.
19 holes – I don't know why it's not it's
18 or 19 not 18 but that's
a different story, but 19 holes. Fantastic
facility. One of the best on the east
coast, as well as we'll be starting to do
things like trips to golf courses to do
singles tournaments.
So, we are going to offer a number of
different activities
both on the campus, at our off-campus rec
facilities and even at some rented areas
like golf courses in the area
to give students opportunities to
partake
in different events as well as to work
on their health in outside safe
environments.
The one indoor facility that is allowed
to open, it might not open on Monday
because we're still unsure about how
many lifeguards we can get, is our pool.
Our indoor pool facility will open
because we can get to it
from the outdoor pool complex so you
don't have to walk into the recreation
center and pools are allowed to open
across the state.
So we are going to have that open – that
will be open specifically for lap
swimming
and water aerobics. So, they'll have
special water aerobics classes and lap
swimming.
Again, they will be open. How you access
all of these because all of these
programs
is not are not going to be first come
first served in terms of walking up –
they're all going to be reservation
based.
You're going to have to download the ECU
Rec and Wellness app.
You can get it at either store. ECU
Rec and Wellness app
and you will go on, you'll see the
different offerings located
and you'll be able to register for the
thing you want to do so that way we
make sure we have the right amount of
people so we're adhering to outside
guidelines from the governor,
as well as spacing out. You'll
hopefully see that what we've done
in preparation for this is they're
already six foot, nine foot actually,
circles
painted on the ground in a lot of our
grassy areas and outdoor complexes
and they're about nine to ten feet apart
to make sure that everybody knows how to
social distance. You don't have to figure
it out.
You step in the circle and you get led
through the class. Again, go on
engage.ecu.edu – find out what
organizations to get involved in,
what virtual events there are, what
in-person events including those rec
events,
and then that will send you or you can
go right to the ECU Rec and Wellness
website that will... our app, sorry,
that will then allow you to register for
all these different activities
and in person and virtual based
activities.
Again, we are so excited to be opening
Rec. facilities.
We are still going strong and we are
so excited that Pirate Nation is in
Greenville and
that we are going to continue. Now
it's my pleasure to welcome back
Bill McCartney, who's going to give us
some information about food services.
Dining Services is alive and well on
on the ECU campus right now.
So, as we transition into the coming week,
that we will be transitioning into
providing service
for the students who live on campus as
well as any student
who might still be coming to campus who
lives in the Greenville area
and so we'll not only have dining hall
service available, also have
some retail options available for them,
as well.
So, when you look at this the places that
are available, we'll have Todd Dining
Hall open
and it will be open from 8:30 in the
morning till 8 o'clock at night
on Monday through Friday and on Saturday
and Sunday the hours are 10 a.m.
to 8 p.m. and students with meal plans
will come in and use their meal plan
like normal. We're not changing
the basis of our meal plan, so anyone who
lives here with a purple plan still has
all access.
Any of our students who live off campus
who purchase a purple meal plan still
have
all access or gold plan students can use
a meal by coming into the dining hall as
well if they would like.
On the retail front for the residential
students, we will have the Galley open.
The Galley will be open from
noon through 10 p.m. and there's a Subway
in there there's also
a burger place called Stack that's there
and then we also have a convenience
store called the Pod Market which is
available
and has some expanded hours. They're
opening at 10 o'clock in the morning
and then closing again at 10 p.m. at night
and so the meal plan and or cash is
available there.
Students would use their Pirate Bucks if
they would make purchases in those areas.
Both the Subway and Stacks do require
that students use
the Grubhub app in order to order
food from those locations. You cannot
walk in and order
food there. You must order a head using
Grubhub and then just pick up your food.
Other retail options on campus are that
we will
open in the student center: Raising Cane's,
Panda Express and Starbucks and those
those will be open to coincide primarily
with the hours that
the student center is
open and available to the public. Those
will be
at this point in time the only things
that are up that are open.
We are closing all food service
locations at the Health Science
campus and closing other locations on
campus because what we've seen with the
move to online education
is that students are not coming to
campus and hanging out and being here as
often
as they were in the past and sales at
all of those locations,
other locations on campus are down to
such a degree
that it's not feasible really to keep
them open and so there still will be
for students who are here in a meal plan
five different retail options for them
to supplement the dining hall with,
as well as an opportunity for them to
use the Pod Market.
The students who live off campus,
it is very important if they have a gold
meal plan to let us
know what will happen for them on the
gold meal plan front.
They are eligible to receive a prorated
refund on the unused meals portion of
their gold meal plan.
The bucks would remain on their account
because those roll over from semester to
semester
and can be reused at any point in time
in the coming months or years.
The big issue though is if they plan on
and want their meal plan to remain
unchanged moving forward for the Fall
semester,
they recently received an email to their
ECU account and they need to respond to
that
telling us to keep their entire meal
plan active if that's what their choice
is.
One of the things that
we've kind of prided ourselves on as a
campus from the dining front
is the are the dining halls. When you
look at how the dining hall operates now
it is a little different in the past
but all of our dining halls have
multiple
opportunities for students and they will
remain that way in Todd.
There will be multiple food stations
available at open daily.
There will be a pizza area, there will be
a grill area that does the traditional
hot dog, hamburger, grilled cheese, chicken
sandwich.
There'll be a home line where you're
used to getting things that are more
like that
fried chicken Wednesday with fried
chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob.
There'll be that meatloaf or lasagna or
all those kind of traditional comfort
foods that you see come out of that area,
as well as there will be other specials.
There'll be a deli area. We have
in there we have a quesadilla
bar where you can have
your own special quesadilla made for you
to your liking, as well as the salad bar
and desserts and
coffee and drinks, so the dining hall is
not being scaled back at all
and i think that the students who remain
on campus and eat out of the dining hall
will be quite pleased with what we have
to offer them there.
So, with that is kind of an update
on the dining front, I want to turn it
back over to Chris Stansbury
who will close our event today.
Thank you, Bill. It is different,
right, the world we live in is different
so some of the things that we're used to
being able to do impromptu, we just have
to schedule a little bit. Some of the
rec. programs get the app,
the engagement in our dining
program, getting the Grubhub app and
getting involved. We have to be a little
more thoughtful about what we're
to do before we get out there. We went
into a lot of detail for this program
today,
that was very intentional. We've heard
from a lot of our parents and our family
members
that have questions. They're not here.
You've dropped off your student and
you're not familiar with what's going on,
so that's why we went into the detail
of even letting you know what's
available in the dining hall as far as
some of the food options and that's very
intentional. We want you to know
that we've thought about this, we're
doing everything we can to make sure
that your student has
every bit of a good experience in
college as possible even in these very
difficult times.
I want to thank my colleagues Bill
McCartney and Erik Kneubuehl for that
information.
A couple of things, too. Return of Pirate
Nation website,
ecu.edu, go.ecu.edu/coronavirus
are all a couple of options
for you to stay connected.
The official ECU social media accounts
on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
you name it, there's information being
shared from the university
in every capacity possible. We want you
to stay informed. There's FAQs available
on those websites for students, for
employees, for family members.
If you're not sure, reach out to those
websites and see what you can find out
to stay connected and of course we're
going to be here
whenever there's information that needs
to be shared, we'll pop up with special
programs like this.
Until then, till we talk again next time,
be safe.
