Penn State has canceled all in-person classes until April 3, closing residence halls and reducing campus dining facility hours — and leaving many students questioning whether or not they will be partially reimbursed for the lost time.

“At this point the University does not plan to issue prorated refunds for the virtual period between now and April 3,” Penn State spokesman Wyatt Dubois said via email. “However, the issue will be revisited if the remote-instruction period is extended beyond April 3."

According to both Dubois and the Penn State Office of the Bursar, the university will not issue refunds due to the remote-instruction period being a “short-term effort.”

Penn State student Michael Keller said that is a “terrible excuse.”

“Three weeks is over one-fifth of the semester,” Keller (junior-plant science) said. “In what world is closing housing and moving to virtual classes for one-fifth of a semester considered a small disruption?”

Keller works at an on-campus location that will be closed during this period, leaving him and many other Penn State students out of a job for the next few weeks.

“I am an out-of-state student living on campus and I pay $25-30,000 per semester,” Keller (junior-plant science) said. “For one-fifth of this semester, I am being forced to receive online instruction of diminished quality and to avoid returning to my dorm in which a majority of my belongings reside. To make me pay full price for these things is simply unacceptable.”

Keller isn’t alone in his anger. One Penn State student started a change.org petition titled "Penn State: Give Students a Partial Tuition and Housing Refund" that had nearly 2,500 signatures as of Thursday night.

“The only correct course of action that Penn State can make now is to offer reduced tuition for these three weeks, at the same rate as World Campus tuition,” Keller said. “Housing deposits should be refunded as well to accommodate for the lost time.”

Dan Quedenfeld is also unable to earn a wage right now as his on-campus job has been temporarily closed.

Quedenfeld (senior-materials science and engineering) lives off campus, but said he believes students who live on campus should be fully reimbursed for the duration of time that they are unable to access their housing.

Housing isn’t the only reimbursement Quedenfeld believes Penn State students are subject to during to this closure period — as students won’t have access to their campus meal plans.

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“Penn State should compensate for what will result in overfull meal plan accounts at the end of the semester,” Quedenfeld said, “An entire month of no campus meals means meal plan budgets will be way overfull by the end of the semester.”

During the 2019-20 academic year, Penn State students pay $2,070 for a level 1 meal plan, $2,399 for a level 2 and $2,665 for a level 3.

Because these dining dollars will remain dormant for the next few weeks, many students are worried they will lose substantial amounts of money because leftover dining dollars from the spring do not typically carry over to the fall and are forfeited.

Student Coltrane Conner said he thinks adjustments should be made to this process instead of the university forfeiting student’s leftover points.

“I do think that they should allow student’s meal plans to roll over spring to fall, which they do not normally,” Conner (freshman-engineering) said. “That would place an undue burden on the university and would demonstrate to students that administrators are not taking students’ financial needs for granted.”

Beyond meal plans, Conner said Penn State is doing the best it can to protect its community and isn’t responsible for refunding students for part of their tuition since classes are continuing during this period.

Some students, however, feel that the quality of instruction they pay for will be disrupted by the lack of in-person instruction and communication.

Quedenfeld said he believes students deserve a partial tuition reimbursement because they aren’t receiving what they are paying for —instruction from an in-person professor and the benefits of human interaction in the classroom.

“As a student, I pay tuition to receive in-person instruction,” Quedenfeld said. “I don’t particularly care about having to take classes online as opposed to in person as far as convenience goes, but I am worried about the quality of online instruction and how that will impact my grades.”

While Penn State’s decision to close campus was anticipated by many, what many students are waiting for is the university’s decision on how to accommodate students for lost time — and money.

“Penn State has a good opportunity to demonstrate its good will toward its students by reimbursing them properly,” Quedenfeld said.

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