Derek Furtado, a sophomore at Norwich University, had just stepped out of the shower in his dormitory and was shaving, a towel wrapped around his waist, when he looked to his left and saw the figure of a man in military uniform.
“That was when my heart sunk,” recalled Mr. Furtado, a cadet who plans to commission into the Coast Guard. He pulled himself together, stood at attention and said, “Good morning, sir!” The circumstances were not ideal. “He has two stars on his chest,” Mr. Furtado said. “I’m in a towel.”
But he would have to get used to it, because, it turned out, Col. Mark C. Anarumo, the university’s president, was his new hall mate.
Among the surprising outcomes of the coronavirus pandemic was that Dr. Anarumo, newly arrived as president of the private military college in Vermont, decided that the best way to support students who were quarantining in their rooms was to move into the dorm with them.
some parents lashed out, the administration relaxed the measures, allowing seniors to double up in rooms and leave campus for meals. The Academy’s leaders revisited their earlier decisions, reconsidering the risks of isolation, said Dr. Anarumo, who has a Ph.D. in criminal justice.
estimated 26 million college students whose lives have been disrupted by the virus.
“We’re enforcing physical loneliness,” said Dr. Rachel C. Conrad, the director of Young Adult Mental Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “There’s not really anything to compare it to, exactly, from our history.”