Up to 300 Dartmouth students could be without on-campus housing in the Spring term in the event that the College cancels its off-campus programs due to a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Dartmouth currently has no specific contingency plan for how to house displaced students if the College cancels its spring programs abroad due to anti-American violence abroad.
Although Director of Off-Campus Programs John Tansey said a wide-scale cancellation of programs is "very unlikely," the chance that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could cause the cancellation of a handful of programs exists.
"The College is actively considering that question along with many other, related ones," Tansey said of how the College would handle a large-scale cancellation of language study abroad and foreign study programs.
"We anticipate that we could accommodate a few more students in campus housing during Spring term, but not very many and certainly not all of those students who will be abroad on Dartmouth programs," said Dean of the College James Larimore.
Both Tansey and Larimore also said that depending at what point the College cancelled an FSP it might be possible for students to still receive credit for that term.
"If a program were cancelled far enough into the term that faculty felt comfortable granting students full academic credit, there would be no reason for those students to return to campus," Larimore said.
Tansey said that the College's reaction to a crisis abroad would hinge on the specifics of the incident.
"An incident in Iraq would probably not affect a [program] in, say, Mexico," Tansey said. "I think it's not so much the action of war, but the reaction."
Other than the disappointment inherent in the foreign study programs being cancelled, the influx of students whose D-plans would be disrupted would create major logistical programs for the College.
Even if only a small fraction of the approximately 300 students on spring FSPs return to Hanover, the overcrowding effect could be significant.
"The question about housing is, as you would expect, complex. Our housing system is quite full during Fall and Spring terms, so we have very little capacity for absorbing students from cancelled programs into College-owned dorms and apartments during those terms," Larimore said.
Tansey said that while official statistics would not be available until next week, he felt that applications for study-abroad programs have "kept pace with previous years." He also cited that even nationally there had been an across-the-board increase in applications for foreign programs.
According to Tansey, program directors participating in Winter term programs have reported no anti-American incidents despite current anti-war demonstrations across Europe.
"People in a given country tend to make a distinction between governments and their people," said Tansey.
During the Gulf War, five programs were cancelled, while one in Granada, Spain was moved to Puebla, Mexico. Tansey also estimated that the Off-Campus Program's office had been receiving a couple of phone calls per day from concerned families questioning the status of the programs.
