The Students’ Association (SA) and the Eastman Students’ Association have been advocating since the beginning of the academic year for new ways that undergraduates living on the River Campus and at the Eastman School of Music can safely interact with one another amidst COVID-19 protocols, in order to stay connected with friends, classmates, and meet new people. The number of COVID-19 cases on campus has fluctuated at different points throughout the fall and spring semesters, making it difficult to consider relaxing any of the protocols designed to prevent COVID-19 transmission.

However, if the positive cases stabilize through students’ continued adherence to the UR Community Commitment, SA—in collaboration with University leaders and CURT members—plans to launch a pilot program that allows residential undergraduates on either campus to have one other individual visit their room, as long as both individuals are masked and both are current University residential undergraduates.

This new visitation pilot is targeted to begin on March 15 and will continue until the end of the spring semester if these two criteria are continuously met:

• University Health Service needs a minimum of 1,000 undergraduate residential students to be tested each week as part of surveillance testing
• The total number of positive cases among undergraduate students on the River Campus and at Eastman must stay at 40 or below over a 14-day period.

Find out more about the pilot program.

Financial aid applications for the 2021–22 academic year are due March 15. Reminders have been sent for the past several weeks with instructions on completing outstanding applications. Select undergraduate students are required to submit paperwork to the College Board’s IDOC service in addition to submitting the FAFSA and CSS Profile online. If you are required to submit your application via IDOC, you should send all paper documents directly to the College Board, not the Financial Aid Office. Keep in mind that in order to receive your IDOC instructional email from the College Board, you must have already submitted your FAFSA or CSS Profile online.

Further instructions can be found by logging in to your FAOnline account. Returning undergraduates who do not submit their application with all supporting documentation by the March 15 application deadline are not guaranteed full consideration for need-based University grant assistance and may have their institutional aid reduced due to limited funding. Students can review the late policy by reading the Financial Aid Handbook. Contact the Financial Aid Office with questions.