5 ms·

I'm struggling to figure out how closing campus housing is legal. There's a huge chunk of student for whom that IS their housing. Full stop. They paid rent.

I'm struggling to figure out how closing campus housing is legal. There's a huge chunk of student for whom that IS their housing. Full stop. They paid rent. They occupy the space. They have no other home to go to. This seems like illegal eviction to me.

nexuist 7y ago
I'm in university right now and our housing contract has a clause stating: "The University reserves the right to repossess student rooms and residence hall facilities in the event of an epidemic or other emergency as defined by the University." Happy I live off campus.
- crooked-v 7y ago
  That clause seems like the kind of thing a judge would immediately throw out the window when it conflicts with tenancy laws.
  - nexuist 7y ago
    This is a state university for what it's worth. I doubt they haven't already run it by lawyers.
    - dayofthedaleks 7y ago
      U of Dayton is a private, catholic university.
      - kylebenzle 7y ago
        The guy you are replying to was talking about "his" school.
    - kamarg 7y ago
      Many contracts that have illegal/unenforceable clauses have been run by lawyers...
      - kwhitefoot 7y ago
        > Many contracts that have illegal/unenforceable clauses have been run by lawyers... Many contracts that have illegal/unenforceable clauses have them because they have been been run by lawyers. They know perfectly well that most ordinary people are in no position to tell whether or not a clause is enforceable. My landlady when I was at uni (74-77) tried it on me not realizing that my girlfriend was studying land law and contract law at the time.
  - anotherman554 7y ago
    Only if the tenancy laws don't have an exception for college dorms.
  - HarryHirsch 7y ago
    That assumes that the judge isn't crooked. Judges are locally elected, and they may not wish to go against the largest employer/donor in town.
- bradstewart 7y ago
  Just because it says that, doesn't make it legal. I have no idea if it or isn't, but contracts can and do include illegal and/or unenforceable clauses.
rpiguy 7y ago
YES. This is one of the most monumentally stupid things I've seen in response to COVID19, stupider than hoarding toilet paper and drinking colloidal silver. I suspect the University will be taken to court and fined quite a bit for this. Some students left homeless will sue for civil damages. Happy days for lawyers in Dayton. Students not so much...
- smacktoward 7y ago
  Universities are in a difficult position here. You're probably right that someone will sue them for breaking their housing agreement. On the other hand, if they didn't break the housing agreement, and students in the dorms started sickening (or worse, dying), you had better believe the lawsuits would start flying pretty quickly as well. So, if it's not a question of whether you're going to be sued but on what grounds, you want to do whatever thing will leave you in the best position to defend yourself when the inevitable lawsuits start arriving. And given the medical consensus that social distancing is necessary to protect against coronavirus, if I were a university administrator, I'd much rather be defending myself against charges that I broke a contract than against charges that I recklessly endangered peoples' lives in order to not have to break it.
  - d4mi3n 7y ago
    This is a very good point that deserves discussion. That said, this isn't an either-or situation. Universities could easily arrange temporary off-campus housing for students displaced by the crisis.
    - smacktoward 7y ago
      They could, but would such housing be appreciably better at protecting from coronavirus transmission than the dorms? They'd likely be just as densely populated, if not moreso. If the university buys a couple of buildings and moves the residents of five dorms into those buildings, they haven't made things better, they've made them worse. The reason to close the dorms isn't because the dorms themselves are bad in this scenario, it's that packing people closely together is bad in this scenario. The virtue of closing the dorms is that it sends most of the students back home, spreading them out among the general population. Density is the enemy.
danudey 7y ago
I love that the headline says the students "took to the streets" after they were kicked out of their homes onto the streets.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Where else did they expect them to 'take'? If I don't have any place to go besides my dorm, I likely don't have a car either.
smacktoward 7y ago
> There's a huge chunk of student for whom that IS their housing. Full stop. I haven't seen the details of UD's arrangements, but in the case of MIT yesterday, they explicitly provided an exception for students who didn't have any other housing to return to. It would be a sign of extraordinarily bad management at UD if they didn't provide the same. > This seems like illegal eviction to me. I discussed this in the MIT thread yesterday, but contract law does provide mechanisms for invalidating or modifying existing agreements under extraordinary circumstances. The doctrine of force majeure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure), for instance, under which both parties to a contract can be relieved of their obligations if some unforeseeable, unstoppable outside force makes it impossible or impractical for them to meet them. American contracts commonly have a force majeure clause included with the rest of the legal boilerplate. One potential wrinkle here would be exactly what legal standard would be required for the coronavirus to qualify as a true force majeure. Massachusetts and Ohio both declared states of emergency due to the coronavirus yesterday; I suspect it's not a coincidence that universities in Boston, MA and Dayton, OH waited for those declarations before they started taking these types of actions.
- Beldin 7y ago
  > One potential wrinkle here would be exactly what legal standard would be required for the coronavirus to qualify as a true force majeure ... for the institution. Getting kicked out of your house could easily be a force majeure for the tenant I'm curious how a force majeure clause applied to the current pandemic would help the institution more than its tenants.
  - kangnkodos 7y ago
    So if both parties are being relieved of their obligations, does that mean students get their money back for tuition, room and board? If you sign up for in person instructions, and then are told they are switching you to a YouTube video, you should be offered a choice to continue on the new terms or to terminate the agreement. If you are asked to leave your housing for part of the semester, you should be compensated for relocation expenses. If lightning struck one small campus dorm, the student would expect the university to immediately provide alternative housing or pay for a reasonable alternative and moving expenses. The same should hold if the whole campus was closed.
sneak 7y ago
Some places have banned gatherings, too, which, while good guidance to give out, I think might also be illegal. I think a lot of illegal things are going to “just happen”, and some will get sorted out in courts months or years from now. (And some never will, like the potentially impending medical treatment collapse in prisons.) In the current moment, I think it’s just going to be a matter of “might makes right” or at least “might makes progress” until the courts untangle it way down the line.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> I'm struggling to figure out how closing campus housing is legal. > There's a huge chunk of student[s] for whom that IS their housing. Full stop. This is addressed explicitly right up front: > UD housing will close at 6 pm March 11. If you are approved for an extended stay or housing over spring break, you are permitted to stay. It can't have been that much of a struggle to figure out?
- deckar01 7y ago
  > If you are approved for an extended stay or housing over spring break, you are permitted to stay. That statement is pretty vague though. At my university you had to apply to stay in the dorms during breaks and I think there was an additional fee involved. I'm sure most of the students were planning on leaving, but now they have 4 day gap between when they have to leave and when they were planning on leaving. At my university, I believe only students in the condo style units with personal entrances were allowed to stay by default. Navigating the bureaucracy of an institution like this can be difficult for a young person, especially one with a busy schedule and short notice.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    If on-campus housing is the only housing available to you, then either (most likely) you already have the approval, or (not at all likely) you're in the same crisis now that you would have been in in four days. Neither of those is really an exceptional hardship. "I need to shift my flight up four days" is not a difficulty to be described as "that IS their housing, full stop".
mschaef 7y ago
I worry about this aspect of it too. When I was in school, I was in easy driving distance (3 hours) of stable alternative housing at my parent's place. Not everybody has 'stable alternative housing', much less available to them without a huge logistical challenge. No idea what somebody from out of the country is supposed to do when their university throws them out with a week's notice or less. (Particularly after paying tuition, housing costs, and the like.)
h1srf 7y ago
As a former international student, even regular breaks when school would close the dorms were tough. Winter/Spring break especially. Back then there was no AirBnb and no one would do short term rentals. I do not envy those students with nowhere to go. Plane tickets while cheap-ish due to the outbreak may still be out of the reach of college students.
- smacktoward 7y ago
  UD has explicitly said international students can stay in their dorm rooms -- see https://udayton.edu/studev/health_wellness/healthcenter/coronavirus/index.php https://udayton.edu/studev/health_wellness/healthcenter/coro....
  - h1srf 7y ago
    Ah, missed that. I'm glad for them.
- dahfizz 7y ago
  There wasn't an international dorm at your University? My University had a dorm for international / special circumstances kids that never closed over breaks. I assumed that was normal.
  - h1srf 7y ago
    Nope. Small private school. I think as I was graduating they started operating some dorms full time.
tssva 7y ago
Ohio tenant laws specifically address the circumstances under which a student tenant can be evicted and this would violate them. However the governor has declared a state of emergency which does grant the executive branches powers they normally would not have. It may be within the power of the Ohio Department of Health under the state of emergency to force the university to take such an action. I don't know that it is but is would not be totally surprising if it was.

nexuist 7y ago

I'm in university right now and our housing contract has a clause stating: "The University reserves the right to repossess student rooms and residence hall facilities in the event of an epidemic or other emergency as defined by the University." Happy I live off campus.

crooked-v 7y ago
That clause seems like the kind of thing a judge would immediately throw out the window when it conflicts with tenancy laws.
- nexuist 7y ago
  This is a state university for what it's worth. I doubt they haven't already run it by lawyers.
  - dayofthedaleks 7y ago
    U of Dayton is a private, catholic university.
    - kylebenzle 7y ago
      The guy you are replying to was talking about "his" school.
  - kamarg 7y ago
    Many contracts that have illegal/unenforceable clauses have been run by lawyers...
    - kwhitefoot 7y ago
      > Many contracts that have illegal/unenforceable clauses have been run by lawyers... Many contracts that have illegal/unenforceable clauses have them because they have been been run by lawyers. They know perfectly well that most ordinary people are in no position to tell whether or not a clause is enforceable. My landlady when I was at uni (74-77) tried it on me not realizing that my girlfriend was studying land law and contract law at the time.
- anotherman554 7y ago
  Only if the tenancy laws don't have an exception for college dorms.
- HarryHirsch 7y ago
  That assumes that the judge isn't crooked. Judges are locally elected, and they may not wish to go against the largest employer/donor in town.
bradstewart 7y ago
Just because it says that, doesn't make it legal. I have no idea if it or isn't, but contracts can and do include illegal and/or unenforceable clauses.

rpiguy 7y ago

YES. This is one of the most monumentally stupid things I've seen in response to COVID19, stupider than hoarding toilet paper and drinking colloidal silver. I suspect the University will be taken to court and fined quite a bit for this. Some students left homeless will sue for civil damages. Happy days for lawyers in Dayton. Students not so much...

smacktoward 7y ago
Universities are in a difficult position here. You're probably right that someone will sue them for breaking their housing agreement. On the other hand, if they didn't break the housing agreement, and students in the dorms started sickening (or worse, dying), you had better believe the lawsuits would start flying pretty quickly as well. So, if it's not a question of whether you're going to be sued but on what grounds, you want to do whatever thing will leave you in the best position to defend yourself when the inevitable lawsuits start arriving. And given the medical consensus that social distancing is necessary to protect against coronavirus, if I were a university administrator, I'd much rather be defending myself against charges that I broke a contract than against charges that I recklessly endangered peoples' lives in order to not have to break it.
- d4mi3n 7y ago
  This is a very good point that deserves discussion. That said, this isn't an either-or situation. Universities could easily arrange temporary off-campus housing for students displaced by the crisis.
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    They could, but would such housing be appreciably better at protecting from coronavirus transmission than the dorms? They'd likely be just as densely populated, if not moreso. If the university buys a couple of buildings and moves the residents of five dorms into those buildings, they haven't made things better, they've made them worse. The reason to close the dorms isn't because the dorms themselves are bad in this scenario, it's that packing people closely together is bad in this scenario. The virtue of closing the dorms is that it sends most of the students back home, spreading them out among the general population. Density is the enemy.

danudey 7y ago

I love that the headline says the students "took to the streets" after they were kicked out of their homes onto the streets.

hinkley 7y ago
Where else did they expect them to 'take'? If I don't have any place to go besides my dorm, I likely don't have a car either.

smacktoward 7y ago

> There's a huge chunk of student for whom that IS their housing. Full stop. I haven't seen the details of UD's arrangements, but in the case of MIT yesterday, they explicitly provided an exception for students who didn't have any other housing to return to. It would be a sign of extraordinarily bad management at UD if they didn't provide the same. > This seems like illegal eviction to me. I discussed this in the MIT thread yesterday, but contract law does provide mechanisms for invalidating or modifying existing agreements under extraordinary circumstances. The doctrine of force majeure (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure), for instance, under which both parties to a contract can be relieved of their obligations if some unforeseeable, unstoppable outside force makes it impossible or impractical for them to meet them. American contracts commonly have a force majeure clause included with the rest of the legal boilerplate. One potential wrinkle here would be exactly what legal standard would be required for the coronavirus to qualify as a true force majeure. Massachusetts and Ohio both declared states of emergency due to the coronavirus yesterday; I suspect it's not a coincidence that universities in Boston, MA and Dayton, OH waited for those declarations before they started taking these types of actions.

Beldin 7y ago
> One potential wrinkle here would be exactly what legal standard would be required for the coronavirus to qualify as a true force majeure ... for the institution. Getting kicked out of your house could easily be a force majeure for the tenant I'm curious how a force majeure clause applied to the current pandemic would help the institution more than its tenants.
- kangnkodos 7y ago
  So if both parties are being relieved of their obligations, does that mean students get their money back for tuition, room and board? If you sign up for in person instructions, and then are told they are switching you to a YouTube video, you should be offered a choice to continue on the new terms or to terminate the agreement. If you are asked to leave your housing for part of the semester, you should be compensated for relocation expenses. If lightning struck one small campus dorm, the student would expect the university to immediately provide alternative housing or pay for a reasonable alternative and moving expenses. The same should hold if the whole campus was closed.

sneak 7y ago

Some places have banned gatherings, too, which, while good guidance to give out, I think might also be illegal. I think a lot of illegal things are going to “just happen”, and some will get sorted out in courts months or years from now. (And some never will, like the potentially impending medical treatment collapse in prisons.) In the current moment, I think it’s just going to be a matter of “might makes right” or at least “might makes progress” until the courts untangle it way down the line.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> I'm struggling to figure out how closing campus housing is legal. > There's a huge chunk of student[s] for whom that IS their housing. Full stop. This is addressed explicitly right up front: > UD housing will close at 6 pm March 11. If you are approved for an extended stay or housing over spring break, you are permitted to stay. It can't have been that much of a struggle to figure out?

deckar01 7y ago
> If you are approved for an extended stay or housing over spring break, you are permitted to stay. That statement is pretty vague though. At my university you had to apply to stay in the dorms during breaks and I think there was an additional fee involved. I'm sure most of the students were planning on leaving, but now they have 4 day gap between when they have to leave and when they were planning on leaving. At my university, I believe only students in the condo style units with personal entrances were allowed to stay by default. Navigating the bureaucracy of an institution like this can be difficult for a young person, especially one with a busy schedule and short notice.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  If on-campus housing is the only housing available to you, then either (most likely) you already have the approval, or (not at all likely) you're in the same crisis now that you would have been in in four days. Neither of those is really an exceptional hardship. "I need to shift my flight up four days" is not a difficulty to be described as "that IS their housing, full stop".

mschaef 7y ago

I worry about this aspect of it too. When I was in school, I was in easy driving distance (3 hours) of stable alternative housing at my parent's place. Not everybody has 'stable alternative housing', much less available to them without a huge logistical challenge. No idea what somebody from out of the country is supposed to do when their university throws them out with a week's notice or less. (Particularly after paying tuition, housing costs, and the like.)

h1srf 7y ago

As a former international student, even regular breaks when school would close the dorms were tough. Winter/Spring break especially. Back then there was no AirBnb and no one would do short term rentals. I do not envy those students with nowhere to go. Plane tickets while cheap-ish due to the outbreak may still be out of the reach of college students.

smacktoward 7y ago
UD has explicitly said international students can stay in their dorm rooms -- see https://udayton.edu/studev/health_wellness/healthcenter/coronavirus/index.php https://udayton.edu/studev/health_wellness/healthcenter/coro....
- h1srf 7y ago
  Ah, missed that. I'm glad for them.
dahfizz 7y ago
There wasn't an international dorm at your University? My University had a dorm for international / special circumstances kids that never closed over breaks. I assumed that was normal.
- h1srf 7y ago
  Nope. Small private school. I think as I was graduating they started operating some dorms full time.

tssva 7y ago

Ohio tenant laws specifically address the circumstances under which a student tenant can be evicted and this would violate them. However the governor has declared a state of emergency which does grant the executive branches powers they normally would not have. It may be within the power of the Ohio Department of Health under the state of emergency to force the university to take such an action. I don't know that it is but is would not be totally surprising if it was.