Nearly 250 students stayed on campus during Thanksgiving break this year.
The majority of students who stayed in their residence halls while the university closed last week were athletes, according to Residential Life. However, students who are far from home also stayed on campus.
Only freshmen, sophomores and juniors made up the number of students who stayed on campus during break, since seniors are allowed to stay without going through Residential Life procedure.
Assistant Director of Residential Life Mike Guthrie said the university works with students who live several hours away, but they even get requests from students who might live 15 minutes away.
“We’re absolutely willing to work with the students because we are one giant family here and unfortunately sometimes we take it for granted,” Guthrie said.
Residential Life sends an email to students a few weeks before Thanksgiving closing which states that students need to put in their request to stay one week before break. Guthrie said some students send in their requests on Friday morning, but this makes it more difficult for Residential Life.
“For every student that needs a late stay, we actually go into the computer and manually override [their QCards],” he said. “Many students don’t realize the extensive process on our end that we have to go through to make it happen for them.”
Junior Seyma Buse Gorucu from Turkey stayed with her roommates from Massachusetts and New York for the majority of the break, but she said she worked with Residential Life to come back the day after Thanksgiving.
“They emailed us about one month ago [saying] if you want to stay on campus you need to tell us,” Gorucu said. “It was easy.”
Gorucu said she does not celebrate Thanksgiving back home, but she missed spending time with her family and friends earlier in the year.
“In Turkey, when I first came here we had the biggest holiday,” she said. “It’s like Thanksgiving and I felt lonely in that time because I usually spend my time with family and with my friends, but here I was so alone even with my Turkish friends.”
Junior Lucy Nuranto from California did not go home for the break and stayed on campus at the end of the week. But she found another way to spend time with her family.
“My mom flew from California to New York City and I met her there,” Nuranto said.
Nuranto has gone home to California for past Thanksgiving breaks, but she said her sister starting college at Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. this year made things more difficult.
“I wish that my sister and I would have been able to gone home because it is nice to escape from everything,” she said. “[My mom and I] had a couple of days in New York and then we got my sister and went to my grandma’s house which is in Connecticut.”
Guthrie said several students this year requested to stay on campus during the break due to hardships at home.
“We assume students are gonna go home to a very traditional Thanksgiving and a very happy, healthy environment and unfortunately that’s not always the case for every student,” he said. “We don’t want any student to be without a place for the holidays.”
