The University of South Carolina has recalled its earlier announcement, asking students to resume the classes on Monday instead of Tuesday.
The university made the decision after accessing the situation post-Hurricane Florence, which hit the southeastern states of North and South Carolina.
In a statement on Saturday, the university said the campus had largely avoided the harm from the hurricane and normal operations would be resuming on Monday. However, no student will be penalized if he or she is not able to make an early comeback.
“Due to a previous announcement anticipating that classes would resume on Tuesday, any student unable to return to Columbia for Monday classes will not be penalized for the absence. Students are still responsible for the material covered in classes on Monday and instructors will be cooperative with students needing to make up this work,” President Harris Pastides said.
As of Monday, the Florence deluge has killed 18 people and trapped hundreds of residents in parts of North and South Carolina.
The sudden announcement by the university has left students scrambling to make it back, spending hundreds of dollars on flight tickets in the backdrop of closed highways.
“When you email students saying classes will be canceled, we all plan around that. A lot of I-95 is closed. There’s no easy way for me to get to Columbia,” Charlotte Overton, a graduate student in USC’s public administration program, told Greenville News.
The university said it was following Governor Henry McMaster decision to open government offices and schools on Monday.