Liberty University proves media wrong by reopening amid coronavirus pandemic
Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, says media opposition to institution's reopening was 'totally political.'
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Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. took the mainstream media to task on "The Ingraham Angle" Tuesday after he received heavy criticism for keeping the Lynchburg, Va. campus open in March, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
"Well, if you're a conservative college president, be careful because they'll come after you," Fallwell told host Laura Ingraham. "It's totally political. It was totally political. And it was just so reprehensible how they did it. They spent days on campus. The New York Times reporter and the other reporter [from] ProPublica. And even though there were 'No Trespassing' signs everywhere, [they] never called to ask us for any comment. Never talked to our on-campus doctor."
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Instead, Falwell claimed, the reporters spoke to a doctor across town and contacted the university on a Sunday, one day before publishing.
"We were scrambling, trying to pull everybody together on a Sunday. But that shows their intent," Falwell said. "Their intent was to create this false impression."
Falwell said the school focused on online classes in the final weeks of this semester, while keeping regular on-campus hours for the approximately 1,200 students who returned to the dorms after the university's spring break.
"We have a campus built for 16,000," he said. "Twelve hundred students came back to stay in the dorms for seven weeks and they were students who either didn't have high-speed internet, had elderly relatives living at home or were international students," Falwell said. "And so they had no place else to go."
Falwell said he disagreed with plans by other academic institutions to cancel on-campus instruction in the fall, saying they have an obligation to their students.
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"I think colleges have an obligation to do whatever they can to continue the student's education. That's what we did," Falwell said. "We do it in a safe manner. We really became the model. We had all takeout at our restaurants. We had social distancing. All the academic buildings were open so they could spread out. And ... it worked perfectly."
As of Tuesday, the Virginia Department of Health had confirmed just 75 cases of COVID-19 in Lynchburg, a city of more than 75,000 people. Liberty's residence halls closed for summer break earlier this month, with Falwell declaring that "nobody who lived in a campus residence hall or who worked in a campus office tested positive for the virus."