As there will be more housing available for graduate students -- Stanford can now assign safer living spaces for these students. Students should not have to share bathrooms. Glad Stanford has made the ethical decision to emphasize health and now can do the right thing by giving the graduate students decent and hygienic living quarters.

Just curious about the economic impact on Palo Alto and the surrounding communities with students not coming back to campus. Does anyone have an idea about what this means for the local economy?

Oh, No! fewer pizzas and burgers to be sold!

Hi all,

I guess I will bite at the comment.

I am curious about not having 5,000 undergrads , buying, renting and putting cash into the local economy. Stanford will not employ as many folks based on this decision. Add that to the loss of local revenue.

Fewer pizzas and hamburgers sold means higher unemployment.

I was looking for a rational conversation.

The people here are running around without masks, not social distancing, and people wonder why the economy is bad. The city council is not requiring a crackdown on unsafe behavior.

Stanford is doing what it had to do given the selfishness of the local population.

It is time to follow the lead of other countries and get serious. Stop fooling around.

"Does anyone have an idea about what this means for the local economy?"

It'll be a loss of customers to all local businesses, but especially bad for those in Town and Country shopping center. And then there are Stanford game weekends. Big revenue generators.

There were never going to be fans at Stanford games even if they were played.

The head of the Minneapolis Fed says that we need to go into a short-term hard lockdown to drive the case rate down to level that all of the cases can be tracked and traced with the infected people put into an enforced quarantine.

We are in the situation now where the owners of a very few restaurants are driving public health policy. How backwards can this be?

I'm not saying it isn't the right thing for Stanford to do (I think it is), just that it'll have a substantial financial impact on local businesses.

Thanks, Chris. Sooo many seniors without masks, which is insane given their age-affected lower immune systems. Others, too, of course without masks.