Khuslen Tulga is one of 55 students, almost all international, still living at Hamilton College after the coronavirus outbreak ended in-person classes and sent most students off campus. Her days are marked by video calls to her grandparents, who raised her, in Mongolia. The internet is her only tether home after the pandemic closed the country’s borders.

The abrupt end to the semester and the transition to remote learning has been difficult for everyone. But international students like Tulga—far from family and often with little sense of when they might return home—are among the most vulnerable.

As college administrators across the country continue announcing plans to reopen their institutions this fall, two important questions have been largely lost in the debates over those decisions. What will it take for colleges to reopen responsibly as long as there is no vaccine or treatment for COVID-19—and how realistic is it that colleges can put measures in place by fall?