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In an email to students, Longwood University President W. Taylor Reveley IV announced that commencement for the Class of 2020 would be the weekend of Oct. 9 and 10.

“I promised last month that the Class of 2020 would walk for in-person graduation,” Reveley said. “We have been working with government officials and campus and community leaders to identify a date as soon as possible that is also as reliable as can be.”

According to Reveley, commencement for graduate students will be on Friday, Oct. 9. Undergraduate students will graduate Saturday, Oct. 10.

Reveley says it will be a full weekend of celebration with plenty of opportunities over the course of the weekend for students to celebrate and reconnect.

“Campus and Farmville are so beautiful in the fall, and earlier dates which we explored so closely continued to have a real risk of disruption by this crisis,” Reveley said.

More details regarding times and logistics will be sent to students in the coming weeks. Students who fulfill their academic requirements will officially become a Longwood graduate in May.

Currently, students are continuing classes via online learning since the campus closed to in-person instruction after two students tested positive for COVID-19 in March.

According to Reveley, Longwood fully intends to return to in-person learning on campus in the fall.

“No one can predict exactly what the weeks and months ahead in this historic and challenging time may hold, but I am in regular touch with the other Virginia college presidents and state officials as we begin preparing for a return to normalcy,” Reveley said. “It may require us to do some things differently on campus, at least for a while, including additional steps to protect public health. But we have every expectation of being back next fall.”