So as most people know, most colleges have shut down due to coronavirus. The current school I’m at for grad school kicked all students in student housing out (besides students in extreme circumstances). From my understanding, students had a few days to get everything out of their dorm but as some live far away from the school, they elected to leave their stuff in the room until further notice of instructions. Well as the number of people in need of hospital beds has increased, the school decided to turn the honors dorms into a makeshift hospital and hired 4 companies to come in and gut the place within 12 hours. Each room was packed up into a separate box and labeled. Students still in that building were moved I believe. The issue is, the school didn’t tell anyone about this until after the building was gutted. Their reasoning was that if they told people, some would rush to the school to get their stuff and that would increase infection rates since people would be breaking quarantine or the general process would be slowed down in a time when these hospital beds could mean life or death for some people. Do these extenuating circumstances make up for the school’s quick decision? If not, how should they have handled the situation?

Bonus question: this became big news when one of the workers hired to gut the building posted videos on FB complaining about how much work he was being hired to do (fair, gutting a whole dorm in 12 hours even with a large number of workers is difficult) and basically berating the school for the “terrible decision” they made. He was fired yesterday once the videos made it back to his employer. Is this grounds for firing since it’s generally common knowledge not to bash your employer on social media or was he acting as a whistleblower?