(MassLive – Stephanie Barry) A vacant student dormitory at Westfield State University is no longer being considered an option for emergency migrant housing, according to a spokesman for the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities.
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“Simply put, putting an emergency shelter in the heart of a campus defies all logic and reasoning. And unlike buildings considered at some other institutions like Salem State University, Lammers Hall also lacks access to critical services and is fully inadequate to serve as an emergency shelter,” said state Sen. John C. Velis, D-Westfield, in a statement yesterday. “I’ve always felt that it was misguided to attempt to solve one problem — the federal government’s inability to mitigate an immigration crisis — by exacerbating another problem, namely, requiring higher education to deviate from their core mission of educating students.”