Student says MSUM won't fully reimburse her after canceling international trip over coronavirus concerns

MOORHEAD, Minn. (Valley News Live) - Concerns over the coronavirus, or COVID-19, has potentially cost some students at Minnesota State University Moorhead thousands of dollars.

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They were planning to leave on an overseas trip when the Minnesota State Chancellor pulled the plug.

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Andie Wood, a senior at MSUM, said she was one of those students and was leaving this week to study abroad in Costa Rica.

“I want to go into conservation biology and to enter an absolute reserve is kind of the dream,” Wood said.

She said the dream was crushed after the chancellor decided to bar any international travel citing the coronavirus.

“We got that news at 8 o'clock on Friday night, five days before we were supposed to leave, and so obviously really devastating,” Wood said.

MSUM President Anna Blachurst sent an email to students on Monday afternoon that it is working with the impacted students on the change.

The students, who were in a biology class, had been looking forward to this trip all year, and had paid for it in the beginning of the semester as it was included with their tuition and fees, according to Wood.

Wood said she paid $2,400 and learned at a meeting on Monday afternoon that MSUM will only reimburse the 21 students for a quarter of that.

“I think that if we're not going to use them, we should be getting our money back,” Wood said.

After contacting MSUM, we learned from Dean of Students Kara Gravely-Stack that the university will try to work with the students. However, it wouldn’t guarantee full reimbursement.

Tod Ganje of Travel Incorporated said if you have a trip planned, and are looking to cancel, read the fine print even if you have travel insurance.

“I would think [that] 90 percent of the time, if you're getting a travel insurance, there's probably some restriction to it,” Ganje said. “And it's not just a, ‘I don't feel like going’ cancellation.”

Ganje said people who've booked trips with his agency have called but mostly to ask questions.

“Our clients are probably booking things far in advance, so they're just kind of wondering what might happen this summer, and obviously we don't know what's going to happen this summer,” Ganje said.

We checked with North Dakota State University and Concordia College. NDSU said it is restricting travel to China, Italy, and South Korea, and is also monitoring the situation for other outbreaks.

Concordia hasn’t canceled any study abroad programs, but is having two student come back early from Italy.