Migrants going into an overflow shelter at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts. Photo taken by Tom Joyce on March 29, 2024.
A private Christian college in Quincy, Massachusetts is shutting its doors to students, but not to migrants.
The Board of Trustees of Eastern Nazarene College announced last week that it voted unanimously to start the process of closing the school and transitioning it into a “new educational enterprise” with a shared mission of educating students with Christian values, according to a press release from the college.
The school, which had just 492 undergraduate students, will continue teaching through the end of 2024, but not after that, according to its web site. However, it will only serve students who will graduate by the end of this year. Other students must transfer. Eastern Nazarene has streamlined transfer agreements with three other schools: Gordon College, Mount Vernon Nazarene University, and Trevecca Nazarene University.
So how does that news affect migrants on campus?
It doesn’t — for now.
The Eastern Nazarene College campus will continue to serve as a migrant overflow shelter until at least June 30, 2025, a spokesman for the school told NewBostonPost by email. The school has served this role since September 2023. At any given time, the college houses up to 58 migrant families — about 230 people. These are migrants waiting to be placed into longer-term housing situations, including taxpayer-funded hotel and motel stays.
Here is what the schools’s site says about its migrant shelter program amid the school’s closure:
ENC anticipates no immediate impact on the Matthew 25 initiative, which includes a Family Welcome Center and Temporary Family Emergency Shelter for people displaced from their home countries due to severe violence. ENC will remain in close contact with its partners in the Matthew 25 initiative – including the Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services, Bay State Community Services (which operates the Family Welcome Center) and AMI Expeditionary Healthcare (which operates the Temporary Family Emergency Shelter) to ensure timely and transparent communication with the families we serve.
Eastern Nazarene has been housing people, including migrants, in connection with the state’s 1983 right-to-shelter law.
The statute guarantees emergency assistance shelter at state government expense for families and pregnant women.
The lack of a residency requirement attached to the law has been a focal point in the news for the past several months, as migrants, primarily from Haiti, have come to Massachusetts and received state-funded shelter, including hotel rooms. Some of these migrants even include illegal immigrants, as NewBostonPost previously reported.
Photos of migrants at Eastern Nazarene College are available below:
Migrants going into an overflow shelter at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts. Photo taken by Tom Joyce on March 29, 2024.
A group of migrants standing outside of the Cove Fine Arts Center at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy. The Cove Fine Arts Center is currently being used as a migrant overflow shelter. Photo by Tom Joyce on March 29, 2024
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Migrants going into an overflow shelter at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts. Photo taken by Tom Joyce on March 29, 2024. 
