A letter from Southeast Missouri State University's President Dr. Kenneth W. Dobbins was emailed to students who live in the Ferguson and Florissant areas of St. Louis at 2 p.m. on Monday stating that an early move in date is available for anyone who wishes to come to campus early.

The letter states, which can be read in full here, that any students from these areas are allowed to move in at Southeast starting Tuesday at 1 p.m., with dining services beginning for all students later Tuesday evening.

Dr. Bruce Skinner, assistant vice president for Student Success and director of Residence Life, said that the early move in date was decided early Monday in a meeting.

The communities of Ferguson, Florissant and other surrounding areas have been faced with turmoil since Michael Brown, 18, was killed on Saturday Aug. 9 by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Since that day individuals in those communities have been protesting and there have been riots as well.

"The president and the executive staff, we met this morning and one of the conversations, one of the topics that started really this weekend was 'Is there anything we can do for our students in the North County area, when they get back to campus, to be helpful?'" Skinner said. "It started more as a question then it was 'Here are some solutions,' and the discussion said 'Well, if there's any students interested in coming back early we could certainly make that available to them.'"

As of 5 p.m. today, Skinner said that Residence Life had received two calls from students saying they wanted to come or were considering moving in early.

"We don't really expect that there would be a large number of students that would take us up on it, we just wanted to make the offer in case there were any that were interested in coming back early," Skinner said.

Skinner said he met with all of the resident assistants from Southeast Monday at 3 p.m. to speak to them about how to handle conversations about this issue with residents on their floors. He said he told them that some students will be more impacted by this than others and that they need to be on guard to watch out for situations that may be problematic between students with differing opinions or beliefs.

"My conversation today was more along those lines of 'I'm not asking you to have a certain opinion, I'm just asking that you be aware of what's happening and that for some of your [the resident assistants'] students this is a very, very big deal, therefore they may be very sensitive to it and you just need to be aware of that happening in your floor, in your classroom or here on your campus,'" Skinner said.