... for the institution. Getting kicked out of your house could easily be a force majeure for the tenant
I'm curious how a force majeure clause applied to the current pandemic would help the institution more than its tenants.
If you sign up for in person instructions, and then are told they are switching you to a YouTube video, you should be offered a choice to continue on the new terms or to terminate the agreement.
If you are asked to leave your housing for part of the semester, you should be compensated for relocation expenses.
If lightning struck one small campus dorm, the student would expect the university to immediately provide alternative housing or pay for a reasonable alternative and moving expenses. The same should hold if the whole campus was closed.
But what if all dorms everywhere are struck by lightning? All at the same time? Is it still reasonable to expect the university to be able to conjure up alternative housing in the near term then?
Scale matters.
The whole reason force majeure exists as a concept is because sometimes really big, bad things happen, and when they do, it can be unreasonable to expect people to be able to do things they are able to do in normal times without breaking a sweat.
Uninhabitable apartments have a lot of relevant case law for things like fires.
In such cases universities could pay for hotel rooms while setting up long term accommodation. The specifics get tricky, but generally it’s on them to hold up their end of a contract. The ultimate escape clause is bankruptcy, not just being expensive.