Pollock also said the college had to address both the probation and the pandemic. Sometimes those issues were interconnected, as Wells president Jonathan Gibralter said in January 2020 that the college was preparing for its study abroad program in Florence, Italy, noting at the time that the program generates around 18% of the college's operating budget. The 173 students in the program were instructed by Wells in March of that year to come back to the United States after the Italian government extended its previous mandate for all college institutions to be shut down amid the country's high number of COVID-19 cases.
