As the 2025-2026 school year wraps up, the chaos of finals week, moving out and graduation can all make it easy to forget details. Here are some reminders and important end-of-semester information.
Swipes for Swoops
Students can donate their unused Flex dollars or meal plans to Swoop’s Food Pantry from now until May 1, 2026. This donation will go to supporting food-insecure students with Flex dollars for the 2026-2027 school year.
Donations can be made on kiosks at any campus dining location or on the mobile ordering app. To do so, students can select a dining location on the app and scroll down to select “Swipes for Swoops.” From there, students can donate $1, $5, $10, $25 or $50 of Flex. At Eagles Grind, students can use up to three meal swipes at a time. This can be done on or off campus, so students who have moved off campus can still make contributions.
Students are welcome to donate as much as they would like, as long as they are following the 30-minute latent period between spending meal swipes.
Swoop's Pantry
Swoop's Pantry will remain under construction in the coming weeks. Students can use the door facing Pease Auditorium to enter and exit. Swoop's Pantry also encourages students to fill out their 2025-2026 Pantry Shopper Survey, which will help the pantry with programming, grant funding, and community donations. 10 random respondents will be chosen as winners of a $20 DoorDash gift card.
Swoop's Pantry will be open during finals week but closed the following. Starting May 11, 2026, the food pantry will reopen and operate on summer hours. During the summer, students can visit Mondays through Thursdays from noon to 5 p.m.
Course evaluations
On April 12, 2026, student course evaluations opened. Students can give feedback to their professors on their classes to help make improvements for future semesters. These course evaluations close before finals week, so anyone wishing to give feedback should do so before 11:59 p.m. April 26.
Textbook buyback
Students who rented a textbook from EMU's online bookstore must return all items to Eastern Outfitters in the Student Center by May 18, 2026.
Students can now also participate in textbook buyback for books that they purchased rather than rented. During finals week, students can bring their textbooks to Eastern Outfitters Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. or Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. This can also be done online by using the website.
Heat and hot water outages
For the university’s annual energy center work, many on-campus buildings will not have heat or hot water from 9 p.m. May 3 to the end of day May 10, 2026. In an email sent to students, Anthony Duty, director of operations, confirmed the following list of buildings that will continue to have hot water and heat, while the rest of the buildings on campus will not. The buildings that will have hot water and heat are the following:
- Cornell Courts
- The Village
- The Towers
- Lakeview
- Westview
- 601 West Forest Apartments
- The Honors College
- Department of Public Safety/DC-3 (Crossroads Marketplace)
- Sculpture Studio
- Central Stores
- Emu House
- Fletcher
- Campus Wellness Center/IHA
- West Athletic buildings
Next year, this annual shutdown will take place from May 3-9, 2027.
Move out
Students living on campus for the winter 2026 semester must be moved out of their space by noon, May 2, 2026. Students who have been approved for summer housing, late-stay or carry-over are the exception and should refer to their approval from housing for move-out information.
Students can check out of their spaces using either express checkout or in-person checkout. For an express checkout, students can fill out and sign a checkout envelope that is sealed with their white electronic key card inside. This envelope can be turned in at the front desk of each building. Students who wish to contest room damage or have previously failed a room check must schedule an in-person checkout. If a student is required to have an in-person checkout, they will receive information from their complex director.
Friends and family visiting campus to help students move out will need to pay for parking. This can be done using the QR codes in front of the spots along the front of each dorm building. This single-space metered parking costs $2.25 for one hour or $4.50 for two hours, and the meter only allows two hours of prepaid parking at a time.
Dining hall trash rooms closed this past weekend, so students wishing to throw anything away need to walk to the dumpster nearest to their building.
Graduation
The winter 2026 commencement ceremony will take place Saturday, May 2, at George Gervin GameAbove Center, 799 N. Hewitt Road, Ypsilanti. Students graduating from the College of Business, GameAbove College of Engineering and the College of Health and Human Services will attend the ceremony held at 9:30 a.m. Doors will open for the morning ceremony at 8 a.m. Students graduating from the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Education and the Individualized Studies Program will attend the 1:30 p.m. ceremony, with doors opening at noon.
Each student is allowed four tickets but can request additional tickets by contacting the ticketing office at emu_tix@emich.edu or calling 734-487-3669.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 3:24 p.m. April 27, 2026, to include information about textbook buyback and Swoop's Pantry.
