I am both a landlord and also pay my daughter's rent at BYU. I have no problem with people petitioning for students to be let out of their contracts. I also have no problems if the landlords say no. There are a lot of travel and other industries that are changing their terms to allow non-refundable contracts to be refunded or credited in the future. I had a non refundable hotel in Cambodia that banned US visitors for the next month and so I asked the hotel if they could do anything. They refunded 50% and gave me a credit to use sometime in the future (we had 2 rooms). Part of it is how they want to be viewed by the public. Same with the landlords (probably more accurately the management companies) that already have a pretty poor reputation in some people's eyes. They don't have to do it but some gesture might be appreciated by the school and some of the struggling BYU students. Just my 2 cents...