Care to support your very sweeping claim?
My alma mater didn’t close the dorms. It was fun staying on campus, surrounded mostly by international students–I got to know a lot of people I wouldn’t otherwise have known, as we were the only ones in the dining hall (which was also open).
That was the 90s, of course, and as you say, this isn’t the 90s, but I have a lot of former (international) students who attend LACs in the US, and they almost never come home for T’giving–in fact, they stay in the dorms.