We are living in an unprecedented time, not just as students, but as citizens of the world. In just a few short weeks, the COVID-19 virus has changed life as we know it. As Cal Poly students, this semester has changed our education in ways we could never have predicted.
Just recently, the Cal Poly Pomona administration announced that classes would be online for the rest of the spring semester, effectively keeping students at home and off-campus until summer at the earliest.
While the COVID-19 virus is a completely unpredictable event, and no one could have foreseen this kind of pandemic bringing the world to a halt, CPP still has a responsibility to its students who have already paid for the full semester.
Students who are graduating this year have already lost their last semester of college, as well as graduation and all the events that go along with it.
The student body as a whole is scrambling to adjust to a new way of learning online.
The university owes it to the students to reimburse them, either partially or in full, for the complete education that they are now missing out on. The decision to stop in-person classes was the right one, as the safety of the community is the No. 1 priority.
I know that I much prefer in-person instruction, particularly for classes that I have trouble in, like math and science.
I don’t believe that online instruction and pre-recorded lectures are very helpful, which is the reason that I avoid online classes in the first place.
Students planned their spring semester with the understanding that they would be able to take their classes with the aid of an in-person instructor.
Now that most people are not on campus and face-to-face interactions with professors are limited, this handicaps their ability to fully grasp the subject.
Furthermore, many professors are unfamiliar with the methods of online instruction and have had their lesson plans upended by the shutdown.
Not only do they have to rebound from this within a matter of days, they still have to forge ahead with their classes despite learning these new methods of instruction themselves.
CPP should find some way of reimbursing the student body for this shutdown, because the university is simply unable to provide the product that we paid for in advance. Students paid their tuition under the assumption that they would be able to take full advantage of the campus resources and be able to learn the subject matter in the classroom with a professor.
Now we are dealing with professors who are adjusting just like we are, which could very well affect our overall performance in the class.
It is not the university’s fault that this is happening, and the decision to suspend in-class lectures was the right one.
The COVID-19 virus has taken the world completely off-guard, and all of our lives are changing rapidly, both on campus and off.
However, the university cannot expect students to be able to simply transition to online courses without any problems.
With less access to school resources and less interactions with professors, students are facing academic challenges that we never expected.
That is why CPP should partially reimburse the student body for the lost education this semester – because no one could have anticipated what would happen, and we definitely did not sign up for this.
