DEAR ARTCENTER:

Please consider our petition and put our student's health safety as your top priority.

Within the email that we all received in the afternoon, we found that the status of the school shows there are only two students who got Covid so far. However, based on what my friends and I know, there were at least 15 omicron cases that happened this week within the ACCD student community. And there are more and more colleges in California are announcing they will remain online for the first two weeks and analyzing the situation.

Omicron is much more contagious than its previous strain, and with more than 20,000 new cases every day across Los Angeles County, the situation is worse than it was last semester. We do not think it is safe to go to school and take a five-hour studio class within an enclosed classroom every day. It will be hard to ensure the progress and quality of our study if we are infected. I also heard some international students are having a hard time getting the tickets back to the United States because of the recent surge in Covid cases that causes massive flight cancelation. Therefore, We think for the spring 2022 term, most of the courses should still be hyflex and allow us to choose whether we want to go to school voluntarily or not.