As the fall semester is coming to an end, many things need to be addressed about the semester as a whole, especially while COVID-19 still runs rapidly. This semester has been unprecedented in nature and organization.
During this semester, the performance of the faculty and the services were at an all-time low. Professors have been doing as they wish with their courses, announcing less, and overall performing worse than ever before. University facilities such as student accounts and career services have been slacking as well, with no one available for students both in-person and otherwise during their assigned office hours.
More so, COVID-19 has still infected the community harder than last semester, a pass/fail semester. Many students have either been infected themselves or know students who have been infected for COVID-19 during this semester. The number of COVID cases among students has risen to such high rates that Binghamton University had already shut down its campus TWICE. Students have had to leave and return to campus just like in the semester prior, yet the University seems to neglect this fact.
For many students, this semester has done nothing but hurt their academic careers and their overall GPAs. Given these facts, it seems only fair for the University to give students the option to save their GPA, as was done in the semester before this one. With the lack of tools and services that were once provided by the University and yet being charged at full tuition, it does not seem fair to allow a global pandemic and such stressful times to affect future opportunities any more than it already has. This petition is to make this semester as fair for students and their academic success as possible, starting with the option to pass/fail the semester for all students. Lack of performance from the school and a global pandemic should be considered as students struggle to maintain their physical health, mental health, and grades during these trying times