The Boston University administration must offer accommodations for undergraduate students as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread within the BU community. Despite our student body’s high vaccination rate of 96.0%, the university continues to experience a surge of positive cases per day (with September 15th being an outlier of 36 positive cases). Large mask-optional events and gatherings, often facilitated by administration and large student organizations, run the risk of spreading the virus amongst the student body. Undergraduate students who do test positive for COVID-19 must quarantine, isolate, and miss in-person classes for 10 days. 

It is understandable that students infected with the virus must go into isolation housing and miss in-person classes as a means to keep others safe and minimize exposure, but it is inexcusable that the university expects quarantined students to keep up with over a week’s worth of missed work without recorded lectures. In a town hall for faculty and students on August 19th, University Provost Jean Morrison acknowledged the reality of breakout cases, saying that “[the administration] anticipates there will be some students who will either need to isolate or be in quarantine.” However, the university’s current “system” inadequately addresses the burden of missing more than a week of classes. According to Morrison, "students should make sure they have a friend in class, they can share notes, they can refer to the syllabus, keeping up on materials assigned to be done independently.” While Provost Morrison encourages “students and faculty to do what they have always done when dealing with illness that keeps them out of the classroom,” the system currently in place is unsustainable.

Given the dramatic changes the pandemic has caused in almost all aspects of life, it is safe to say that COVID-19 is not the typical illness students are used to dealing with every fall and winter. Masks are mandated indoors. Vaccinations are required for all students. 10 day isolation periods await students who contract it. This is not a normal illness. It is a highly infectious disease that has killed millions of people across the world and continues to mutate.

So why should we “do what we have always done”? 

While the administration has sought to address these concerns, it has not done enough to accommodate the needs of students. An email sent to the student body by Provost Morrison on September 17th, 2021 outlined the administration’s policy for students maintaining academic continuity while in isolation due to COVID-19. In its first piece of guidance, the email said that “each school/college has an Academic Continuity Coordinator who can support [students] in making arrangements to keep up with your academic work.” The specific roles and responsibilities of this position were never described. Outside of this, the remaining bullets outlined basic procedures that any responsible student would follow in order to attempt to keep up with missed work. 

Circumstances change and we must learn how to adapt. Last year, Boston University touted its highly efficient hybrid model of learning, Learn from Anywhere (LfA), due to the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, as breakout cases continue to arise on campus, there are little to no accommodations in place for students who are forced to isolate, quarantine, and miss in-person classes. The expensive infrastructure that allowed us to conduct LfA classes continues to exist in classrooms and lecture halls across campus. Why not use it? As long as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, we believe the University must allow the following:

Encourage faculty in all colleges and departments to record and post lectures for students unable to attend in-person lectures due to the following extenuating circumstances:

• COVID-19 infection
• Family emergencies
• Medical emergencies
• Sicknesses
• Missed COVID-19 test appointment (yellow badge)

We are not asking for Boston University to increase restrictions on students. We are not asking for a return to LfA. And we are not asking for a costly solution to a simple problem.

Instead, we are asking for the Boston University administration to encourage the use of an already-existing system to sufficiently accommodate its students’ basic academic needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Make your voice heard. Please sign and share this petition.

Sincerely, 

Dhruv Kapadia, Executive VP of the College of Arts and Sciences Student Government

Hessann Farooqi, Vice President of Boston University Student Government

Shashwat Shah, Chairman of Boston University Student Government Senate

Savannah Majarwitz, Lead Senator of College of Arts and Sciences

Richard Segalman, Chairman of Expect More Committee