As a CGS student at Boston University I am more than just disappointed that instead of postponing our program, you have decided to make it obsolete. Like many CGS students, I came to Boston University under the assumption that I would be studying in London this summer. While circumstances have prohibited us from traveling this summer, this does not mean the administration should just give up everything the program is meant to do. In coming to this school, CGS students were promised a general education curriculum and an abroad experience, all of which is focused on London. By cancelling this trip and forcing us into online learning, you are doing your students a great disservice. Online learning is NOT an equivalent to the experience we would be having abroad. Students are expected to produce work at the same caliber, but we do not have the environment or the resources available to us that we had before. There are distractions of everyday life and especially in the summer, this is extremely difficult. Many students will be forced to balance work and school, effectively undermining any notion of social life in the process. This is not the same experience. 

I’m asking you to do something. Listen to students' suggestions; I guarantee they have been thinking just as long and hard as anyone else trying to imagine a possible solution. These suggestions include:

Using a portion of the tens of thousands of dollars each student pays for BU to get additional housing and send us to London next summer. I propose you send all 2023 CGS students to London in summer session 1 and 2024 students in summer session 2, this way there will be no overlap with teachers. If not that, then something. 

Virtual museum tours are not worth $30,000 a semester. Not even close. We are living and learning at home through a computer screen. This is not the education we signed up for. We should not be charged for this “experience” at all. 

A way that we could make up the experiential learning we have been promised is to go to london for 1-3 weeks next January before school begins. During our break we could go to London just to participate in the excursions that our classes are supposed to be based around. 

Our freedom is being taken from us. Living at home we are completely dependent on our parents unless we are working. We have been using ZOOM to go to our discussion classes throughout the week and watching lectures at our leisure. If we have to do online learning this summer, it would be beneficial to the students to have those discussions on the same days. This way, we would only have to attend class once or twice a week, hopefully giving us an opportunity to work or have social experiences of any kind. 

We are asking you to do SOMETHING to remedy that we sacrificed our first semester of college and watched all of our friends on social media having incredible experiences with the expectation that we would be going to London this summer. We want you to make an effort that is more than an “enriching” experience of online museum tours. This is not what we signed up for. While it is an unfortunate situation for everyone, we are expecting more than what you have given us as an alternative.