On August 10th, Florida Southern College issued a statement reversing their earlier ruling to allow all students who wished to take courses in campus to live in school owned housing and and stated they would be offering courses in person. Now they are only allowing a select group of students to be on campus, alienating the majority of the student body. In addition, they did so only 3 weeks before the start of classes, making it nearly impossible for students who wished to do so to transfer.

To mislead students on this level is wholly unacceptable. Students have gone 5 months without seeing many of their friends or being on campus, and the vast majority were greatly looking forward to returning. Most had already made expensive travel arrangements, which will go to waste without compensation for the majority of students.

These actions by the school are not acceptable and are crippling for many students. While we as students understand the burden Covid-19 places on a school, there were much more reasonable ways to deal with the issue than removing the vast majority of students from campus, and thus throwing them into unknown situations.

Unless Florida Southern reverses their decision, many students cannot or will not return. This is not a good situation for anyone. We implore the school to rethink this decision; perhaps with a waiver releasing the school from liability if a student were to contract coronavirus, this attending at the risk of the student themselves. This decision affects FSC students more than anyone can imagine who does not attend. Please, rethink.