We are the students, visiting scholars and faculty members in Kansa State University. We are starting this petition to express our concerns about the potential outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in our campus and to provide some suggestions.

As we all know, the global number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 has already surpassed 110,000, and total deaths have reached 3,877. In the United States, 36 states have already been confirmed with COVID-19 cases by the time we write this letter, there are more than 600 cases and 22 deaths in the United States. One lady has been tested positive on Mar 7th in Topeka, Kansas. Seven States (WA, CA, NY, KY, MD, FL and UT) have declared state of emergency. However, a lot of KSU students are traveling to different states like New York, California and different countries including Italy, France, Britain during spring break. They could possibly catch COVID-19 from others when they travel.

Therefore, we are extremely worried that some students may get infected, but many carriers can shed the virus without symptoms, even if they have, the symptoms of influenza and COVID-2019 are similar. When they take classes, the potential outbreak could happen on campus. For example, almost a hundred students need to stay in the same room for some classes like biology, physics and classes in vet school. If any one of them is a carrier, it’s very dangerous to other students.

Hence, we have some suggestions for preventing this condition:

1. Have classes online via Zoom or other communication software. UW, UCLA, and Stanford already plan to teach classes online. While testing and preparing for online courses, instructors should at least record their classes and upload them to Canvas so students who feel ill can at least stay at home not worrying about missing any classes.

2. Exams and quizzes should be taken online and KSU could ask students to record the environment where they take the exams and quizzes to make sure the exam or quiz environment is acceptable.

3. Students should come back to campus for academic activity after COVID-19 has been controlled or at least after the two incubation periods (28 days) have passed.

In conclusion, the COVID-19 is a global challenge in 2020, many countries and regions are fighting with this disease right now, people from those countries are not the enemy, the enemy is the disease. We hope the immediate actions are taken by the university and the outbreak, which is the last thing we want to see in our home-KSU, can be prevented before it actually happens.