When coronavirus sent students to online school in the Spring of 2020, New York University allowed their students to pass/fail most if not all of their classes, because students were learning in an entirely different medium, and we were living through a pandemic that has now killed 215,000 people.  Neither of those facts have changed in the fall of 2020--the pandemic has only grown more deadly, and none of the barriers that make Zoom learning so prohibitive for many students have disappeared, they have only become more visible as the time we spend on Zoom grows. 

NYU students are working so, so hard, not just to protect themselves and those around them in this truly hard time, but working to focus in their classes while so much to worry about sits right outside.  We are working to maintain a good academic standing over Zoom, an entirely new method of learning that simply does not fit all students well. 

All we as the student body ask of you is to recognize why Pass/Fail was changed for last semester, and recognize that all of those same problems and barriers to our learning still exist--residence halls being a utility for some of us this semester does not change that we are in a stressful, deadly pandemic, and it does not change the ways learning has gotten much harder for us over Zoom.

Thank you.