Given the complete disorder surrounding recent events, we request that Northeastern University give students the option to take classes as pass/fail for the Spring 2020 semester while allowing all credits to count towards a student’s degree. Many students have been evicted from University housing with nowhere to go, yet they are expected to maintain the same levels of participation in their classes. While this is a challenging request at even the best of times, for certain groups of students, including first-generation and low-income students, the request is almost impossible. For other students, returning home would be dangerous, both for themselves and for people around them who could unknowingly be infected by the coronavirus. This has left students scrambling to fulfill basic human needs, and requiring students to also perform highly at educational tasks is heinous.

Beyond the demands of immediate relocation during a state of emergency, the sudden move to online instruction left many students and most professors wholly unprepared. A shift to online learning often requires a shift from synchronous to asynchronous learning, and for many students asynchronous learning does not work. Readings and discussion board posts are in no way as engaging as in-class conversations, and even if a class holds virtual video meetings, the lag time between speakers makes an effective conversation with 20+ participants virtually impossible. All this is working on the assumption that students have fast enough internet at home to handle this amount of streaming, which is untrue.

Most professors are not prepared to shift learning online either. Teaching online requires much more planning in order to effectively work through class content, and many professors are too unfamiliar with using technology in the classroom to effectively run an online class even in the best of circumstances. The manners of instruction and learning have changed dramatically, so it is necessary to change the methods of evaluation, too.

The latest CDC numbers predict up to 1.7 million people in the United States will die as a result of the coronavirus. These are people’s family members, friends, and some of the very students at Northeastern, too. At this time, people’s focus—students, faculty, staff—all members of the Northeastern community—should be on staying healthy and taking care of those around them. Many students are dealing with the confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety that the pandemic and possibility of social isolation bring. These are times of immense emotional distress; another arbitrary stressor like grading should not be a consideration.