In the wake of a global pandemic, Dominican made the right choice in enforcing social distancing by moving all classes onto an online platform. However, with such transitions comes a time of confusion for many students as they scramble to find resources in order to be successful under such circumstances. We all are dealing with a great deal of stress and anxiety that will very much affect our academic achievements. A lot of classes are also not well suited to be taught under such circumstances. Grading should be changed under such circumstances to ensure that many of our students don’t suffer a drop in their GPA. Many students currently dwell over their GPA as it is an important factor in their pursuit of internships and grad school. As a student body we believe it would be appropriate to give us the choice to makes classes, even those that are a graduation requirement, quality assessed courses where we receive a pass/fail grade.
      Although most of our students are commuters already, a good portion of students live in different parts of the country as well as different parts of the world. Not everyone lives within the Central Time Zone making it difficult for them to be able to access online/video lectures. Even more, students may not retain much information given the new environment they’re forced to learn under. We may not know what complications everyone has in their own households that may impede their learning such as caring for family members or even the lack of access to a good internet connection. Even so, resident students were rushed out of their dorms and forced to return home and continue their studies online. Life at home is hard enough to balance being that now everyone is asked to be home but adding school on top of that could cause more stress.
      Schools such as MIT* and Northwestern* have opted for such a transition in the midst of all the chaos in order to ease students' stress. This will ensure that students have more of an opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them without worrying about their grades dropping significantly. This will help students regain their focus on what they're learning as well as allow them to retain as much knowledge they can.
      The world is changing on a day to day basis and so many changes are going on. In a matter of days, many states, including Illinois, have issued “shelter-in-place” policies causing a significant amount of stress for students. Even so, many have already lost their jobs and must find ways to make ends meet and help their family as much as they can, given new limitations. We are entering a time where social distancing is to become the new normal and Dominican should do their part to ease us through it.

*https://facultygovernance.mit.edu/message-chair 

*https://www.northwestern.edu/coronavirus-covid-19-updates/developments/updates/winter-finals-policy.html