Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the MIT administration has taken decisive action to move students off campus and virtualize courses. While we commend the administration on protecting our safety, we nonetheless contend that this change will have grave academic consequences. Many students are in lab classes or depend on in-person instruction. It is a certainty that student performance will be affected by this change.

The Rules & Regulations of the Faculty provides for a change of grading standards under section 2.64 in the face of "Significant Disruption" such as "pandemic illness." These new standards would provide a "PE" for performance in the ABC range and "NE" (no record). We believe that these standards would increase fairness and decrease student anxiety in this trying time.

Nonetheless, we recognize that certain students may want their GPA to be affected by this semester. Therefore, we firmly believe these changes should be opt-in. 

We recognize that these are challenging times but we are confident that we will emerge from this a stronger MIT Community.