Due to the COVID-19 outbreak across the United States, Saint Mary's College has decided to cancel all in-person instruction for the remainder of the spring semester and move to a completely online learning system.

Students are currently working in extraordinary circumstances and the college should account for this. Saint Mary's has already made the decision to allow Sophia Requirement classes to be taken as pass/fail, but this decision still falls short of giving students the complete support that they need. To ensure that no student’s GPA is impacted by the virus and its aftermath, every class (including classes for a student's major or minor) should have the option to be taken on a pass/fail basis. The pass/fail system will also ensure that student mental health is made a top priority in a time when concerns about the virus are already causing stress levels to rise.

Each Saint Mary's student faces a different set of circumstances when they leave our campus (whether that means they are home or elsewhere), so it is unfair to assume each student has the means or ability to focus on school in a way that will allow them to be successful. The optional pass/fail system will allow these students to focus on what matters most (which may mean something other than school, given the global pandemic) and ensure that they are not punished academically due to their necessary shift in focus.

This situation especially impacts low-income students who may now be working to help their families or are facing situations such as their parents being out of work, as a community we need to support these students in the best way possible— which includes implementing an optional pass/fail system. This situation also has the potential to negatively impact students outside of the EST time zone who may now have limited access to live office hours or struggle to "attend" live lectures (this is especially true for international students), we need to support them with a pass/fail option for their courses. The inequality that sets in when students leave campus cannot be ignored and our grading scale should reflect that. 

Please sign this petition to support student well-being, academic equality, and learning efficiency for the spring semester at Saint Mary's College!