As part of its COVID19 contingency plan, USC recently announced that classes would continue online for at least the week after Spring Break (March 22-29) with an email "[encouraging] students not to return to campus during this time."

If USC follows the lead of schools like Harvard University and UCLA, this period of online instruction will be extended until the end of the semester. While this is an important step in upholding the univerity's responsibility for students' safety during this crisis, this measure will have serious consequences for the thousands of students who rely on their federal work-study positions for income.

One of our primary academic competitors, NYU, has addressed this concern by providing work-study students with remote work so that they can continue to earn a salary even though their campus is closed. This petition calls for USC to take similar steps to ensure that the stress of the Coronavirus pandemic is not compounded by additional financial stresses.

While USC has a reputation as the "University of Spoiled Children," those of us who participate in work-study programs here on campus aren't using this extra income to pay for Gucci bags or trips to Cancun — for many of us, attending USC would not be possible without the additional income that comes from our work-study jobs.

How are these students supposed to pay for food, especially if dining halls are shut down for the remainder of the semester?

How will they afford healthcare and preventative supplies like masks if the student health center is closed?

USC is an extraordinarily wealthy institution with an endowment of over $5.7 billion; it is also an institution with an extensive recent history of prioritizing student wellbeing below financial concerns. Continuing student employment during this time would be a significant step toward doing away with this reputation among USC's most vulnerable students.