Unless you own a crystal ball or you’re a certified witch, you have no idea what the days ahead are going to bring.
During this pandemic, situations change seemingly by the hour. Information is simply evolving too quickly to keep up with at this time.
That’s why San Jose State’s decision to allow students to opt into Credit/No Credit grading was an absolute no-brainer. Contrary to what we’ve been told our whole lives, there are more important things than school, especially right now.
According to SJSU, about 36,000 people attend the school.
That’s 36,000 different situations. As of publication time, only one student has tested positive for COVID-19. According to Santa Clara County Public Health, there are 1,302 cases confirmed in the City of San Jose as of April 22. With the lack of adequate testing in America at the moment, that number is sure to be an extreme underrepresentation.
Do the math. There’s little doubt that there’s more than one SJSU student with the coronavirus and there are surely countless students that have family members afflicted.
That number is unquantifiable, and thus will remain unknown. That’s why SJSU needed to give students an option to switch to
Credit/No Credit.
There’s also an economic toll this pandemic is taking.
SJSU is a commuter school. Commuting means you have to find transportation to school. It means you have to have a place to live. It means you might have a family, with a spouse and children.
What do those situations have in common? It all costs an exorbitant amount of money. To have money, you obviously need a job.
The longest-lasting impact of the pandemic will be the economic ramifications. According to The Mercury News, the Bay Area lost more than 27,000 jobs in March.
So in addition to sitting in on Zoom lectures and doing group homework over Google Docs, a great number of students have to deal with suddenly becoming unemployed.
While there are students that are living peacefully in their parents’ house just waiting for society to go back to normal, there are others whose lives are on the verge of falling apart.
Despite being told that college is the most important thing they could do in life, that reality is now shattered for many. Allowing those students’ GPAs to tank while there are real problems going on in their lives would exhibit a complete lack of empathy from the university.
It’s simply not fair to judge students based on criteria given to them before the world was turned on its head. Students are adapting, so the schooling system needs to as well.
Some students are obviously able to adapt to the “new normal” easier than others. If those students choose to stick with traditional grading for GPA reasons, that’s fine. Those that hope to attend graduate school or enter competitive job markets should probably stick with letter grading.
Holding everybody to that standard, however, would be completely unreasonable.
In unprecedented situations, we need to remind ourselves that we are all human. We are resilient creatures and we will get through this.
But we need to get through it together. If a university was to force a single mother to decide between putting food on the table or studying for her online psychology exam, then we would need to remind those making the decisions of their humanity.
If there’s one thing we need right now, it’s compassion, and SJSU should be commended for showing some humanity when it’s so desperately needed.
