When students arrived back on campus this year, they were met with a lot of changes. Last year, the university had an option for students to Zoom in to their classes in case they were unable to attend in-person because of being quarantined. However, this semester, all classes are now completely in person without even the option for Zoom. This creates a challenge for students who test positive for COVID or who are in contact with someone who does because they can no longer attend class via Zoom to get the information they need.
Sophomore Business major Amelia Chavez is one of these students who was quarantined during the first few weeks of school. Chavez stated that one of her classes did have a Zoom option, but for each of her other classes, she had to be in contact with students to get the information she missed. She shared that this was especially hard for her as a visual learner.
“For me, even though I’m getting notes from friends, I feel like I’m missing how the content is supposed to be portrayed,” Chavez said. “Notes are helpful but to hear the teacher explain it is extremely helpful for me. It was a little disappointing to hear that they were going to make people quarantine this year if they’ve been exposed and of course quarantine when you have COVID , yet not provide any hybrid method while you’re at home.”
Spanish professor Charles Workman has witnessed the struggle that not having Zoom has been for quarantined students. He said he tries his best to make sure those students get the information some other way.
“What I do with the no Zoom option is I try to involve other students and have them FaceTime the students in or somehow allow or open some sort of method of communication where they can be present in the class without technically being present,” Workman said.
At the SGA Senate meeting on Sept. 14, the Academic Affairs Committee announced that it had received many constituent reports from students concerning the issue of having no Zoom options. Committee Chair Amelia Park said the committee was in contact with administration to try to resolve this issue.
The committee said there were still no updates at the next week’s Senate meeting, but they will continue to work to fix the issue and obtain more options for quarantined students.
Staff Writer
