My IWF colleagues Karin Agness Lips and Kelsey Bolar have rightly warned that millennials are not impervious to COVID-19, and that they should take sensible precautions to stay healthy.
It should go without saying that these days whooping it up on spring break is a bad idea, but new “safety” demands from some undergraduates reinforce already negative stereotypes associated with the free-for-all-college entitlement crowd.
An online petition insisting that the University of Arizona in Tucson end spring classes has garnered more than 8,800 signatures from students who think expectations to pass their classes are “stressors that could endanger them more [than] the virus.”
The university had already announced a delayed start of spring classes and moved as many as possible online out of concern for students’ health. However, the online petition objected, “This is not an effective solution in this time of crisis.”
Maritza Almanza, a sophomore studying psychology according to Campus Reform, started the petition, which states:
We, the students of the University of Arizona, need all classes for the Spring 2020 semester to be cancelled…We need an optional pass/fail system* implemented for all Spring 2020 classes, and for every student to be given a passing grade for every class.
… Although online classes help slow the spread of the virus, they still require intellectual and sometimes emotional labor. This labor should not be the focus of students right now. They should be self-isolating and focusing on their health, so they don’t get the virus. It’s unreasonable to expect students to still be productive in a time of crisis. This is expecting too much from UofA students.
No word yet on whether rivals at Arizona State University have started their own online petition demanding that UofA change its mascot from the Wildcats to the Fraidy Cats, but there is a small glimmer of sanity amidst all the apparent fear and trembling in Tucson.
The petition was updated because not every student wanted a free pass, as Campus Reform reports:
Shelby Humbarger, a freshman studying agricultural management technology, had a different reaction. While she understands the purpose of the pass/fail transition, she “also understand[s] if people don’t want that because we need to learn either way and it isn’t fair if someone is barely doing anything in that class [and] gets an easy passing grade.”