LfA: LACK OF ALL INFORMATION RETURNING TO CAMPUS DURING A PANDEMIC written by Haley Paraday designed by Ting Li
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Boston University students were able to cancel their on-campus residents licensing agreement and take classes remotely. Unfortunately for many students, some details that would have made the decision easier were not available until after the deadline. BU has used a disorganized and potentially misleading approach throughout the planning process for the fall semester. This issue hasn’t just affected the students, it has affected the university’s community as a whole. “This has been an extremely topdown, upper administration focused decision-making process in terms of hoarding information and making decisions,” said Jason Prentice, a BU writing professor and faculty union
7 | The Buzz
negotiator. At a recent Boston City Council meeting, Prentice testified about the public health concerns related to opening BU’s campus. He also cited the technological issues that would be faced by the professors and students. “As LfA [Learn from Anywhere] was developed, faculty, the institution’s experts on teaching, were not consulted,” Prentice said during the meeting. “LfA was announced to faculty in bits and pieces often by articles in the university’s public newsletter.” He also mentioned that the university did not give the faculty any direct information until there were protests. For students, when the time came to decide to return to campus or not, they still didn’t feel like they had enough information to make the decision.
As she waited on the status of her student visa, Anastasiia Eremina (COM ’22) was doubting her decision to return to Boston. Eremina sees her decision to return as “reckless.” “I would’ve stayed home and taken a gap semester if it wasn’t too late,” she said. Ahnaf Eram (CAS ’22) was planning on returning to campus in the fall. However, when he saw Boston City Councilor Kenzie Bok’s recent letter requesting BU and Northeastern to switch to an online platform, he feared returning to campus and all classes going virtual if there was “any sort of spike in the number of cases.” Bok’s letter states that she believes that both universities’ plans present a danger to the community since nearly 75% of undergraduate students are from out of state. She said that “plans for off-campus
