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 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

student communities are concerningly weaker,” which puts those who are more vulnerable in the community at risk.

William Marx, a communications professor at BU, expressed that “for many faculty members, there’s an enormous amount of apprehension and fear as the students return and the semester begins.”

Students are growing anxious about returning to campus as the day grows nearer and are using sites like Reddit to voice their concerns. As move-in day approaches, students are looking for possible ways to cancel their housing agreements and receive a refund.

Despite being told that canceling their residence licensing agreement and receiving a full refund was not possible past August 1, when a repre

sentative of BU Housing was asked, she said, “due to the circumstances, a full refund of housing, dining, and the housing guarantee payment will be given.”

This information is not publicized by the university and contradicted the information that is available to students, causing many students to believe they cannot change their previous decision. By not providing students with this information, the university is guaranteeing themselves money from students who otherwise would not return to campus.

This isn’t the first time students have had to uncover information themselves. According to an article published in the Daily Free Press, a grad student attempted to renew her lease for two weeks but was denied because her apartment was already designated for quarantine housing. This was later confirmed by BU Real Estate.

The policy was only revealed once a student was inconvenienced by it. Had this not been discovered, BU Real Estate may not have told graduate students until the first undergraduate student was put into the assigned quarantine housing.

Across multiple incidences, there seems to be a pattern of BU withholding information from the appropriate parties until it is too late or nearly too late. No one truly knows how the semester will play out, but the lack of information is only making anxieties worse.

With the stress building among students and faculty members and the first day of classes draws closer, the situation seemingly mirrors the state of the world.

“I think COVID-19 is revealing structural problems with university governance, especially at BU, but not just at BU,” said Prentice.