As every one of us has come to find out, our school seemingly cares less about their students and more about the profit they are making off of them. For most of us, this became very obvious this fall semester when our school decided to inform us two weeks before the semester began that we would in fact not be having classes in person. Could this information have been given to us maybe a month before they decided to tell us? Most likely. Did they do that? Nope!
Currently, we are all sitting at our computers listening to our professors talk over zoom instead of in person. While we all completely understand the risk of COVID and we don’t want to put anyone else at risk, they could have made the executive decision to have classes online way before they chose to. This left a lot of us students in a pickle, so thanks, Emmanuel! There were students left without a place to live for the semester because Emmanuel was supposed to be their home during the months of September through May. What about those students? How about the students with poor internet connections who are struggling to get to class every day? Where is the stipend for their internet access, Emmanuel? Living in an area where there isn’t a fabulous connection to the internet means that students might be unable to attend class every day of the week. Emmanuel could have at least given us the choice to do asynchronous classes, which would have been more convenient for the students with jobs or a lack of internet access.
Given that not only did they cancel in-person classes, they also left tuition the same, this would lead us to believe we were receiving the same education, right? Think again. Our students don’t have full access to our library—what about those classes with books that aren’t in the online library? They even cut our counseling services, which in a time like right now seems like a terrible plan. While most of us understand the magnitude of COVID 19, we also recognize the importance of our mental wellbeing during this time. The school even had the gall to inform us all that they were in “no financial crisis” and that we shouldn’t worry about them! What about us? A lot of our students are struggling right now. Our financial and mental stability should be just as important to Emmanuel as their own financial stability. Hopefully, Emmanuel learns from their mistakes and doesn’t get our hopes up about next semester unless they’re 100% sure we will be back.