Nov 2, 2020
To our Yale Community,
Just one day prior to the presidential election, Dean Marvin Chun and the Yale College Dean’s Office sent out an email about the Spring 2021 course schedule. The email notified us that on December 18th – the last day of finals for what will be an unequivocally challenging academic semester – students will be responsible for submitting their preliminary course schedules. During a semester with no fall break, deteriorating mental health, increasing political anxiety, and mounting fears about personal and familial exposure to COVID-19, students are expected to pre-register for classes early. Once again, administration demonstrates their lack of empathy for the student body in the midst of a semester with more uncertainty, fear, and violence than any other.
This decision is only the most recent in a long list of tone-deaf and paternalistic announcements the university has sent out to students over the past few months. They have already modified next semester: it will start at a later date than usual, on February 1st, to allow for a compressed semester with only five separate break days in lieu of a spring break. Dean Chun claims that the decision for earlier pre-registration was made with the students’ best interest in mind. He claims that this will give us better information about course availability, provide more time to plan our schedules, and allow us to consult with our advisors before winter break. Clearly, Dean Chun is not listening to students’ needs.
We do not need to plan our course schedules months before next semester begins. We do not want to add more meetings with advisors on top of our already lengthy days spent in front of a computer. What we want is administrators to understand what we are all going through. What we need is a moment to rest and breathe.
As a collective of student journalists and creators of color, DOWN at Yale is appalled by the Yale administration’s demonstrated lack of compassion for their most vulnerable students. Last semester, they adopted universal pass/fail with a supposed understanding that the disparity between student experiences during this global pandemic was too wide for a normal grading system to be fair. Since then, the national public health situation has only gotten worse. Many parts of the U.S. break records for COVID-19 deaths and cases. With Black and Latinx people dying at disproportionate rates, it is not a coincidence that the communities experiencing the most loss are the most underrepresented at Yale. In the spring, we may not have had the data to prove the disparities that pass/fail attempted to circumvent. Now that we do understand which students and their communities are the most affected, our pain falls on the administration who have turned a blind eye.
With the election rapidly approaching, Black students, students of color, and queer and trans students are expected to continue performing academically while threats to their livelihood play over and over on news and social media. DC boards all its windows up in preparation for civil unrest. Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court threatens LGBTQ adoption rights and abortion rights. Trump spews hate speech from his podium at massive, super-spreader rallies. Kentucky State Police use Nazi propaganda in their training materials, and fascism could potential become a reality… Still, the Yale administration expects us to focus on our academic work.
We are in the midst of an incredibly unique moment in time. The Yale administration has the opportunity to make decisions that extend compassion to students. Or they can opt to continue making decisions that perpetuate the violent expectation of impartiality and distance from global circumstances felt by marginalized students – that is their choice. But our response remains ours.
In solidarity,
Alexandra Rocha-Álvarez (SY ’22)
Kelsey Tamakloe (SY ’22)
Jennifer Qu (BK ’22)
(Editors of DOWN at Yale)