The Daily Gamecock

Opinion: University opening early unfair to students

default opinion
default opinion

My mom once promised to take me to the store to get candy when I was a kid. It was right after a football game, and I had all these high expectations about what I wanted to get. I didn’t make any post-game plans with friends because I was dedicated to the idea of going to the store. Then, my mom cancelled the store trip, and it was too late for me to go hang with my friends. I felt so betrayed by my mom. And up until Saturday night, I'd never felt such betrayal again. But then, the school had to tweet out that classes were "uncanceled" on Monday.

USC should have kept Monday classes canceled so as to stay true to its word and prevent students from traveling in dangerous conditions.

First, many students went home to avoid the storm or to help their family who might be in the thick of it (looking at you North Carolinians). Tweeting out that classes would resume 36 hours before the first classes would take place is incredibly unfair to those directly affected by Hurricane Florence. 

Plans were oriented around students being able to get back on Monday, and then they had to rush back on Sunday. Many roads north and east of Columbia are in terrible disarray, and traffic is a nightmare for many traveling. The extra day to let that cool off would have been helpful for students driving back.

All of this doesn't even touch on kids who have to fly back. Students spent a lot of money booking flights for Monday under the pretense of that being an option. Now, students had to pay high fees to rebook their flight or miss classes on Monday.

In their announcement of the reversal, the school said professors had been instructed to excuse absences on Monday. Yet, one Ph.D student who teaches at USC replied to the tweet saying that he'd received nothing from the university about this as of Saturday night. While the school seems to have sent out an email clarifying this point later, the initial confusion was clear in people's responses on social media. 

Even without attendance being counted, lectures, quizzes, labs and exams were missed due to the change. It isn’t fair that students miss these lessons and then are expected to make them up because the university went back on the original plan.

Now I understand that some of this is out of their hands due to Richland County government's decision to open on Monday. However, as an outsider to that bureaucracy, it seems like there should be some way for the school to not restart classes while still opening back up for some other things. 

Hopefully the university learns from this mistake and actually helps students out. However, after four years of hurricanes hitting the school and causing disruption, you would think this administration would be past rookie mistakes.


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