USC needs to offer support to students in spring semester

As the fall semester draws to a close, USC’s plan for the spring semester remains up in the air. In October, President Carol Folt announced in a video message to students that the University is hoping to offer in person and hybrid classes and welcome 5,000 students back to campus in the spring. However, these plans are contingent on clearance from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which USC failed to receive in the fall.

With coronavirus cases still on the rise and stay-at-home orders still in place in Los Angeles, it is not unlikely that classes will remain online in the spring semester. Under these circumstances, USC will need to continue to ensure that it can enable academic success despite remote learning challenges and provide support to students who may be struggling with mental health.

USC announced that amendments to the spring semester schedule this year would include the cancellation of spring break — which is typically one week long — in an attempt to minimize the spread of the virus due to travel. While this is not a bad idea and the University should be commended for its active efforts to contain the spread of the virus, it creates novel mental health challenges for students. 

The lack of a fall break this semester was somewhat made up for by the fact that the semester was condensed to 13 weeks, though this posed other problems for professors and students who had to adjust to a faster-paced schedule. However, the spring semester is a more typical 15 weeks. Though the University has proposed a personal wellness day program that will provide a series of days off during the semester, it has yet to disclose additional details. 

The extended winter break, which is almost two months long this year, is a welcome rest from spending upwards of eight hours a day on the computer attending Zoom classes, club meetings and remote work. Zoom fatigue is real, and the University will need to ensure that students are not burnt out during the spring semester.

Students should also be able to continue to elect the pass/no-pass grading option through the spring semester. As the petition urging the administration to offer pass/no-pass in the fall stated, “classes have not gotten any easier but the state of the world is much, much harder than it was at the beginning of this year.” It does not make sense to hold students to the same standard as when they had access to every resource that the University usually provides.

In addition, the deadline to elect this option should be after finals, like it was in Spring 2020. Online learning has not become much easier this year, and it would alleviate some of the stress students may experience due to the remote format if the University implemented a grading system that was more accommodating.

Part of the stress of the fall semester came with the University’s last-minute communication to students regarding class plans and housing. It took until July 1 — after many students’ lease deadlines for off-campus housing had already passed — for the University to announce that classes would be primarily online. Then, on Aug. 5 — less than two weeks before classes began — the University announced that the fall semester would take place fully online. 

There is little point in being blindly optimistic about the spring semester. While a wait period is understandable considering USC is waiting on a decision from L.A. County itself, students do not want to have their hopes up for a return to campus only to be disappointed. They were inconvenienced, more than anything, by the University’s late announcements this semester; some students were locked into off-campus housing contracts and others had to deal with flight and on-campus housing cancellations.

In order to address this, the University must be fully transparent about spring semester housing and classes. In addition, it should make an effort to relay its decision to students as soon as possible and well before any off-campus housing deadlines.

As of now, it is still unclear when the pandemic will end and life will return to “normal.” The results of the 2020 election indicate that the government will be making changes to its current direction in the fight against the virus, although it is not immediately clear exactly how or to what extent. The best thing USC can do for its students during this time of uncertainty is to ensure that it, at least, is clear in its direction during the pandemic.