It Always Starts with a Petition
By Olivia Jaber
Petitions have been circulating the University of California, Berkeley since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, signaling a trend across American college campuses. While one petition aims to preserve the tradition of graduation by postponing it versus canceling it, another is centered around changing grades to Pass/ No Pass and demanding a threshold for grading options (requiring teachers to stay at or above B-) when distributing final grades. Unsurprisingly, a clamor of students hopped on the bandwagon. Students argue that these times have been trying and that it is inexcusable to expect students to continue their work quality in such uncertain times. The perfect example of an echo chamber— student after student— signing the petition, armed with a false sense of morality, and angered by opposing views entering the arena.
Noting common concern for international and disadvantaged students, who might undergo severe disruption, homelessness, lack of access to online resources, or contracting the COVID-19 virus themselves, students worried that their peers facing exceptional circumstances would not be able to work. These are understandable concerns. After all, certain students have unique and specific situations that require exceptions and extra help in these times. However, what has appeared as a common concern for severe circumstances, developed into piggybacking off of unique circumstances. In turn, these demands and pleas are self-serving at their best— students, initially concerned for their peers, are more likely than not, coming from a place of self-preservation and inability to cope.
Part of this inability to cope stems from the status quo that the University has adopted over our four years, never requiring students to rise to difficult occasions, always shielding and blunting the blows that reality often throws. The rest stems from self-developed resiliency. These pleas arise from a place of weakness, more often than not. And rather than a University challenging its students to meet the new situation’s demands, UC Berkeley has again, quelled and legitimized these fears, and lowered the standards of study in reaction to them. Professors right and left making participation for online courses not mandatory— changing their syllabus— extending spring break— when, what students need in these times, is high expectations placed upon them to continue in the face of a trembling time for all.
Family members losing jobs, loved ones getting sick, as history has shown, have happened before, and in even more aggrandized levels. Did our grandparents get to take a break from reality to deal with mentally coping from the Great Depression? Shouldn’t we be held to the same standard of academic pursuit expected prior to this pandemic? I’ve always been taught that the world does not stop for you— it keeps ongoing. It appears as though the University has stopped for us. We have stomped our feet, and they have answered. Worried that we cannot perform as well as before, we displace the responsibility of focusing in times of noise, when our minds and hearts are strained. So I have to wonder— how much of this is actually part of something that we cannot handle— and how much of this is stemming from something we just don’t want to handle?
While I hope the recently prescribed leisure time will encourage a room filled with cascading thoughts that never seem to meet nor find opposition at their doors to seek outward opinion and discussion. I worry that these times will only encourage echo chamber behavior and erode further opportunities that the academic setting can provide to dismantle and evolve viewpoints. The purpose of higher education is adversity and discomfort— but the education we have received has met us, year after year, with placating our grievances and telling us that we are right. This generation is not good at conflict. This generation subverts conversation and replaces it with affirmation. This generation values certainty and security over discovery and ambiguity. We crave a constant comfort and respite in the face of strife and unsettling waters rather than diving in and embracing the disruption. When asked to adapt, we demonstrate a certain disability to adapt. Instead, we demand the lowering of standards and waiver in self-doubt.
Can we do this? Can we handle this? And how would we ever find out if we could? It’s not like we ever give ourselves the chance. Our culture has become so accustomed to usurping hard and trying times. Instead of turning them into lessons, we assert that we know the right way something needs to be handled— we, in turn, try to teach previous generations, not beginning to fathom their wisdom and past experiences that might serve us well. We keep postponing the inevitable. There will be a day, post-graduation when a petition will not cut it— when we have to interact with the un-comfortability of life, rather than just signing it away.
It is jarring to me that the default setting is to dive under the wave, rather than facing it head-on. Sure, it might provide immediate gratification— it might save you from being rumbled around under the white water— it might save you from your fear— but then you will never know what it feels like to gasp for air, and fight to get back up. So, students who signed the petition to Pass/ No Pass grades and have now taken back seat in classes, might think they have won the “war,” but really, they’re in a battle, and their armor is thinning by the second.
Photo via @hillhouse
