What if Fall Quarter is Online?

ALAINA BENSCHING & ALLY MARECEK—THE SANTA CLARA

The thought in the back of every student’s mind

When I said goodbye to most of my friends before the end of winter quarter, I thought I would see them in a month. Instead, I’m here–working from my high school desk, attending Zoom class and desperately hoping the fall won’t face the same fate: becoming a virtual limbo.

Since spring quarter went exclusively online, the fall has remained a happy thought in the back of my mind. I would still get to move in one last time, catch up with people I haven’t seen in months and stay up late having those intimate conversations college was seemingly designed for.

And even though it would be my last quarter, and I would be graduating before most of my friends, I would still know it was my last, and I’d get closure—the kind of closure that was taken away from so many of my senior friends.

But as the weeks have passed—April is over in case you’ve lost track of time—and the world hasn’t shown promising steps towards improvement, the possibility of spending another college quarter in my high school bedroom has shifted from an unbelievable thought to a reality I might have to accept.

Three weeks ago, I read an article about a professor at the University of Pennsylvania that was reprimanded for speculating to students that their fall semester would not be “normal” (read: online). A week later, a friend told me that Boston University became one of the first institutions to formally suggest that they wouldn’t be able to allow students to return in the fall. The next week, San Jose State University announced it would begin planning for Fall 2020 to be fully online.

While it’s not like I’ve been actively searching for these stories, it’s hard not to come by them. Especially when every other Zoom meeting invokes the, “Do you think we’ll be back for fall quarter?” question, and every decision and plan for next year comes with the caveat, “assuming everything returns to normal in the fall.”

Yes, Governor Newsom is rolling out plans to reopen California step-by-step. But the last places to open will have to be those most crowded. Is social distancing in the residence halls even remotely possible? And could Santa Clara even function semi-normally while keeping everyone six feet apart?

So, I have tried to mentally warm myself up to the possibility that fall quarter could be online. Maybe if I find another happy thought to keep in the back of my mind now, the news won’t be as devastating when I read it in the “COVID-19 Update #25 (or whichever number we’re at)” email. We’ve already gone through one quarter online–so what’s another? There will be fewer unknowns and the transition will be more seamless. 

But, an online fall quarter would feel much worse. In many ways, this online spring has felt like a necessary evil. If we all stay home, we help flatten the curve and do our part in reducing the effects of this pandemic. Extend this policy into fall and it starts to feel like a continuation to this never ending nightmare we’re all living. 

It would also be taking another part of our Santa Clara experience away. No amount of breakout rooms and polls can make up for in-person lectures and discussions. At the very least, it doesn’t seem fair to be charged full tuition for pre-recorded lectures and email-only office hours. 

These pre-recorded lectures, however, may be the socially responsible solution. With warnings of a second wave and most semester schools heavily leaning towards an online fall, it seems too much to hope that in four months it’ll be okay for everyone to safely travel back to Santa Clara. 

A Reddit post from a professor at UC Berkeley breaking down recent medical literature about the coronavirus says that students should plan to have classes online again in the fall. His conclusion is that even if we try to bring students back with social distancing and hybrid online classes, we’d still end up burying students. He concludes that our only way out of our homes would require aggressive testing, contact tracing and 100 percent mask-wearing. 

My new happy thought amid this looming online fall? I’ll take fall quarter off and come back in the winter. The classes I need will still be offered and I don’t have pressing post-grad plans. While I would very much like to be back on campus amid the perfectly manicured lawns and palm trees, at this point, it almost seems too irresponsible, for our sake and the world’s.