Compassion for students with COVID-19 seems to be dropping

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Some students feel that professors are becoming less lenient in handling student absences due to COVID-19 related issues.

“Our professor didn’t have, like, recordings of lectures or anything. So it was literally just one of the TA’s sending me notes, like, every class period,” BYU student Lindsay Hafen said.

Hafen has never, to her knowledge, contracted the COVID-19 virus. But that’s not to say she hasn’t been impacted by its presence.

“There were six people in the apartment and four of them had COVID. Every consecutive week after that one roommate tested positive. So we just missed that whole block of class,” Hafen said.

One of Hafen’s roommates contracted the virus, then another and then another leaving Hafen to quarantine for several weeks.

“I missed six weeks of class, I think. Obviously it was really difficult because I couldn’t participate in any way, like I could just do my homework and hope for the best,” she said.

The situation got so bad, it prevented her from being able to participate in her first semester of Arabic. “Arabic I ended up having to withdraw from,” she said.

Hafen said she noted a marked decrease in the willingness of professors to accommodate absences due to COVID-19 related issues.

Helpful resources seem less readily available and professors seem to be slower to help students like Hafen. Her advice to professors is for more understanding.

“I just wish they were more understanding and made the class more accessible. If you can’t for some reason have a Zoom link during it, at least have it recorded,” she said.

But until such accommodations are more frequently made, students will have to continue maneuvering through college in the face of a cutback on compassion for COVID-19.

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