After having been partially online for almost a full year, Arizona State University students received an email on Monday stating that the university will resume in-person learning for the fall 2021 semester.
“For fall, we plan on returning to Learning Mode 1, in which instruction will be delivered to students by faculty in person, on campus,” the email reads.
According to the same email, select courses will be available digitally through ASU sync and iCourses.
However, while it appears that ASU is hopeful that they will be able to safely conduct in-person learning, the reactions from students on the matter are varied.
Anthony Jakubczyk, an Air Force ROTC student majoring in mechanical engineering, supports the university’s decision to resume in-person learning and believes they will be able to do so safely by the fall 2021 semester.
“I think with their rapid testing and other procedures to prevent COVID, college life could return a little closer to normal,” Jakubczyk said.
In contrast, Shealyn Cooke, a nursing major on the downtown campus, said, “it’s a little concerning because most students don’t have the vaccine yet.”
Cooke also explained that she is concerned on behalf of the high-risk students who may be exposed to COVID-19 or COVID-19 variants if ASU chooses to return to a fully in-person learning model without offering ASU Sync options for every class.
Harrison Hong, an informatics major on the Tempe campus, said that returning to in-person learning feels “naively hopeful.”
Harrison expressed an all-too-common sentiment of simply feeling exhausted from the constant changing of plans.
At the start of the pandemic, ASU students were expected to return to in-person learning within two weeks. After the two weeks were extended into the remainder of the spring semester, students were expected to return to in-person classes by August. Now, as we approach the one-year anniversary of the first “COVID break,” thousands of students are still taking classes entirely online.
“Part of me wants to believe it but can’t yet, since we know how quickly things can change and how much uncertainty there still is,” Hong said.
In a Twitter poll conducted by Downtown Devil asking students for feedback on whether they felt they were ready for ASU to return to in-person learning during the fall 2021 semester, 49% of students said “yes” while 51% responded “not yet.”
ASU will be fully in-person for the Fall 2021 semester. Are you ready?
— Downtown Devil (@DowntownDevil) February 16, 2021
In a similar poll put out by Downtown Devil on Instagram, 55% of respondents said that they were ready to return, showing that students are still roughly 50/50 on the issue across both platforms.
In an effort to help combat the spread of COVID for on-campus students, ASU has offered a variety of COVID-19 resources on their campuses since the beginning of the fall 2020 semester.
The most recent addition being Devil’s Drop-Off, which is a convenient way for students to pick up testing kits and return them to a drop location within one hour that requires no appointment. Results are typically returned within 48-72 hours.
According to ASU’s most recent COVID-19 management strategy and data update released on Feb. 15, there are 38 known positive cases among faculty and staff, 173 known positive cases within the student population, and only 9 of these 173 cases are students who live in on-campus housing. This is a slight decrease from the number of cases within the ASU community reported on Feb. 11, consistent with the downward trends in the rest of Arizona.
Contact the reporter at clparri2@asu.edu.
Cami is Downtown Devil's co-executive editor. Cami is a third-year student studying print journalism and political science. When she's not writing or editing, she enjoys hosting radio shows, playing piano and bass, and teaching art classes at a local art studio.
