Students Create Petition to Have Online Classes due to Coronavirus Case

Students Against Coronavirus KCL has started a petition to have online classes shortly after the announcement of King’s first coronavirus case.

This petition outlines the demands by the newly created group to President and Principal Edward Byrne, as follows:

“1. Protect your students and staff

2. Transition to entirely online learning, which already exists through Lecture Capture on KEATS

3. Inform students about confirmed cases of coronavirus in a straight-forward fashion

4. Continue to provide more resources to combat racism and hate speech; make it more clear in your communications that discrimination should not be tolerated.”

Recognise your impact; protecting our greater community beyond students and staff is key and is the right thing to do.”

It is clear that the recent announcement has caused fear and concern among students, especially with the abrupt increase of cases within the UK. The petition also condemns the delivery of the news to students by mentioning “the university’s failure to be transparent about the incident” as well as the fact that in the email the news “was not disclosed until the fourth paragraph“ a detail which was missed by many students.

While King’s College remains open, several schools in the UK have closed along with other universities overseas who have not had any confirmed cases yet.

At the time of writing, 86 students have signed this petition and it can be found through this link.