Katie Szilagyi
Health Editor

Eager and excited to begin my final semester at Pace, I began scanning my email for messages from professors regarding the start of classes. Much to my surprise, I received two emails one week before the start of the semester titled simply “Class Cancellation.”

Normally, I would roll my eyes and find quick replacements for my courses. However, these two cancelled courses were Modern and Ancient Philosophy, mandatory to complete my philosophy minor, with no other professors offering the courses on the Pleasantville campus.

Furthermore, these were the only two courses being taught by a wonderful adjunct professor, Evangelos Kobolakis, who would now not be teaching at Pace.

Soon after receiving this email, I discovered several of my peers and professors were inconvenienced by such changes as well.

As an active and involved student who will be paying back student loans to this institution within the next six months, I believe students have a right to partake and voice their perspectives in these decisions, rather than have to react to their sudden announcement. I know I am not the only student who feels this way.

Kaleigh Kessler
Contributor

I also was excited to start the spring semester, and was disappointed when I had seen they had canceled two of my classes.

Unlike Katie, I am able to try to take the courses in another semester, but I did have a different issue; I lost 7 credits putting me below the 12 credit requirement for living on campus.

I had to rearrange my whole schedule in order to remain a full time student. I was frustrated and thrown off guard, and had very short period of time to pull everything together.

It was obvious that this was going to affect a large majority of people across campus, faculty and students alike, so why was it handled in such a childish manner? And why were we not notified sooner?

The semester has started with strong sense of disappointment and contempt towards administration, and this isn’t something that can be just blown over.

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The issues at hand with these sudden course cancellations are numerous.

Primarily, the lack of communication between students and administration has become a regular pattern.

That students were informed a mere week before the start of their classes was inconsiderate, to say the least.

In addition, some adjunct professors were not informed of cancellations until the day of their first classes, therefore having prepared coursework and syllabi for no reason.

Several adjunct professors who have gained a constant following from students and will not be returning which has several students outraged and disappointed.

These decisions affect students as much as they do faculty, and yet no student input or feedback was requested before the decision was made.

We understand several students were affected by these decisions, and we encourage faculty and students to speak out on how they were affected so that administration knows we take our education seriously.