(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Columbia University announced on May 1, 2024, that professors should either make final exams optional or cancel them because the pro-Hamas supporters swarmed the college campus.
University Provost Angela Olinto sent an email to students and faculty, in which she wrote that all classes would be moved online for the rest of the semester and urged professors to consider making final exams optional or cancel them entirely, the Columbia Spectator reported.
Professors are “encouraged to provide accommodations in their final assessments” such as “modifying the final’s weight… making the final exam optional, or canceling the final exam,” and must provide an “asynchronous option to accommodate students who have left campus and returned to homes that may be in different time zones,” Olinto wrote.
She then acknowledged that this situation was caused by the pro-terrorist protesters and added that the safety of the “community” is the university’s “highest priority.”
“Given the evolving campus situation, we are working hard to provide support and accommodation to our students, particularly those who are in residence on our Morningside campus. Again, the safety of our community is our highest priority as we strive to support our students’ learning and all the required academic operations,” Olinto wrote.
The Spectator also reported that all exams for Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of General Studies and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences that were previously scheduled for May 3, 2024, have been moved to May 10, 2024, and all papers, projects and other final semester coursework has been reassigned to a date in-between May 6, 2024, and May 10, 2024.
The announcement did not include Columbia’s School of Professional Studies and graduate programs in the School of the Arts.
The announcement came after Columbia University was taken over by pro-Palestine radicals who started setting up tents all over the university, attacking Jewish students and occupying buildings on campus like Hamilton Hall, which prompted the indoctrination center to call in the NYPD to break up the group and the encampment outside.
