In these strenuous times of uncertainty following the coronavirus outbreak and academic changes, appropriate action should be taken to ensure students do not underperform due to outside pressures that are no fault of their own. Giving students an option to make their classes pass-fail would allow students to still succeed in this online learning environment, while not sacrificing the hard work we have put earlier into this semester, along with the hard work we have put into our GPAs from previous semesters. For many future jobs and internship opportunities, student GPAs are one of the strongest indicators for performance and qualification. Having a semester where everyone is set back in their academic performance will only hurt us in our future prospects. Many people, students and professors included, are not acclimated to an online learning environment. Along with that, many classes simply are not ideal for this mode of instruction. While professors can try to shift their classes to the best of their ability to make online learning work, it will never be to the same effect as the face to face instruction many of us are used to. When we paid for our tuition, we students had a specific idea for how we wanted to be taught. Some students may feel as though online instruction might benefit them while others have no idea how their classes could even be feasible online. Giving us the option to decide how we want these classes to affect our futures is the only reasonable idea and I urge you to give great consideration to this moving forward.

Article explaining why the pass-fail option is beneficial for students and professors, along with a list of universities who've already adopted it: https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/18/opinions/coronavirus-makes-college-and-life-pass-fail-perry/index.html