Skylar Swart’s Sept. 7 column, “SU should encourage professors to offer an online option for classes,” makes a case for a remote option for students who are sick or awaiting negative COVID-19 test results.

This would be reasonable if remote learning were as simple as setting up a Zoom link. It’s not. Students in the room and students on Zoom is a hybrid classroom. Hybrid classes have completely different dynamics. They require different preparation, different learning activities and an entirely different course structure. This is what the tweedy masses mean by “pedagogy.” So, unless all of your classes are 100 percent pure lecture, livestreaming from your room is not the same as attending class. Not to mention the technical support required for hybrid classrooms may not even exist anymore in classrooms reconfigured for in-person learning.

Also, while attendance is important, nothing is more important than your life, my life and the lives of people we care about. Many of your professors have vulnerable people at home, such as unvaccinated children or elderly family members. We want to teach and we want to stay safe, just as we want you to learn and to stay safe. Sometimes that means missing class. No matter what the attendance policy says, no instructor wants a student who may be sick with COVID-19 in the classroom. Your fellow students don’t either.

So we do what we did in old times (circa 2019) when students were sick and missed class: Get the notes from a friend, come to office hours, and work out revised deadlines with your professor. It worked then and will work now, delta be damned.

Aileen Gallagher

Associate Professor, Magazine, News & Digital Journalism