Professors at Columbia University Offer To Drop Test Scores, Cancel Classes To Accommodate Student Meltdowns Over Trump Victory

Professors at Columbia University are reportedly offering to drop upcoming midterm exam scores and cancel classes to support students who are distressed over the results of the presidential election. Emails from several Columbia and Barnard educators were posted online by one disgruntled student, Eliana Goldin, who took issue with what she felt was the schools’ coddling of its far left students given that they school is facing persistent accusations that its offered little support to Jewish students facing rampant antisemitism. “Reports of @Columbia professors canceling class for the day or easing course requirements because of Trump’s win,” Ms. Goldin wrote on X on Wednesday morning. “Jews endured calls for their genocide day and night last semester, and Columbia did nothing. Half the country votes for a candidate and Columbia elitists can’t deal.”The screenshotted emails show the Ivy League professors relaying sympathetic messages to their students, telling them to “please take care of yourselves and each other,” “be good to yourselves, check in on your friends,” and “I hope you are all taking care.” One professor planning to hold a midterm exam on Thursday offered to swap out their students’ grades should they score higher on their final exam “in recognition of the increased stressed [sic] some of you might be feeling because of the election results.” Announcing their decision to end class early on Wednesday, another professor lamented that “processing the results of a national election can be heavy” and “having space to breathe and go a bit slower is vital.” Another professor who decided to cancel class altogether estimated that “the current events would make it difficult to concentrate on factorial ANOVA” and that “it feels a bit tone deaf” to deliver their prepared lecture as a result. “Their blatant double standard couldn’t be more offensive to the Jewish community at Columbia,” Ms. Goldin wrote. Just last week, a House of Representatives committee designated the Morningside Heights school “the site of some of the most disturbing and extreme antisemitic conduct violations in the country” in the wake of the protests which exploded on campus after Hamas’s attack on October 7. The Committee also reprimands the school for enforcing “shockingly few” disciplinary consequences for violent anti-Israel student agitators. Other elite universities have come under fire for overindulging their students following Tuesday’s election results. Students at Georgetown’s School of Public Policy were awarded a day off from classes and encouraged to unwind at a school-run post-election “Self-Care Suite,” according to an email obtained by the Free Press.The letter, sent by the school’s director of student engagement, Jaclyn Clevenger, to all students, advises community members to “gather” for a “much needed break” and participate in “mindfulness activities and snacks throughout the day.” Ms. Clevenger attached a day-long agenda that started with “Tea, Cocoa, and Self Care” at 10 a.m. and ended with “Snacks and Self-Guided Mediation” at 5 p.m. Other activities offered include “Coloring and Mindfulness Exercises” and “Legos and Coloring.” The report spread across social media like wildfire, with many voicing criticism of the school’s over-the-top efforts to comfort students over something as routine as the presidential election. One education reform expert at the American Enterprise Institute, Robert Pondiscio, denounced the school’s programming in a post on X, warning: “Folks, this isn’t funny anymore. It’s disturbing to treat adults like fragile children.” Director of the Defense of Freedom Institute, Ginny Gentles, an organization which advocates for educational freedoms, expressed similar disapproval. “Perhaps we should encourage future diplomats and policymakers to be a bit tougher,” she wrote on X. However, a spokeswoman for Columbia told The New York Sun that they have received “no reports of cancelled classes” and that “Columbia faculty and students were in class yesterday and our academic schedule was fully underway as usual.”

Professors at Columbia University Offer To Drop Test Scores, Cancel Classes To Accommodate Student Meltdowns Over Trump Victory

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