Academic Senate addressed fears that students and staff may have about the coronavirus, which may have an effect on international students who were recently in China.

Stephanie Serna, member of De Anza Classified Senate said one of the main concerns are the suspended flights to and from China, making the upcoming spring quarter difficult for international Chinese students.

“We’re learning that the feds are not allowing people from China to come over” said Serna. “The panic is going to start kicking in.”

According to a CNN article, American, Delta, and United Airlines all have suspended flights to and from China until at the earliest March 27 and at the latest April 30. With spring quarter beginning April 6, international students recently in China may experience difficulty beginning courses spring quarter due to these complications.

Shagun Kaur, language arts instructor, brought up the possibility of online classes for these students during the spring quarter in order to still complete nine required units.

“Federally speaking, (international students) have to be in nine units on campus.” Serna responded. “If they’re not in total of twelve units, they’re not in compliance.”

Attendance

During a reading of the Academic Senate’s model syllabus for faculty, Thomas Ray, Dean of Language Arts, spoke on the importance of attendance policies.

Ray said that the attendance policy should blend with each individual classrooms’ curriculum, and professors discussed different implementation of student attendance.

“The example that I was given is that if you teach a tennis class and you require the students to serve 150 serves; they can do that at home.” said Ray. “You’re grading the quality of each service motion.”