A STUDENT group at the University of the East decried the school’s decision to reject an appeal to postpone the opening of the second semester of Academic Year 2021-2022.

In a letter to UE President Ester Garcia, the University Student Council said that professors must first finish encoding the grades before classes start on January 17.

“The student council has received so many complaints from students that there are professors who haven’t encoded their final grades even they were given the deadline and the enrollment has started,” USC said.

“Thus, this caused conflicts with the enrollment process of a lot of students since their grades were not yet complete,” it added.

The group also urged school officials to allow learners enroll next semester even without PhilHealth insurance since physical classes will remain suspended.

“Since most of the areas in our country were placed under Alert Level 3 and the new variant is something that we should not neglect, it is indeed a risk for most of the students to process all of this in just a short span of time,” it pointed out.

“Many are getting sick and demanding them to process such requirement in the middle of this pandemic crisis is another load to settle,” it stressed.

Garcia on Monday rejected students’ appeal to postpone the opening of classes, saying that the new semester will be held online.

However, she admitted that the school may change its decision depending on the health and wellness of students and faculty.