LETTER | Please, hear the cries of us, the students!

LETTER | I am a matriculation student since August 2020. We, matriculation students, have been learning online since October after our mid-semester break and for our final exam, we’re forced to return to campus and sit for our final exam, despite the high number of daily Covid-19 cases in Malaysia.

For nearly two months of online learning, we’ve managed to complete most of our continuous assessments and assignments, including quizzes and practical tests for science students, online.

Our lecturers have been putting much effort to ensure their students could complete these assessments online by using multiple platforms, such as Google Classroom, Google Forms, Whatsapp and Telegram. If lecturers could give an online test to their students without severe problems, what is the reason that the Ministry of Education cannot carry out the final exam online? Why are they putting our lives at stake just for examinations?

There are voices who said that the Education Ministry can’t do the final exam via online because some of the poor students can’t afford internet or their area had poor connection. It’s been two months of us learning online and I think they have adapted to this situation after two months of online classes.

Matriculation students have been given an allowance of RM250 a month and most of us are using that money to buy mobile data. For students with a poor internet connection, these people could be given permission to take the online exams inside the campus, where the connection is much better.

Last month, the ministry did a test run on online exams via Google Forms and it was terrible, as the website kept crashing because of thousands of matriculation students clicking on the same link. I acknowledge that this may be one of the reasons why we can’t have our exams online, but this is only a simple problem that can be solved easily. The ministry could provide different links with the same set of questions to each matriculation college so that the websites won’t crash.

I keep wishing that all of this would be a dream because I can’t accept the fact that the ministry could make such a harsh decision like this. Are they so confident that out of 20,000+ matriculation students throughout Malaysia, none of them is infected?

If there was an outbreak in one of the colleges, what would their actions be? We don’t even need to be quarantined after coming back to our campus. There’s no way they could find the source if an outbreak occurs. All these premises have been playing in our heads and we have been voicing out these things to the ministry and the Matriculation Division of the ministry (BMKPM), but until now they haven’t justified their decisions yet.

A severely bad decision like this could cause frightful events in the future. I really value my life and my matriculation friends. I don’t want myself or any of my friends to be infected with this virus. Even our parents are extremely worried because their children are putting themselves in danger, just to sit for their final exams.

I am begging the authorities to take into consideration the plight of me and my matriculation friends. There are lives at stake in this matter, as we have already seen deaths of youngsters from Covid-19, even though they were perfectly healthy. Exams can be redone, but lives can’t be returned.

Please do not wait until a disaster happens to me and my friends.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.