We are teaching assistants from the Department of chemistry and biochemistry at Utah State University. During the past several days, we have received emails regarding the University's decisions, from cancelling classes and moving courses online, to resuming chemistry labs on the week of March 24th, and the last notice of resuming lab teaching on the week of March 17th.

We have several major concerns about these changes in decisions and thus held this petition to ask our univeristy to reconsider the resume of laboratory courses our department, and postpone all chemistry labs until the rest of USU courses are meeting on-campus.

Currently, there is no protective instructions for both our TA and students to prevent any potential COVID-19 infection. Besides, no furhter information about medical bill reimbursement for TA or students who get infected by COVID-19 during the laboratory courses.

As more and more of students are getting scheduled for COVID-19 testing, and the rest of USU courses moving online, we believe it is safe for chemistry students to take the same level of precautions. Again, please take our concerns into consideration and we would like to hear your response to all the questions above. We would also like to understand the reason why our University made such decisions to resume chemistry labs.