Dear Administration and Faculties,

We are sending you this petition letter in regard to many students’ concerns toward some courses via Zoom platform. We appreciate your efforts on enabling us to continue our education and creative acts during this extremely difficult time. However, over the past three weeks’ experience with online classes, we have all come to an identical conclusion that, through online courses, we cannot receive the intact or even requisite education as some courses designed to deliver, especially:

1. Those may only learn through practical operations, for example cinematography class which require our adept in operating camera and lighting equipment;
2. Those may only learn with professional softwares, for example editing class and producing class which require Avid and Movie Magic as their operating softwares;
3. Those may only learn through interpersonal collaborations, for example production workshops which attach importance to practical crewing.

We believe that we will not be fully prepared for the upcoming tasks in our future semesters if we continue these courses via Zoom. Thus, we are looking forward to an open discussion with respect to our following requests:

1. Reschedule and postpone the practical courses, for example the aforementioned ones;
2. Refund a portion of this semester’s equipment fee (no less than $1000 per person).

To our knowledge, American Film Institute (Los Angeles) has already postponed all filming exercises to June, and the School of Visual Arts (New York) has decided to refund 50% of students’ facility fee. We highly suggest that NYFA shall act accordingly to the current circumstance as well by scheduling only theoretical classes online and postpone all practical courses. We would love to work with the administration in order to seek a feasible plan which reaches our educational needs and refrains us from unnecessary payments.

Sincerely,

New York Film Academy Los Angeles Campus Students