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We strive to provide a consistent educational experience for all of our students while being sensitive to our community’s safety and security. The most demanding challenge posed by the pandemic is uncertainty. We want to provide as much notice to our students, facility, and staff, in order to plan appropriately and deliver the high-quality course content and access to faculty that VLS is known for.
— Thomas McHenry, President and Dean of Vermont Law School, commenting on the decision to hold all Fall 2020 classes remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. An informational page on the law school website notes that “[w]hile Vermont is presently a low-risk state, the pandemic is continuing to rage in parts of the country where many VLS students live. This is a contributing factor to the decision. It could make travel more challenging and perhaps difficult for students to come to campus or return home.” Vermont Law will offer a “January Start” for first-year students, and the school joins Harvard Law and Berkeley Law in the decision to hold all classes online this coming fall. Harvard is being sued over its “outrageous tuition” for remote classes.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.