My name is Vasiliki Platsidakis and I am a junior Justice Studies major at Rhode Island College. I am starting this petition because the school administration has blatantly ignored the concerns of students for far too long. In just a few short weeks, we will be embarking on an almost entirely remote fall semester. Due to COVID-19, it is easy to see why this is the safest way to approach education for the foreseeable future. However, what is unclear to myself and the fellow students I have shared my concerns with is why we are being charged full tuition fees for online classes. Furthermore, tacked on to that tuition bill is a slew of miscellaneous fees, such as dining center and recreation fees totalling an additional $600 for facilities we will not be utilizing from home. It came as a great shock to me when millions of college students around the nation were entirely unheard and overlooked in the midst of a global pandemic, the likes of which we have never seen before. There was little to no financial relief for us then, and there is none to be seen now. Even worse, students at RIC have not even received acknowledgement of the struggles we are going through during these unprecedented times, but simply the conventional email regarding the due date of our tuition bills. Our financial aid packages are being based solely on the 2020-2021 FAFSA, which uses outdated tax information from 2018. For the majority of students who are claimed by their parents/guardians as dependents, such as myself, financial aid is determined by taking their income into consideration as well. As the unemployment rate in the United States has skyrocketed, many of ourselves and family members have lost their jobs. Our entire lives have been turned upside down and yet our financial need is still being determined by figures no longer representative of that need. In fact, many peers have shared with me that they are receiving less aid than ever before and I can certainly relate. Please, help make this issue important enough to make a difference. Make it a priority to lessen the burden of college expenses during these uncertain times.