The AnCap prof behind this email raises an extremely fine point; what good could possibly come from preventing reasonably-prepared classes from administering exams? I've never been an A student, I relied on stellar final exam grades to slingshot my course average every semester of my college career. Say what you want about me or my work ethic, but we all agree to the course syllabus at the start of the semester. Unilaterally withholding finals is detrimental to students who struggled early on and particularly cynical given how many courses were prepared to operate without Canvas.

Two vectors of legal risk appear: one from teachers, who are now segmented into A and B, where A can test and B cannot (and take umbrage); one from students who are owed accommodations that require presenting exams in non-standard formats, and whose professors may have used Canvas to provide necessary accommodations. I’m not positioned to assess the statistical validity of either risk, but it only took a few seconds to find them in the scenario, and if nothing else I assume the university tends to promote cowardice re: legal risk.

I suspect the (perhaps misguided) goal was to avoid a scenario where an array of patchwork solutions leads to a deluge of exceptions to the patchwork solutions require even more intervention. IMO, what they should have done was issue a mandate that finals carry on as usual for any class where they can do so without tightening any access limitations: In-person can remain in-person or go online, synchronous ("the final is at 9:00am-11am") online can stay as such or go asynchronous ("take the final at your convenience today")