DISCLAIMER AND CONSENT:  The Columbia Volunteer Tutor Corps (also known as the “Program," “New York City Volunteer Tutor Corps”, "Columbia University Tutor Corps,” "CVTC," and "CUVTC") is a grass-roots, community-based organization that provides free tutoring to students in the K-12 grade levels.  Initially formed to assist time-stressed essential health care workers with their children’s education, the Program has branched out to provide free tutoring services to socially disadvantaged students in these grade levels.  Tutoring is provided by unpaid volunteers, many of whom are in advanced educational programs, who share the Program’s drive to give back to the community.  Please note that tutoring matches are informal arrangements involving volunteer work, and Tutors and Parents are both solely responsible for governing this working relationship moving forward. By participating in the Program, you acknowledge the foregoing.  If you are a parent or legal guardian of a tutored student, you acknowledge that, regardless of when your child or ward starts or started participating in the Program:

 

• All tutoring sessions must be attended by a parent or legal guardian, or another adult designated by a parent or legal guardian (referred to here as a “parent”), of the tutored student, and it is the parent’s or legal guardian’s responsibility, and not the responsibility of the Program or any tutor, to assure such attendance.

 

• The Program has not investigated the background or tutoring skills of any tutor nor made a determination of the adequacy of the tutor’s educational skills.  The Program does not design individualized curricula or other educational programs for participating students.  It is the responsibility of the parent, in coordination with the participating student and the student’s traditional teachers, to ensure that topics subject to tutoring are relevant to the student’s school curriculum.

 

• Parents, for themselves and their participating children, irrevocably release the Program and all of its directors, officers, staff, volunteers, and any others acting on the Program’s behalf from any and all liability, claims, demands, causes of action, and possible causes of action whatsoever. 

 

If you are a tutor, you acknowledge the foregoing, and you undertake to provide the requested tutoring services to the best of your ability in a constructive and safe environment and to report to the Program promptly if you have any circumstances that might be interpreted as otherwise or if you have any concerns about your ability to provide those services in such a manner.  You also agree to neither meet nor make any attempt to meet your tutored student in person except in the continuing presence, and with the consent, of a parent of the student, nor will you engage in any other contact or communication with the student, whether in person, by telephone, email, social media, or otherwise, outside of formal tutoring interactions, and to advise the Program immediately if such contact occurs, either inadvertently or otherwise.

 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY DISCLAIMER: 

Through this program, faculty, graduate and undergraduate students have volunteered to help as tutors for the children of essential workers (from Pre-K to 12th grade) in a wide range of subjects. This program was developed rapidly in an effort to address a pressing need that was created by the circumstances of the pandemic. This is a purely virtual tutoring program to be conducted via videoconference. There are no in-person meetings.  

 

Due to the timing of the program designed to address an immediate need the volunteers and/or the content they are providing have not been screened by the University during the Spring-Summer 2020 period.

 

If there are any concerns by the tutees and/or their parents or guardians regarding the verbal or visual behaviors by tutors over videoconference, please contact the program administrators immediately at:  tutoringprogramcovid19@gmail.com or protectionofminors@columbia.edu.

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