Conestoga students react.
College students face accelerated schedule, some expected to drop out
KITCHENER — Never mind the long faculty strike and the forced five-week break at 24 Ontario colleges. It’s over. So the push was on for college students to hurry back to class on Tuesday.
A 14-week semester has taken a five-week body blow for nearly 14,000 full-time students at Conestoga campuses scattered throughout Waterloo Region and beyond.
“We’re running out of time here,” Conestoga College president John Tibbits said on Monday.
The three-week Christmas break is trimmed to a single week. The first semester has been shoved two weeks into January as the post-strike curriculum squeeze begins.
At least the mid-winter break leading into March survived unscathed.
“We’re back in business,” Tibbits said. “That’s good.”
But the mood of many in the student body is hardly jubilant as classes resume on Tuesday, two days after back-to-work legislation ordered faculty to return while binding arbitration was arranged. Even Tibbits, Conestoga’s president for 30 years, concedes that as a student he wouldn’t be very
happy.
“It’s been a long painful process, from their point of view,” he said.
How are some of those students feeling as they prepare to return to class?
“Upset,” said Kitchener’s Krysten Rischel, a 22-year-old public relations student who is spending $4,230 in tuition for her second year at Conestoga’s Doon campus.
“No time was given,” she said. “We were out for five weeks. Then, all of a sudden, at the drop of a hat, we’re just expected to go back as if almost nothing has changed. I think that’s little bit unbelievable.”
And so, Rischel said, was a college email from student affairs vice-president Mike Dinning. That was unbelievable, too. It asked that students not engage in “protracted discussion” about the strike when classes resume.
“You are naïve to believe that we are not going to discuss this with our professors,” Rischel said before visiting campus Monday to work on some homework.
“We have been kept in the dark for so long now. We want to know what’s going on. I firmly believe that in the negotiations, or just to sit in, students should have been part of the talks. We are a major part of this triangle.”
But the other two sides in that strike, which featured a media blackout in negotiations that rankled Rischel, are in agreement.
The colleges and union representing professors, instructors, counsellors and librarians, say there is no time for a philosophical assessment of the strike and its impacts — at least not during class.
The Ontario Public Service Employees Union local representing 784 Conestoga faculty advises against professors allowing or encouraging that.
“How would they even have time if we’re going to be condensing five to eight weeks into twoweeks extension of our classes?” said Lana-Lee Hardacre, president of OPSEU Local 237.
“There’s no time to do anything in class, other than the course work.”
And Monday classes, Hardacre said, get hit even harder.
Already, Mondays have been lost to Labour Day and Thanksgiving. Another Monday was lost for instruction this week as Conestoga’s academic chairs met with faculty to sketch out a revised hurry-up plan to get the semester successfully completed.
Students also return on a Tuesday in the new year, on Jan. 2.
So, as classes resume, there’s simply no time for a strike rehash by instructors.
“I recommended they just warmly greet their students and get into the course revision,” Hardacre said.
Right. The pace of learning is picking up. It has to.
“What we’re being told is things are going to be condensed,” said Rischel, who works three part-time jobs to help pay for her final year of Conestoga schooling.
“Projects are going to be taken out. Then why was I doing that project in the first place? If it was fluff and not needed then why was I learning it?”
Rischel, who works part-time at two clothing stories and also holds a social media position with her sister’s company, has to explain to her bosses that her work availability has suddenly changed. It’s no longer wide-open as it has been for weeks.
A big time crunch awaits as Conestoga classes resume.
“We didn’t even get to do our mid-terms yet,” Rischel said. “We still have those, our finals, all these other projects. There’s just not enough time. There’s going to be a lot of all-nighters. It’s going to be a massive strain on all of us.”
And that stress is going to cause some students to pack it in, call it a lost year and ask the college for a refund. They’ve got two weeks from Tuesday to decide if they want their money back. The province, which is offering up to $500 in extra assistance per student for incremental unexpected costs due to the strike, is ready to give full refunds.
“Some people will drop out,” Tibbits said.
Rischel knows of two Conestoga interior decorating students, her co-workers, who plan to pack it in and get their money back.
“This was their first year,” Rischel said. “They said, ‘We’ll just try again next year. There’s no way we can fit all of this knowledge into these last couple weeks.’ I’ve been hearing a lot of people saying they’re going to drop out.”
Aimee Calma, president of the Conestoga students union, hears the dropout talk too. The alliance of college student unions argued for the province to provide the extra assistance for strike-burdened students and the refund option.
“Those are two big wins for us,” Calma said. “We’re happy to see students have some options moving forward. They don’t just have to bear down and figure out what the rest of this semester is going to look like for them.”
The rest of this semester, to Rischel, looks as surreal as the last five weeks.
“We’re in a very limbo-ey kind of place right now,” she said.