CEGEPs react to mandatory mask mandate when classes resume next week
Posted August 18, 2021 5:57 pm.
Last Updated August 18, 2021 9:56 pm.
Montreal (CityNews) ─ CEGEP students and teachers in Quebec are going back to school in-person next week, with masks required to be worn at all times.
CEGEPs are strongly encouraging vaccination, with mobile clinics being set up on campus.
Dawson College will have a mobile vaccination clinic on location on Aug. 18-19, Vanier on Aug. 23-24, and John Abbott on Aug. 25.
Here’s what some students and faculty at two Montreal CEGEPs had to say.
Diane Gauvin, director general of Dawson College
We want to send a very clear message to our communities that vaccination is very important and we will do everything in our power to support vaccination. Every CEGEP in the Montreal region is holding vaccination clinics to ensure that our students and employees are vaccinated.
We’re not letting our guard down and that’s a message that’s really important. The priority is the safety of the community and to maintain an agility to maintaining changing circumstances.
We have a priority of health and safety but we want to make sure that student success is still at the heart of everything we do. So colleges have implemented a number of measures to make sure this happens. We have had welcome days and a number of different activities, especially for first semester students and especially second-year students who haven’t been the college at all and especially students with disabilities and special needs.
Pierre-Etienne Phaneuf, student at CEGEP Saint-Laurent
In an ideal world, everyone understands that vaccines are good and we all get vaccinated and that’s it. But now that some people won’t be vaccinated and will still attend school, I’m reassured that we will have to wear masks at all times and we wont be touching each other or be close in a social setting where a risk of transmission is happening.
Most people I talk to are first of all happy to go back to school but they want it to be well done. We don’t want to go back home after, we don’t want to go back to Zoom sessions.
Everyone that I talk to, my colleagues, they’re happy to be going back to school, to live the life and school and to talk. It’s very, very different and much more motivating to be with your peers and your teachers.
Selma Hamdani, psychology professor at Dawson College
As a teacher, it’s a sigh of relief to know that there’s some security measures that are put in place. Our classrooms are quite crowded. I would say you can have up to 45 students in one classroom.
I think for the mental health and social adjustment of students, the in-person or on-campus experience is crucial. There’s nothing that can replace that.
