McGill University students questioning in-person exams despite surge in COVID cases

Some university students across the country are transitioning to laptops to wrap up exams. But some students at Montreal’s McGill University, can’t understand why the university won’t make their exams virtual amid soaring COVID-19 cases.

“The university had options. They can look to their own faculty of law whose exams are entirely remote, whether timed take-home exams or basically essays that students write. Other universities have followed lead as well there were other options rather than this very traditional view of you must coming to write an exam,” said Josh Werber, Representative of law students to McGill University Senate.

“The university did almost nothing, they allowed masks to be taken off by instructors, they did not enforce the mask mandates, people [were] in hallways without masks there was a violation of the very few rules and those rules came from Quebec City, not from McGill,” added Richard Gold, law and medicine professor at McGill University.

Gold says after several attempts from various departments, the university decided to go ahead with in-person exams and on Monday, Quebec said universities can remain open amid exams.

“Our global experts said that they needed to take steps. The university refused to listen to them, they signed a letter they refused to listen to them. The school itself wrote a letter they refused to listen to them. The law school professors wrote a letter saying you have all the legal right and authority to do this and if you do not do this you are open to liability because you know there are vulnerable people and those people are most at risk and the university did almost nothing,” explained Gold.

“We saw students at McGill, they’ve very recently [been] exposed to someone who has symptoms or has tested positive or they themselves have symptoms and their waiting to get their results and they have an exam coming up within the next day that McGill has kept in person,” added Werber.

Exams are to be kept within the school’s sealed gymnasium where over 200 students will sit for up to 3 hours, and while the university tells CityNews in a statement that “safety measures have been communicated to students, including information about exams deferrals in situations where an individual presents COVID-19 symptoms.” Many are feeling the academic pressure.

“Students fear failing an exam because they didn’t show up and their request for deferral is rejected. Students acknowledge that if they do defer their exams they’ll have to write it in March during the next semester while studying for other courses and potentially forgo required credits from this semester. These factors combine to a sort of implicit pressure,” explained Werber.

In an open letter sent by student leaders, it asked the university to not hold these exams in person and if that was not possible to move them to early January which the university has not yet acknowledged.

“Had we been consulted on if exams would remain in person, we could have absolutely forecasted that students would have certain academic pressures leading them to come in person.”

By holding in-person exams it was foreseeable that students would be attending even though they had symptoms.

And while Quebec has now introduced new restrictions that say universities exams can continue, many schools across Quebec have opted to do online exams. As for McGill, a spokesperson says “the health and wellbeing of their community remains their top priority.”

But Werber says, “students don’t believe that they should be entirely remote. We understand that there is nuance and we need to wait and see how the public health situation evolves what we’re looking for is a slightly less risk-averse from the university as well as consultations with student leaders so we can communicate what is likely to happen how students are likely to behave and what our safety and health needs are.”