On Tuesday, January 25th, Twitter Account @MUNWalkout2022 was created to spread the word about MUN’s refusal to listen to students’ concerns for return to in-person classes, while the province remains in Alert Level 4 and has high COVID-19 case numbers.
This walkout has been planned and organized by the Students for Online Accommodations Coalition. I reached out to them in order to receive some more information about the event and their goals.
They explained that they are a group of students who originally came together when MUN announced that science labs would be in-person, during Level 4 restrictions. The Coalition continued, “We worked together to write a letter to the department of science to request that accommodations be made for those students/lab instructors/professors who either are immunocompromised or are living with someone who is immunocompromised, and also that this decision be reassessed to be treated like in-person classes.”
However, this letter did not appear to have a sufficient impact, and the Coalition decided to take on this new problem of MUN’s decision to return to in-person classes on January 31st. The organizers, therefore, named themselves Students for Online Accommodations Coalition to reflect their new goal of advocating for a safer environment to return to in-person.
The organizers explained, “Given that our original letter did not work, we knew that we needed to take a new approach to get MUN’s attention. We then thought about having this virtual walkout, as not only will it be able to include students who can walk out of class, but also professors/faculty members who may not be able to simply just ‘walk out.’”
They explained that they were inspired by the large network of people in academia on Twitter and decided that by flooding the website with their hashtag #SafeMUN4Everyone “…would allow everyone who wanted to support the cause, regardless of tenure status, personal commitments, exams, tests, etc., to participate and get the attention of the important decision-makers in the university community.”
When asked about their goals for the walkout, the organizers explained that they hope MUN will listen and understand that they need better protection from COVID-19. They noted, that under MUN’s current policy, if someone has to self-isolate or ends up catching COVID-19, it is up to professors and instructors to provide them with accommodations. They explain:
“We feel that this is unfair to both the student and the faculty member, given that the guidelines that MUN gave to professors regarding these accommodations are close to nothing, and there is no consistency. We want to ensure that everyone can attend their classes without having to choose between their health and their education, so this would mean handing out the correct masks as the university recommends (IE KN95s, N95s), offering online options to those who are not comfortable or at high-risk, and a concrete, university-wide plan as to what happens if a student or faculty member finds themselves in the situations above. Transparency and accommodations are key here, yet MUN did not seem to and continue to not take any of these issues into consideration as they plan to return to campus.”
The Coalition has gained significant social media attention since starting the hashtag, even gaining support from the Canadian Federation of Students NL. Their Twitter account now has 125 followers and has also received responses from students on student Facebook groups featuring stories from students unable to receive accommodations from their professors. Student responses show that students have had difficulties receiving accommodation from professors when raising concerns for their personal or family’s safety when classes return to in-person, with many expressing concern for their own health or immunocompromised family members.
In their statement to me, the organizers explained:
“For the most part I do think that we have gained a fair bit of attention, not only from students and faculty in the university, but also from people out in the communities of Newfoundland and Labrador. We only started our Twitter account a few days ago and are already at over 100 followers, and personally I have heard people talking about it in all of my classes this week, even if they did not formally follow the account or indicate that they were planning to participate. This is definitely in huge part thanks to CFS, who we met with early last week and who helped us organize our plan and helped us to advertise it on social media. The media (such as yourself) is also hugely helping, as we have had more interest in the past couple of days after speaking to several different outlets.”
I also asked the organizers if they have received any backlash to their social media posts or planned walkout protest and the organizers told me:
“There has not been any direct backlash. We did have a professor tweet us and say that they felt that we were blaming the professors for the lack of accommodations being provided (as we have been tweeting some personal experiences from students who are currently dealing with trying to find a way to be able to stay enrolled in their in-person classes despite their personal situations), however that was never our intent.”
On Thursday, the organizers released a statement in a Twitter thread explaining that they have been made aware that professors felt like they were blaming them for the actions of the university and that this was not their intention. They indicated their gratitude for professors that are doing all that they can to accommodate students and that they hope students and faculty will be able to work together.
They emphasized, “After we explained that our intention was to highlight the inconsistencies made solely by the very minimal guidelines from Memorial senior staff who made the decision, it seemed to have been smoothed over and we have gained some more faculty support as they too feel that MUN needs to be a safe place for everyone and face many of the same situations as students (IE being immunocompromised, living with immunocompromised individuals, overall not feeling protected, etc.)”
The walkout however does raise some concerns regarding the administration’s prior response to student protest. This past December, student activist Matt Barter was banned from campus after silently protesting the tuition hike and MUN president Dr. Vianne Timmons. This event has made some students weary that the University will take action against free-speech and other forms of student protest.
I asked the organizers about this concern, and the organizers responded that “In the beginning, this was definitely a concern given the situation with Matt and the fact that he got banned from the university for protesting. However, we realized that if we have as much support as we currently do, it would be hard for the university to punish everyone. It is not a current fear that we hold as we know that we will be stronger together and the more people we have supporting our walkout, the better our chances will be that MUN will listen to our concerns instead of punishing us for speaking out.”
Finally, the organizers stated that on Monday they will be walking out of classes and that they encourage/invite other MUN staff or faculty to do the same. Those who are interested in learning more can go to their Twitter Account to find out more information.
They also wanted to emphasize “…our intention is not to have the rest of the semester online because we understand that in-person truly is the optimal option for students and online education does not work for a lot of people, ourselves included. We are simply asking for the option to do so online, protection and transparency from the university, and reassurance that we will not be penalized if (or rather when) we get COVID.”
Their Twitter explains that those interested in participating in the walkout protest can help in three different ways:
- Do not go to class on Monday, January 31st, 2022 and email your professors with the template (posted on their Twitter) to explain why you won’t be attending.
- Use the link shared on their Twitter to automatically email the administration to demand safer conditions for a return to in-person learning.
- Tweet #SafeMUN4Everyone and direct your tweets at administration and state why you think MUN needs to be safer, with the goal of taking over everyone’s timeline.
- Continue to spread the word and get the message out to everyone.
