Following the return to campus, some McMaster students push for a hybrid option

Just days after the full return to campus, a student-led petition calling for McMaster University to provide online learning options has amassed nearly 1,000 signatures from students, faculty and staff.

The petition launched in late December outlines demands for a safe return to campus, saying "access to courses through online learning tools must continue to be an option available to all students beyond Feb. 7."   

McMaster was one of many Ontario post-secondary schools that delayed a planned return to campus due to the spread of the Omicron variant.  A full return began on Monday. 

Emunah Woolf is a McMaster student and director of Maccess, an organization for students with disabilities. Woolf said they would like to see an option for students to continue with remote learning.

"The main ask that we've [had] is around hybrid learning, so options for folks to go in person, as well as options to attend online so folks can tune in from a safe or distant location and also to not be in a disadvantage to in-person classmates."

Woolf was a panellist during a Monday event called #PushBackOnBackToMac, where students and faculty voiced their concerns regarding the back-to-campus plan.

The social work department where Woolf studies has continued its courses online after students advocated for the option. But Woolf said they decided to speak up and be part of the panel after hearing concerns from the wider McMaster community. 

"There's a lot of fear and anxiety, either for their own health, health of family members or community members, just a general sense of feeling dismissed or unheard by the university, or that our lives and concerns don't matter." 

More than 100 people attended the event, where Woolf wanted the main takeaway to be that "disabled students, staff and community members aren't expendable."

"We deserve to be included and safe on campus as well as [be] brought into these conversations where we have the knowledge of what we need."

McMaster professor Ameil Joseph was also a panellist at the Monday event. He said in his view, current safety measures on campus go against what public officials have said.

"It is very unique that Hamilton is being described as the epicentre of the pandemic and that our hospital CEOs are telling us that they are overcapacity, and we're being bad neighbours by not responding to that need."

McMaster requires students to have two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and be masked when indoors, but according to Joseph, that's not enough. 

"It's been widely discussed that initial vaccine efficacy of 95 per cent is no longer the case with Omicron, and a small portion of the population has received the boosters. There are health experts who recently in the British Medical Journal advocated for the vaccine-plus strategy, which is having N95 masks or similar, physical distancing testing, contact tracing, isolation measures, ways that we can manage through data collection and protective measures."