Immunocompromised students scrambling for online options with return to in-person classes

Willow Robinson is planning to graduate from the University of Ottawa this year, but in order to safely earn her degree, she's spending thousands of dollars taking online classes at a school more than 3,500 kilometres away.

The lectures at Athabasca University in Alberta were the only virtual options she could find that meet course requirements while avoiding COVID-19 exposure, according to Robinson, who has a progressive degenerative muscle and nerve disorder and takes medication that lowers her immune response.

She's not alone. Robinson is also co-ordinator for the Centre for Students with Disabilities (CSD) at the University of Ottawa and says she's working with at least 81 other students scrambling to find professors who will accommodate online learning because they can't attend in-person classes.

"A lot of our students are currently suffering," she said, describing the university's stance as  "lacking in care [and] lacking in ethical response."

After more than two years of the pandemic, the COVID-19 measures in place during previous waves have been dropped, leaving students and post-secondary staff to sort out for themselves how to proceed safely. While many have happily returned to in-person classes, others don't have that option and Robinson said they're being forced to choose between their health and their education.

The situation has created a vacuum where schools or governments should step up, said Raywat Deonandan, an epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa.

"Institutions at that level have a leadership responsibility. They set the tone, they set the moral agenda and people follow suit," he explained.

"If they aren't taking the steps to mitigate transmission, people will assume the crisis is over and the pandemic is over and neither of those things is true."

A post on the University of Ottawa's website about the return to class this September said learning would mainly take place on campus, with no more than 10-20 per cent of courses offered online.

The university said ventilation has been upgraded to meet or exceed public health standards and stresses the desire to return to the "dynamic, exciting" campus life enjoyed before the pandemic.

University of Ottawa, like Carleton University and Algonquin College, continues to follow provincial guidelines which recommend people wear masks and get vaccinated to protect themselves from the virus, but make neither mandatory.

That's left lecturers in a position where they can ask, but can't require that masks be worn in the classroom, said Stuart Murray, a professor of rhetoric and ethics at Carleton.

He cares for two seniors who are undergoing chemotherapy and said so far his students have been "fantastic" about masking. The university has provided him with masks to distribute and he's using a larger classroom so people can space out.

Still, he said, the language of recommendations and stressing personal choice sounds odd compared to the messages previously used during the pandemic, describing it as an "about face."