Blog

March 2020 was when everything turned for the worst. Beyond classes moving fully online and being required to isolate, every event and celebration for my fourth year of undergrad was abruptly cancelled. My peers and I were being told to get used to the “new normal,” unsure of what that meant or how long it would last.

And with November over, we have officially made it to the last month of 2020! November tends to be OUSA’s busiest month of the year, and even with a pandemic, this year was no exception. 

This month began with the launch of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Survey (OUSS), which was distributed to students at our eight member associations in order to collect data and student perspectives on several key issues, including financial aid, online learning, employment, campus climate, and mental health. We received 5,704 responses from students across the province, and we look forward to analyzing this data and publishing a research report with our findings in 2021. 

My name is Nathan Barnett and I’m a trans man. I began my transition as I entered my first year of university a little over three years ago. I can still remember going to my orientation, writing “Nathan (he/him)” on my name tag, and feeling my heart pounding out of my tightly-bound chest. Even now, thinking about it, I can feel the anxiety. I was so visibly trans, something that is both a privilege and an extremely unsafe thing to be. 

October marked another milestone for OUSA as we held our first-ever full-length, virtual General Assembly. Student delegates from our eight member schools came together to discuss four policies: A Comprehensive Access Strategy, Environmental Sustainability, Responding to COVID-19, and Housing, Transit, & Community Development. Despite the challenges of conducting a four-day conference virtually, our delegates were able to critique policies in breakout rooms, and even had a chance to socialize through a virtual scavenger hunt! The weekend concluded with a closing Plenary session, where delegates debated, amended, and voted on the policy papers—which all passed unanimously, thanks to their hard work. We’re looking forward to sharing these policies over the coming weeks.

When I logged on to my first class this semester, I was abruptly asked in front of 30 other students to turn my camera on. I politely refused, and when pressed further, I gave no reason other than that I didn’t want to. Within 10 minutes, two other students had also turned off their cameras. As we move through this online semester, there’s been a lot of discussion about whether or not students should be required to turn their cameras on during class. As someone who’s in classes, and who’s a student leader in conversation with other students, I believe that to force students to use their cameras is to actively exclude students.

As the 2020-21 school year begins, many students face a full course load entirely online for the first time. With any transition comes frustrating difficulties and surprising upsides to the experience. Having spent my summer doing full-time online learning, I wanted to share some tips from my experience and hopefully make the transition a bit easier.

It’s hard to believe that September has already come and gone. For many students, this month marked a stressful time as they returned to their studies in a new and unfamiliar online format. OUSA has been hard at work continuing to support the challenging transition to remote learning. Our latest campaign, which aims to collect student feedback on the quality of post-secondary education during COVID-19, is now live. Please share how COVID-19 has affected your learning experience here.

SHARE YOUR STORY HERE: ousa.ca/feedback

In light of the global pandemic and the shift to online learning, OUSA wants to hear from post-secondary students about their experiences. OUSA is launching a campaign to collect student stories and feedback about their online learning experience.

It’s September, and if you are an undergraduate student like me, that means you are likely paying tuition, figuring out your budget for the coming year, and spending at least a small amount of time with your head in your hands thinking about your financial situation. For many students, this can be incredibly stressful as university education becomes more unaffordable, and it can be difficult to know where to start if you want to see changes. My suggestion is to start by looking at university budgets, which helps to frame how universities make decisions and the role that the provincial government plays in how much your tuition costs.

The experience of being an international student is fundamentally different from being a domestic student. What challenges should we be aware of when advocating for international students?