By Lexey Burns, Editor in Chief

Laurentian University’s Senate has announced that the winter semester will be delayed one week to give professors time to grade essays and prepare their courses for remote delivery. 

Serge Demers, Registrar and Secretary of Senate, released a statement to students Thursday saying that “at its November meeting, the Laurentian University Senate approved a one-week delay for the start of classes in January 2021.”

The next semester will now start on January 11th instead of January 4th and the last day of classes has been moved from April 1st to April 9th. 

The Winter Reading Week remains unchanged from February 15th to 21st. 

Demers warns that “there is a possibility that a very small number of programs will maintain the original dates.” 

Cynthia Whissel, a professor in Laurentian’s psychology department, said “we don’t have time to get ready… we had that time in the summer,” in the October Senate meeting that determined if the Winter semester would be delivered remotely. 

More recently, Whissell commented that “as time passes, they are giving us more and more information for running courses online but right now, like most students, I’m busy getting through this term before I can really attend the next.” 

Alan Shepard, Western University’s president, said that the university had no plans to extend the holiday break.

Concordia University’s Anne Whitelaw, Interim Provost and Vice-President, however, said that “extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.” She says that the university recognizes that the Concordia community “may need additional ‘downtime’ over the holiday season” and that the Winter semester is now set to begin on Wednesday, January 13, 2021.” 

In an email, Whissell said “I think after another few terms we can all be online experts (God forbid!).” 

*Update* Western’s Senate has recently announced that they will postpone their Winter semester and classes will commence on January 11th, 2020.