by Lexey Burns, Editor-in-Chief

“I love learning that my program got cut during exam season” – Allie Blake-Khaleel, third year French Zoologie

“Horrified and heartbroken by the news coming out of LU today” – Tweet from Laurentian Alumna Robin Desmeules

Having lived in residence all through COVID-19, I’ve gotten used to the emptiness that the pandemic has brought. Today has been different. 

Today seems like students have given up. 

The study rooms in East residence were empty, despite this being the first week of exams. I walked past two boys talking about how lucky they were to be in a program that didn’t get cut. It feels like these cuts are sucking the colour out of campus life and no one can escape it. 

The buildings that once held bustling classes now stand empty, a looming reminder that they will still be empty come fall. These are the visible scars that the CCAA proceedings have left us. But since everything has been done from home offices and bedrooms, barely anyone is here right now to see the damage. 

In the words of English professor Sylvia Hunt, “they have gutted the university.”

With today’s cuts, they have also taken away so much of the arts, Hunt said, that the English program is the last humanities program left at Laurentian.  

“It’s administration that doesn’t see the value in any of these programs,” she said.

I couldn’t agree more. 

Use your resources

I am, or should I say was, double-majoring in English and Huntington University’s Communications. 

After taking classes with amazing professors like Kristeen McKee and Natasha Gerolami,  I think Robert Haché and Laurentian’s administration would benefit from taking some introductory communications courses.

My first example: announcing the dissolution of the federations at 10 pm before a long weekend, sending students, staff, and faculty into panic for an entire four days before they received any answers.

Second example: According to a post on UMentioned, Marie Josee Berger “made the announcement” to the faculty of the midwifery program that they would be one of the programs cut, “and left the meeting, providing NO details in answer to… questions.” 

Third: Where is President Haché through all of this? My personal opinion is that he couldn’t recognize half of the faculty whose jobs he has just taken away if they walked into his office right now. 

And why push all student questions onto our respective deans? This isn’t their mess to clean up. I believe answering all the emails they’ve received yesterday only would become a full-time job. 

Who’s to blame?

It’s heartbreaking to watch professors announcing their terminations on social media believing that this could have all been prevented. 

How? I’m not too sure. Some blame Dominic Giroux, past president of Laurentian and now CEO of Health Science North for his poor mismanagement. Some blame an overpaid administration or say that the Ontario Government hasn’t been providing enough funding and that Minister of Colleges and Universities Ross Romano has been silent while Laurentian suffers.

 Everyone has been pointing fingers everywhere so fast that my head has been spinning. 

What’s in it for the future of LU?

While writing this, my little brother, who is in Grade 12 and has yet to accept offers to Laurentian’s Sports Administration and Outdoor Adventure Leadership texted me wondering if he was affected by the cuts.

I told him his programs were still viable options.

“Is the school gonna be any good?”

I told him I had no idea. 

He told me that one of his friends, who had also applied to LU received an email today that her program she was initially accepted to– Environmental Science– had been cut today. Laurentian was her first choice. 

After months of giving them all the answers on where to live, what to take for electives, what not to eat at GHall, and overall gushing about “how amazing my university is” it’s more than embarrassing to tell them that at this point, I don’t even know what my future is at Laurentian.