Out of Province University Students Told to Find Proctor to do In Person Exams

FREDERICTON – With COVID-19 cases rising throughout the Atlantic bubble – this led to it popping.

On November 26, New Brunswick Premier, Blaine Higgs, announced that alongside the Atlantic bubble being no more, N.B. would be closing its border at midnight. This meant that anyone who was outside the province would have to isolate for 14-days once coming back. This included students who attend a university within the now popped Atlantic Bubble.

Two third-year St. Francis Xavier University students, Ashley Hatt and Claire Lavoie heard this news around 3 p.m. Both students had no idea what they were going to do for Christmas break since having to isolate once they got back to Fredericton would leave them eight days of freedom until they had to travel back to Nova Scotia again.

Hatt and Lavoie waited for over two hours before StFX sent the N.B. students a vague email stating that if they chose to return home that night before the border closed, the school would do their best to accommodate them for their in-person exams. But that’s all the email wrote.

Both Hatt and Lavoie had no options to isolate if they returned home when they were supposed to on December 12.

“Do I go home, do I not? Because if I went home past midnight, then I would have had to isolate. And my parents at the time were isolating with my brother because he had just gotten home from Texas. So if I had to isolate, then my parents would have been isolating for four weeks out of five,” said Hatt.

Whereas Hatt did not want to prolong her parents’ need to isolate due to her brother already being in isolation, Lavoie’s house is not suitable for isolation by Public Health Guidelines. All the bedrooms in her house are upstairs, as well as the bathroom, which would mean she would have to be in contact with her family members. But not all people have the opportunity of working from home right now.

“Both my parents are school teachers and, I have a younger brother who’s 11 who can’t afford to miss school. And my parents can’t afford to miss work. So they would have to take two weeks off of unpaid work during Christmas. It’s not something that’s feasible, basically. So I had no choice to go,” said Lavoie.

StFX University had in-person classes this semester – one out of a few schools that had chosen to opt-out of online learning. When the students had arrived back in Fredericton, they had no information about how their exams were going to be done. Both Hatt and Lavoie assumed their exams would be held online like last semester.

They received an email a couple of days later telling them they would need to find a proctor for their exams. The original proctor sheet the school had sent out stated that the proctor must be anyone associated with an educational institution, such as university professors or high school teachers.

A second email followed, saying that the exam had to be done at an educational institution like a school. But with Fredericton being in the Yellow Phase of COVID-19 restrictions – this would have been impossible.

“So essentially, it just felt like StFX was making it as hard as possible for me to write my exams. It was really frustrating, especially because I had an exam coming up so soon,” said Hatt, whose exams started on Dec. 5.

After not knowing what to do, Lavoie informed Hatt that the Oromocto Public Library has free proctors for students.

A few days later, StFX sent another email saying that anyone could be a proctor, even the student’s parents. They could also write their exams from home if they needed to. Lavoie had gotten in touch with a high school teacher and, after receiving permission from the school’s administration, he gladly agreed to be her proctor. For her exam, she will be going into her old high school in Oromocto to write it.

Hatt on the other hand got a proctor at the local public library and will do the rest of her exams the same way.

Both students are unsure what their next semester will look like now that the Atlantic bubble has ended.

“I know my education is better when I’m getting in-person classes. But for my mental health, and for probably my physical health, I just do not want to go,” said Hatt.