NATIONWIDE – With Canadian universities resuming on-site classes after the latest COVID wave, several institutions announced new policies allowing students to miss final exams in the event that an in-person, interactive learning environment causes them to die.
“This is a huge step in compassionate health policies,” said Meric Gertler, President of the University of Toronto. “The last thing we want these students to worry about as they shuffle off this mortal coil is how missing exams will affect their final course marks.
U of T will be deriving the final grades of deceased students from their already-completed course work, unless they died before midterms but after the final course drop date; in that case, the student’s peers are expected to Weekend at Bernie’s their friend through the end of the term. Concordia University’s policy is even more benevolent: parents of students who miss exams due to a COVID-related demise will receive letters of condolence, rather than the usual “your child is a failure” letters.
“There are always risks to being in class,” stated a representative from Concordia. “The risk of encountering challenging ideas; the risk of catching a highly contagious virus we know is circulating freely; the risk of falling into debate with a Jordan Peterson stan. No room for snowflakes or the immunosuppressed here. ”
At the University of Manitoba students are also now permitted bathroom breaks if a virus is eating their internal organs and are being forgiven for late assignments if they are in a coma, though deceased students still must submit their death certificates to turnitin.com. However, most universities have had to end the “you get straight As if your roommate dies” policy as it was starting to throw the curve.
“We don’t coddle students – I’m still giving out Fs to people who miss class because travel restrictions and literal wars have stranded them in lands unknown,” commented a tenured McGill professor who cannot get fired no matter how hard he fucks up.
At press time, several universities have come under fire for forcing students back into classrooms while the omicron variant is still causing high rates of infections, hospitalizations, and racist convoys. One UBC student commented, “I came here because Maclean’s ranked it very high on mortality. I thought that meant low mortality.”
York University has defended the choice, saying, “We have no other option – our tenured professors are ill-equipped to teach in a virtual setting, and our younger, more tech-savvy adjuncts all caught Covid at their second and third jobs.”
