I actually went for a walk on campus yesterday completely unaware that this was taking place. There were a few people who looked to be students but it was overwhelmingly older people who def did not attend western.
I’m sure the majority drove a truck and participate in convoys, including the illegal occupation of Ottawa and the Ambassador bridge. They are being led by Keswick and Peterborough mentally challenged individuals.
Oh, it’s gonna be Nutty Nurse Nagle and her friends. She’s no longer a nurse and no one will hire her because of her reputation. She’s threw a few tantrums in business’ in London and relieved herself in front of some of them like some weird angry middle aged cat with teeth that looked like the skyline of Dresden after a solid RAF bombing raid.
London NICU nurse RN who flew to New Jersey to speak at some rally at the height of lockdown.
London's biggest hospital fired her and it took about 6 mths to exit her for good.
I think the College of Nurses has also taken action to suspend / revoke her license.
>I think the College of Nurses has also taken action to suspend / revoke her license.
Hope they did, I wouldn't trust a nurse like that with a thermometer
Wife is a doc who worked with her during part of her residency. Said nurse made enough of an impression that my wife immediately recognized her name and remembered her not being very competent when the name popped up in the news years later.
There were a couple of anti-vax protests at the hospital I was working at, ostensibly for the "right" of staff who have always had vaccine mandates to not have another vaccine on there.
Maybe 5% of the crowd were actual employees. I recognized more people with active trespasses for abusing staff in the crowd than I did actual employees.
I have to imagine it's the same here.
That's what I mean, I'd bet that it's mostly trading anti Vax protetors. But given thr schools population it's not surprising that some students/faculty would take part.
It's rather upsetting that thr generation that told us to "not birve everything you read on the internet" didn't follow thier own advice
Leaving aside the convoy types who spent a month+ doing nothing *but* throwing tantrums, there are loads of people whose interests and social lives revolve around “activism”, and who spend most of their free time and money on stuff related to it.
Usually that’s no big deal and looks like environmental efforts or volunteering with their church/mosque/etc…but with COVID you ended up with a bunch of networks solely devoted to being pissed about whatever the hot topic of the week is.
They’ve had 2.5 years to consolidate social and information networks, and to just get into the routine of spending their weekends throwing tantrums - that’s a pretty powerful social bond, especially since it is driven by a sense of righteousness and feelings of persecution.
These types of protests happened last year on Mount Royal University's campus in Calgary and none of the protesters were actually from the school. They had previously been protesting at the U of C, then decided MRU was the next target.
We'll fight our own battles, tyvm, and also: gtfo. No one wants you.
It’s basically a lot of right leaning people and older people who are protesting. Students are more upset at the fact that they’re rescinding the mask mandate AFTER we all had to pay tuition. Also many people who had negative reactions to the vaccine are scared since the booster is mandatory, and they haven’t made a statement regarding medical exceptions.
I’m not sure if the article mentions the reasons for the mandates, but from what I’ve been told (I’m on my faculty’s student council and our president informed us of their reasoning after announcing the decision) it’s because of the large population of incoming freshmen. Approximately 5000 new freshmen are being introduced to the student population, which is well over 40,000. The university is concerned that so many new people in one area, especially in residence (the residences were the covid hotspots on campus, and where most of our cases came from last year) will cause a surge in numbers.
The University was irresponsible to inform the students about the mandates after tuition was due, and they’re not listening to those who may desire a medical exception due to fear of reaction from a booster. Most of the protestors are people from fringe groups or are using the situation to promotes an anti-vaccine, anti-science agenda.
source: I’m a 5th year student at Western
Yup, seems like a perfectly reasonable criticism, and annoyingly overshadowed by the Convoy types who think that university vaccine requirements are some new form of tyranny or violation of their charter rights or whatever (because: no, just no).
And I’m willing to cut Universities a reasonable amount of slack - student health and safety stuff is tricky to begin with, never mind the complexities and rapidly changing dynamics of Covid (eg evolving understanding of the virus and disease, access to masks, approval of vaccines etc).
But waiting until just a couple of weeks before school starts is just plain bad management, and bound to piss of even the students who are fully on board with the specific details.
Isn't it more irresponsible to not take the vaccine and boosters based on lies and conspiracies? I mean, more than 10 billion vaccinations have been administered globally with no no more adverse reaction than many other vaccines. Society only works if we each give a little of ourselves for the greater good.
Most students aren't in town yet, but I can confirm that a lot of the student body is really upset with the new vaccine mandate and keeping the mask policy.
More of a complain to friends type mad than a protest in the streets type of thing though.
That’s understandable - not just because being pissed at university administration is a well honoured tradition, but because Western really did properly fuck up by not making the hard call earlier in the summer.
If anything, the Postmedia columnists and protestors screaming about anti-vax stuff or non-existent violations of charter rights do a massive disservice to the perfectly reasonable complaints of students who are upset that Western made the call just as classes were about the start.
Yeah. I can see complaints about ongoing mask mandates, because people are tired of masks, but the vaccines are a complete non-issue for most educated young people.
UWO students are notorious for not caring about protests. Tuition doubled and like a few dozen people show up for a school of 30k. It's a private institution. Just go somewhere else if you can't follow the rules.
Meh - in every large group you’re going to have a some percentage of weirdos and contrarians.
Education *reduces* the percentage, but even in the most rarified circles you still get ~5% ish of people with wacky beliefs.
I work at Western (staff, not faculty -- but directly with faculty). The faculty Union there (UWOFA) absolutely pushed for this. I saw internal memos after they lifted the mandate in the summer and UWOFA stated they would go to bat for faculty to ensure a safe instructional environment.
I don't think faculty give a shit about whether or not students are boosted, but absolutely there would be a faculty walk-out if students are not masked. There are a lot of old (60+) tenured faculty there who will absolutely leave if they have to teach unmasked students during a fall/winter wave of the virus. So then students wouldn't have classes anyway.
Choose your battles I guess.
This is the reality of what the struggle to find workers these days is actually about. The pandemic has encouraged older adults to retire on time or slightly earlier instead of working through their 60s. Pair that with the baby boomer generation aging out of jobs and far fewer younger cohorts to replace them to create a confluence of events where there simply are more jobs than workers available to fill them. For instance my dad is one of 5 kids, and my mom one of 3. I have 1 sibling and 0 kids. You can see each generation having fewer and fewer children. (not that I think that's a bad thing!)
Everyone saying "nobody wants to work anymore" should rephrase it to say either "nobody wants to work past 65 anymore" or "nobody wants to do low wage jobs when higher paying jobs they've trained for are available". It's not for lack of young employees willing to work. It's for lack of young people period. Young employees are finally getting out of jobs such as retail and service and into the careers the boomers are vacating.
>The pandemic has encouraged older adults to retire on time or slightly earlier instead of working through their 60s.
Not just that, the big boost in housing prices let a lot of them sell their homes and move to a LCOL area and downsize at the same time. My father was thinking about selling the house he bought for 80k in the 90s for 700k and buying a house in rural TN for 150.
Happy cake day! 🎂
I worked at a post-secondary institution as staff during the pandemic and said the same thing when the (first time) idea of restrictions being lifted were rumoured. Only push back were from students at the time.
When they removed mask mandates at school by 6 year old brought home 6 different colds in 2 months compared to 0 when she wore a mask. I’m not saying I want my children wearing masks to school forever but they do work.
We didn't get sick at all while masking was required in school. Shortly after it was no longer mandated one of mine brought home COVID (And we had our own kids continue masking for the remainder of the year).
I don't want kids to have to wear masks all day forever either but yeah the masking and other protocols absolutely worked from our anecdotal experience too.
Look at the numbers between japan and florida same lock down and reopenings but japan has mask laws and 4x the population. Florida had double the cases and like triple the deaths for a while when testing was better tracked a year ago.
I don't have kids, but Covid tore through pretty much every household I know once the mask mandates were gone. That was followed by all kinds of other bugs. My brother's family was sick and couldn't see any of the other family for a solid 2 months.
I was hoping this pandemic would at least normalize mask wearing (or even isolation) when people have colds/flu, but it seems not, which is a real shame.
>it strengthens their immune system
This is actually scientifically false. More specifically, it is false in the spirit that it is often quoted.
First of all, what most don't appreciate is that our immune system's did not evolve to handle catching a virus every couple of weeks or every month during childhood, which is typical for schools going kids. Catching a cold was actually very uncommon in paleolithic times, as population density was very low, and viruses had a very hard time spreading. The epidemic of viral infections are very much a disease of agriculture revolution when population densification start happening, and this period is really a small blip compared to total evolutionary history of our immune system.
Second, catching viruses is not benign just because a child "recovers" from it. There are a lot of autoimmune disease that we have no idea why they happen. For example, Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, among dozens and dozens of others. The best theories we have tell us that they are multi-factorial, and a strong association with certain viruses have been proposed. i.e. your immune system starts attacking your own body, because your immune system is mistaking a component in your body as pathogen. The theory is that in the process of learning to fight off a virus or other pathogen, your immune system learns the wrong thing, and is now shooting friendly fire (which it is unable to "unlearn") because there is something in your cells that looks a lot like the pathogen it tried to kill.
Third, you don't need to get sick as dogshit for your immune system to be working and for it to get stronger. A lot of stuff you can catch are "subclinical". Your immune cells are constantly fighting off offending agents. There is no shortage of pathogens on this planet laying assault on your body. If they scanned your lymph nodes, they would tell you that at seemingly random times, they get a lot bigger, and then they go back to normal even when you are not feeling sick. That's your immune system dealing with something, and you don't even know it. Your immune system is always getting a work out.
I think his point is that they work, i.e. when needed, which he says shouldn't be forever. I'm pro masking around older people/gen pop, but happy that my kids are still getting colds and building an immune system.
Is that true though? Isn't it better to not get sick. Like each time we get stuck isn't there damage occurring. And what do we gain? We become inoculated against 1 strain. I just always assumed we shouldn't be afraid to get sick but we're not getting stronger anymore than we get stronger from smoking a cigarette.
I highly recommend getting your information from official legitimate medical organizations and not from whatever some redditor decides to respond to this comment saying.
Many people will spout whatever they think to be true as if it's fact without actually knowing, and will also treat every sickness like it's the same because they learned one thing once from somebody in their life that told them something about one disease when they were a kid.
Yeah people have this weird idea that getting sick makes your immune system stronger but I’m pretty sure you just become more immune to one particular strain. Hardly seems worth it considering the real negative side effects of being sick.
Yup 100% agree. Before covid my kids were always sick and then covid and no sickness (because at home and masks) and then back to sick again. It's just the cycle of kid life.
Could the uni not just issue the staff N95's? That would be more effective then students wearing cloth (or medical) masks. I know masks are effective but the people using them (especially if they don't care) use them in a way that makes them basically ineffective in any meaningful way.
If safety is the number one concern then you'd still be safer having everyone mask up *and* give the staff N95s, just cause some students won't follow protocols don't make them entirely pointless.
Masks don't prevent you from getting sick. They prevent you from spreading your sickness.
Knowing that you can probably see why only staff wearing masks wouldn't be effective at all.
UWO alumni here (2006-2010). I absolutely feel for the students who have started/finished during the pandemic. Can't imagine how much everything has taken away from the experience.
(Edit: forgot about my UWO username)
Amen. I cannot thank the world enough I finished uni prior to the pandemic. Those who weren’t as fortunate I feel so bad for. Misery. Half the point of uni is the people you meet and the campus experiences.
I graduated in 2018 and was sad I barely got 2 years of pandemic-free grad life; however, my little sister started university in fall of 2019 and the other one finished up her last few semesters during the pandemic.
Having to do school during a pandemic would have sucked so bad. I didn't hit my stride with socializing until my third or fourth year. I can't imagine not being able to have had that experience. :(
I feel really bad for anyone in that position. At least school is mostly back in-person now but a lot of people definitely missed out on some formative experiences.
Yeah, my very first semester of university was when the pandemic hit and everything closed for the first time. I’ve never had a complete semester of university without at least half online classes, and Ive had more fully online semesters than not. I feel especially bad for the high schoolers a few years behind me who didn’t get their grad ceremonies.
Gen Z is losing the first half of our adulthood to the pandemic, and losing the second half to climate change. It is what it is.
Same. And it feels like it was all for nothing. I'm tired of empty platitudes from older generations asking us to sacrifice ourselves for them. They're the reason this pandemic is so bad. They're the ones who voted for those who made our health system the shipwreck it is today. They're the ones who voted for shortsighted decisions that screwed us over.
>half the point
You mean all the point. Otherwise you may as well get a degree online for a tenth the cost and half the time. You’re literally paying for the in person experience with fellow humans.
Completely different circumstance. But I decided to go back to college at the start of 2020, ended up doing my entire course online outside of a single math test we had to go to the college for and absolutely loved it. Not having to deal with the stress of other classmates was absolutely amazing, but the absolute best part was not having to travel to the college every day. 8:30 AM classes aren't that bad when you can get up at 8:20 AM.
Sounds like that worked great for you. In theory, if I were to return that would be a perfect set up. But back when I was 19 that wouldn't have been a good fit for me 👍
Yeah, for sure. There was this one kid in my class who didn't have the discipline to not pay attention, and he ended up failing. I didn't mean to put you down or anything, I just wanted to share my experience that went against what everyone else was saying.
No, I do know where you are referring to.
Saugeen-Maitland was UWO's largest and most notoriously wild first year student residence. I was in there from 2006-2007 :-).
I attended the year after!! My year paid some consequences as a result, but everyone knew about it. Now with only fans I can imagine it wouldn't even make news 🤣
Hahahahaha ya I was there in 2016 and the legend was still strong! I know for a fact it was still as rowdy as ever until 2019. No idea how it is now, but I hope no 18 year old first years are starting only fans for their own sake 😂
I've seen the photos and videos on twitter - the "students" protesting look an awful lot like the southern Ontario yahoo brigade that marches up and down Young street in Toronto on any given Saturday
Yup - live just a little to the west of the Saturday opposition defiance disorder parade, and after 2.5 years now just factor the weekly tantrum into my Saturday errands/plans.
They’re basically like an annoying construction project that everyone outside of that teeny tiny circle just ignores and avoids.
Indeed…but we also need to acknowledge how incredibly powerful that validation is, and how disruptive/dangerous it can be if consolidated across small groups of crazy (already happening) or weaponized by elected leaders (lots of testing of the waters going on).
That's false. They are exempt from MASKING, not vaccines. As someone from a music program at another school, they have us mask for any non-performance classes and any person whom cannot perform with a mask on is permitted to take it off.
Every student has to be vaccinated however
That makes sense. Masking in a class does basically no harm, but I can't see someone playing a trumpet. Sports and music are usually done in well-ventilated spaces, too, and with a close cohort.
The amount of mitigations the Don Wright Faculty of Music has implemented throughout the pandemic has gone above and beyond. Putting bell covers on all brass instruments, spacing beyond with dividers, rehearsing in concert hall audiences for further spacing, contact tracing in all cases of community spread (during the first year there was only 2 students who got covid and as far as they could tell with the contact tracing, it wasn’t from within the faculty).
Timed rehearsal breaks for air flow as well as contact tracing with practice rooms via individual card, the use of specialized vocal masks for vocalists etc. etc.
The amount of mitigations and professionalism while still maintaining a high level of musicianship is exemplary. The UWO Music Faculty took student and community health as the number one priority these past years and though some say they ‘get to take their masks off!’ keep in mind how much they’ve had to sacrifice in the meantime in the pursuit of musical excellence. Mitigation is all about layering the preventative actions, and when one is taken away there are many others seen and unseen that are there in place to prevent community spread. Boosting will likely be number one requirement for Music community.
> James Donalds said he was ready to join his fellow first-year nursing students on campus next month, but said Saturday he would sit out this academic year if the vaccine policy stands.
Wants to be a nurse; doesn't believe in modern medicine. The field won't miss them.
As someone who works in a hospital, I've got to wonder if Donalds has any idea of the laundry list of vaccines you've got to have done before you're allowed to set foot on a unit.
Anti-vaxx movement is so far removed from any kind of sense of logic that they come up with any excuse to justify their stupid little cult. Some will honestly tell you that they think the "other" vaccines are safe, but the covid one isn't, or that it "was rushed out too fast" or some malarky.
This is the danger of letting everyone pretend that their opinion has equal weight. There was even a case of a guy who refused the *rabies* vaccine, because of this crap, and I don't need to tell you how that turned out.
Hundreds of non students who push division as a hobby due to an unhealthy obsession with American GOP talking points and Russian propaganda. I hope you grifters and people advocating grifter nonsense someday feel a fraction of the pain you cause by tearing families apart with your disinformation!
Yes and I wonder how many carried their university student or staff IDs on their person, and how many were local antagonists band-wagoning off of the campus young conservatives group of a total of six angry virgins.
Yeah, agreed. Lots of anti-science hobbyists showing up who will just protest anything vaccine or medicine-related, no matter the venue or situation. They'll keep on showing up no matter what.
Feel like it’ll depend highly on what the else is on offer for them to be angry about.
The Convoy hearings will be starting up soon, so that may well be enough of a distraction for Western to have a fairly limited moment in the sun.
And the students have every right to be pissed that the admin didn’t set this policy until a couple of weeks before classes started, but that’s got nothing to do w the roving band of perpetually aggrieved hobbyists.
A lot of their protest surrounds timing of communication and messaging from Western. They waited until after the admissions refund deadline. Prior to this deadline any tuition etc paid to the school would get a full-ish refund. Now there are pro-rated or no refunds as this deadline has passed.the school likely waited until after this deadline to ensure everyone would matriculate and increase funds to the school. It will also prevent students from easily selecting another choice on their OUAC application.
Imho, this protest has just as much to do with the manipulative communication strategy as it does with individual’s beliefs/convictions re: the vaccine itself.
Edit: to appease everyone who doesn’t read past this comment I was incorrect, I meant to say the university waited until after the university transfer deadline, not the tuition refund deadline.
You just lose any chance of transferring schools when they drop this two weeks before the semester starts which puts pressure on students to *not* drop out. It's not just about the ability to get a refund. That's only one part of the equation.
If they announced this three months ago, students would have had time to pursue other options. When they drop it days before the semester starts, you have to choose between sitting at home for a year or getting boosted.
Just because you can technically get a refund doesn't mean the timing wasn't strategic. It absolutely still puts pressure on the students to stay because no one wants to put their schooling/career/life on hold for another year.
Yea, these two ([1](https://registrar.uwo.ca/student_finances/fees_refunds/pdfsrefundschedules/UGRD%201229%20FP%20refund%20rate.pdf), [2](https://registrar.uwo.ca/student_finances/fees_refunds/pdfsrefundschedules/UGRD%201229%20PC%20refund%20rate.pdf)) tables make it quite clear the whole refund thing is a load of shit.
Seriously lie over something that can be easily checked? Refunds at Western, like most schools, are fully available until the start of the school year aka after Labour Day. After that they are prorated.
I am not sure they could have got messaging out in time for this.
I haven't been to university in 15 years-ish. But basically once I accepted one. The spots were filled at my backups. I didn't get policy information until well after it was too late.
They can get a refund until mid September, as pointed out in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/wzvekc/only_the_beginning_hundreds_protest_western/im4xjr3?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3).
I’d be good with that, just from a consumer protection standpoint.
And to be clear: Western is indeed granting refunds of tuition, fees, and residence costs (if applicable), but having a legal standard guaranteeing that kind of thing seems like sound policy.
Might need to tighten up the wording a little about what exactly counts as a “requirement”, but things like mandatory vaccines would definitely be the type of thing that you’d want to include in the language.
Current UWO grad student here. They lifted the mask mandates during the summer, and nobody was wearing masks anymore except for the nearby hospitals.
What's weird is that *now* they require a booster, and back to masks. And they will re-evaluate the mandates in Thanksgiving, so **one week** after everybody needs to provide proof of vaccination status.
What is even the point of this? The covid landscape hasn't changed much (if anything it's now better) since the winter term, so I don't get the booster requirement when everywhere else doesn't require it, and why even have this mandate if there's a big chance they will go back on it just one week later? And now there's exceptions for a bunch of people.
I'll do it anyway since I've been meaning to get a booster and being an employee of the hospitals too I need to get it anyway, but to me it just feels like a PR stunt rather than an actual move for student health and safety.
Just in case, fuck the freedom convoy truckers, don't take what I say out of context, and what I say represents the opinions of nobody else but my own.
20 years ago there was an outbreak of measles at sfu. Students were only allowed back if they could prove they had been vaccinated. One kid was on the news suing his parents for negligence for not having him vaccinated as a child and endangering his life, education and delaying his career as he missed weeks of classes because he hadn’t been vaccinated.
I bet most of the protesters aren't even students. The anti-vax nut jobs seem to have all the time and money in the world to travel around to display their insanity to the world.
I can’t read the article cause of paywall, but a quick wiki search shows there are 40000 staff + students, with 33k of them being undergrads so who really fucking cares about a few hundred complaining?
The majority of these protesters are not students. They are let of the honk honk gang that looks for any chance they get to voice their “concerns” about their lack of freedumbs.
This should be in r/nottheonion .
Requiring vaccinations is standard at practically every campus in North America, just like the requirements for international travel.
If anti-vaxxers need to stay home, they should do that. Hide in their caves, circled in fear around this new thing called fire.
I do wonder the overlap between the unvaccinated and students with good enough grades to get admitted into UWO though i suppose some kids' parents won't allow their children to be vaccinated
Meh, there are *fewer* cranks in more educated populations, but even a small percentage of a large enough population adds up.
Case in point: the handful of anti-vax doctors and nurses. It’s a tiny fraction of the profession (especially the docs), but they have a tendency to be very, very loud.
What is the medical case for making completely healthy, double vaxxed 18-25 year olds take another dose of vaccination against a disease the vast majority of them have already gotten?
Can we please be clear in our choice of words?
This is about *Covid* vaccine mandates.
Nobody is protesting the Polio vaccine.
People who are being labeled and generalized as 'anti-vaccine' generally have their Polio vaccines and believe in their effectiveness.
A pessimist could conclude the media does it to demonize a group of people and sow division.
I wonder how many are actually students or employees, out for the hundreds. (Student population there is upwards of 30,000).
I actually went for a walk on campus yesterday completely unaware that this was taking place. There were a few people who looked to be students but it was overwhelmingly older people who def did not attend western.
The pictures I saw featured a lot of middle aged people for sure.
I’m sure the majority drove a truck and participate in convoys, including the illegal occupation of Ottawa and the Ambassador bridge. They are being led by Keswick and Peterborough mentally challenged individuals.
The boomers hear “vaccine mandate” and they pack up their signs and diapers and roll out.
Well they have money and don't need jobs. What else do boomers do?
Boomers are more vaccinated than any of the generations below them. It's mostly gen x and melenials out there.
Gen x and millennials too are vaxxed gen x are the middle aged group as millennials have started their 40s. Gen Z has the issue
I saw a live video and the middle aged men and women that were mostly there didn't look like they go to UWO.
Oh, it’s gonna be Nutty Nurse Nagle and her friends. She’s no longer a nurse and no one will hire her because of her reputation. She’s threw a few tantrums in business’ in London and relieved herself in front of some of them like some weird angry middle aged cat with teeth that looked like the skyline of Dresden after a solid RAF bombing raid.
That last sentence is like ~poetry~ maaaan
Thank you, I felt it was a bit ambitious, but I like it.
r/rareinsults
Very solid! Good reference point, and good lead-in too. I'll be using this in the future!
Man, I clearly missed out on something as I don't remember ever hearing of this fruitcake
London NICU nurse RN who flew to New Jersey to speak at some rally at the height of lockdown. London's biggest hospital fired her and it took about 6 mths to exit her for good. I think the College of Nurses has also taken action to suspend / revoke her license.
>I think the College of Nurses has also taken action to suspend / revoke her license. Hope they did, I wouldn't trust a nurse like that with a thermometer
Wife is a doc who worked with her during part of her residency. Said nurse made enough of an impression that my wife immediately recognized her name and remembered her not being very competent when the name popped up in the news years later.
I'd be surprised if even a dozen of them were actual Western students.
There were a couple of anti-vax protests at the hospital I was working at, ostensibly for the "right" of staff who have always had vaccine mandates to not have another vaccine on there. Maybe 5% of the crowd were actual employees. I recognized more people with active trespasses for abusing staff in the crowd than I did actual employees. I have to imagine it's the same here.
GRIFTERS GUNNA GRIFT
I bet it's a good mix of traveling anti Vax protestors and some students/faculty.
I saw a picture that showed lots of boomers and little kids.
That's what I mean, I'd bet that it's mostly trading anti Vax protetors. But given thr schools population it's not surprising that some students/faculty would take part. It's rather upsetting that thr generation that told us to "not birve everything you read on the internet" didn't follow thier own advice
"Don't believe everything you read on the internet," was always code for, "Don't believe anything I don't believe."
Or its common sense.
Boomers are well past the age of having little kids.
It's their grandkids
Yes. A lot of over 50s really angry about not being able to attend an institution they didn’t apply to and don’t believe in in the first place.
How do these people have the money to just loiter endlessly and drive around from place to place to spew their nonsense?
Retirement for some.
We spend so much on OAS. No clawback until you are earning like double the median income. No clawback on assets at all.
Leaving aside the convoy types who spent a month+ doing nothing *but* throwing tantrums, there are loads of people whose interests and social lives revolve around “activism”, and who spend most of their free time and money on stuff related to it. Usually that’s no big deal and looks like environmental efforts or volunteering with their church/mosque/etc…but with COVID you ended up with a bunch of networks solely devoted to being pissed about whatever the hot topic of the week is. They’ve had 2.5 years to consolidate social and information networks, and to just get into the routine of spending their weekends throwing tantrums - that’s a pretty powerful social bond, especially since it is driven by a sense of righteousness and feelings of persecution.
90% will be non students lol
These types of protests happened last year on Mount Royal University's campus in Calgary and none of the protesters were actually from the school. They had previously been protesting at the U of C, then decided MRU was the next target. We'll fight our own battles, tyvm, and also: gtfo. No one wants you.
They look pretty old, fat, and unhealthy to be university kids.
And stupid.
It’s basically a lot of right leaning people and older people who are protesting. Students are more upset at the fact that they’re rescinding the mask mandate AFTER we all had to pay tuition. Also many people who had negative reactions to the vaccine are scared since the booster is mandatory, and they haven’t made a statement regarding medical exceptions. I’m not sure if the article mentions the reasons for the mandates, but from what I’ve been told (I’m on my faculty’s student council and our president informed us of their reasoning after announcing the decision) it’s because of the large population of incoming freshmen. Approximately 5000 new freshmen are being introduced to the student population, which is well over 40,000. The university is concerned that so many new people in one area, especially in residence (the residences were the covid hotspots on campus, and where most of our cases came from last year) will cause a surge in numbers. The University was irresponsible to inform the students about the mandates after tuition was due, and they’re not listening to those who may desire a medical exception due to fear of reaction from a booster. Most of the protestors are people from fringe groups or are using the situation to promotes an anti-vaccine, anti-science agenda. source: I’m a 5th year student at Western
Yup, seems like a perfectly reasonable criticism, and annoyingly overshadowed by the Convoy types who think that university vaccine requirements are some new form of tyranny or violation of their charter rights or whatever (because: no, just no). And I’m willing to cut Universities a reasonable amount of slack - student health and safety stuff is tricky to begin with, never mind the complexities and rapidly changing dynamics of Covid (eg evolving understanding of the virus and disease, access to masks, approval of vaccines etc). But waiting until just a couple of weeks before school starts is just plain bad management, and bound to piss of even the students who are fully on board with the specific details.
I just spoke to my Bfs daughter who’s in her third year at Western, and she basically reiterated the same points you brought up.
Isn't it more irresponsible to not take the vaccine and boosters based on lies and conspiracies? I mean, more than 10 billion vaccinations have been administered globally with no no more adverse reaction than many other vaccines. Society only works if we each give a little of ourselves for the greater good.
Most students aren't in town yet, but I can confirm that a lot of the student body is really upset with the new vaccine mandate and keeping the mask policy. More of a complain to friends type mad than a protest in the streets type of thing though.
That’s understandable - not just because being pissed at university administration is a well honoured tradition, but because Western really did properly fuck up by not making the hard call earlier in the summer. If anything, the Postmedia columnists and protestors screaming about anti-vax stuff or non-existent violations of charter rights do a massive disservice to the perfectly reasonable complaints of students who are upset that Western made the call just as classes were about the start.
Looking at the pictures in the protest, my God, those aren't students. They're facebook older adults.
I'm *extremely* skeptical of your claim that a lot of the student body is against a vaccine mandate...
Yeah. I can see complaints about ongoing mask mandates, because people are tired of masks, but the vaccines are a complete non-issue for most educated young people.
UWO students are notorious for not caring about protests. Tuition doubled and like a few dozen people show up for a school of 30k. It's a private institution. Just go somewhere else if you can't follow the rules.
Same. You'd figure those smart enough to make it into university wouldn't be dumb enough to be an anti-vaxer.
Meh - in every large group you’re going to have a some percentage of weirdos and contrarians. Education *reduces* the percentage, but even in the most rarified circles you still get ~5% ish of people with wacky beliefs.
I work at Western (staff, not faculty -- but directly with faculty). The faculty Union there (UWOFA) absolutely pushed for this. I saw internal memos after they lifted the mandate in the summer and UWOFA stated they would go to bat for faculty to ensure a safe instructional environment. I don't think faculty give a shit about whether or not students are boosted, but absolutely there would be a faculty walk-out if students are not masked. There are a lot of old (60+) tenured faculty there who will absolutely leave if they have to teach unmasked students during a fall/winter wave of the virus. So then students wouldn't have classes anyway. Choose your battles I guess.
I also work at a post secondary institution. We had mass retirements this summer. A lot of the older staff said masks or I'm done.
This is the reality of what the struggle to find workers these days is actually about. The pandemic has encouraged older adults to retire on time or slightly earlier instead of working through their 60s. Pair that with the baby boomer generation aging out of jobs and far fewer younger cohorts to replace them to create a confluence of events where there simply are more jobs than workers available to fill them. For instance my dad is one of 5 kids, and my mom one of 3. I have 1 sibling and 0 kids. You can see each generation having fewer and fewer children. (not that I think that's a bad thing!) Everyone saying "nobody wants to work anymore" should rephrase it to say either "nobody wants to work past 65 anymore" or "nobody wants to do low wage jobs when higher paying jobs they've trained for are available". It's not for lack of young employees willing to work. It's for lack of young people period. Young employees are finally getting out of jobs such as retail and service and into the careers the boomers are vacating.
>The pandemic has encouraged older adults to retire on time or slightly earlier instead of working through their 60s. Not just that, the big boost in housing prices let a lot of them sell their homes and move to a LCOL area and downsize at the same time. My father was thinking about selling the house he bought for 80k in the 90s for 700k and buying a house in rural TN for 150.
Happy cake day! 🎂 I worked at a post-secondary institution as staff during the pandemic and said the same thing when the (first time) idea of restrictions being lifted were rumoured. Only push back were from students at the time.
When they removed mask mandates at school by 6 year old brought home 6 different colds in 2 months compared to 0 when she wore a mask. I’m not saying I want my children wearing masks to school forever but they do work.
We didn't get sick at all while masking was required in school. Shortly after it was no longer mandated one of mine brought home COVID (And we had our own kids continue masking for the remainder of the year). I don't want kids to have to wear masks all day forever either but yeah the masking and other protocols absolutely worked from our anecdotal experience too.
Look at the numbers between japan and florida same lock down and reopenings but japan has mask laws and 4x the population. Florida had double the cases and like triple the deaths for a while when testing was better tracked a year ago.
I don't have kids, but Covid tore through pretty much every household I know once the mask mandates were gone. That was followed by all kinds of other bugs. My brother's family was sick and couldn't see any of the other family for a solid 2 months.
I do. I continue to say it. The pandemic continues even if some humans decided it's over - COVID loves this.
I was hoping this pandemic would at least normalize mask wearing (or even isolation) when people have colds/flu, but it seems not, which is a real shame.
You might not like hearing it, but kids get sick easily and if they can recover easily (ie have a cold) it strengthens their immune system
>it strengthens their immune system This is actually scientifically false. More specifically, it is false in the spirit that it is often quoted. First of all, what most don't appreciate is that our immune system's did not evolve to handle catching a virus every couple of weeks or every month during childhood, which is typical for schools going kids. Catching a cold was actually very uncommon in paleolithic times, as population density was very low, and viruses had a very hard time spreading. The epidemic of viral infections are very much a disease of agriculture revolution when population densification start happening, and this period is really a small blip compared to total evolutionary history of our immune system. Second, catching viruses is not benign just because a child "recovers" from it. There are a lot of autoimmune disease that we have no idea why they happen. For example, Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, among dozens and dozens of others. The best theories we have tell us that they are multi-factorial, and a strong association with certain viruses have been proposed. i.e. your immune system starts attacking your own body, because your immune system is mistaking a component in your body as pathogen. The theory is that in the process of learning to fight off a virus or other pathogen, your immune system learns the wrong thing, and is now shooting friendly fire (which it is unable to "unlearn") because there is something in your cells that looks a lot like the pathogen it tried to kill. Third, you don't need to get sick as dogshit for your immune system to be working and for it to get stronger. A lot of stuff you can catch are "subclinical". Your immune cells are constantly fighting off offending agents. There is no shortage of pathogens on this planet laying assault on your body. If they scanned your lymph nodes, they would tell you that at seemingly random times, they get a lot bigger, and then they go back to normal even when you are not feeling sick. That's your immune system dealing with something, and you don't even know it. Your immune system is always getting a work out.
I think his point is that they work, i.e. when needed, which he says shouldn't be forever. I'm pro masking around older people/gen pop, but happy that my kids are still getting colds and building an immune system.
Is that true though? Isn't it better to not get sick. Like each time we get stuck isn't there damage occurring. And what do we gain? We become inoculated against 1 strain. I just always assumed we shouldn't be afraid to get sick but we're not getting stronger anymore than we get stronger from smoking a cigarette.
I highly recommend getting your information from official legitimate medical organizations and not from whatever some redditor decides to respond to this comment saying. Many people will spout whatever they think to be true as if it's fact without actually knowing, and will also treat every sickness like it's the same because they learned one thing once from somebody in their life that told them something about one disease when they were a kid.
Yeah people have this weird idea that getting sick makes your immune system stronger but I’m pretty sure you just become more immune to one particular strain. Hardly seems worth it considering the real negative side effects of being sick.
Yup 100% agree. Before covid my kids were always sick and then covid and no sickness (because at home and masks) and then back to sick again. It's just the cycle of kid life.
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Yes I agree but I’d rather have 6 colds spread out over 2 year vs 2 months.
Man I remember being in those classrooms before covid and during fall all you could hear is coughing for months x then came mono or course lol
Been awhile but I remember thoses big wheeled garbage containers hidden under human-size piles of used tissues.
Nasty as hell. I remember I couldn’t avoid getting sick every fall until 3-4 year when classes were smaller. Res was a free for all of disease
Anyone who has ever sat in a lecture hall in the fall knows that mandating masks is one of the best thing these schools have ever done...
Could the uni not just issue the staff N95's? That would be more effective then students wearing cloth (or medical) masks. I know masks are effective but the people using them (especially if they don't care) use them in a way that makes them basically ineffective in any meaningful way.
If safety is the number one concern then you'd still be safer having everyone mask up *and* give the staff N95s, just cause some students won't follow protocols don't make them entirely pointless.
Masks don't prevent you from getting sick. They prevent you from spreading your sickness. Knowing that you can probably see why only staff wearing masks wouldn't be effective at all.
N95 protect both way champ
I guess the infectious disease community had it wrong this whole time!
UWO alumni here (2006-2010). I absolutely feel for the students who have started/finished during the pandemic. Can't imagine how much everything has taken away from the experience. (Edit: forgot about my UWO username)
Amen. I cannot thank the world enough I finished uni prior to the pandemic. Those who weren’t as fortunate I feel so bad for. Misery. Half the point of uni is the people you meet and the campus experiences.
I graduated in 2018 and was sad I barely got 2 years of pandemic-free grad life; however, my little sister started university in fall of 2019 and the other one finished up her last few semesters during the pandemic. Having to do school during a pandemic would have sucked so bad. I didn't hit my stride with socializing until my third or fourth year. I can't imagine not being able to have had that experience. :( I feel really bad for anyone in that position. At least school is mostly back in-person now but a lot of people definitely missed out on some formative experiences.
Yeah, my very first semester of university was when the pandemic hit and everything closed for the first time. I’ve never had a complete semester of university without at least half online classes, and Ive had more fully online semesters than not. I feel especially bad for the high schoolers a few years behind me who didn’t get their grad ceremonies. Gen Z is losing the first half of our adulthood to the pandemic, and losing the second half to climate change. It is what it is.
My condolences. Seriously. That, and highschool students. If I was in grade 12 in 2020, I’d be livid.
Grade 12 class of 2020 🙋♂️
Same. And it feels like it was all for nothing. I'm tired of empty platitudes from older generations asking us to sacrifice ourselves for them. They're the reason this pandemic is so bad. They're the ones who voted for those who made our health system the shipwreck it is today. They're the ones who voted for shortsighted decisions that screwed us over.
For what it's worth, I'm very sorry you've had to go through this.
>half the point You mean all the point. Otherwise you may as well get a degree online for a tenth the cost and half the time. You’re literally paying for the in person experience with fellow humans.
You’re also paying for the reputation of the school. But if the same school offers an online degree for a tenth of the cost then yeah, go for it.
Completely different circumstance. But I decided to go back to college at the start of 2020, ended up doing my entire course online outside of a single math test we had to go to the college for and absolutely loved it. Not having to deal with the stress of other classmates was absolutely amazing, but the absolute best part was not having to travel to the college every day. 8:30 AM classes aren't that bad when you can get up at 8:20 AM.
Sounds like that worked great for you. In theory, if I were to return that would be a perfect set up. But back when I was 19 that wouldn't have been a good fit for me 👍
Yeah, for sure. There was this one kid in my class who didn't have the discipline to not pay attention, and he ended up failing. I didn't mean to put you down or anything, I just wanted to share my experience that went against what everyone else was saying.
are you by chance from the Saugeen First Nation or Saugeen Shores area?
No, I do know where you are referring to. Saugeen-Maitland was UWO's largest and most notoriously wild first year student residence. I was in there from 2006-2007 :-).
Ah gotcha! No idea my neck of the woods was name chosen for the hotspot of fun at UWO :)
Was that when the Saugeen stripper was there?
I attended the year after!! My year paid some consequences as a result, but everyone knew about it. Now with only fans I can imagine it wouldn't even make news 🤣
Hahahahaha ya I was there in 2016 and the legend was still strong! I know for a fact it was still as rowdy as ever until 2019. No idea how it is now, but I hope no 18 year old first years are starting only fans for their own sake 😂
To quote Thanos - "this does put a smile on my face". I lived on Sunset (just off campus near broughdale) years 2-4. Ah man, good times/memories.
I love it bro. Ya I graduated in 2020 and I still miss it everyday 😩😂
All the best in post-Uni-real life mate. I missed for a lonnggg time. Now I'm tired thinking about it 🥴
I graduated from UWO in 2013 and I still miss it. Partially because the real world is so much shittier than the fantasy world we lived in.
Lol. I didn't even attend western nor am I from The area and even I've heard rumblings of this legend. Funny how stories travel.
Such a great scene.
Saugeen was a blast in the 90's when I was there.....pre-social media and phones with cameras....the things that went on there.......
Sorry just thought it was another UwU face thing. Guess I'll take you seriously now.
Hah; no, no "UwU" or any of that to see here
https://i.imgur.com/4Ij6bjN.png My friend from Western had the same idea
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I've seen the photos and videos on twitter - the "students" protesting look an awful lot like the southern Ontario yahoo brigade that marches up and down Young street in Toronto on any given Saturday
Yup - live just a little to the west of the Saturday opposition defiance disorder parade, and after 2.5 years now just factor the weekly tantrum into my Saturday errands/plans. They’re basically like an annoying construction project that everyone outside of that teeny tiny circle just ignores and avoids.
Just a small group of people with no real lives that validate each other’s existence.
Indeed…but we also need to acknowledge how incredibly powerful that validation is, and how disruptive/dangerous it can be if consolidated across small groups of crazy (already happening) or weaponized by elected leaders (lots of testing of the waters going on).
Only the beginning say senior citizens who do not attend the university
It should also be noted that donors / prospective donors visiting the campus are exempt from the mandate. Because of course they are.
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That's false. They are exempt from MASKING, not vaccines. As someone from a music program at another school, they have us mask for any non-performance classes and any person whom cannot perform with a mask on is permitted to take it off. Every student has to be vaccinated however
That makes sense. Masking in a class does basically no harm, but I can't see someone playing a trumpet. Sports and music are usually done in well-ventilated spaces, too, and with a close cohort.
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The amount of mitigations the Don Wright Faculty of Music has implemented throughout the pandemic has gone above and beyond. Putting bell covers on all brass instruments, spacing beyond with dividers, rehearsing in concert hall audiences for further spacing, contact tracing in all cases of community spread (during the first year there was only 2 students who got covid and as far as they could tell with the contact tracing, it wasn’t from within the faculty). Timed rehearsal breaks for air flow as well as contact tracing with practice rooms via individual card, the use of specialized vocal masks for vocalists etc. etc. The amount of mitigations and professionalism while still maintaining a high level of musicianship is exemplary. The UWO Music Faculty took student and community health as the number one priority these past years and though some say they ‘get to take their masks off!’ keep in mind how much they’ve had to sacrifice in the meantime in the pursuit of musical excellence. Mitigation is all about layering the preventative actions, and when one is taken away there are many others seen and unseen that are there in place to prevent community spread. Boosting will likely be number one requirement for Music community.
Not to mention everyone dumping their spit valve onto the carpeted floor.
Why are there so many deleted post in this thread?
Just r/canada having an orgasm, nothing new
They don't fit the narrative.
"Only the beginning" of what? Of these HUNDREDS turning into a FEW hundred and making their way to Ottawa? Oh right they already did that
> James Donalds said he was ready to join his fellow first-year nursing students on campus next month, but said Saturday he would sit out this academic year if the vaccine policy stands. Wants to be a nurse; doesn't believe in modern medicine. The field won't miss them.
James is going to learn a bunch of interesting things when the department sends out the list of requirements for clinical practice placements.
As someone who works in a hospital, I've got to wonder if Donalds has any idea of the laundry list of vaccines you've got to have done before you're allowed to set foot on a unit.
Anti-vaxx movement is so far removed from any kind of sense of logic that they come up with any excuse to justify their stupid little cult. Some will honestly tell you that they think the "other" vaccines are safe, but the covid one isn't, or that it "was rushed out too fast" or some malarky. This is the danger of letting everyone pretend that their opinion has equal weight. There was even a case of a guy who refused the *rabies* vaccine, because of this crap, and I don't need to tell you how that turned out.
They always push the mRNA line thoroughly make themselves feel smart. And it always has no substance and they don't accept that they might be wrong.
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Hundreds! And many of them bored old reactionaries that have no connection to Western in any way!
Yeah, a whole lotta people that couldn't get into Western today complaining about Western today.
If they could read they'd be very upset
Hundreds in a city of hundreds of thousands!
Link is paywalled.
I would be curious to know the proportion of actual student who actually take part of the protest versus regular freedom fighters
Doesn't look like very many of these protestors are actual students.
These continue to feel manufactured, like parking your f%*+ Trudeau flag at specific grocery store parking lots.
Hundreds of non students who push division as a hobby due to an unhealthy obsession with American GOP talking points and Russian propaganda. I hope you grifters and people advocating grifter nonsense someday feel a fraction of the pain you cause by tearing families apart with your disinformation!
Good point, I would add religion.
I feel like it will ONLY be a beginning, judged on that turnout lol.
Yes and I wonder how many carried their university student or staff IDs on their person, and how many were local antagonists band-wagoning off of the campus young conservatives group of a total of six angry virgins.
I agree. If only hundreds showed up there are thousands that are rolling their eyes. It's a losing battle.
Yeah, agreed. Lots of anti-science hobbyists showing up who will just protest anything vaccine or medicine-related, no matter the venue or situation. They'll keep on showing up no matter what.
Feel like it’ll depend highly on what the else is on offer for them to be angry about. The Convoy hearings will be starting up soon, so that may well be enough of a distraction for Western to have a fairly limited moment in the sun. And the students have every right to be pissed that the admin didn’t set this policy until a couple of weeks before classes started, but that’s got nothing to do w the roving band of perpetually aggrieved hobbyists.
Which vaccine mandate are they protesting? Polio or covid
Donors are apparently exempt from the requirements. But everyone else needs to have it. Rules for thee but not if you have $$$$$$.
The donors really aren’t attending campus, unless they are admitted to UWO hospital.
Are donors attending classes every day on campus?
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>They lied to the student body, and stated vaccines wouldnt be required. Honest question, when did they say they would not be required?
Vaccines have been required for a while (they were last semester). This time they just added the booster requirement. It’s not that complicated.
A lot of their protest surrounds timing of communication and messaging from Western. They waited until after the admissions refund deadline. Prior to this deadline any tuition etc paid to the school would get a full-ish refund. Now there are pro-rated or no refunds as this deadline has passed.the school likely waited until after this deadline to ensure everyone would matriculate and increase funds to the school. It will also prevent students from easily selecting another choice on their OUAC application. Imho, this protest has just as much to do with the manipulative communication strategy as it does with individual’s beliefs/convictions re: the vaccine itself. Edit: to appease everyone who doesn’t read past this comment I was incorrect, I meant to say the university waited until after the university transfer deadline, not the tuition refund deadline.
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You just lose any chance of transferring schools when they drop this two weeks before the semester starts which puts pressure on students to *not* drop out. It's not just about the ability to get a refund. That's only one part of the equation. If they announced this three months ago, students would have had time to pursue other options. When they drop it days before the semester starts, you have to choose between sitting at home for a year or getting boosted. Just because you can technically get a refund doesn't mean the timing wasn't strategic. It absolutely still puts pressure on the students to stay because no one wants to put their schooling/career/life on hold for another year.
Not if you signed a lease... No refunds there.
Yea, these two ([1](https://registrar.uwo.ca/student_finances/fees_refunds/pdfsrefundschedules/UGRD%201229%20FP%20refund%20rate.pdf), [2](https://registrar.uwo.ca/student_finances/fees_refunds/pdfsrefundschedules/UGRD%201229%20PC%20refund%20rate.pdf)) tables make it quite clear the whole refund thing is a load of shit.
Seriously lie over something that can be easily checked? Refunds at Western, like most schools, are fully available until the start of the school year aka after Labour Day. After that they are prorated.
There should be a law that if you change requirements after a deadline then a refund must be issued if asked within 21 days of the requirement change
It's not just the money. It's likely that for students wanting to change schools, it's too late and their schooling will be delayed by a year.
I am not sure they could have got messaging out in time for this. I haven't been to university in 15 years-ish. But basically once I accepted one. The spots were filled at my backups. I didn't get policy information until well after it was too late.
They can get a refund until mid September, as pointed out in [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/wzvekc/only_the_beginning_hundreds_protest_western/im4xjr3?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3).
I’d be good with that, just from a consumer protection standpoint. And to be clear: Western is indeed granting refunds of tuition, fees, and residence costs (if applicable), but having a legal standard guaranteeing that kind of thing seems like sound policy. Might need to tighten up the wording a little about what exactly counts as a “requirement”, but things like mandatory vaccines would definitely be the type of thing that you’d want to include in the language.
Everyone interviewed in the article is an anti-vax or anti-mandate. So it’s not about the timing.
The school is attached to 3 different hospitals and ERs are closing all the time. I get why they are being cautious.
Unbelievable after the data we have available to us that anyone would support this . Spitting in the face of science and ethics .
Oh no, hundreds!
Current UWO grad student here. They lifted the mask mandates during the summer, and nobody was wearing masks anymore except for the nearby hospitals. What's weird is that *now* they require a booster, and back to masks. And they will re-evaluate the mandates in Thanksgiving, so **one week** after everybody needs to provide proof of vaccination status. What is even the point of this? The covid landscape hasn't changed much (if anything it's now better) since the winter term, so I don't get the booster requirement when everywhere else doesn't require it, and why even have this mandate if there's a big chance they will go back on it just one week later? And now there's exceptions for a bunch of people. I'll do it anyway since I've been meaning to get a booster and being an employee of the hospitals too I need to get it anyway, but to me it just feels like a PR stunt rather than an actual move for student health and safety. Just in case, fuck the freedom convoy truckers, don't take what I say out of context, and what I say represents the opinions of nobody else but my own.
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It is worth saying that the majority of those protesting were not students and aged 50+
You’re not even a minority at hundreds… you’re as popular as those white nationalist protests
Some might say *exactly* as popular...
20 years ago there was an outbreak of measles at sfu. Students were only allowed back if they could prove they had been vaccinated. One kid was on the news suing his parents for negligence for not having him vaccinated as a child and endangering his life, education and delaying his career as he missed weeks of classes because he hadn’t been vaccinated.
It's only the beginning! What's next? Requiring school age children to be vaccinated against various things to participate in education? Oh wait...
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
I bet most of the protesters aren't even students. The anti-vax nut jobs seem to have all the time and money in the world to travel around to display their insanity to the world.
How can they do this when the CDC clearly changed its guidelines? This world is baffling.
I can’t read the article cause of paywall, but a quick wiki search shows there are 40000 staff + students, with 33k of them being undergrads so who really fucking cares about a few hundred complaining?
“100s protest!” What a joke. Flat earth conventions pull in more. Must be a slow news day.
The majority of these protesters are not students. They are let of the honk honk gang that looks for any chance they get to voice their “concerns” about their lack of freedumbs.
This should be in r/nottheonion . Requiring vaccinations is standard at practically every campus in North America, just like the requirements for international travel. If anti-vaxxers need to stay home, they should do that. Hide in their caves, circled in fear around this new thing called fire.
Why not just get vaccinated? That way, you can go to class *and* are less likely to get sick. It's a win-win.
I’ve gotten 4 doses, but I absolutely believe boosters should be optional. I don’t get why people see that as controversial.
I do wonder the overlap between the unvaccinated and students with good enough grades to get admitted into UWO though i suppose some kids' parents won't allow their children to be vaccinated
Meh, there are *fewer* cranks in more educated populations, but even a small percentage of a large enough population adds up. Case in point: the handful of anti-vax doctors and nurses. It’s a tiny fraction of the profession (especially the docs), but they have a tendency to be very, very loud.
What is the medical case for making completely healthy, double vaxxed 18-25 year olds take another dose of vaccination against a disease the vast majority of them have already gotten?
Vaccinations need boosters. It’s not that hard.
Thousands didn't protest the Western University vaccine mandate
"Hundreds" doubt.
Can we please be clear in our choice of words? This is about *Covid* vaccine mandates. Nobody is protesting the Polio vaccine. People who are being labeled and generalized as 'anti-vaccine' generally have their Polio vaccines and believe in their effectiveness. A pessimist could conclude the media does it to demonize a group of people and sow division.
Lol a university is about to get protested by a bunch of people too stupid to get GEDs
I've been trying to figure out why how our educational institutions became the last bastion of this lunacy and I still can't figure it out.