As the night wound down, and as I gulped down the dregs of my third Diet Pepsi, I realized I felt a low-grade sense of calm and peace.
Lockdown
With the pandemic exacerbating the stress and difficulties of university life, University of Ottawa students have created a discord to connect with fellow classmates.
Ontario universities have started their winter 2021 semesters under a province-wide stay at home order. But while this is not the first semester impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown measures are complicating an already difficult situation for students.
Rock, whose eight-year tenure as U of O president ends in June, says we’ll know who his successor is by the end of November. “The selection committee has been working really hard,” he said.
“Ought there to be a code of conduct?” the taskforce asked, according to Rock. “If so, how should it be developed, what should it look like, how would it be administered, and what role does the university have in the responding to behaviour off-campus or in behaviour that’s not related to the academic role of the university?”
“When I told people to please follow lockdown procedures, I don’t know if it’s just because they didn’t take me seriously because I was technically a student, but none of them even seemed to know what exactly that meant,” he said.
Feeling threatened can bring out the worst in people. When Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was able to shoot and kill Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial and infiltrate Parliament on Oct. 22, two places many University of Ottawa students have been to without fear, it reminded us of our vulnerability.
In a week when national security and terrorism were already at the top of the national political agenda, Parliament Hill itself today was besieged by a gunman who shot and killed a soldier at the National War Memorial before bursting into the Centre Block, apparently bent on a rampage, before being shot and killed himself in a shootout with Hill security officials.
