As COVID-19 decimates the Canadian economy, throws indebted students into an uncertain job market, and poses real risk to both physical and mental health, Osgoode Hall Law School’s students click into their Zoom classes to start off the 2020-2021 academic year.
One student reflects on the changes brought on by the pandemic and laments the virtual formatting of her courses. “Just because I never exercised the option to attend in-person lectures doesn’t mean I didn’t benefit from having the option,” said the 3L, who requested to remain unnamed. “That’s, like, basic contract law or something.”
Many students agree that the unavailability of in-person lectures dampens the value of a law degree, an anonymous survey confirms. “I may have completed 66% of my degree online already,” one survey response from an employed final-year student reads, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to consider completing the remaining 33% in-person.”
The administration, who a few months ago proposed in-person attendance be made mandatory to earn course credit, declined to comment directly on the impacts of a virtual school year for law students. In an email sent indiscriminately to the school population, the administration assured students that mental health is a top priority this year and that no change in the school’s traditional, curve-based evaluation methods would be permitted to “further amplify the stresses brought on by this unprecedented, life-altering global pandemic.”
A professor sympathetic to students facing mental health disabilities, caregiving responsibilities, job insecurity, and other pandemic-related stressors said that “failing to pit students against each other this year would be failing to maintain the honour and integrity of the law school.” He noted that he has been teaching for the past fifty years and that no access-to-justice crisis, economic downturn, or social justice movement has shaken the school’s resolve to provide class rankings to potential employers.
“Why should a widespread, as-of-yet unresolved global crisis undermine the system now? COVID-19 has taken everything from us. It should not be permitted to take away the curve, too.”
