UNBC taking on challenges of opening doors during pandemic

As the beginning of the fall school semester looms there is much talk about how post-secondary schools will approach the education delivery system to best keep faculty and students safe during the pandemic.

The University of Northern BC will follow Step 3 and anticipated Step 4 plans as set out by the BC government with some encouragement towards vaccines and mask wearing where appropriate, Dr. Geoffrey Payne, interim president of UNBC, said.

“As we’ve been saying all along, the steps we’ve put in place throughout this almost 18 months is to ensure people on our campus and within our community are safe and as we get ready to come back to fall 2021 the things we’ve been working on first and foremost have been increasing our health and safety plan - updating that - installing new filtration systems on campus that exceed WorkSafe BC and other parameters as there are more people on campus. We’ve been, as we’ve been doing all along, following the sector guidelines that have been laid out by the provincial health office, so we’re in Step 3 right now and should we hit the milestone we’ll be in Step 4 as fall starts.”

Students and faculty can help protect themselves and others by getting fully vaccinated, he added.

“Data shows that vaccines have shifted the curve downward and at every opportunity I encourage everybody in the community to go and get the vaccine - that’s really important,” Payne said. “We also encourage everyone to wear masks where appropriate.”

The University of BC Faculty Association joined the call for more stringent pandemic measures to be put in place for the fall. Vaccines should be mandatory for all students and staff and masking required indoors, the association said in a letter to the university administration.

The rise in cases, the Delta variant and the eased restrictions were all cited as reasons for the request. In the meantime, some students and faculty members at the University of Victoria are calling for COVID-19 vaccines to be mandatory on campus as the fall term nears and case counts rise.

UVic took it one step further and offered a draw for up to $10,000 to cover tuition as an incentive to students to be fully vaccinated in time for school to start.

Payne said they are working on an incentive program at UNBC but it’s too early to talk about it.

“Vaccines are the way to go - masks are great but they don’t do everything - if you look at data coming out about the wave of Covid it is in the unvaccinated group - so get the vaccine,” Payne said. “We are looking in partnership with Northern Health at the opportunity to have a vaccine clinic on campus when students, staff and faculty are back in the fall. Our goal is not to have any barriers to having the vaccine so if we can have something like that on our campus that would be ideal. None of this can be done in isolation - we have to work across sectors with policies, protocols and guidelines - we’re working with the provincial government whether it’s vaccines and vaccine rollout on our campus - we’re working with our local health authorities - we’re all in this together and we need to work collaboratively in order to make things accessible and to protect the people coming to our campuses that we have across the north.”

Payne said the university continues to review what they can do to keep everyone safe and meet on a regular basis with campus groups and members of the faculty association, both CUPE unions and health and safety resource members to ensure that there is an open dialogue around any concerns that may arise.

“It’s all solution driven and we will continue to work together,” Payne said.