George Brown College is extending the fall semester to Dec. 22 and cancelling winter intersession break due to ongoing faculty strike
Updated at 5:45 p.m. with comment from Student Association
Clarification: On Nov. 19, 2017 George Brown College announced that the winter intersession break was restored and updated the calendar for the academic semesters.
On Monday, George Brown College has announced that due to the ongoing faculty strike, the fall semester has been extended to Dec. 22 and the winter intersession break, originally scheduled from Feb. 26 to March 2, has been cancelled.
An update on the GBC website also said that if a settlement is reached, there will be two business days’ notice before classes resume. Exams will not be scheduled and assignments will not be due until at least 72 hours after the announcement of an end to the strike.
“We understand that these changes may negatively impact students’ personal plans and are sorry for the disruption they may cause.” read the notice on GBC’s website “Our primary concern is preserving your fall and winter semesters and unfortunately that means making difficult decisions.”
The Nov. 3 deadline to withdraw without academic penalty has been extended to Nov. 24.
Tiffany White, the Student Association’s (SA) director of education, said that students were not consulted adequately in the college’s decision and that they could have rearranged the year differently.
“There are a lot of students who are going to be very unhappy about this, and there so many other ways other ways that they could have gone about this and they just did it all wrong,” she said.
White, who said that her own travel plans are affected because of the re-scheduling, thinks that moving this semester’s exams in the first week of January and extending the next term would have less of an impact on students’ plans.
The SA funds The Dialog.
Over 300,000 college students across Ontario have been impacted by the strike, particularly apprenticeship students who are on short eight-to-10-week courses.
