Atlantic university towns anxiously await return of students

A runner goes around the football field at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB on May 29, 2020.Forget orientation rallies, house parties or other frosh week events you may associate with the start of the university calendar. For hundreds of out-of-province students arriving at universities across Atlantic Canada, the beginning of this fall semester will be a solitary experience.

Mount Allison students pump about $70-million into Sackville‘s economy annually, a significant boost in a community of 4,300 where the municipal budget is only about $10-million. Like other small, East Coast college towns whose populations nearly double as students return, the university is the largest local employer and the community’s biggest economic influence.

“How is everyone going to make sure that people off campus will self-isolate?” asked Sackville’s Nicole Lavigne, who works in a local nursing home and worries about her elderly father. St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., went a step further, requiring students to sign a waiver absolving the school of any legal responsibility should they contract COVID-19 while attending classes or activities.

“We’ll see a small drop in numbers, but nothing like what we worried about in the spring,” said Scott Duguay, vice-provost, students, recruitment and enrolment management at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S. “If a student has chosen their university, their heart is set on it, and they want to get on with their lives because it doesn’t look like we’ll be free of COVID any time soon.”

The universities don’t have the ability yet to test students themselves for COVID-19. That’s why the two-week self-isolation requirement to enter Atlantic Canada, while admittedly challenging for the students forced to quarantine, is seen as the best tool they have to prevent any outbreaks.

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