A group of student leaders at Mount Allison are sounding the alarm about what they call “a consistent decline” in the services provided by Mount Allison’s student affairs department.
The group of 30 students sent a detailed package to the school’s Board of Regents in advance of their meeting this week, telling of empty food banks, high staff turnover and vacant positions, new resources that sit unapproved and un-released by university administration, and a pattern of reactive policy-making that leaves the department of student affairs looking poorly organized and under-resourced.
Fourth year Sociology student Isabella Gallant is the driving force behind the letter. As co-lead for the Mount Allison chapter of Jack.org, Gallant says she had a list of frustrations with resources for students, and when she reached out to fellow student leaders, she heard similar concerns.
“I started sending emails before Christmas,” says Gallant, “just reaching out to different students and saying, hey, I’m really fed up, are you really fed up too? And the response from everyone I reached out to was yes, let’s do this.”
Gallant assembled a 32-page document for the Board of Regents, which includes letters from other student leaders including the president of the Black Students’ Union, the president of ENACTUS Mount Allison, and a former Mount Allison Student Union Accessibility Affairs Coordinator. The document covers issues in mental health supports, services geared to racialized groups, support for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, campus in-accessibility, and food insecurity.
“We’re really highlighting a lack of organization and formal policy updates, as well as a lack of funding allocation, specifically in the department of Student Affairs,” says Gallant, which is “diluting the supports that are available.”
The lack of accessibility came to light for Gallant after she spent about eight months working on the development of the Garnet Guide for Students, a comprehensive guide to navigating wellness at Mount Allison. “But now unfortunately, most people I speak with who have used the guide are unable to access the services within the guide, because they’re all booked until the end of the year,” she says.
Mount Allison did not confirm or deny a backlog of requests in wellness services.
Mount Allison considering response
Gallant says the Board of Regents has acknowledged the letter, and told her they would be taking it very seriously. In a statement to CHMA the university says it received the “lengthy document” and that “senior administration is taking the time to carefully review” the questions it poses.
Student Affairs is headed up by Ann Comfort, Mount Allison’s Vice President of International and Student Affairs, who in turn oversees two directors: Matthew Maston, the Director of Accessibility and Student Wellness, and Danai Bélanger, the director of Student Experience. But there are dozens of positions included in Student Affairs, from counsellors to nurses to residence dons.
The student letter highlighted recent turnover and vacancies in some of these positions, such as the Black Student Advisor who left in 2022, as well as the Indigenous Affairs Coordinator and the Sexual Violence Prevention and Education Coordinator who left more recently. “It’s really disappointing for a lot of students when they see a friendly and familiar face be gone after six months,” says Gallant.
On Monday afternoon, the university announced a replacement for Patty Musgrave, the departed Indigenous Affairs Coordinator, who left in the fall. Scott Peters from the We’koqma’q First Nation in Cape Breton will take over the position on February 20.
And in response to an enquiry from CHMA, Mount Allison communications officials say there is a hiring process underway for a Black Student Advisor and Sexual Violence Prevention and Education Coordinator, though they did not share a timeline for when the positions will be filled.
‘It just has simply been neglected’
Isabella Matchett is a friend of Gallant’s, and another 4th year sociology student who contributed to the letter. She worked as a student intern for eight months helping develop the university’s first Positive Spaces Training Modules, under then-Sexual Violence Prevention and Education coordinator Tasia Alexopoulos.
The modules were meant to help educate and empower campus community members about being caring allies for queer and trans people, but Matchett says they have been stuck at the administrative approval stage for about 200 days. “It just has simply been neglected,” says Matchett.
After spending her first year at St Thomas University in Fredericton, Matchett says she noticed a difference in the availability of student services when she got to Mount Allison.
“It was super hard just to access any kind of resource,” she recalls, acknowledging that the COVID-19 pandemic presented genuine challenges and barriers. “I’m compassionate, but I’m also believing that time has passed, and there has been time to make real changes to the programs and supports that Mount Allison offers, and it just hasn’t been done.”
Student food bank found empty, now restocked
Mount Allison’s student food bank, The Pantry, is also tapped out, says Gallant. When the group visited The Pantry before releasing their letter, they found it “locked, empty, and completely disorganized,” says Gallant. “The fridge was broken, and no longer functioning. The door was ripped off.”
“I think that that’s really discouraging for students… If we’re going to advertise that we have a resource like a student food bank, it needs to be prioritized and up-kept,” says Gallant. “It’s a positive sign that the day we released our press release, the food bank was restocked. So I’m happy to see that and I really hope that it remains that way.”
The group letter also cites issues with accessibility of spaces and buildings on the Mount Allison campus, and contrasts that with hefty amounts of funding going to other renovation projects such as the athletic centre and the library. The letter asks, “Why hasn’t it been a priority to render spaces at Mount Allison University physically accessible when other renovation projects are receiving significant funding?”
‘Students are not doing well’
“We feel the ball has been dropped on a lot of really important projects and resources,” says Gallant. “We as students are tasked with the responsibility to advocate and push for these resources, but I don’t feel it should be our responsibility to advocate for these resources when we are full time students that need the support ourselves.”
“From my observation, especially doing outreach related to mental health, students are not doing well,” says Gallant. “They’re really stressed out. Everything is really expensive. We’re facing so much academic pressure, the state of the world is very confusing. We’re just young adults trying to navigate the world around us. And I think that a lot of us just really don’t feel supported in our university environment.”
“Rather, we see this glorification of what the university experience should be, when in reality for a lot of post-secondary students, it’s really challenging to come to university and adapt to the pressures and the anxieties.”
Calling for an open meeting on campus
Gallant and Matchett both agree that despite the long list of issues raised in their letter, there are likely more concerns out there, and they are hoping the university takes the initiative to find out what they are. They are calling for an open meeting where students can voice their concerns.
“We don’t know who’s still behind the scenes saying, well, what about this that’s not addressed in the letter,” says Gallant. “So I really hope this can be an ongoing conversation. And to me, this is just the beginning of a lot of frustrated people coming together.”
The Mount Allison Students’ Union issued a statement of support this week in response to the students’ letter. They says they will represent student concerns on the Board of Regents, and also advocate for an open meeting between Mount Allison administration, faculty, staff, and students, “to provide an opportunity for students to express themselves directly.”
