The University of Ottawa is attractive for many features, such as its research facilities, its numerous world titles, and its sustainability projects, but if you ask many, uOttawa is renowned for its downtown location. Steps away from the historical Rideau Canal, and conveniently located near the Rideau Centre and Byward market, uOttawa can seem ideal for a local student, and even more so for an outside student wanting to discover Canada’s capital region and all its offerings.



The 2010s has seen a rise in how we consume information. Social media is exponentially our number one source of it, especially amongst students, but I had to ask myself if that meant that our school should no longer have a role to play in keeping students up to date with sudden or peculiar events on campus. The University has seen some failures in adapting to the new age of media. The tragic death of Ryan Séguin, a medical student at the University of Ottawa, prompted criticism on social media and on campus as the university sent the exact same monotone email that they sent the last four times a student tragically lost their life. The University also failed to communicate several incidents that happened on campus throughout this semester, including a shooting incident that happened in October.



90U residence saw a shooting this past October which thankfully had no victims. (Booking.com)

On October 23rd, the Ottawa Citizen reported on three shootings throughout Ottawa, one of which has taken place in the early hours of that Wednesday morning at an on-campus residence hall. We sat down with three students to get their perspective about the university’s response to the incident.

“I had no clue,” said Christine, a first-year theater student. Kion, a second-year political science student added, “one of my friends told me.” Same here,” said Ahmed, a third-year student studying conflict studies and human rights.

With that in mind, I then proceeded to ask if they felt as though the University had done its job in relaying this incident, based on the fact that students did not receive any information from the university.

Kion believes the university can learn from other institutions around the world on how to communicate with students. (Carmen Tfaily/ Agora Tribune)

Kion used references from universities back in his home to make his point.

“I have a lot of friends who attend Texas A&M University, and whenever there’s a [possible] danger on campus, they receive an app notification for what’s called a Code Maroon. It’s very efficient, especially when you think about how every student and faculty member has a cell phone, but, for example, last semester, when we had the van thing, UO Protection didn’t send out a notification until day later with something like, ‘Oh, it’s okay now,’ but by that point, it’s irrelevant. They should’ve sent it as soon as it’s happening,” he said, taking an example from the incident in March 2019 when a man was driving recklessly near Morisset Library, which could have potentially caused harm to students.



I agreed with Kion’s insight. Despite Canada being one of the world’s safest countries, there have been at least three major incidents that occurred on campus without students receiving immediate information. “I don’t think the school did its part, because I didn’t hear about it,” Christine replied. “And I don’t think any of my friends know, otherwise they would’ve told me about it.”

Ahmed Ben Jemaa was disappointed by how slow the information reaches the students. (Carmen Tfaily/ Agora Tribune)

“I also heard from a friend,” added Ahmed. “And I agree with Kion, I think using something as simple as an app could be very effective. I mean, even last week [Nov 1st] when we got an email informing us about a student death, we weren’t informed until a week later. It’s not normal for information to be that slow in a world where information is literally at our fingertips.“

Ahmed’s comment allowed me to smoothly dive into my next question regarding students and mental health struggles. In the past year, the University of Ottawa has had four extremely unfortunate occurrences of students taking their own lives. I asked the students about their point of view when it comes to the university’s place in preventing it, and if it should also be an issue taken on by professors.

“University is a lot of pressures,” Ahmed pointed out. “I think not only from the professors but also families, and mental health tends to deteriorate from that, especially when you have to work so hard. There’s too much pressure, but there aren’t enough resources to help people out. But even if they are there, they’re not effective. Having a hotline is good, but the effectiveness is subjective to each person. Say in residences, there should be some sort of professional available to students whenever they need it.” This is about the fact that students have to turn to their floor advisors for help, who are students just like them and are not professionally trained to handle mental health issues.

“I agree with that a lot. To add to that, I do feel like we do offer a lot of resources at the University, but nobody knows about them,” Kion said, returning to the point of miscommunication between the administration and its students. “I had a friend looking for a professional to speak to on campus, and was not able to, no matter how much she researched, and then when she finally found did, she was put on a waiting list. Like, even if she wanted to call a hotline, how would she know which one to call? Even OC Transpo does a better job at communicating that, they have posters in the train stations and the buses that say, like, ‘Feeling down? Let’s talk,’ but if I wanted help, the University hasn’t let me know how or where to get it.”

“Additionally, when we do get those e-mails telling us that students took their own lives, they could just say something like, ‘in light of these events, we’re holding a workshop about mental health,’ or something to reassure students that the University is aware of this problem,” added Christine. “As far as professors, just spreading their work out more, and doing it in a way where they know their midterm won’t coincide with all the others. I had a midterm in early October instead of a square in the middle of midterm season, and you wouldn’t believe the pressure it took off of me.”

Health Services offer many helpful resources but many students aren’t aware of their offerings.(CTV News)

Upon researching for this interview, I came across a statement made on the uOttawa Health Services website about a student’s entitlement to see a mental health professional, which read: “Family Health Team Psychiatrist and Mental Health Counselors – available to patients enrolled with a family physician with the UOHS Family Health Team. uOttawa and St-PaulU students can also access mental health counselling services when referred by a provider at the University of Ottawa Health Services Walk-In Clinic”.

They all had no clue that was an option.

“They should make it clear,” said Christine. “At the beginning of the semesters, they send us all sorts of e-mails, but this information didn’t seem to be in any of them—at least not clearly.”

“Well, I did faculty orientation as well as international orientation, and I feel like if you’re going to go through the trouble of preparing such a presentation, you should include this sort of information. They mentioned that there were mental health and wellness services of campus, but never went into specifics, but they somehow took the time in international orientation to explain what a loonie and a toonie were. I didn’t know you’d need to get a reference, which is also crazy because the walk-in clinic is so busy all the time, and you’d have to wait hours just for a referral, instead of just making an appointment directly with a therapist.”

“There’s also a disconnect with the knowledge of a family doctor. Coming from the US, I didn’t know what a family doctor was, that’s not a thing where I’m from, and it’s not a thing in most countries. but still, I didn’t find out from the school in international orientation, I was educated by friends brought up in the Ontario health care system,” added Kion. “If you want to make that a requirement for people needing help, at least let us know what that means. What’s free, what’s not? What services are provided by a family doctor versus another doctor?”



Lastly, I finished with a question regarding security in the city of Ottawa. As University of Ottawa students, whether we live locally, on-campus residences, or in off-campus residences, we all attend school in the heart of downtown. I brought up the incident having taken place in 2014 when there occurred a shooting on Parliament Hill, which took the life of a Canadian soldier. At the time of this incident, the University, given its proximity, was put on lockdown. So, I asked, do these students feel safe attending school in this city?

Six years ago, a soldier was killed on parliament hill, only five minutes away from campus. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld)

“Yes and no,” said Ahmed. “Being downtown means we may be slightly more at risk of things like this happening, but it also means that reactions from authorities are going to be that much stronger, than that of a small town. At the time, I was going to school ten kilometres away, and we were immediately put on lockdown within three minutes of getting the news. The reaction was really fast, and we did feel not secure at that point, despite being so far. If this were to happen on campus, I don’t know how I’d feel because yes, the campus is big, but because of that, we aren’t taught any sort of ‘code’ or drill of what to do if things like this happen. Where should people go?”

“I don’t feel unsafe on campus,” added Kion. “I agree that if something like that were to happen, I wouldn’t know what the hell to do, but at the same time… knowing this country and this city, I do feel safe, but I feel insecurity about procedures and reactions if something like that were to happen.”

“That’s hard to say,” said Christine. “Maybe having the University be downtown isn’t the safest, but at the same time, Ottawa is not unsafe. Again, I don’t know what I’d need to do if that were to happen, though, because we’ve never been informed of any procedure.”

I went into this interview to get student perspectives on the communication or lack thereof of the University of Ottawa faculty following an unfortunate late October incident. Their views echoed my thoughts of there being a disconnect, but also, with different perspectives come different ideas, and those lead to innovation. Living in an age such as this one, there should be immediate communication through something than a long-winded, yet vague e-mail from the university president and the only way to stay on top of effective ways to communicate to students is to listen to the students themselves.

