STUART KINNEY
To browse the website of St. Francis Xavier University, and especially to peruse its strategic plan, is to come face-to-face with an institution of higher learning, steeped in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, which, ostensibly, aspires to exemplify the highest principles of human endeavour.
“Our motto Quaecumque Sunt Vera, or ‘Whatsoever Things are True’ perfectly captures our values of integrity, dignity, truth, and respect for all,” says the website section on the history of St. F.X. This motto, derived from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (4:8), is part of an exhortation to seek “whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Today, facing the great challenge of COVID-19, St. F.X. has decided to lay aside these foundational principles, to forswear its motto, to belie the heritage of the patron for whom it is named, and to force upon the young men and women entrusted to its care a waiver of liability that instead captures perfectly values of self-preservation, irresponsibility, disrespect, indignity and untruth.
The St. F.X. waiver of liability absolves the university of any responsibility, whether for negligence, breach of contract or breach of statute in regard to its handling of COVID-19 issues. It is being imposed upon students and signed by them under duress as a precondition of their enrolment in in-person, on-site educational sessions at the Antigonish campus this fall.
In a moment of uncertainty, when all of humanity is plagued by an unpredictable viral agent, St. F.X. chooses to require students to be on campus, to foist upon them all the risks associated with such attendance and to absolve the university of any responsibility for their safety and well-being. This requirement is immoral, unethical and unjust.
In addition, for a publicly funded postsecondary educational institution, it should be illegal. It is difficult to understand how an institution of higher learning — which includes in its syllabus courses devoted to ethical philosophy, as a precursor to the study of law or service in government — can defend its decision to impose unilaterally upon students an arrangement which so fundamentally strips them of their rights as members of Canadian society and their inherent dignity as human beings.
St. F.X. must desist from this practice immediately. If it has determined that it can open its campus and invite students back for the fall term, it must assure those same students that it can do so safely, that it cares about their health and that it is prepared to be responsible, practically and legally, for enforcement of the protocols it has adopted for campus reopening.
I call upon the Bishop of Antigonish, Vicar of the Founder, and all other members of the board of governors, to reconsider their decision and to abandon this waiver, in the name of whatsoever is true and honourable and just — in the name of the excellence which St. F.X. professes to teach and which it encourages its students to pursue.
How can such students pursue what is excellent when the very institution encouraging them to do so requires them to do the opposite?
Stuart Kinney, a lawyer and former university governor, lives in Woodstock, N.B.
