“We’re out here cause they’re out here for us.”

Cass Lamarche is one of many students who are standing with striking college faculty and their demands for an equal split of full-time and part-time contract workers.

Lamarche is a third year business student—her final year—who has classes both at the college and online.

She says she came in with the thought she’d have professors for most of her classes—four of six of her classes were being self-taught at home with guidance from Durham and Mohawk College workers—but is having to teach herself without any assistance at the moment.

“I feel like I’m going into the workforce after being thrown to the wolves by the college because there’s not enough faculty,” she said.

“A lot of people look at strikes as ‘oh, they want more money or they want things’ but what these professors want is a quality of education for the students that they can’t give them because they don’t have enough hours in the day.”

Lamarche was joined by first-year student Natalie Levesque.

“I see a lot of teachers who want to teach us and are trying to help us with our education and are so willing to help us with office hours, extra help, extra practice and now they can’t,” she said.

“It’s super sucky for them and it also sucks for us who pay to have an education (and) now can’t get one.”

A petition has made the rounds on Change.org, calling for refunds for students for every day missed due to the strike. They say full-time students should get $30 a day while part-time students should be reimbursed $20/day.

As of 12:30pm Thursday afternoon, the petition has over 86,000 signatures on it.

Levesque does agree with the petition at a certain level, but she is not one of the names attached.

“It’s a very tough situation,” she added.

There is another coordinated effort taking place online, with the #StandWithFaculty hashtag.

Filed under: Local News