Nunavut Arctic College students evicted with 1 week notice after program cancelled

Some students at the Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluitreturned from holidays to find theirprogram had been cancelled, their student funding cut, and they had a week to move out of their student housing.

"They could have given me a two-week notice at least," said Geela Kango.

Kango was one of six students taking Inuit Studies at the Nunatta Campus in Iqaluit. She was on academic probation along with three classmates.

WhenKangoreturned toschool in early January,she had no idea she was no longer a student and that the programhad been cancelled.

"My FANS [Financial Assistance for Nunavut Students]funding, I called them to find out why I wasn't paid like my other classmates on our usual pay day and I found out through them that I was terminated from the course I was taking," she said.

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Kango said shedid notreceivewritten notice from the school about her termination as a student or her eviction from student housing. Instead she was told by a instructor that she and her daughter had one week to vacate their home.

The college's vice-presidentEric Corneau said that is not what should have happened.

"Unfortunately we made the decision at the end of December right before the breakthat a number of students were not going to be continuing in the program," he said.

"But the registrar and the management, including myself at this point, we did not provide [termination]letters to the students before they came back from the communities."

The college is willing to be flexible, said Corneau, when it comes to evicting students, despite policy being that students should move out within a week, and said a month might be more reasonable.

In addition to the four students on academic probation who were terminated without notice, two students who had passed all their classes also had their programof study cancelled.

"That's part of the problem with having a program with not a lot of students," Corneau said.

"It is a extremely difficult and challenging decision to cancel a program and it is not taken lightly, but we cannot offer a program to just one or two students."

Both of those students were offered the option to transfer to a different program.