The newest dormitory at Stanstead College will have a new vocation starting next week.
Cowen House was built last year to be a co-ed residence for Grade 12 students, but will instead become a quarantine facility for international students.
School administrators say quarantining students is just one example of how much busier COVID-19 has made planning for this school year.
“I would say ‘complicated’ is an understatement,” says Joanne Carruthers, the school’s director of admissions.
Stanstead College opened in 1874. Today, it’s a private English-language boarding school for Grades 7 through 12.
In a normal year, it has about 245 students, about half of them from outside Canada.
Under the federal government’s COVID-19 emergency order, travellers entering the country must quarantine for 14 days.
Starting Monday, Stanstead College will be picking up international students at Montreal’s Trudeau airport and shuttling them directly to the dorm for their two weeks in isolation. The shuttles are being equipped with plastic dividers to separate the driver from the students, and dividers to separate students from each other. The school’s red vans also won’t be allowed to stop anywhere during the 170-kilometre trip.
The students will be allowed outside in front of Cowen House during monitored breaks, but for the most part, they’ll be spending 14 days in their dorm rooms.
“We’ve told them to bring whatever they need to keep themselves entertained,” says Ross Murray, the school’s director of communications. “So books and videos and computers — and they all have their phones of course.”
READ MORE: Saskatchewan private high school housed international students with visa concerns for the summer
COVID-19 is forcing Stanstead College to make changes to just about every part of life at the school.
Classes are already smaller than most schools, averaging only 13 students. That number is going to be even smaller this year with desks removed from classes so there’s more space between students.
A new machine has been set up in the lobby of the dining hall. It will check the temperature of students before they enter.
Inside the dining hall, most of the chairs have been removed so students can sit 1.5 metres apart.
Normally, all students and staff eat meals together. This year, with fewer chairs, there will be four different meal times.
Enrollment has taken a hit with some international students unable to enter Canada or having delays in getting study permits.
READ MORE: Canadian parents are setting up ‘pandemic pods’ during coronavirus — what are they?
Recently, four German students told the school they wouldn’t be attending due to uncertainty caused by COVID-19.
Carruthers says in these last few weeks of the summer vacation, the school would usually still be adding students last minute. The opposite is happening right now.
“In a normal year, we’d be at 245 and counting,” she says. “This year we’re 200 and subtracting.”
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