The Thursday march. Photo courtesy Twitter, @Ram846.
The province’s plan to hand over NORTEP’s funding to Northlands College in the fall is not settling well with all northerners, as evidenced by a Thursday protest in La Ronge.
A student-led march of dozens of sign-carrying protesters walked NORTEP-NORPAC’s building to the La Ronge Ministry of Education office to mark their discontent with the province’s Wednesday announcement that Northlands College will take over in the fall, even though NORTEP Council recommended Gabriel Dumont Institute.
Third-year NORTEP student Diana Janzen took part in the protest. She said she’s not sure if she’s going to come back to school in the fall.
“I don’t know if I want to go to Northlands. Everything’s televised there, and I can’t learn that way. I like to have interaction with my instructors and get to know somebody that’s teaching me and doing that through computer or TV just doesn’t cut it for me,” she said.
Meanwhile, the province and Northlands College say they want a smooth transition for all current NORTEP students. A Northlands news release states students currently enrolled in NORTEP-NORPAC “will see virtually no change.”
First-year student Alicia Morris took part in the fall protests in Regina as well as Thursday’s protest. She shares Janzen’s concerns that Northlands has less face-to-face instruction, especially when it comes to NORTEP’s language classes.
“Even in their classes when they’re teaching you how to speak Cree or how to speak Dene they take you out with the locals, they let you hunt, they teach you how to snare, how to set nets and I think we will lose that with Northlands,” Morris said.
Fourth-year student Lenny Crookedneck said he doesn’t think it’s fair to change a “First Nations-run school” that focuses on classroom learning.
NORTEP President Jennifer Malmsten has declined to speak until Friday.