Oh, Flavelle House, how I miss thee
There is never a dull moment in 2020. Just when you think a level of normalcy has returned, things have changed yet again. To be honest, when I decided to write this piece, I was planning to speculate if the surge of COVID-19 cases would impact our in-person classes. Well, that’s an easy answer. And here I thought I finally had an opportunity to apply my fortune-telling skills…
As we all know, we shifted to exclusive remote learning on October 10. With the recent spike in daily reported COVID-19 cases in Toronto, the provincial government has rolled us back to Stage 2 pandemic restrictions. This is obviously an unfortunate development. Many of us, myself included, are disappointed. We must, however, remember that much of this is beyond the control of the Faculty or even the University. When looking at the big picture, the decision was understandable. Even if the Faculty did not experience any clusters of positive cases, as confirmed during the October 19 Q&A session with Associate Dean Christopher Essert, we cannot ignore the increasing risk of COVID-19 exposure through other means, such as commuting (especially by transit), shopping, or other activities that occur outside the classroom. Now, the question to ask is when can we return to in-person classes?
In order to predict the future, we must look to the past. This is a common theme in any field, let it be law, science, or history. Taking Ontario and Toronto’s daily record of COVID-19 cases published by Public Health Ontario, I marked three important dates for comparison below: (1) when the winter term of the 2019-2020 academic year transitioned to remote learning in March; (2) when the current fall term began with in-person 1L Legal Methods classes in late August; and (3) when the fall term transitioned to exclusive remote learning in October. These can be visualized in the following chart.
Graph of daily reported COVID-19 cases in Ontario and Toronto with note of relevant law school dates.
A picture is worth a thousand words. After doing this analysis, I must admit I am surprised our in-person instruction lasted as long as it did. I think we can all agree that the second wave is here. And to make matters worse, winter is coming. Everyone will have to stay indoors, which is a paradise for COVID-19. It makes sense to minimize the need for indoor congregations at this point. Consequently, I am not optimistic that in-person classes will return this term. I suspect the province may extend Stage 2 restrictions beyond the planned 28 days, especially since daily reported cases in Ontario and Toronto seem to have plateaued in the 800s and 300s respectively.
Considering the high risk of exposure, I do not think it is reasonable to demand a return to in-person learning right now. If we can rely on the past, I believe we may resume in-person classes once Toronto cases are down to a level similar to what we experienced in early September. How long we must continue to physically and socially distance is less certain. From what we have seen so far, I would predict that normal in-person classes will not resume until we have a vaccine, perhaps in the spring of 2021.
The prospect isn’t ideal but I comfort myself by remembering that we at least had a month (and slightly more for 1Ls) of in-person classes when many other law schools decided to deliver all courses remotely from the start. And more importantly, I am grateful that I was able to meet my fellow 1Ls and many upper years in-person. Let’s hope we can go back sooner rather than later.
