Floor Fellows - Open Letter

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Deputy Provost Labeau, 

We are writing to urge the reversal of the planned decision to abolish the Floor Fellow position in McGill student housing for the 2024-2025 academic year.  This decision, which removes a longstanding and fundamental pillar of McGill’s residence system, is another step in McGill’s overall decline as an institution revered globally as a paragon of academic excellence. This decision, taken without due and open consultation with the McGill community, leaves McGill as the only major Canadian university, and one of the few in North America, without a Floor Fellow, Residence Assistant, or other comparable live-in student support position. More importantly, this leaves first-year students, many of whom are minors leaving their homes and families for the first time, without the readily accessible and flexible peer support that is critical for their continued safety and academic success. 

It is blatantly untrue to argue that the Floor Fellow position can be replaced or is made redundant by the already existing student support systems at McGill, such as the Wellness Hub, the Office of the Dean of Students, or the Office for Sexual Violence Response, Support and Education.  These resources, which the Floor Fellows all know well and work closely with, do not address the crucial niche that the Floor Fellow position was created to fill.  

AskMcGill describes Floor Fellows as “upper-year live-in student staff members, trained in first-aid and crisis intervention, tasked with role-modelling, community building and peer counseling," while the recently deleted page on the SHHS website states that “Ultimately, the floor fellows are amazing resources for [an] abundant amount of diverse information, are capable of providing much of the needed support for incoming students, and are continually striving to build a community in which each and every student feels respected.”

It is because we live in residence alongside the students under our charge that students see us as a trusted peer they can rely on for support.  This cohabitation model, adopted by over 90% of Canadian Universities, creates a sense of community that engenders trust and creates a space where students are not afraid to report situations they’d otherwise be uncomfortable or unwilling to disclose. 

Unlike the staff at OSVRSE, The Wellness Hub, or the Office of the Dean of Students, the Floor Fellows are not professional counsellors, doctors, EMTs, or mediators.  Our role is not to provide professional aid, but to offer flexible, accessible, personalised support, intimately tailored to the needs of the individual residents under our care. Unlike the staff at other McGill support offices, Floor Fellows are live-in peer support, who are trained, accountable, and best positioned to respond to a huge variety of situations that can occur, often with little to no warning, during the times when other services are closed, unavailable, fully-booked, or inaccessible due to lack of awareness or difficulty navigating the booking process.  

Given that Floor Fellows live with the students we support, we build close and flexible relationships with residents, beyond what is possible with non-live in support staff, or full time managerial staff, such as Residence Life Managers, who are not peers.  Through this social and physical proximity, Floor Fellows are able to identify problems as they arise, and take proactive, rather than reactive, steps to offer support.  Removing Floor Fellows from residences will mean that the other support offices, already overburdened, are left reacting to situations only when they reach crisis level, rather than offering proactive intervention and support beforehand.

The first-year student population in student housing has and will continue to be mostly composed of teenagers who have never lived outside of their family home. Floor Fellows are a bridge between the familial structure and adult independence. Over the course of their first year, a Floor Fellow will often help first year students learn how to identify challenges and build self-advocacy skills. 

It is often Floor Fellows, not staff from OSVRSE, the Wellness hub, or virtual therapists, who are first on the scene to medical emergencies, suicide attempts, violations of safety and dignity, harassment, and disclosures of sexual violence that occur in residence. Floor Fellows respond to these situations instantly and flexibly, because of the proximity, both social and physical, to the residents we support.   It is Floor Fellows who respond after hours, Floor Fellows who proactively identify concerns before they emerge into acute crisis, and Floor Fellows who provide referrals to the professional services that can best support our residents in a given situation.   Floor Fellows often make the difference between life and death in emergency situations, as you will read in many of the pieces of testimony attached at the end of this letter. 

The Wellness Hub, already a target of wide-spread criticism, is not adequate to replace the long-term close support peer support offered by the Floor Fellows role.  The 2023/24 Residence Handbook describes the Hub as offering “short-term, episodic care for students experiencing common mental and physical health concerns.”  In contrast, Floor Fellows, as live-in staff, see and speak to their residents regularly and offer peer support and aid on a constant basis.

The newly created “Residence Life Senior Advisor” though advertised as a mental health support position, does not require any professional certification training in mental health, and, once again, is not replacing the live-in peer support and crisis intervention role of the Floor Fellows.  

Additional protection patrollers, who are not peers, not always available, and do not work during the day, cannot replace the services of live-in Floor Fellows, who support students both during moments of acute crisis, and through the casual everyday difficulties of adjusting to university life.  When a student is experiencing an acute crisis after hours, they are much more likely to reach out to a Floor Fellow, who is a familiar face with an established relationship, than a protection patroller who may be a stranger to them.

Virtual services like telehealth, Maple, and keep.meSAFE do not replace the personalised support from a known trusted, trained, and accountable Floor Fellow. In the business of mental health, it is availability, flexibility, personalization, and warmth that makes the difference.  A faceless voice from the other side of a phone or computer screen is not an acceptable replacement for the proactive and personal care that Floor Fellows provide. 

The Local Wellness Advisor in residence, while an indispensable resource, is simply not able to offer adequate support to over 3000 students.  At the time of writing, the Local Wellness Advisor in residence, Margot Nossal, has no online availability to book a one-on-one support session for any time within the remainder of the academic year.  Floor Fellows, who work closely with the LWA in residence, offer the crucial service of bridging the gap between residents and the LWA by filing care reports and referrals, providing insight to LWAs about the urgency and severity of cases, and offering support and advice when students are not able to access other supports. Without Floor Fellows, the LWA will struggle to identify the residents who need their support, leading to increased mental health problems and acute crises.

The Office for Sexual Violence Response, Support and Education does not have a mandate to handle disclosures and provide appropriate support in the immediate aftermath of sexual violence. In one highly publicised example, a McGill student waited three weeks to receive support from OSVRSE after an incidence of sexual violence.  While Floor Fellows do not provide the same kinds of support as the professionals within OSVRSE, the service provided by Floor Fellows to students in crisis in the aftermath of sexual violence has been pivotal.  The simple presence of a trusted, trained, and accountable figure who can help direct students in crisis to OSVRSE and help them navigate this foreign institution at a vulnerable time can be and has been invaluable - this is the support Floor Fellows provide. 

Suicidal ideation, a situation Floor Fellows are specifically trained to respond to, is nearly impossible to detect without a support system capable of identifying and responding to abnormal behavior from students. The University of Toronto recently made national news after three students ended their own lives within two years. In 2019, a student ended their own life in Waterloo residences. These tragedies underscore the importance of a peer support system in McGill residences.  A national survey of Canadian university students reported that 95% of students reported being overwhelmed, 84% suffered from anxiety, and 80% were lonely or depressed.

When asked about the impacts of abolishing the Floor Fellow position, Dr. Norman Hoffman, a clinical psychologist and former director the McGill mental health program, was direct: “increased number of drop-outs of students with emotional problems, increased suicide rate, [and] increased number of suicides of students after they drop out.”

Other student support services do not fulfil the role of Floor Fellows.  The decision to abolish Floor Fellows will result in death.

In the face of tuition increases, declining applications, and declining institutional prestige, McGill University looks ahead to an uncertain future.  For decades, the Floor Fellow role has been an integral part of the student experience at McGill.  The overwhelming support for and impact of this role is reflected in the testimony at the bottom of this letter.  In the face of an uncertain future, the rash decision to abolish the Floor Fellows, taken without any open consultation, transparency, or due consideration, will, if carried out, be another mark of McGill’s institutional decline.  

Provost Lebeau, it is not too late to overturn this decision.  The Floor Fellows have been made aware that the abolition of the position was not financially motivated, and that Student Housing has refused to transparently release the results of their internal strategic review.   Particularly in light of this, we urge you to come to the table, to work with McGill’s Floor Fellows.   

The Floor Fellows, for decades, have been clear that the wellbeing of our residents, and McGill residence life as an institution is our priority.  We want to be best equipped to support our residents, and have always fought for this priority alongside our own collective interests as workers.  

The Floor Fellows have made clear that we are willing to come to the table.  The Office of Student Life and Learning advertises its managerial philosophy as “Mission-driven, dependable, collaborative, transparent, proactive.”  Now is the time to put your words into action. Residents in McGill student housing deserve an environment that supports their safety and wellbeing, and enables them to thrive. 

Floor Fellows save lives.  We hope that you recognize this fact before it is too late. 

We invite you to read the testimony below.