Trillium College

I am one of three students in a particular intake group for a Massage Therapy program at Trillium College's Kingston campus. We were all forwarded an anonymous memo (dated February 24th) via email on February 27th, wherein we were told that we would be put on a mandatory break from March 16th, through April 27th. In this email, the *** () told us that she would come to our class to discuss this with us, which did not occur.

When the three of us went to the office of the , they assured us that this is in our best interest, in spite of acknowledging that it is (at least in part) a financial decision by the college. When asked why we were only finding out about this now, almost 4 months in to our program, the *** said that this issue has been known (by the college) for some time. It was not made clear why we were only just informed of this. The *** assured us that we'll make some of this break time back, over the course of the program, but how that would occur was not stated. As a student, there is no realistic way that is possible: Massage Therapy is traditionally a 3 year program, and this is already a condensed course, down to 88 weeks. Additionally, we will have hundreds of clinic hours to fill while we are doing our coursework.

There is a clause in our student contracts that class schedules are subject to change, but a short-notice, 6-week mandatory break is well beyond any reasonable changes under that clause.