In the 2004-2005 academic year, the Commerce Society Assembly voted to put commerce students’ annual $50, opt-outable fee towards a $10,000 endowment for exclusive counselling services from the Health Counselling and Disability Services (HCDS). The next year, the School of Business took over the funding for the exclusive counsellor at Goodes Hall, and now it’s available twice per week—
one day for undergraduates and a second day for graduate students. Students and professors alike can book appointments on their own website and skip a three-week wait at HCDS. The situation essentially amounts to a small-scale, two-tier health care system on campus.
Amanda Chan, ComSoc vp (external) said, “Our lifestyle is [such] that Goodes is almost a one-stop point for us,” and added that the counsellor was hired primarily for convenience. Surely students from all faculties would benefit from the convenience of shorter wait times for counselling services. There’s nothing in particular about business students’ lives that would put them in greater need of a counsellor than other students. This underscores the disparity between faculties at Queen’s, especially the endowment of the School of Business in relation to others 0on campus. Putting a price on students’
health is morally wrong—especially when the price changes across disciplines. Although HCDS should exist to serve all students, regardless of the faculty they belong to, they cannot be to blame for providing extra care for a particular demographic that has expressed a need and paid the price.
Neither can the School of Business be blamed for looking out for the best interests of its students. But the University bears an equal responsibility for all students, and they should not have allowed this to appen. The need to set up a separate system indicates there is a problem with health services at Queen’s. Although the School of Business’ exclusive counsellor is an additional counsellor and is not taking away from the services regularly supplied by HCDS, it remains unfair for business students to have greater access to health services. Students in each discipline experience stressful life circumstances and should have an equal right to all of their health-care needs—physical or mental.
Whoever approved the separate system failed to notice that something was inherently wrong with letting a specific group cut ahead of the rest of the line.
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