By Chris Lewis | Mar. 11, 2021
The co-student council presidents at Mount Pearl Senior High say the school’s brush with fame because of a Covid-19 outbreak was difficult at times, but it’s served to bring the study body and staff together.
The school was at the epicentre last month of the province’s second major outbreak since the new coronavirus started spreading throughout the world. While that outbreak actually seemed to involve several clusters and included cases in most of the high schools on the Avalon, the students and staff of MPSH were hit the hardest.
Aaron Norris and Victoria Vaters said while it has been roughly a month since the outbreak was first reported, and much of the stigma has passed, it still feels at times as though some people want to point the blame at them and their fellow students.
Norris said when the cases started to rise, he heard a lot of anxiety from the students around him, but with a nearly four-week ‘circuit breaker’ from classes following the outbreak, those feelings are starting to quell.
But, he said, they are definitely still there.
The backlash from some people came as a shock to students.
“A lot of students came to me,” Norris said. “They were saying they were afraid to go out and represent our school, wear their school merchandise including their graduation hoodies in public. That was hard for me to hear because those hoodies are supposed to represent everything you’ve accomplished at school, the fact that you made it. If people are afraid to wear that out in public, well, that troubles me.”
Vaters is happy to say that stigma students were feeling has begun to dissipate, but admitted she did hear similar things as Norris.
Vaters said even doing something as simple as going through a drive-thru while wearing their school’s colours would sometimes result in students being at the receiving end of angry looks and snide comments.
“(People would say) our school was responsible for the whole outbreak, but I mean, it wasn’t really anybody’s individual fault,” she said. “Everyone was following the protocols and measures. It’s unfortunate that it was our school, but it would have been unfortunate if it was any school, which it could have been.”
While Vaters and Norris have not experienced much of the backlash personally, they have been approached by several students about it.
As a result, both co-presidents found themselves providing advice to many of their friends and fellow students about how to handle such encounters, and how to work on overcoming the anxiety that might follow those situations.
The most important thing to Vaters was making sure the students did not try to fight fire with fire. Being the subject of a snarky comment in a grocery store, she said, does not have to be retaliated by making a snarky comment in return.
“That’s not going to get anyone anywhere,” she said. “It’s just important to inform those people that we did what everyone else was doing, following the protocols. I think (some) people just feel the need to place blame, especially since there’s still so much unknown. Really, this could have happened to anybody or any group of people.”
Norris, who is responsible for doing the school’s morning announcements, has been using online platforms like Instagram to carry that out while the school continues with online classes. Through these announcements, Norris has done what he could to spread some positivity to the rest of the student body, especially now when he feels they need it most.
Through it all, the co-presidents said, the negativity the school experienced only solidifies what it means to be a Mount Pearl Senior High Husky: sticking together as students and remaining positive.
“Some of the people I’ve met in that school are just some of the smartest and brightest young men and women that you’d ever get a chance to meet,” said Norris. “They all have so many bright futures ahead of them. And the staff too are just so supportive. They’re always there helping the students along and going that extra mile. That, to me, is what being a Husky is all about.”
