Staff at Providence University College, whose main campus is in Otterburne, received word on February 28 from their downtown Winnipeg campus, that a number of their students had been assaulted.
Dr. Nicholas Greco, Provost of Providence says they were notified just before 3 pm last Wednesday.
“We found out that a number of our students were involved in something in downtown Winnipeg, then later we also found out there were five students that had been assaulted somewhere in the downtown area. We believe around Winnipeg Square. Three students were injured.”
Greco continues, “from what we understand, one was taken to the hospital and was more injured than the other two. But all of them were released. So, we're glad about that, and that there appears to be no lasting injury to those students. In fact, one of the descriptors that some of our staff were applying to the students was, resilient.
“It seems that these students are resilient. They have been very kind to us in the midst of this difficult situation, but of course, they're anxious as well.”
Greco shares what steps they have taken to help the students and staff process the incident.
“So, what we did is, we actually canceled classes on Monday and Tuesday. So, there were no classes at all in these last two days. We've resumed classes today (Wednesday). Now that might seem strange in terms of this event happening last week, but we're trying to figure out how to actually, you know, be with our students.”
Greco continues, “We had some staff that were at the site (in Winnipeg) yesterday. We had people at the site at the end of last week too, to council students that might have wanted counseling, and we thought that if we canceled classes on Thursday and Friday, students would not have come to the site. So, we were able to then help them and shepherd them by having those classes continue on Thursday and Friday last week.”
The five Prov students were all from the Winnipeg campus which is located on Main Street in Winnipeg. Providence Downtown & Buller School of Business opened in May 2022.
Greco says when it comes to keeping the students feel safe, they are working to have more security at their downtown Winnipeg campus.
"I believe that's effective today (Wednesday) we’ll have security guards on site. Now we're glad to say that nothing happened within the campus, but we have increased the number of security guards that are present in the building. We're also making sure that those security guards are able to be with the students as they go to the bus stop and get on the bus. We're doing what we can in the area to make sure that our students are safe.”
He says they are also giving the students all sorts of strategies to be safer.
“Of course, these are difficult things to deal with but we're giving them tips, as well the police will be giving a presentation to them. So, that's one of the tangible things. We're also modifying our class schedule. Originally, our classes ran till 9 pm at our downtown campus, but we're moving those classes ahead so that students would not be on that later bus, but perhaps by an hour, hour and a half earlier. That way they could get out of the downtown core. I think that would be helpful to our students as well.”
Greco says Providence has counseling available to students and many took advantage of it last week. “As well, the VP of Student Life was there in the last few days, and our chaplain will be there this week, to attend to whoever might want to speak to someone, in terms of spiritual health as well as mental health. So, we want to care for our students. It's such a difficult situation, but we're hoping that we can care for them and give them the security that they need at this time.”
With this being the first reported incident of this kind from their Winnipeg campus students, Greco says that going forward he hopes that all students will be able to thrive in the education they are receiving at Prov.
“We want them to feel safe and we're trying to do as much as we can to mitigate the anxiety that they're feeling, in feeling unsafe. We're hoping that you know, through our instructors and with the strategies we've put into place, that this will allow them to not need to focus on the things that are happening around them or even on their own safety, we're hoping that they could take all of that attention and focus it on learning and that's really why we're here, is to teach and to impart knowledge to these students. And so that's what we really want to do.
“And we want to make sure that they're safe here, too. I mean, it sort of breaks my heart to hear that people have been hurt and we don't want that. We want to work with our community. We want to work with police and City Hall to make sure that the city is a safe place to be, and we know that we're not alone in this, we know that many people have felt unsafe in the downtown core. And so, we wanna see if there's a way for us to work with our partners to make sure that people feel safe and are safer in the city of Winnipeg.”