U of T is experiencing a mental health crisis, a fact I no longer feel the need to validate with examples—they are too many and too frequent to leave any doubt that the crisis is real and that it is happening right now. Student activists have been working tirelessly to lobby our University’s administration to make immediate and meaningful changes to support student mental wellness. Unsurprisingly, change has been slow, if not essentially nonexistent.

The core message from student activists has been for the University to take a proactive, rather than reactive, stance on mental health. The majority of U of T’s existing policies are in place for students who are already experiencing or have experienced mental health challenges or crises. While these services are undoubtedly important, students want the University to also support students in a way that reduces the incidence and severity of these mental health concerns and fosters student wellness throughout the entirety of their degree.

While U of T has established a Presidential & Provostial Task Force on Student Mental Health, the University has yet to make any significant changes to its operations or services to immediately support student wellness. Task forces and student consultations are a necessary part of the University’s long-term work, but cannot replace the need for immediate action from the administration. Many necessary policies will take time and care to implement properly, but I believe there are policies that can be easily implemented now that will both improve student mental wellness and signal that U of T is willing to enact real change to benefit students.

Where do these changes start? With a few simple clicks on ACORN, the University’s website for students to manage their information and academic needs. Many of U of T’s existing academic policies could easily be changed to prioritize the needs of students and promote a culture that is supportive of mental wellness on campus.

Extending the credit/no credit and drop deadlines

Allowing students more time to make decisions about their courses is one of the easiest ways that the administration can begin to lessen the academic pressure put on students by being understanding of their diverse life circumstances. The credit/no-credit option is a good place to start.

U of T’s credit/no-credit option for courses (CR/NCR) allows students to have up to 2.0 credits appear as a “credit” (pass) or “no-credit” (fail) on their transcript rather than receive a grade for that course. These courses then neither affect a student’s GPA nor count towards their program requirements, but they do count towards degree requirements needed to graduate. Some students use their CR/NCR credits on elective courses or breadth requirements to lighten their workload, while others use them on courses in which they are not scoring as well as they hoped.

At the St. George campus, students can CR/NCR classes up until early November for fall classes, early March for spring classes, and mid-February for year-long classes. While this is two-thirds of the way into the semester, most students do not actually have a good idea of how they are doing in a class at these cut-off points. Some professors will only have handed back one assignment, which can be nonrepresentative of students’ success in the class. That is to say, some students may do well on the first assignment or test in a class, but experience hardship later in the semester which seriously impacts their academic performance.

While students are sometimes able to CR/NCR classes past the deadline through their college registrars, many students do not know about this option. Additionally, this decision should not be something that students have to meet with their registrar to discuss. Students should have full autonomy over their courses and decisions surrounding them. It is within U of T’s power to make that a reality.

Allowing students to CR/NCR a class up until the last day of classes would lessen the emotional and mental strain that students experience during the academic year. It would show that the University values student wellbeing and overall success over arbitrary academic policies. It would put students in greater control of their degree.

It is worth noting that this policy is already in place at both U of T’s Scarborough campus (UTSC) and its Mississauga campus (UTM). At UTSC and UTM, students are able to CR/NCR courses up until the last day of class. They are able to do this on their own, without speaking to a registrar or justifying their decision. Why this practice is not in place at the St. George campus is beyond me.

In a similar vein, U of T should allow students to completely drop a course without academic penalty until the last day of classes. This would be an especially important step for students who experience any sort of personal crises, mental health related or otherwise, over the course of the semester. Extending the drop course deadline would replace the existing late-withdrawal (LWD) designation that appears on students’ transcripts if they decide to drop a course past the cut-off date.

Giving students greater control over their courses and giving them room to make mistakes is central to fostering student well-being on campus. U of T is known for its unforgiving and punatory academic environment, and changing the CR/NCR and drop deadlines is one way to start to undo this toxic campus culture.

Cap late penalties at 3% per day

In the classroom, administration could support student well-being and success by capping penalties for late assignments to 3% per day. Some professors already use this low late penalty and some go even lower, to 2% or 1% per day. Others, however, have late penalties as high as 10%—an entire letter grade—per day or, in departments like computer science, per hour. These penalties adds to student stress, particularly during the busiest times of year.

I understand that late penalties serve a purpose and I am not arguing that they should be entirely revoked, but they should be implemented in a way that is understanding of students’ circumstances. Many students have to juggle upwards of 5 deadlines in the same week, often for multiple weeks in a row. Assuming that students could manage these unreasonable expectations if they just tried harder misses the point. The University should not be creating these circumstances for students in the first place, but completely reforming this environment will require long-term, incremental change. As long as U of T maintains its unreasonable and sometimes unattainable standards, the least the University can do is build in small mechanisms to support student wellbeing.

The road ahead

These suggestions are merely a few ways that the administration can take immediate, decisive action to begin to support a culture of mental wellness on campus.

Some may point out that many of my recommendations are actually available to students through various petitions and appeal processes at U of T, which is true. But those petitions are long, hard-fought, and emotionally draining processes in which students are forced to retell their personal experiences again and again in order to justify their difficult decisions to administrators. Students should not have to fight for these decisions; they should be made accessible to all.

If U of T is sincere about its commitment to student mental health, it needs to start making structural changes where they really matter. And it needs to start making them now.