‘We all keep each other accountable’: How university roommates have handled COVID-19 precautions as Thanksgiving looms

In a townhouse near Wilfrid Laurier University, 21-year-old student Ryan Lane lives with his four roommates, and — more often than not — three of their significant others. It is, Lane said, “a pretty packed house.” So, they’ve been trying this fall to keep their bubble tight.

That meant no outside friends, unless the visit was in their yard out back. They have a group chat to coordinate which floor of the house has to be quiet and when, to work with each of their Zoom call requirements and give space when someone has to study or write a midterm.

“We all keep each other accountable, and before we go out and do anything that would be out of the ordinary, we make sure we check with everyone, and make sure everyone’s comfortable,” said Lane.

If they didn’t trust even one or two housemates to follow the rules, the arrangement would fall apart. “This is something we talked about coming into September…I’m not going to come back here if we’re not going to be safe.”

As students approach the first long weekend of the school year, a time when many traditionally head home for Thanksgiving, the Star checked in with several students living in larger houses about how they’ve been managing pandemic precautions and studying from home — as well as the potential risks to their families if they return home from campus for the weekend.

Lane noted that one of his family members is immunocompromised, and that risk had informed his choices about exposure since returning to school — he wanted to be able to visit over the coming long weekend without worrying about harming them.

Each of the students who spoke to the Star said they believed their house was taking public health considerations seriously — though several acknowledged that they’d been inside the same house with more than 10 people since returning to campus.

Other students, in their view, were being less responsible.

“I definitely don’t think people are being safe and taking this seriously at all,” said Cassidy McMackon, a fifth-year student at Queen’s University. “I had a guy on Tinder say, actually, ‘I’m having a party tonight, do you want to come?’”

McMackon pointed to a house party that took place on Sept. 18, which had been connected to at least five COVID-19 cases by Oct. 1.

Some of the individuals associated with that party were Queen’s students, the local public health unit confirmed to the Star. The university said that 20 cases from the “campus community” have been reported to them between Aug. 31 and Oct. 4, including 10 last week.

McMackon said she lives with three other Queen’s students and a member of the military. Three of them had significant others, all of whom had visited — two lived locally and one had been back and forth from Sudbury.

Then there were their friends. “I have one friend who’s come over a couple times, and then there’s been two other people we’ve been seeing,” she said. Two of those friends live together, while the other lived in a separate house. She said she’d visited his home since returning to school, and wasn’t too concerned about exposure to his other housemates.

“I do think the people that are really behaving themselves, for lack of a better word, are suffering,” said McMackon.

Before public health began advising households only to see one another, when circles of 10 were allowed, she said larger houses were unable to have friends over and might be forced to choose how many housemates could see their significant others.

“I think it definitely presents challenges, especially because if (even) one person in the house comes into contact with a COVID case, everyone else is kind of screwed over,” she said.

McMackon said some of her housemates plan to spend Thanksgiving in the GTA, but said she trusted them all to be safe. “I’m not worried about when they come back,” she added.

Toronto Mayor John Tory, on CP24 Monday, urged families not to convene with university-aged kids for the holiday.

“Unfortunately, that is the advice…they’re going to come home into a setting with their parents who might be up into that age range where, you know, there’s a vulnerability there,” said Tory.

But Luke Jin, 21, a student at the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus, said he doesn’t believe that message has been communicated adequately to postsecondary students — including himself.

The first he heard of that advice was from a Star reporter, he said. Lane, too, said he hadn’t heard the guidance about Thanksgiving before being asked about it on Tuesday.

If the rules were “set in stone,” Jin said that he and his housemates would follow them, but his plans until that point had been to visit his family in Ottawa over the coming weekend.

He and his three housemates have been around roughly 15 people recently, he said — including the four of them. All of those friends either lived with each other or on their own, he added.

Earlier in the fall, they’d had events like cookouts at their house, but whittled them back as cases began to climb. “Especially because reading week and Thanksgiving are coming up,” Jin said. “It’s not like we want to pass it to our families, who I guess are higher risk than us.”

Jim Dunn, chair of McMaster’s department of health, aging and society, said it wasn’t surprising to him that Jin didn’t know what the public health guidance was for Thanksgiving. He pointed out that Ontario’s chief medical officer of health last week by advising people to ensure their turkeys were fully cooked.

“What shocks me about the current situation is there seems to be an incredible reluctance to tell people specifically what to do,” Dunn said.

The province has since advised households not to mix during Thanksgiving, with Minister of Colleges and Universities Ross Romano saying Tuesday that students should stay put this weekend.

“They are young adults, and I trust that they will make smart decisions,” he said. “I trust that they are going to respect their own health and safety, and the health and safety of their family and their extended family.”　

Dunn pointed to a as an example of how activities that would be seen as “quite innocent” in usual times could contribute to outbreaks. Eleven cases within the outbreak were linked to three student houses.

If students were living in larger houses, Dunn said there should be clear communication not to interact with anybody else, or travel home to visit family this weekend.

“Have a Thanksgiving with only your roommates,” Dunn said. “That’s one way to manage your risk.”

With files from Ann Marie Elpa and Kris Rushowy

Victoria Gibson is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering affordable housing. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email: