Update from Your GSA President

Dear members,

I hope that by now, most of you have received the message from the President of the University, stating that in-person classes will be ending as of end-of-day today, and that no in-person exams will be held this term. Updates will be sent from SGS and your respective departments about expectations and graduate work during this time. Please keep an eye out for such statements. For all updates from the University, please visit the institution’s COVID-19 website (https://covid19.mcmaster.ca/) as this is your best source of up-to-date information. Our Twitter and Facebook group channels will also be sharing these resources. 

For all GSA related questions, feel free to email us at macgsa@mcmaster.ca and we will be sure to respond to you as soon as possible. Our office will be closed until further notice. As such, our Annual General Meeting (AGM) scheduled for March 20th has been cancelled until further notice. At this meeting, we were going to approve our proposed budget and student fees for 2020-2021 and we were also going to ratify our elections which. We are currently thinking of alternatives for how to best move forward with these AGM items. Our Safe Talk workshop scheduled for March 18th has also been cancelled until further notice.

We understand that this is a very stressful time for us as students, and encourage you to use our mental health resources at Empower Me. This is how they can be reached.

  • Call the 24/7 helpline at 1-844-741-6389 from anywhere in North America to be directly connected to a trained counsellor—the person answering the phone is not an operator, administrator, or receptionist. 
  • Log in to the Empower Me website and use “Studentcare” as the password.
  • Download additional Empower Me student assistance tools on the iAspiria mobile app. Enter “Studentcare” as the Login ID and select “Student” in the drop-down menu.

Please stay safe and take care of yourself!

Shawn M. Hercules
President
McMaster Graduate Students’ Association
Refectory Building, East Tower
McMaster University,
1280 Main St. West,
Hamilton, ON, Canada L8S 4K1
Work: (905) 525-9140 x22043

Posted in GSA, Uncategorized.