A substitute professor at the University of Guelph (U of G) has been put on a leave of absence after allegations of him mocking a student with “severe anxiety” surfaced on social media.
A student posted about the incident on a public Facebook group called Overheard at Guelph, where students post interesting or unusual things they see or hear on campus.
Omoye Otoide, a fourth-year student who was present in the class at the time of the incident, said in a Facebook message that Edward Hedican—the professor in question—allegedly asked the student’s aid if his aid was his “handler” and that the student needed to be “controlled.”
“The boy and his [aid] left, and he looked visibly upset . . . A few minutes later people started to walk out and then Hedican asked if class was over,” she said.
According to Otiode, that’s when a girl stood up and told the professor that she didn’t want to be in a class where a student that’s paying the same tuition as her is being treated so poorly, and that everyone deserves to be respected.
“The class started clapping and pretty much [three-quarters] of the class or more walked out,” she said.
The Charlatan reached out to Hedican and the school for a comment, but did not get a response in time for publication.
However, Alexander Weeks, another student who was present during the lecture, shared his own opinion regarding the incident on the Facebook page.
“I think the prof was very frustrated and uncomfortable because of the situation . . . and didn’t mean to disrespect the student,” he said.
In a Facebook message, Weeks said he understood why some students may have been offended, but he felt it necessary to “give details on both sides of the altercation, as it seemed the masses had already made a firm decision that [Hedican] was an awful person.”
However, for Gabrielle Hoggarth, another student at the U of G, that is not the case.
She said in a Facebook message that this is not the first time Hedican has made questionable remarks.
“There were a few incidences in the previous semester, where I had [Hedican] as my cultural anthropology professor, where I noticed questionable behaviour,” Hoggarth said.
She said while she is not enrolled in the class in which the alleged incident happened, she felt uncomfortable or uneasy in her first-year course with Hedican, and said she thought his teaching method was“more destructive than constructive” towards his students.
Otoide was one of the many students to leave after Hedican’s alleged interaction with the student, and said that she was “shocked” and that she “truly feels for the student that was pretty much humiliated in front of the class.”
As for consequences, Otoide said that she hopes the professor learns from this and “receives proper training” to prevent any future incidents like this one.
In reference to her past experiences with Hedican’s courses, Hoggarth said she was glad to see that the students had stood up for their fellow classmate.
“I don’t think anyone has said anything before because we didn’t think we could. I thought that if I paid tuition and attended class I had no real right to protest. I didn’t think that one voice would make much of a difference,” she explained. “I now know that’s not the case.”
In a statement to the CBC, University of Guelph provost and vice president Charlotte Yates said she finds this situation troubling and is taking the matter seriously.
A representative from the university also told the CBC that the professor had been replaced by another faculty member during this time.
