Solidarity between Professors and Students in the Canadian University: Student Mental Health and the Always Already Mutating Professoriate

Amid the mental health crisis plaguing Canadian university students, the professoriate is an underexplored, yet well-positioned resource. While campus wellness centres and other similar offerings are important interventions, they’re inadequate, requiring students to take the initiative, which many won’t do. All students have professors, however, and this paper argues that the professoriate be re-imagined as a caring profession. Drawing on the work of Hazel Barnes, I argue that in the university-as-church, the professor is akin to clergy, and as such, should exercise (non-religious) pastoral care. I present an ekphrastic reading of the ancient Greek myth of Ocnus to gesture toward the change that is possible in the professorial profession and the professor-student relationship.