Though UBC’s response to the danger in Japan has been swift, at least one student isn’t happy to be sent back home.

UBC decided Friday to send 19 students from what the Canadian government has deemed level three and four risk areas in Japan back home in urgency. The flights have been arranged and paid for by Go Global, and their return is mandatory.

Elsa Chanez, a student who was on exchange at Sophia University in Tokyo, said she feels she has been given no options. “I do understand their decision, but when I see that my European friends are given the choice to either stay or go, I feel patronized. I have no voice and it’s a bit upsetting.”

Chanez said it is hard to watch the news in Tokyo and wonder if the decision they made was too rash. She had been told the decision would be made on March 21 rather than on the 19th.

“Some of my friends in Tokyo are telling me the situation is fine and that we could have come back with no problems. Once again, we cannot be too sure but I feel time would have been able to tell us. But we were not given the option to wait.”

Janet Teasdale, senior director of Student Development and Services, recommended on March 17 to require UBC students to return home under Policy C69, which gives the university the right to remove students from high risk areas overseas.

“I think you see all universities, all organizations, all governments working to get their citizens and students out of the area,” she said. “We also look at the assessment other countries make—Italy, France, the UK—these countries have different kinds of ways of making these assessments. Some are more or less conservative.”

Teasdale said the level of urgency increased with the nuclear reactor situation at Fukushima. Those who are not in high risk areas will be allowed to stay, but also assisted if they choose to return home.

“We really quickly removed any barriers so that if a student anywhere in Japan wanted to return home or to Canada, they could do that immediately,” she said. Students that were taking advantage of Japan’s mid-semester break to travel throughout Asia were asked to remain where they are and not to return to Japan.

After the quake, Chanez’s parents flew her to Hong Kong temporarily. When she was contacted by Go Global, she discovered that she was not allowed to return to Japan at all to pick up her belongings or say good-bye to her friends and was to immediately fly back home to Marseilles.

Chanez said that her year in Japan was the best of her life, and she was upset at having to leave so suddenly. “I tried arguing with the advisor but she said the ‘situation was final.’ Since I left Tokyo in a hurry, all my belongings are still there. I could not say good-bye to my friends, I still have a bank account and a phone to take care of—these may seem trivial but [they] will become annoying things in the future,” she said.

Teasdale said that while the university is working with Japanese counterparts to ensure the safe return of belongings, the scale of UBC’s actions is unprecedented.

“[Of] decisions in the past ten years, we have never refunded tuition, arranged for travel and required students to leave an area,” she said. “For the most part, the students have been great in understanding the situation and quickly mobilizing themselves in what is a very distressing situation for many of them.”

Students who were planning to leave for Japan were asked to remain home. For these students, and those who were going to start their second semester in Japan in April, it means a semester of classes will be lost.

“We all just lost a semester since we cannot take courses at UBC now until the summer semester,” said Chanez.

Teasdale said the university still made the best decision for the safety of students.

“The university moved quickly and appropriately. Obviously there are some students who are upset that their ideas of studying abroad so quickly ended. But we can work with them on alternate arrangements and alternate plans.”

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