Just to be clear my e-mail was sent out by my faculty so perhaps your faculty is the one who messed up here. It was from the Academic Advising Office.

It read:

This notice is being sent to all students registered in the Faculty of Humanities.

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The course withdrawal deadline of November 6 has been changed due to the Strike by CUPE 3906, Unit 1. The revised date for course withdrawals will be one week after the end of the labour disruption or November 30, 2009, whichever is earlier. This change is in accordance with the Senate policy on the Rights and Responsibilities of Undergraduate Students During Work Stoppages that Substantially Disrupt Academic Activities (http://www.mcmaster.ca/senate/student/stoppage.htm).

I received it on November 5th.

Originally Posted by georgeb.1990

When was this email sent out? My MUSS account was automatically cleaned on Nov 2nd and since then the only strike related email I've had was to tell me that the strike has ended with no mention of the drop deadline.

there was no email from mac. don't listen to the above poster.

One thing you will quickly learn on this site is what I write is absolute.

No email was sent from Mac that talked about drop deadline.
There was an email which said pay attention to the McMaster Daily News for updates.

Now. You say you did not get an email from Mac. So this means you thought the deadline was on Nov. 6th as normal. MUGSI says the deadline was nov. 6th, as you mentioned above. So you should've thought the deadline was Nov. 6th anyways.

Instead you got second hand information for which you did not check the source.
btw another thing you will notice about MacInsiders is that many of the posts are shit (not any of mine).

tl;dr you messed up.

^^^Thanks for putting it so bluntly. The point is I received no information from the university, my faculty, or any official source so I had to rely on second hand information. I know I handled a risky situation poorly and am at fault but so is the university somewhat. They couldn't update the course drop page? The course drop pdf? Send out emails by themselves instead of relying on faculties? What makes this worse is that everyone I've spoken to was under the impression that it was the 30th as well. I'm going to try my luck tomorrow regardless.

This is the email I got on the 5th. It's from the University, I received nothing from my faculty regarding the strike.

To McMaster Students:

McMaster hopes the strike by CUPE Teaching Assistants and Research Assistants will be resolved soon in order to minimize the impact for all students. We are pleased that CUPE 3906, unit 1 has agreed to let members of the bargaining unit vote on the University’s contract offer. We hope that every TA and RA on campus participates in the vote so that the result reflects the true views of the entire bargaining unit.

The University’s best offer includes higher wages, improved benefits and new provisions that improve the working conditions of teaching and research assistants.

The full offer can be found at http://www.mcmaster.ca/opr/labour_relations/cupe_2.html

Offer Highlights:

• Hourly wage increases that raise pay to $39.40 for graduate TAs and $22.15 for undergraduate TAs
• Improvements to dental benefits with the University increasing its share of the cost by 12% for those with individual coverage
• Continuation of the union-administered benefit fund of $150,000 per year

The union vote will be conducted this Sunday and Monday for all TAs and RAs (in lieu of TAs). On Monday the University is providing a free shuttle bus from the campus to the union office where the vote is taking place that day.

We hope that the outcome of the vote will be acceptance of the offer and an end to the current strike. We appreciate your understanding during this time.

George: Plead with your faculty. It may feel like it's an 'end of story' kind of deal, but even if the drop and add deadline wasn't all wishy-washy this year, you could potentially get the course dropped. If you go make a big fuss about it, you may end up getting what you want...it's definitely worth a shot.

The moral of the story is: The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Remember, the university works for you...that's what you paid tuition for.


But naturally, you should do it as soon as possible because, well...tick tock.

I agree with Mowicz for the most part.