Students and teachers in Nain are upset about changes to an online Parks Canada contest that challenged schools to create a video about a national park and possibly win a trip to Banff, Alberta.
The grade eight class at Jens Haven Memorial School in Nain, northern Labrador, made a video about the importance of the Torngat Mountains to the Inuit.
They had 5000 votes — putting their video in first place last week — but then Parks Canada reset the contest over the weekend after the initial launch was beset by computer glitches.
The Labrador students are discouraged by the change, according to their teacher.
“They felt like giving up, some of them did, they kept saying: ‘We’ve already lost,'” said Natalie Lushman.
Before the reset, students could vote once a day but then Parks Canada changed the rules – voters must register and it's only one vote per email address.
At least one Labrador student argues that gives an unfair advantage to schools in large towns or cities where a lot of people live.
“We have a small population, here in Nain, we're already outnumbered by the big schools in different cities, so this is very upsetting to us,” said Brianna Brown.
An official said Parks Canada has had trouble with the contest since voting began on Feb. 1.
"We were informed by a teacher that the system was hackable," said Andrew Campbell, director general of external relations for Parks Canada.
"We weren't sure whether others had figured out a way of, in fact, breaking into the voting system and adding votes."
Restrictions were created, but that made it impossible for many schools across the country to vote for several days.
This past weekend the website was taken down entirely, and then put back up with all the voting reset to zero.
Campbell said it was necessary.
“Just to be fair to everybody we informed the schools and the teachers that we would start the votes over again, bring the system down and redevelop a fairer voting process," he said.
There are no comments yet