To: All Queen’s Students

Please find attached a letter from the Minister of State for Universities within the Department for Education. As ever, the assumptions made throughout the letter and some of its content do not apply to our context directly. There are, nevertheless, sentiments which are important to hear (along the lines of ‘thanks for putting up with all of this; you’ve done remarkably well’!). 

With reference to hardship payments, I do need to spell out that we are not given payments on the scale given to large Universities (our next payment will be £780). You may recall that the last two payments came to around £2500 in total and, following consultation with the student body at two points, you advised us to purchase more e-resources for the library as a way of enabling more students to benefit, and to off-set the fact that many of you found yourselves buying more books personally, or incurred greater costs than normal in sending back library books. We shall consult with you again about this more recent payment.

In sending on this government communication let me repeat our own thanks, as a staff, to you for bearing with us, and even managing to flourish, through these extraordinary past 14 months. We are not ‘over it’ yet, and need to be cautious and sensible in the immediate months ahead. But things are feeling a bit different and more hopeful already.

With all good wishes

Clive

(Edited by Judith Rossall - original submission Tuesday, 18 May 2021, 4:47 PM)