Dear All
Happy 2022 to all members of the Queen’s Community! I hope that whatever your personal and local circumstances you had some experiences of joy and took some opportunity for rest over the Christmas break.
Following up the message from Dave Allen of Dec 22nd, I am now writing with a further update following the Queen’s Leadership Team’s meeting yesterday, at which we considered the latest Government guidance to educational institutions, and with specific reference to our own context.
Our decision is that we should meet face-to-face as much as possible as from next Monday (Jan 10th). This means that all teaching sessions which are due to be face-to-face will happen as planned. This decision is in keeping both with what has been communicated to us representatively by the student body, and with Government guidance.
We are able to make this decision because of the safety measures already in place on site (continuing use of hand-sanitization stations, mask-wearing in classes and other confined spaces, appropriate ventilation). All who come on site will need to continue to adhere to these. We also expect all those who come on site (whether as visitors or our students), to test negative before they come. Wherever possible (supplies allowing) we strongly encourage people to test more often than the minimum twice-weekly, and the ideal would be to test each day that anyone will be in contact with others on site. Test kits will continue to be made available for this.
We accept that some members of the community may feel uncomfortable, for medical reasons, about coming on site. Reasonable adjustments will continue to be made to enable those wishing to remain off-site to access the learning made available. The form of this needs to be at the discretion of individual tutors as live-streaming may not always be possible. Furthermore, sufficient notice will need to be given to tutors to enable any form of hybrid learning to happen. Patience and understanding will be needed on many fronts as we negotiate our life collectively as a community through the coming weeks. It is, however, a relative joy that we have reached a situation where much face-to-face encounter can continue.
Beyond teaching sessions, we are able to clarify:
· chapel worship is able to continue as before, following the protocols which were already in place (hand-sanitization, mask-wearing, ventilation, social spacing as far as possible);
· communal dining can continue, although efforts will be taken to organise greater spacing between tables, in addition to continuing to provide socially-distanced tables and alternative eating space;
· the library remains fully open as before.
As things stand, the UK Government is due to review its current guidance on/by Jan 26th. Though the timing is tight, this does mean that we are as yet making no decisions about Feb 1st, the next time (and only date this term) when there will be on-site Tuesday evening lectures, and thus when the campus could be especially busy. We deemed it unwise to try and pre-empt matters, or whatever guidance will be given, in the hope that we may be able to continue as we plan to in the coming weeks.
I trust that you will be pleased as a community that we are able to make these more positive decisions about the immediate future, despite the still precarious situation Covid continues to present to us. It is important that we remain careful, and appropriately cautious where necessary, whilst also recognising that we are a community which thrives on personal encounter, knowing that, invaluable though it has been and is, Zoom alone will not do!
With blessings and best wishes for the calendar year ahead
Clive