If everything goes according to plan, students will be able to return to classrooms in September. Today, the board of directors decided to prepare for educational activities where social distancing wasn’t a factor.
So far, the board of directors had assumed that once students were allowed to return to their faculties to attend classes come September, they would still have to maintain their distance from each other. In an interview with UKrant, rector magnificus Cisca Wijmenga said the advantage of this is that it’ll be easy to switch to regular education if the restrictions are relaxed.
That will happen sooner than expected. The ministry of Education thinks social distancing measures can be abolished at the start of the new academic year. That means the UG is now preparing for ‘scenario 3‘: groups no larger than seventy-five people and no social distancing. Students will have to wear face masks when inside.
‘The board is looking forward to welcoming the students back to campus next year, and to meeting each other in person being normal again’, Wijmenga says. UG spokesperson Anja Hulshof emphasises that the plans will only be put in place if the corona numbers allow. ‘We will follow the ministry of Education’s guidelines.’