UG staff will only have to prepare for one scenario for September. There will be no more social distancing and no maximum group size. Rector Cisca Wijmenga announced the decision during a university council meeting on Thursday.
Last week, outgoing education minister Ingrid van Engelshoven asked universities to prepare for two different scenarios, one with social distancing and one without. On August 13, The Hague will decide for good whether social distancing will be a thing of the past.
All over the country, university staff responded to her request with ire. They said they didn’t have enough scheduling capacity or lecturers to prepare multiple scenarios. The UG has now said that they don’t need to.
Disregard
The UG will be disregarding the minister’s advice, the rector said. ‘We’re preparing for scenario 3, which we’d already assumed was going to happen. But we’ll also be doing away with the maximum group size.’ Initially, the UG was banking on groups of no more than seventy-five people, but staff will no longer have to prepare for that.
Should social distancing be maintained after all, classes will have to be down-sized. ‘We’ve done that before, so we know we’re capable of it’, said Wijmenga. Where necessary, educational activities will shift online again.
‘We’ve told everyone to take blended learning into account in their preparation. We’re continuing to grow and we already know we don’t have enough space to house everyone.’