CARISA LEE

Class­es will re­main vir­tu­al when tu­ition re­sumes at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (The UWI) on Jan­u­ary 17th. 

That was con­firmed by Kobe Sandy, pres­i­dent of The UWI St Au­gus­tine (UWI-STA) Guild of Stu­dents, fol­low­ing his meet­ing on Mon­day with UWI-STA Prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland, to ad­dress ques­tions about the cam­pus’ phys­i­cal re­open­ing for Se­mes­ter Two. 

“We agreed that it is im­pos­si­ble to bring all of the stu­dents—the whole cam­pus—back in full force be­cause of the dif­fi­cul­ty to man­age phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing,” he said. 

Sandy said af­ter the meet­ing, they were as­sured that there will be no ful­ly in-per­son class­es for this se­mes­ter at all.

This came af­ter the Guild, in a re­lease ti­tled “Let­ter of Con­cern”, asked whether the cam­pus will re­open to all stu­dents. 

They said they need­ed at least three months’ no­tice to pre­pare and al­so asked for bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion. 

“Stu­dents have been com­ing to us ask­ing for in­for­ma­tion that we don’t have,” he said. 

On De­cem­ber 22nd, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion an­nounced the phas­ing-in of more stu­dents back to phys­i­cal school. 

This, ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, was af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers. 

Among the list were Post-sec­ondary and Ter­tiary stu­dents, who, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry, will be al­lowed to at­tend phys­i­cal class­es for teach­ing and prac­ti­cals from Jan­u­ary 2022.

Sandy said the uni­ver­si­ty will not be ready, es­pe­cial­ly with the pres­ence of the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble Omi­cron vari­ant among the pop­u­la­tion, con­cerns Sandy told Guardian Me­dia the cam­pus ad­min­is­tra­tion un­der­stands. He said there are stu­dents who may have to phys­i­cal­ly at­tend class­es be­cause of the na­ture of their pro­grammes, but vir­tu­al school re­mains un­til fur­ther no­tice for the wider stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. 

“The cam­pus has a lot of hand­wash­ing ar­eas at every cor­ner; I see san­i­tiz­ers, but the on­ly thing is that those things would have as­sist­ed lim­it­ed peo­ple on cam­pus.  It might need more of those of things when cam­pus ful­ly re­sumes when­ev­er that time comes,” he said.  

He said The UWI will send an of­fi­cial state­ment on this de­ci­sion lat­er to­day.