The gates of Trinity College at College Green in Dublin. Image: Leah Farrell The gates of Trinity College at College Green in Dublin. Image: Leah Farrell TENS OF THOUSANDS of third-level students will tomorrow begin the new academic term at colleges across the country.
The challenge now for both institutions and their students is to adapt to public health guidance and often at short notice. Only yesterday, Higher Education Minister Simon Harris told colleges that all lectures should move online for the next two weeks, with the exception of a small number of essential lab practicals and workshops.
“We want life to be normal, we want our students to have a great social life, a great learning experience and for that to take place in somewhere like Trinity, that’s what we want but we just can’t have that this year,” Catherine McCabe, Dean of Students at Trinity College Dublin explained to TheJournal.ie.
Since then Donegal, home to Letterkenny IT, has also moved to Level 3 and several other counties including Louth and Waterford, which are also home to third-level institutions, are on a knife-edge in terms of their position at Level 2. “We’re not entirely sure how this is going to pan out but we do have accommodation available for students, flexible accommodation available for students… we have extra health services available for students in terms of counselling and we’ve seen an increase in our services there.”
“Those will have to be booked and on a 45-minute basis… We’re mindful that while students need social spaces, they need learning spaces. And what we didn’t want to do is just say ‘there’s a marquee, it has loads of space’ because again, it has to be safe for students. It’s like being at a match and people keep moving the goalposts on you. “We’re happy enough and we’re going to keep firing ahead, and one of the things we’ve done is for freshers’ week, which is such an important experience, is to have some sort of semblance of normality.
“It’s basically a freshers ball online… we’re going to try and keep people engaged but mainly we want to give students something, it’s nowhere near where it should be but it’s the absolute best we can do. We want them to have something that looks like freshers’ week.”