News
Aug 14, 2020

Schools to Enact 3-Strike Rule for Non-Compliance with Coronavirus Rules

Staff and students who break the new coronavirus rules three times will have their access to buildings revoked for a month.

Sárán Fogarty News Editor
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Sinéad Baker for The University Times

A number of Schools have decided to ban staff and students who break coronavirus rules from entering School buildings for as long as month.

Staff and students will be given three strikes: the first strike being a warning, the second strike a week-long suspension of access to buildings and the third strike a month-long suspension.

Individuals can anonymously report non-compliance with public health guidelines. The designated Head of School will then reach out to the person who has broken the rules and give them a warning.

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If a second offence is recorded, the offending individual will be denied access to their School for a week, followed by a month without access if a third offence is committed.

Schools that have adopted this policy are operating on the assumption that “in most/all cases this will just be a lack of awareness and some informal promotion of safe behavior will prevent subsequent issues”.

This policy is being adopted by the School of English, the School of Histories and Humanities, the School of Genetics and Microbiology, the School of Mathematics and the School of Social Sciences and Philosophy. The School of Computer Science and Statistics, the School of Education, the School of Medicine, the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and the School of Natural Sciences have indicated that there will be consequences for non-compliance with guidelines, but have not explicitly stated what they will be.

The Schools announced these measures as part of their safety plans, which were published by Trinity this evening.

At the beginning of August, the government published a set of public health guidelines for higher education institutions.

These guidelines relaxed the two-metre social distancing rules, allowing students and staff to social distance by one metre if instances occurred where “teaching cannot be delivered while maintaining 2m distance between students”.

College announced today that students with underlying medical conditions will be able to request that all their course content be provided online, if they are unable to attend their face-to-face teaching and learning activities, College announced today.

Students who wish to move their course content fully online must contact their tutor and Head of Department, who will deal with the request on a case-by-case basis.

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