Anyone work in a university worried about going back?

[garlictwist]

I haven't been too stressed about corona but I do feel a bit iffy about going back to a campus with thousands of students descending from around the country/world. I just feel like it's going to be a hot bed.

[HilaryBriss]

I'm not too worried, I'm support staff so will stay in the office as much as possible and try to keep away from students as much as I can!

Saying that, I still have no clue when we will be going back, January is looking likely at the moment.

[usernotfound0000]

Support staff here too, we haven't been given a date to go back but January has been suggested, ours seem really cautious about bringing staff back unless there's a really good reason. I'm lucky that I don't work on the teaching side so really there is no reason why I can't continue to WFH.

[MedSchoolRat]

I'm worried about not going back.
for me WFH is challenging, my contract is insecure. I generally like my work & Other jobs are difficult to get (right now).

Foreign student numbers are way down.

[PragmaticWench]

Ooh, not sure we're allowed to call ourselves Support Staff anymore, it has to be the wanky Professional Services title which sounds as though you advertise in a phone box.

We're not going back until 2021 but I'm not worried personally as my department don't deal with undergraduate students, so it's no different to any other office.

[GCAcademic]

Yes. All my teaching is going to be face to face, and our teaching rooms are unventilated. Seeing what’s happening at universities in the US is extremely worrying. Several have had to shut down their face to face operations within a week of the semester starting. Students flaunting social distancing rules and having huge parties are being blamed.

[MrsBlondie]

Already back - part office and part wfh.
Had to do this as results week and then arrivals etc.
I'm office staff and want to keep well away from the students!

[RandomMess]

Non student facing role for me so I could be WFH forever...

[AgentCooper]

‘Professional services’ here too. No idea when we’ll be allowed back but I wish to God we could. I hate wfh. It’s really not good for my mental health at all. Finding it very isolating.

There will be zero face to face teaching in my university in semester one so campus will be dead anyway. We’re fending off questions from students wanting to know if they should sign rental agreements or not because senior management haven’t made an official announcement about sem 1 being wholly online yet and we’re just giving them the facts so they can make informed decisions. The whole thing is disgusting.

[RandomMess]

That's shocking Agent. It seems ages ago ours announced all lectures would be on line and all small group and lab work would be in person.

[AgentCooper]

@RandomMess it’s a fucking joke. We’re all really fed up. The decision to go online completely was only made a couple of weeks ago but there should have been an announcement then. We were told to timetable with 1m distancing in place, which would have allowed for smaller in person groups but they reverted back to 2m and all that work was lost.

[garlictwist]

Ours is business as usual from September. I'm also "professional services" but work on a reception desk a lot of the time and the office is in a lecture building so lots of people using the same loos etc.

[Silversun83]

Professional Services here too and no student contact. We've been told that unless we need to be on campus to do our job that we will be wfh until at least February, when the policy will have been reviewed.

Even staff who need to be on campus have been told to only be in for the parts of their job that need them to be there.

[ramblingsonthego]

I work in student engagement so a lot of face to face with students. I am also based in a student social space with my desk being literally in the middle of the social space (no privacy for me!). It could mean sharing toilets with hundreds of students a day. We have been told to prepare to be back on campus from the beginning of September, and with masks to be worn at all times.

[Chemenger]

I don’t really understand why I can’t go back now, I have my own office, it would be easy to make the corridor one way and we have no social space to speak of anyway. The policy seems to be that nobody goes back until everyone can and the shared offices are a problem. We’re doing minimal face to face teaching at 2m distancing so there shouldn’t be crowds of students. I think there will only be 5 teaching rooms in our building and fewer than 100 students, compared to the usual nearly 1000 maximum capacity.

[FordBlue]

I work frontline in a uni library so I’ve been back since June, but the vast majority of staff will be at home until at least January. It’s fine at the moment since it’s obviously very quiet in vacation time, however I’m a bit apprehensive about the start of term as we’ll be expected to stand in the foyer greeting students, answering questions etc.

Legally, masks have to be worn in libraries but my university aren’t mandating their use in other campus buildings or lecture halls/teaching rooms which I think is an odd decision. First term will be a mix of face to face and online.

[Pertella]

We are going back in September - those that can, and still want to wfh can continue to do so and the rest of us will be in on a rota basis to reduce the number in at any one time.

I'm not sure whats going on with the teaching side yet. There are some courses where there has to be F2F teaching and assessments so I believe its going to be a mix of online and f2f at least until Christmas