Employees must work from home for the next three weeks, unless they have to provide a physical form of education or carry out on-location research. All physical education on campus is timetabled and remains unaffected. In addition, the university is going to ‘further optimise online education.’ For the rest, students can continue to make use of the study spaces on campus and the university library.
Temporary
Brinksma stresses that these measures are temporary. “If the measures work successfully, we will gradually be able to open our doors again. If not, we will be going into lockdown in three weeks’ time.” The university is also looking for (online) alternatives for the organisation of major events, such as graduation ceremonies and the Dies Natalis.
Own initiative
Barely any changes can be seen on campus on Tuesday. For example, the Spar supermarket does not have a policy in place for face masks. “Customers are not obligated to wear face masks,” says staff member Stacey Markus. “In principle, we have kept up with all the rules so far. All we are doing now is making sure that the measures are respected even more.”
At the StudyStore, they are asking customers to wear a face mask from Wednesday onwards. The shop has hung up flyers with the text ‘Please, wear a face mask,’ among other things. “We are doing it on our own initiative,” says staff member Siham Bouhtala. “We cannot force customers, but hopefully this message will encourage them to wear face masks anyway.” Bouhtala considers that wearing face masks is especially important the busier the shop gets. “It is relatively quiet right now, so you never really exceed the maximum number of five customers. But for example, the new course for law students will start next week, so we’re expecting more people to turn up,” adds colleague Kommer Hakkenbrak.
Trusting people
In front of the Food Plaza are Filipino students Don Quebral and Bea Quintos. They are almost the only ones on campus who are wearing face masks on Tuesday. They arrived in the Netherlands just a few days ago and are actually still staying as much as they can in their room in the Hatta building. But today they have to do some grocery shopping. “As far as corona measures are concerned, things are so different here than in our country. Here, it is a matter of trust that people will take responsibility, whereas in the Philippines it is all about tough measures, such as a total lockdown, checkpoints and a curfew.”
The Urban Management and Development students know that face masks are not mandatory, but still choose to wear them. “We wear face masks because we are afraid of infecting people,” says Quintos. Before they left for the Netherlands, they had to be tested and their results were indeed negative. “But you never know if you’ll catch anything during the trip,” says Quebral. “So, better safe than sorry.”
