So, my university is unveiling this phased approach to re-opening campus this semester. It’s not going to be fully in person, but it will be opened to students, staff, and faculty, though I think a majority of classes are going to be online.
They just announced this last week, as this week was supposed to be when students started coming in. In the first phase, they start classes only online, so ALL classes are online. The next phase, on Sept 7, they start bringing in first year students, grad students, and law students into the in-person classes. Then in phase 3, they bring in everyone else who’s taking in-person classes. But the thing is, they’re also gonna be doing testing for all individuals, TWICE a week, and honestly the whole thing just sounds so exhausting lol.
Of course, we were already basically all remote over the summer and all the covid jazz, but when we were returning, we had to get a test and only return if we had a negative result, which we did that part. But now we switched to this phased approach, where EVERYONE on campus will take a test twice a week. Luckily it’s a spit test rather than the one where they stick a q tip up your nose.
idk, being someone who’s working in a live audio/lighting position at the university, where essentially, I’m pretty sure almost nothing is going to be happening for the remainder of the semester. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I’m getting paid, but I’m pretty sure I’m mostly going to sitting around just reading tech papers and books to pass the time.
Now there’s news reports of at least three universities I’ve read that opened, but then shut down after their COVID cases just spiked (Uni North Carolina, Uni of Michigan, one other…), and I’m feeling like we’re just gonna shut down again lol. Honestly I kinda hope we do, cuz at least then I’d know I’ll be staying home until January.
Granted, I’m a little concerned still about the budget. My department specifically falls within the student government, which is paid for by student fees, so we’re not funded by the general university budget, so while the university if taking budget cuts, that won’t affect us. However, student enrollment IS down, and further I’ve heard that with so many students taking online classes, they’re offering student fees to be optional (even worse), so we may be making budget cuts ourselves, and being the guy who’s supposed to be doing live sound and lighting for events that are just not happening, I admit I am kinda concerned.
I am the new guy still tho, which i feel miiight help. Also, as we’ve suffered the loss of the previous coordinator, as well as most of our student techs leaving and not being able to replace them, we’ve actually dropped our budget quite a bit (tho admittedly, it wasn’t a planned reduction).
idk. I am honestly kinda considering putting out applications to different places. Even if we get through this semester, I’m wondering if we’ll even be able to have big events by the Spring semester.