Monday 16-03-2020 - 14:24

Glasgow Caledonian University has from Monday 16th March 2020, due to potential spread of the Coronavirus, ceased all face-to-face teaching and is currently advising students not to come onto campus.

The Students' Association takes the health and safety of its members and employees very seriously and is carefully monitoring the situation around the coronavirus outbreak. Our Full Time Officers continue to be actively consulted by the University in their response to this situation.

The Students' Association Building and London Office is closed. All Full Time Officers and staff are working from home and can be contacted by email. 

Our Student Advisers will remain available as normal from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, to support students through email. Email: advice@GCUstudents.co.uk.

GCU Students' Association has taken the following decisions:

• All sports club training, fixtures and face to face events (including Sports Ball, Dance and Cheerleading events) are cancelled. Sports Ball/Awards will be rescheduled.
• Society face to face events and activities are cancelled. This includes any society end of year events.
• All our face to face events, including at GCU London, are cancelled.
• The nominations for Teaching Awards and the STAR Awards will continue and events would be moved online. 
• Student Voice and Academic Rep Gathering is cancelled.
• The Nightline Service has been closed and calls referred to the Samaritans.
• Members will receive refunds for cancelled events.
• The radio station studio will be closed.

Thank you for your understanding of these decisions. All members are referred to the latest advice from the University on the coronavirus.

On Friday 20th March 2020 we sent an email to our members with our initial plans to move our services and activities online. This included launching our new Students’ Association Community on GCU Learn that has hosted Ask the Officer events, academic rep meetings, a discussion board and our weekly Online Pub Quiz. The Collaborate Ultra functionality on the GCU Learn Community works in the same way as MS Teams or Zoom. The Teaching Awards and STAR Awards Ceremony will be moved to online events on our GCU Learn Community and the Sports Ball/Awards is planned to be rescheduled to within Trimester 1 2020/21.

In addition to our GCU Learn Community, our Facebook page has held Ask the Officer events and provided signposting to mental health and wellbeing support by the University and externally and suggestions for daily online activities, such as virtual tours of museums, online gigs, online comedy etc.

Our Vice President SCEBE initially created Suzi Dee Daily Lockdown Vlogs (video blogs) that have now moved to a weekly Lockdown Vlog. These light-hearted Vlogs showcase the work the Students’ Association, the University and students are doing each week of Lockdown and adjusting to studying at home.

Our Full Time Officers and staff have continued to supported the academic reps (Class Reps, Department Reps, PGT Reps and PGR Reps) in addressing localised concerns affecting students learning, teaching and assessments.