Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) has called for upcoming exams to be held online due to the high numbers of coronavirus in Ireland.
Foundation Scholarship (schols) candidates and first-year students are due to sit exams next week.
Trinity has previously said it will only enact contingency plans if public health guidelines mean the exams cannot be held in person.
In a press statement, the union said: “TCDSU has consistently raised the issue of exam safety since November, achieving a significant decrease of in-person exams in December’s session. Despite frighteningly high case numbers currently, Trinity refuses to move exams online without further government instruction.”
The statement continued that currently, students must provide evidence within three days of their exam of having tested positive for COVID via PCR, been contact-traced by the HSE or been unable to acquire a PCR appointment. However, current advice for people under 40 is to take an antigen test instead of booking a PCR.
In an email to students, Senior Lecturer David Shepherd confirmed that the exams would be held in person, and that deferral arrangements had expanded in light of the changing coronavirus situation.
“If you have symptoms consistent with COVID but cannot access a PCR test, you must not attend an in-person exam or online exam on campus and must contact your Tutor immediately, and prior to the starting time of the examination”, Shepherd said. “Retrospective evidence of having taken or scheduled a PCR test must be submitted within three days of the scheduled examination. If you have received a positive result on an antigen test and have been unable to take or schedule a PCR test, you must submit a screenshot showing that no slots were available within three days of the examination, along with a photograph of your positive antigen test. You must follow HSE advice around testing.”
“If you are a household or close contact of a confirmed COVID case, even when you are fully vaccinated and showing no symptoms, you must restrict your movements until you have received a negative PCR test or for the duration advised by contact tracers, whichever is longer. You must not attend an in-person exam or online exam on campus while restricting your movements, and you must follow HSE advice for close contacts. Contact your Tutor on the first day to inform them of the household member’s positive result, providing them with a copy/screen shot of the text message confirming the positive PCR Covid result from the HSE to the household member or the text message to you confirming you as a close contact. Make sure that the date is displayed.”
“If you cannot attend due to COVID-related international travel disruption, you must contact your Tutor as soon as possible and provide documentation showing that your flight(s) or other international travel arrangements have been cancelled or substantially changed for Covid-related reasons.”
TCDSU Education Officer Bev Genockey said in the statement that “TCDSU and its representatives spent a large portion of last semester advocating for the automatic right to defer exams, and if ever there was a time to implement this – especially in the context of JF exams – it would be now. Moreover, when the impact on invigilators, students and families is considered, it becomes increasingly apparent that the safest approach for college to take is to move exams online entirely.”
On Schols, Genockey said: “It would be prudent to enact the contingency plan to move the exams online – the means is tried and tested: last year, scholarship exams ran online, smoothly, and maintaining the integrity of the exam to as high as possible a standard in the midst of the public health crisis that we are still experiencing – what reason should we have to believe that this year would be any different, and for what reason should individuals’ health be put at risk unnecessarily?”
In a joint statement, Graduate Students’ Union President Gisèle Scanlon called on College to provide students with FFP2 face masks, as well as facilitating a second Schols exam session before Trinity Monday to ensure “no-one is left behind”.
In an email statement to The University Times earlier this week, Trinity Media Relations Officer Catherine O’Mahony said: “As it stands, the plan is indeed for exams (both Schols and those JF that are scheduled to be in person) to go ahead in person. The usual caveat applies to this; unless public health guidelines change.”
Update: 06:40pm, January 6th, 2022
This article was updated to include information from an email sent to students from the Senior Lecturer.
