Some 40 members of Trinity’s academic staff signed a letter to Provost Patrick Prendergast urging him to close the College “for all bar essential lab-based teaching”, less than 24 hours before Trinity announced that lectures would be suspended for the rest of the semester.
The letter, obtained by The University Times, was sent to Patrick Prendergast last night, before staff and students were informed that lectures will be delivered online for the rest of the academic year, but laboratory sessions, seminars and tutorials would still take place on campus.
The letter said: “We write to you with a simple request – to close the college for all bar essential lab based teaching and to move administration, teaching and other work to remote, home working.”
“The country faces a crisis described yesterday by Professor Sam McConkey as akin to the 1916 Spanish flu combined with the Wall Street Crash plus the Civil War. We are most concerned in the first instance with the health issue”, the signatories wrote.
“Covid19 is a killer”, they said. “Mortality rates estimate at between 1-3%. The HSE has not disputed that up to 1.9m persons will be affected.”
“That translates to excess mortality of between 19000 and 57000 deaths.”
“Students, and to a lesser extent staff, are generally not in the most at risk groups. However, it is clear that persons can be asymptomatic or have very mild symptoms while still being infectious. Thus they can infect persons who are immunocompromised or at risk, unknown to themselves.”
The 40 signatories of the letter.
“Congregating hundreds of persons in concentrated spaces is the absolute antithesis of social distancing”, they said.
“College should take a lead and CLOSE. This will not stop the pandemic. It will however slow it, by some unknown but worthwhile level, providing crucial breathing room for health and emergency services to deal with incoming patients.”
They concluded: “We can do this. We should do this.”
In addition to suspending lectures, Trinity has closed the Book of Kells, Science Gallery and Douglas Hyde. The College stopped admitting visitors from noon today, in order to be able to shut at 1pm.
An email sent to staff and students, signed by Prendergast and Vice-Provost Jurgen Barkhoff, stated that Trinity is continuing to run the smaller teaching sessions – lectures, seminars and labs – while cancelling lectures in order to “maintain continuity of teaching and learning while minimizing the need to bring together students in large groups”.
“Social distancing protocols” will be implemented in the teaching sessions that do go ahead, the email said.
Last week, Provost Patrick Prendergast confirmed in an email to staff and students that a person in Trinity had contracted the virus.
Another email, sent on Sunday, said that “the member of the college community who was diagnosed with the coronavirus appears to have made a good recovery”. The email, sent by College Secretary John Coman and Acting Director of College Health Dr Niamh Farrelly, also said that no new cases have been diagnosed in Trinity since.
