UPDATE – FRIDAY, MARCH 13th

After careful consideration and consultation we have decided to keep campus open for both generations of students should they choose to remain.

As far as we know, to date, no current UWC RCN student or staff member has been infected with the Covid-19 virus. All measures put into place by our College are purely precautionary and follow the advice given by the health authorities.

Our prime concern has been, and will continue to be, keeping our student community safe and healthy. In order to be able to do so, we must minimise the risk of any current member of our community being infected and, at the same time, provide safe spaces should any community member fall ill.

We have asked all first-year students to contact their parents immediately and make a decision if they would want to remain on campus or if they want to return home for the rest of the term. We will make arrangements to support them with online contact with their class and teachers if they decide to go home. As travel is becoming more restrictive in many parts of the world these days, they should plan for the journey to happen immediately. We will provide support for the travel arrangements.

If a 2nd year student should prefer to go home for the rest of the term, following consultation with their family, they would also be granted permission and given help for travel arrangements. However, they should be aware that they would not be allowed to come back to campus given the current health advice in our part of the world. We would support them in attempts of finding an alternative IB centre for taking their examination, but are not in a position to guarantee this.

Stringent precautionary measures are being put into place on campus for the coming period to ensure the continued health of our students. Some of the most important are:

• Visits to campus are limited to the strictly necessary
• All programs at our centre for visitors have been cancelled, both to minimize risk of infection and to free up capacity for isolation units in case of needs
• Students should stay on campus
• Physical contact between students and staff who live outside should be kept to a minimum

Beyond this, we keep on stressing the normal health advice emphasising good hand hygiene, coughing to the shoulder etc.

We keep regular contact with our local health authorities and receive good advice from them. Updated information about the situation in Norway with regard to Covid-19 can be found in English here.

White mountains, fjord and high spirits. That’s what Friluftsveka (Outdoor Week) is all about. Some of our students never saw snow before. Now they found themselves on skis on a steep slope and all were looking toward spending a night outside in a sleeping bag.

It was a great experience to see the students evolve. Some, that weren’t able to stand on their skis when we arrived, rocketed down the hills on the last day.

In their reflections, students often describe Friluftsveka as the experience of a life time – surely that goes for this one as well.