Every month, this space, the back page of UWI TODAY, holds our calendar of events. It’s a resource for our readers, on campus and in wider society, to see and partake in what UWI St Augustine has to offer.
Ordinarily, by this time our calendar would be filled with Faculty-driven events for the public. We might have lectures with leading academics from within the university as well as international institutions on the most scientific of topics or the most applicable to our daily lives. In this space we offer shorter educational programmes and even opportunities to work and study abroad. The calendar invites our readers to live performances and films from our student and staff artists. Regularly, this happens.
These, however, are not regular times. As institutions worldwide have been forced to adapt to COVID-19, so has The UWI. The risk of contracting the virus at mass gatherings is too great to allow activities that bring people together in the same physical spaces. The campus has shut. The events that fill our calendar have been postponed and in some cases cancelled. So our back page is an empty one – a very rare (possibly unique) circumstance in the history of UWI TODAY.
There’s no denying that this situation is not good. We can’t pretend that a massive disruption to the campus isn’t happening and that we’re not saddened by what will hopefully be the temporary loss of our activities. But we are not discouraged. And we are certainly not defeated. This institution was created to develop the Caribbean, ensure its survival and growth, and to find solutions for its challenges.
It’s an outlook that allows us to look at an “empty” page as an open page. So this month our calendar is open. The same applies for most of us beyond the campus and the island. The adventure is to fill it in new ways. Find remote sources for work and study. Plan and attend virtual meetups with your favourite groups. Enjoy streaming performances and entertainment. Learn or resurrect a hobby or routine that deepens the self. Or simply be here in this moment. Appreciate the people and things that are so easy to take for granted – now that we see how easy they are to lose.
The Calendar of Events will return.
For now, let's create a new page.
