Dear Staff and Students

Management at the Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT), held a special meeting yesterday, 5 July 2021, to discuss and address recommendations from the COVID-19 Incident Management Task Team (IMTT), consisting of critical university stakeholders including representatives from various divisions, Management, organised labour, and student leaders from both campuses.

In the meeting, Management supported the IMTT’s recommendation for an early recess, which means suspension of academic activities on the two CUT campuses, having taken into account critical factors impacting the day-to-day operations of the university.

The decision to allow an early recess is informed by the COVID-19 third wave, and the sporadic violent protests, acts of intimidation, and illegal gatherings by groups of students at both campuses. This means that academic activities will be suspended with effect from Wednesday, 07 July 2021 at 12:00, until Friday, 16 July 2021. As Delta variant COVID-19 infections continue to rise, the after-effect of these unfortunate incidents caused by some students (who do not even wear masks) hold a huge risk to the university to become a super-spreader location of the third COVID-19 outbreak wave.

This decision is in the best interest of the university to bring about stability on both campuses, but also to mitigate and limit the spread of infections due to continual transgression of the Level 4 COVID-19 lockdown provisions by these students.

Management has established a task team to implement further strategies and measures to bring stability to our campuses; to ensure the safety of employees and students; and to restore sound behaviour of all aligned with the Code of Conduct in order to ensure a conducive environment for teaching and learning.

The academic activities will be placed in abeyance for the duration of the early recess. The recess period will be used for formulating feasible solutions to the recurring student-related matters. Students will be encouraged to self-quarantine upon returning to the university residences and private accommodation facilities, since this arrangement has proven successful during levels 4, 3 and 2 of the lockdowns in 2020.

The recurring issue with data that is affecting student assignments, tests and assessment activities, resulting in an inability to keep within the academic calendar, will be addressed as follows: deans, heads of department and lecturers are requested to forward cases of individual students experiencing data challenges to data@cut.ac.za, to be verified by the Director of ICT.

Meanwhile, employees will continue to work remotely from home, while essential services such as administrative support will remain functional across the two campuses.

Residence students will be supported financially to travel home, and this will be coordinated by the residence managers.

Management wishes to express its sincere regret over the inconvenience that you may have experienced earlier on the Bloemfontein and Welkom campuses.

Kind regards / Ditumediso tse mofuthu / Vriendelike groete

Prof. Alfred Ngowi
Acting Vice-Chancellor and Principal

Download the VC Communique, 06 July 2021 (PDF)