Senior Tutor’s Report

Dr Penny Barton

2021 was another year of strange and shifting landscapes for academic institutions. We had a very difficult term in Michaelmas 2020, with the whole of West House being isolated by Public Health England after a COVID outbreak in the block, but we waved off our students in December 2020 expecting them back in January to something more like normal.

Sadly that didn’t happen, and we all went into the big second lockdown over the Christmas period. This led to extensive correspondence with students who did or didn’t want to come back into residence, some in dire and serious need to be living and studying somewhere other than their family home, and others just thinking it might be more fun to be in Cambridge. All teaching was online throughout Lent 2021, and as always some students coped with everything more or less unscathed, whilst others gradually began to slip out of our grasp.

By the time we got to the Easter vacation we were allowed to have students back in College for a broader range of reasons, and there was a general gradual return. Everything was kept quite low key through the Easter term – most meals were takeaways and very few social events were possible. Students were pretty much focused onsite for a long term of revising and then exams – for the second year running almost no exams took place in conventional exam halls. Different Faculties experimented with a number of different assessment formats, and a number of lessons were learnt. For instance if you tell a student they can do their open book exam any time in a 24 hour period (to allow for students in other time zones), but are not recommended to spend more than three hours on it, then it turns out that many students will work continuously for 24 hours and keel over as a result – especially if another 24 hour period begins immediately afterwards.

Sadly the main graduation ceremony, General Admission 2021, had to happen without guests in College or in the Senate House, but as some exam results were late some students had a later ceremony with limited College guests. By September we were able to have a couple of

nice catch-up celebrations for students who finished in 2020, but still without guests in the Senate House.

The late results had knock-on effects in terms of finishing one academic year before the next began, and it felt like we spent the whole summer playing catch up. We were careful not to over-offer for the 2021 A level results, as we are still coping with the very large cohort admitted in 2020 as a consequence of the Government vacillations about A level grades. Our 2021 Freshers arrived in good form and genuinely happy to be at university at last, and the College has had a rather pleasant, calm, industrious atmosphere through Michaelmas 2021.

The other great change over 2021 was the transition to a new Principal. The Fellowship worked hard under the leadership of our VicePrincipal, Dr Louise Joy, culminating in our choice of Lord Woolley. We had a great line-up of candidates, whom we put through a gruelling ordeal by multiple Zoom interviews, and in the end Simon was elected without us ever meeting him in real life. However, he has completely lived up to expectations and we have had an extraordinary Michaelmas term. It was frustrating not to be able to give Geoff the send-off we would have liked, although in the end we managed both a large garden party and a Fellows’ Dinner, the end of a remarkable Principalship n

Sally Nott