submitted by cashdar@augsburg.edu
Since Friday afternoon, when Minnesota Gov. Walz and the Minnesota Department of Health announced new measures to slow the spread of COVID-19—and as those guidelines have been updated in the days since—University Events has been working with our campus partners to address bringing Augsburg events into compliance.
This work began immediately on Friday, canceling events for that very evening, including the Asian Celebration Show that had been set to take place in Hoversten Chapel. Event planners are reaching out to discuss events with our campus partners in chronological order. If you are the contact for an upcoming event and you’ve not yet heard from University Events, you will soon. So far, as of Monday night, we’ve addressed all events through Thursday and some—for which event hosts reached out to us proactively—for later in March. We expect to reach many more event hosts during the day today.
The MDH guidelines do not permit any gathering with more than 250 attendees or any event at which participants cannot maintain at least six feet of social distancing at all times. In our venues, that means that even much smaller events will not be able to take place.
There are three alternatives we are discussing with event hosts:
1. Live Stream / Video Conference (or other alternate modality) – Some events can be conducted online, via conference call, or in other ways that do not require face-to-face interaction.
2. Postpone – For events that will be postponed, we are asking event hosts to hold off on rescheduling for specific future dates at this time. Augsburg will be monitoring the situation and University Events will be in touch with updates about rescheduling.
3. Cancel – Many events won’t be able to be rescheduled for a number of reasons.
When events are cancelled or postponed, we ask that the event hosts do not delete them from the Google Calendars for their office or area. Those calendars are synced to the University Calendar (https://calendar.augsburg.edu), but if events are deleted they will not be removed from it. Instead, please change the title to include CANCELLED or POSTPONED, as appropriate, and that change will be synced to the University Calendar.
We know that many of these cancellations, postponements, and adjustments are and will be disappointing and painful for our campus community, the event hosts, other participants, and our valued community partners. We share in that sorrow, but also know that all of us are doing what we must to promote good health and protect the most vulnerable within our community and among our neighbors.
Please reach out to me or your assigned event planner with questions or concerns.
Sarah Cash-Darvell