News has just broken University Students will be made to sit for pen to paper exams, physically on campus, in the peak of a global pandemic. 

Thousands of students have sacrificed a lot this year to ensure their own safety as well as that of their loved ones, and it seemed like just a few months ago we were experiencing a breath of fresh air with the relaxation of measures and life returning to a semblance of normality. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore with the recent alarming surge of COVID 19 cases, proving that the new variant of the virus spreads like wild fire. Yet, there remains an unfounded and baseless insistence on physical exams by the Administration Staff at the University of Malta, together with the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education.

Students plea that they have sacrificed way to much this year to endanger themselves now when the number of infections is at an all-time high. Measures have been taken to protect the general public, but the student comes last time and time again.

Sign this petition if as a parent, you do not want your child to attend an exam indoors within rooms with poor ventilation, with people from various clusters for hours under examinations conditions.

Sign this petition if as a student you feel like a great social injustice is being leveled against you, were all you’ve sacrificed has been disregarded, and the grievances you have been burdened with where completely out of your control and work entirely against you.   

Dear UoM Administration and Respective Ministers, there are so many unanswered questions:

1. Once students are all in one exam hall, if there happens to be a positive person sitting for the exams, by measures of contact tracing, does this mean that all other students attending physically for that exam will be placed under mandatory quarantine considering they have been in contact with that person?

2. How are students guaranteed that those sitting for the second session of the exam - weeks after the original session - will have an examination paper of the same standard?

3. Considering that there has been a hybridity of lectures during this semester (because of the need to minimize the mixing of students), what has changed thus far? How is it suddenly okay for students to mix now?

4. What procedures will be in place for those students who happen to be stuck in quarantine during both sessions of the first exam sitting?

5. What about those students who have vulnerable persons living at home with them, who are immunocompromised and cannot risk being exposed to the virus? Are their sacrifices of staying inside going to be jeopardized now?

6. The system of online exams has been tried and tested and has proven to be effective. In a situation where the risk of transmission is higher than it was last year and the year before, why are student being made to attend physical exams?