How do you know that things are going very well if you aren’t on site? At the university I work at they have been making all sorts of claims for months. Academic staff only have to be onsite when they need face-to-face contact with students. Senior management and admin staff are on rotas. However, technical staff like myself returned to work full time on 1st September. I was horrified at how little had been done to make the place Covid secure and have been working to get these things in place. Students return on Monday and still it’s not complete. And academic staff have had a nice 6 month holiday and planned absolutely sod all.
Because communication? Not from senior management as I., much like yourself, take all that with a grain of salt. But I have friends/colleagues that have been part of welcoming teams and have been part of the process of setting up the labs and teaching spaces for social distancing. I have seen a huge amount of pictures (again, from friends, not senior management "Ohh look at what we have done").
Also, our academic staff have certainly not been sat idle - the amount of emails/tickets I get daily about COVID related implementations is crazy.
I have been on site a few times, but back in July which is not representative.
I will 100% concede that it could all be nothing and that students will turn up and ignore it, but what I am saying is that from my perspective I am going into the start of the academic term with hope.
As a side note, it would be very funny if we were talking about the same place
.