Glasgow Uni exams happening in the same venue as COP26

Crazy that we’re doing our exams in the SEC where world leaders gathered


To add to the ever-expanding list of new university venues, the University of Glasgow has decided to rent out spaces within the Scottish Events Campus for final semester exams.

In a recent email sent this afternoon by the university’s Vice-Principles to all students, it was announced that in order to accommodate as many in-person final semester exams as possible, the university had secured additional examination space within the Scottish Events Campus (commonly known as the SEC), and Kelvin Hall.

According to the pair of Vice-Principles, they expect, “These external venues [to] deliver a high-quality exam experience for students”.

Despite concerns by some students that the university has increased in size beyond capacity, the university says the decision to need extra space for exams this year was to “accommodate in-person exams.”

This announcement comes almost a year after the SEC hosted the 26th annual Conference of Parties, otherwise known as COP26. The world’s largest and most significant annual global climate conference, creating world-changing accords and agreements that help pursue climate action and climate justice on an international scale. 

Over the course of COP26, hundreds of hours were put in place to create the Glasgow climate pact, a set of rough agreements that outlined the hopeful phasing out of coal from global use, halting of mass deforestation, and reducing methane emissions. All have increased since the pact was signed. 

In the space of only a year, the SEC has gone from becoming one of the most high-profile areas, featuring major political faces such as Joe Biden, Nicola Sturgeon, Barack Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to a place which will feature university students being major academic weapons. The massive change in events, although rather surprising, is common for many event spaces globally. One event can be as major as a UN climate conference and can immediately be followed by an Ariana Grande Concert or, for University of Glasgow students, an exam room. 

So, as exam season begins to kick in, and you find yourself sitting in the middle of the SEC campus, looking at the walls around you as you think about the information you plan on putting down on your exam, think about the change that has happened within those walls, and what kind of effort you can put into your exams.

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