Sunway University brings 'celebrities' to campus to practice social distancing

Sunway University in Malaysia has created an international team of celebrity "Social Distance Companians", a simple and creative measure to get its student community to practice social distancing on campus. This measure features the cut-outs of well-known personalities and leading figures who will 'mingle' with the students at lunch times and revision times across the entire campus as they permanently occupy certain seats on the campus.

This is part of one of the measures to discourage students from sitting too close to each other and ensure the one-meter social distance seating is maintained. The campus believes the cut-outs will provide a positive distraction to the current challenges of the “new norm” on campus whilst offering up some unique photo opportunities for the student to community to share with family & friends.

In a statement to A+M, the spokesperson said the university believed it would take a more “interactive and innovative approach” to try and encourage the younger generations to embrace social distancing once back on campus. It was also explained that the campus had been planning this for a while, and the idea fit in naturally with the other social distancing measures the campus had put in place.

Some of the Social Distance Companions working on campus at Sunway University include Malala, Einstein, JK Rowling, Will Smith, Woody from Toy Story alongside Jack Ma & Mr Bean.The figures were chosen for various reasons, some for their outstanding contribution to society, some for their inventions, academic brilliance, some for their sheer popularity and others to simply provide unique photo opportunities for the students on campus. The post on Facebook by Sunway University has garnered over 4,000 likes and 3,300 shares as per today.

Elizabeth Lee, CEO of Sunway Education Group told Malay Mail that rather than placing a huge “X” to discourage people from sitting too close to each other, Sunway planted celebrity cut-outs on seats which could otherwise be occupied by another to provide a bit of fun as students could take photos with “celebrities”.

Take a look at some of the cut-outs by the University here:

Jeon Jung-kook from BTS

Ed Sheeran

Mr Bean

Meanwhile, KFC Singapore also brought in new dining companions in stores in June at eight selected KFC restaurants, as part of its social distancing measures. The cut-outs of Colonel Sanders were spread out across the store, featuring a series of four different Colonel, including two cartoon Colonel 'Buddy' Sanders, a young anime Colonel and the original Colonel Sanders.

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