Charlotte LYTTON and
When teenagers become freshers in coming weeks, some of the hallmarks of that rite of passage – few contact teaching hours, a bout of flu-cum-conjunctivitis or two – will still be there. But while the majority of UK universities are planning for a “new normal” intake of adolescents, who are by now halfdazed from the A-level results fallout and absent for half a year from formal education, theory and reality may make for uncomfortable bedfellows by the time mum and dad’s battered Volvos start descending on campus.
Covid-proofing institutions – including those that house tens of thousands of young people in cramped conditions – is prudent, but no number of hand-sanitising pumps at lecture theatre (or, more realistically, union bar) doors will be barrier enough to prevent inevitable outbreaks. What universities choose to do when that happens will be the most important next step for a generation already beaten down by grade pandemonium, cancelled end-of-school celebrations and a damp squib of a “summer of freedom” best written off completely.
The rule usually follows that what happens across the Atlantic makes its way here next; at the State University of New York College at Oneonta, an outbreak of nearly 400 cases – just a week after the academic year had begun – has seen the campus closed down, face-to-face classes cancelled and its 6,000-strong population sent home. The five students accused of organising a party that led to the spike have been suspended; at other institutions, petitions railing against those who commit similar infractions have sprung up, as have hotlines through which to report suspected perpetrators.
The Covid class of 2020 is already staring down the barrel of a much-diminished university experience – one that is meant to be about mixing, meeting, seeing and doing the new: if this wasn’t sweet relief enough for those who have spent 18 years under their parents’ roof, months of lockdown will have intensified such feelings all the more. And campus is surely one of the safest places there is; save for the occasional (generous) lecture in which a certified grown-up stands way off at the front, you are only ever in the company of the very young and non-vulnerable. Of course, students with pre-existing conditions ought to take precautions, but given that under-40s have accounted for less than 1 per cent of Covid-19 deaths in England, it’s hard to see how – even if freshers’ outbreaks push case numbers above what has been deemed acceptable – this would have any real ramifications. A few missed classes, maybe – but when hasn’t that been par for the student course? Deferring university places for this academic year has become the de facto get-out-of-covid-jail-free card for the Government and institutions alike. After more offers than places were doled out, revoked and reinstated following the A-level results shambles, they are hoping to shuffle some of this mess into 2021. Michelle Donelan, the universities minister, has promised “a range of opportunities for development” for those who end up unexpectedly taking the next 12 months out of education; at Durham University, a bursary and guarantee of accommodation has been promised to those who agree to start next autumn instead. How that will work come 2021, when the regular intake will have the Covid tranche on top in a world that may be no less virus-ridden or socially distant than it is now, is quite simple: it won’t.
Young people are one of many groups of corona casualties – mercifully not severely affected by the virus, but who have seen their lives uprooted even so. University is surely a necessary reprieve, then; a place where they can try and return to normality without worrying what hanging out with their friend in the park will do to Granny Norma.
Time enough has passed to witness how the disease is unfolding elsewhere, and begin to apply some logic in our own handling which – as far as travel quarantine, hospital appointments, and returning to work go – doesn’t look amazingly likely. But not every Covid cluster necessitates a shutdown, least of all among the young and well. Inevitable freshers’ flu spikes in the coming weeks may feel more threatening in our pandemic age, but continuing to leave a generation’s lives needlessly on pause is surely the greater risk.
Arrested development could
extend to students’ romantic lives, too, following warnings from Canada’s top doctor. Dr Theresa Tam this week advised avoiding “face-to-face contact or closeness” during sex, and that those who don’t like dalliances at a distance “consider using a mask that covers the nose and mouth”; the lowest-risk form of sexual activity, she added, “involves yourself alone”. Well. Not exactly Mills & Boon, is it?
If Dr Tam does want bed-hoppers to be more cautious, she might consider spicing her guidance up a bit; masks for the role-play crowd, perhaps, or even a hazmat suit. Liaisons dangereuses might not feel so, well, dangereuse with a stash of anti-bac in your eyeline, but it will give new meaning to the notion of safe sex, if nothing else.
Protection concerns are striking all over the place. In an unlikely story combining alligators, a Grade Ii-listed Victorian gas holder and, as helpfully pointed out in multiple reports, “the cheapest square in Monopoly”, plans for a “Florida-style” reptile park on the Old Kent Road have been scrapped following “significant pushback” from furious locals. Of which, let the records state, I am not one: it’s hard to imagine that a gator or seven wouldn’t improve the 1881 eyesore that has become a common feature on my Covid walks. Instead, developers say it will become “some sort of community park” – lower risk of maulings, sure, but much less exciting all the same.