Lockdown rules have failed our students, Nicola...

LIKE many Scots, I went to university at 17. The 60 or so miles between my East Neuk village and the centre of Edinburgh could have been the Atlantic, such was the difference between the two worlds.

Living away from home for the first time was daunting, but exciting. I didn’t get into halls of residence, but was placed in a university-owned flat with four other freshers I’d never met before. We were above a pub on the Grassmarket and next to the city morgue. There were easily 20 other flats in the scheme and parties every night. I called the police to a fight on the street below my window in the first week – it turned out the chap left lying on the pavement had been stabbed.

I went to freshers’ fairs, joined clubs, drank until dawn and climbed Arthur’s Seat, with dozens of other first years, to watch the sun come up – fortified against the weather with a hip flask and three jumpers.

For all that I remember the fun, I also know that I found it hard. Being unsure of yourself, being away from people you know and who know and love you, trying to find new friends or a group you can fit in with amongst people with wildly different backgrounds and experiences to your own is tough.

So, I cannot imagine what it’s been like for this year’s new students. First, having their school year disrupted and their exams cancelled. Shut in the house under lockdown for three months, unable to see their friends or go to their leaving ceremony or school prom. The results fiasco robbing them of their surety or confidence to get on their course. No way to take that final holiday with their friends before they go their separate ways or to work through the summer for drinking money for uni. Being told that they have to be on campus, even though many of their lectures will be moved online.

Then arriving at university to be told they can’t have parties. Or hug new friends. Two-metre distancing meaning snogging is forbidden. So too, sex. The usual room-hopping for halls parties before going out is out of the equation. And then the virus outbreak reaches campus.

So far, hundreds of students have tested positive and were initially told to self isolate and get tested, just like everybody else. But then the new restrictions on not meeting other households came in across the country and they were told they can’t go home to visit their parents. Then Nicola Sturgeon decided to call all the unis together to come up with draconian new rules to try and suppress the outbreaks ripping through campuses.

THOSE living in university accommodation have been barred from leaving their room or flat. They’re not allowed to go to the park for a walk or the shops. Extra staff have been brought in to walk the halls and monitor their movements. The wider student population – all quarter of a million of them – have been told that they are barred from going to coffee shops or pubs and everyone must download the government’s tracing app to their mobile phone. Those who break the rules are subject to disciplinary action up to and including being suspended from their course, while all are prohibited by law from going back home. They’re not allowed to break the expensive rental agreements they signed for flats or halls either.

Some students are being told to wash clothes in the bath because they are not allowed in communal laundries, others that they would have to sort out their own supermarket delivery – some are unable to get slots for days. The dangers of thousands of students coming together to live cheek by jowl has been flagged as a Covid risk for weeks. Opposition politicians, parliamentary committees and government advisors all raised concerns and called for widespread testing of the student population. Now we have thousands of teenagers stuck miles from home, cut off, isolated and miserable. No wonder the Scottish Government’s suicide prevention adviser has warned that quarantining students is a ‘mental health tragedy waiting to happen’.

These teenagers have suffered enough this year. Nicola Sturgeon needs to grip this situation, fast.