UNIVERSITIES HAVE BECOME JAILS...AND IT’S AGAINST THE LAW TO GO HOME
UNIVERSITY campuses have become penal colonies for legions of highly stressed students. Confined to poky rooms in crowded halls of residence, many away from their parents for the first time, they are prisoners of Covid.
It’s a form of mass incarceration at a key moment in their lives, when they’re meant to be enjoying newfound freedoms.
This week, students who have formed ‘households’ at university have even been threatened with the full clout of the law for venturing out of captivity to return to their family homes.
In a blundering performance this week, the government’s chief medic Jason Leitch executed an abrupt U-turn: overnight he pivoted from saying home visits for students were allowed to warning that they could be illegal.
It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the enormity of what’s happening here: going home will be against the law for young adults who only left the sanctuary of home a matter of weeks ago.
Herded into halls with limited hope of effective social distancing, students are meant to be learning online, while their parents shell-out thousands for their accommodation – though they might as well have stayed at home.
Universities, in the midst of a cash crisis, have welcomed in large numbers of undergraduates, including those from south of the Border and overseas, who pay significant tuition fees.
CASH from students in halls is helping to keep these institutions financially solvent after lockdown put massive pressures on their budgets.
While the commercial imperative overrode other concerns, there was also an absence of planning, both by principals and ministers, whose officials somehow failed to foresee the turmoil ahead.
Was it rocket science to forecast that cramming students into halls and cramped accommodation – then banning them from going home or, temporarily, from bars and restaurants – would create untold chaos?
As in care homes, testing of students has varied from patchy to non-existent.
This is another catastrophic mistake from a government that appears to be busking it.
The idiotic and shambolic presentation of this extraordinary policy aside, where on earth is the clamour of political opposition, the rebellion from the supine SNP backbenches?
Clone-like, our elected MSPs accept these impositions without hesitation, as if Nicola Sturgeon has free rein to micro-manage our lives.
Under the Covid emergency laws, of course, she more-or-less does, though south of the Border Boris Johnson faces a backlash from a growing contingent of his own MPs over the new English restrictions – which are less strict than Miss Sturgeon’s.
But is there no ceiling to the price we’re willing to pay for the ‘suppression’ of coronavirus (the more ambitious plan for ‘elimination’ has dropped out of Miss Sturgeon’s gruelling daily briefings)?
Excluding children – and many first-years are only 17 – from their own homes is a cruel and monstrous escalation of state interference in family life.
It’s no wonder that psychologists warn of the risk of major mental health problems among the student population.
Many of the curtailments thrust upon us in recent months have been made possible only by the goodwill of the public, who largely heeded the message to stay at home and protect the NHS.
It’s a mistake to believe that our collective patience will never run out – that there is an inexhaustible supply of tolerance and understanding.
Rules that are increasingly arbitrary, or simply unjust, will be flouted – and broader public compliance will also be jeopardised.
Miss Sturgeon directed a message to students and their parents yesterday, about how ‘heart sorry’ she was for them.
‘This is an exciting time in your lives,’ she said from her podium. And she insisted students were not to blame for Covid: ‘It’s not your fault.’ How many more times do we have to hear this broken record about how supposedly we are all in this together before, finally, the logic underpinning some of Miss Sturgeon’s assumptions begins to crumble?
STUDENTS have been banned from attending pubs and parties this weekend, while Miss Sturgeon has backed new guidance which puts incredibly strict limits on their movements.
Universities Scotland, the country’s higher education umbrella body, has also said that students are ‘required’ to download the Protect Scotland tracing app.
But Miss Sturgeon muddied the waters by stressing yesterday that it wasn’t mandatory. Frankly, it’s anyone’s guess – they are making it up on the hoof.
Universities Scotland has said: ‘We will intensify our institutions’ liaison with Police Scotland, to ensure vigilance about student behaviour off-campus and in private accommodation.
‘We will take a strict “yellow card/red card” approach to breaches of student discipline that put students and others at risk.
‘While we first want to advise students about breaches of discipline, we will not hesitate to escalate this to disciplinary action including potential discontinuation of study.’
Yesterday, Miss Sturgeon was flanked by Chief Constable Iain Livingstone at her gloomy briefing to back up the get-tough message.
Fines and arrests are a sobering enough prospect – but the threat of ‘discontinuation’ of studies is particularly chilling.
And yet the likelihood is many of those who do get Covid, in this age-group, will experience mild symptoms.
From the start of lockdown back in March, government has betrayed its Big Brother tendencies.
The plan to suspend jury trials and the wateringdown of Freedom of Information laws were thrown out after an outcry.
But they were telling examples of the SNP’s authoritarian instinct which, if not kept firmly in check, has the capacity to wreak havoc.
We are willing to fight on, make sacrifices, and to pull together in a time of crisis.
But we will not put up with more intrusion into family life from a government that is straining our patience to breaking-point with draconian clampdowns, half-baked planning and endless U-turns.