This swaddling of students is bad for us, and bad for the country

Unless woefully naive, no student beginning their first year of study this autumn would have expected an experience unburdened by lockdown policies. Communications from my own university, Glasgow, where I started as a fresher last month, promised Zoom quizzes, fully online teaching and hand sanitiser stations everywhere. Not ideal but, given that they were throwing in two complimentary face masks, I decided to give it a whirl.

Some have argued that students unhappy with such provisions should have deferred a year. In reality, it’s not so simple. The usual opportunities for those who defer – picking up casual work in a bar, travelling – are absent. For many, the choice was between university or another period with little to do.

And, admittedly, to begin with it wasn’t so bad. The early days in halls were a blast, given that socialising these days tends to happen indoors (students, unsurprisingly, have been known to contravene the rules when it comes to numbers). Even pubs were off limits – Nicola Sturgeon announced a studentspecific ban on them for one weekend, although quite how pubs were supposed to single out the students from the regular pretentious dressers I’m not sure.

Still, it hasn’t really been worth trying to go out. The police in Glasgow have singled out students above all others as requiring stringent enforcement; in freshers’ week, bobbies would drive by our halls multiple times during an evening, breaking up house parties and dispersing groups on the street. The university has adopted a “red and yellow card” system, in which two violations of Covid rules will see you hauled before a judicial panel, with the threat of expulsion.

It all seems unnecessary as I write this, however.

Things have become quieter since an exponentially increasing number of student households have developed Covid, and had to enter a prolonged selfisolation. I’ve been lucky enough to escape this fate – although it’s surely only a matter of time.

And what of the educational input? Well, the virtual will never be able to fill the shoes of face-to-face teaching. In part, the tech simply isn’t up to scratch; varying Wi-fi speeds mean you can’t always guarantee clarity, and it seems almost cruel to expect lecturers to have mastered cumbersome and unintuitive platforms such as Zoom and Moodle. Yet even if we had South Korean internet speeds and a cast of tech-savvy teachers, online education would still suffer from low engagement (it’s much easier to be shy behind a screen), awkward, forced interactions, and short attention spans.

It’s not what I wanted from my student experience – and I don’t think it’s good for the country, either. Swaddled Elizabethan children, wrapped tightly in cloth to prevent them hurting themselves, grew up to be stunted adults. I’m worried today’s students, denied the rites of passage afforded to our predecessors as our Government swaddles us from the merest hint of Covid transmission, will emerge into adulthood with smaller personalities and a less rich tapestry of life experiences.

And why are students making this sacrifice, given that even the Government downgraded Covid from a disease of “high consequence” in March, and for the young the risks are even more miniscule? We should take the risk and let students get on with it.