Student leader says stay home... unless you’re black or poor
A PROMINENT union leader has called for university students to stay at home this autumn to help prevent a second wave of coronavirus – unless they are poor, black, disabled, gay or transgender.
Larissa Kennedy, president of the National Union of Students, warned it was too dangerous for undergraduates to flood campuses but said exceptions should be made for those from certain backgrounds.
During a webinar last week hosted by the University and College Union (UCU), which has been accused of scaremongering after claiming that universities could become ‘the care homes of the second wave’ if they reopen as normal, Ms Kennedy said students had been ‘sold a lie for months’ that ‘going back to [university as] normal is possible, viable, safe’.
But she added some students ‘do need to move’ to university because
‘Gay and trans people can also return to campus’
home might not be ‘viable or safe’ for them and reeled off a list of groups she believes should be given priority. ‘Working-class students’ should, she said, be able to live on campus because their homes might not ‘have all the facilities including technology and broadband’ to study remotely while non-white students should also be able to return, as ‘we know that students of colour are disproportionately [living] in crowded households and disproportionately hold caring responsibilities’.
Disabled students could require ‘equipment, support, other reasonable adjustments’ not available at home, she went on, and gay, bisexual and transgender students could ‘find themselves in [family] environments that are homophobic or transphobic, and need to leave those’.
Ms Kennedy said members of such groups should be given ‘safe access’ to campus accommodation so as not to ‘widen the gap in educational justice’ caused by the pandemic. ‘If we can hold space for students at the margins, for those who – particularly – campus is and needs to be home, then I think we will navigate our way through this situation and ensure that everyone is safe and cared for,’ she said.
UCU general secretary Dr Jo Grady, whose call for students to stay away from campus was branded ‘a blatant piece of politicking’ by the former Labour education secretary David Blunkett, agreed, saying it was time ‘to reach out to them, to get them to where they need to be, and not create the chaos of everybody else moving around’.
The UCU has also been criticised for highlighting a claim by a Left-wing computer scientist that 50,000 people will die if university students return this autumn. Quoting research by Professor Alan Dix of Swansea University, the UCU tweeted: ‘Without strong controls, the return to universities would cause a minimum of 50,000 deaths.’
But Dr Kit Yates, author of the book The Maths Of Life And Death and co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at Bath University, told BBC Radio 4’s More Or Less programme that the study had made a series of major assumptions including imagining that all 1.9million UK students would become infected, over-estimating how many other people students would infect and overstating the death rate.
Ms Kennedy said last night: ‘There may be many reasons why it is not possible for students to study from home. These include but are not limited to; lack of facilities, crowded households, unsupportive study environments and other adjustments that may not be feasible at home.’