Paying to be a Prisoner: Lockdown in Student Halls
Casting my mind back to my Freshers’ experience, around eight years ago, I can’t help but feel sorry for the generation of 17/18 year olds that have just embarked upon what will likely prove to be a pretty dismal first year at university. The transition from highschool to university can be challenging enough, with teenagers expected to take on a host of new responsibilities while simultaneously getting a first taste of real freedom from parental oversight, and lockdown measures will undoubtedly amplify this challenge, as students will be unable to access face-to-face support services and must instead rely on the endless company of their new flatmates.
Halls are famously poor value for money — cramped rooms which barely accommodate a bed and a desk, with mouldy, communal toilets and mouse-infested kitchens. In fact the only plus side to living in these minimalist prisons is the social life — you’re surrounded by people from so many different backgrounds it’s almost impossible not to make friends — and unfortunately that aspect has effectively been banned under the lockdown guidelines. However, unsurprisingly, this ban has not been strictly adhered to and university accommodation has become the source of large scale COVID-19 outbreaks in both Dundee and Glasgow.
As a UofG student I thought I would compare two emails the university sent us. The first arrived in my inbox approximately 10 minutes after the ban on students visiting pubs, restaurants or their own families was announced by the Scottish government. It reminds students that compliance with accommodation rules is essential and offenders will be punished using the yellow/red card approach — two strikes and you’re out. Evictions will admittedly thin out the density of students in halls and protect those following the guidelines from their dangerously irresponsible flatmates; however sending the rule breakers home will then surely risk greater spread as students potentially carry the virus back to their local communities.
The email concludes with the somewhat contradictory line that “we are all in this together”, when quite clearly “we” — the student body, with a particular emphasis on first years staying in halls– are at a significantly greater risk due to the fact we’ve been herded into Glasgow, while lecturers and most university staff continue to live at a safe distance from the student throng. Speaking to my friends who are foreign students, many are quite rightly aggrieved that they returned to Glasgow, only to be put under house arrest a couple of weeks into the start of term. “I can’t believe they brought us all back, without anticipating this,” a friend from the Netherlands tells me. “It was obviously going to spread in halls; I mean it happens every year with fresher’s flu. I personally blame the university, more than the government. They were creating this ‘business as usual’ narrative for most of the summer, telling us we need to be there in person to make use of the ‘world class’ facilitates; so I came back and am paying a ridiculous amount for rent, with zero time scheduled in the university and no chance of getting a job to support myself.”
This neatly leads into the second email, sent on the 10th of August. Your university experience will be a bit different this year, it begins, but “…we expect the majority of our students will be in Glasgow for the start of the session and we want you to be here, on time and as planned. Our campus is open, and our students are able to access our world-class facilities and resources…” One line also promises a commitment to prioritise “the health and safety of our students and staff”which begs the question, how was this halls-related crisis allowed to happen in the first place?
The clue lies in the final paragraph of this email which assures students that if they are unable to arrive in time for the start of term, their accommodation will be held for them and they will only have to pay from their date of arrival. The message is clear — just one month before the outbreak in halls, students were still being actively encouraged to come and stay there, even if the pandemic had affected their ability to travel and they would be missing the start of term. This was only one of many opportunities that the university had to discourage students from attending in person — they could have offered full refunds on accommodation and told students who hadn’t yet made the journey that they would be safer staying at home — but this did not happen.
Instead undergrads flocked to student halls, such as Murano, where flats house up to as many as 12 and kitchens and bathrooms are all communal. There is a well established hierarchy of student residences in the city and Murano definitely hovers somewhere near the bottom. It’s located in Maryhill, a lone student outpost around 30 minutes away from the campus and gentrified West End and while in previous fresher’s weeks, serried ranks of taxis would speed drunken freshers to and from the Glasgow strip aka Sauchiehall street, this year they’ve been replaced by Deliveroo and Uber Eats.
It is well known that a normal year in Murano can be quite an insular experience, spent hopping from flat to flat, as it’s too grim to spend much time in your own and the local pubs aren’t particularly inviting; therefore it is not unreasonable to conclude that the university was fully aware of the risks and high likelihood of an outbreak under these conditions, yet still decided to entice students back, with a set of safety protocols in place, that effectively amounted to asking teenagers to safeguard themselves during a week when they would usually be out partying every night, snogging strangers and trying to make as many new friends as possible.
Something as simple as ensuring students downloaded the track and trace app upon arrival could have easily reduced the spread within halls as it is likely many foreign students were entirely unaware of its existence when they arrived. Students should be capable of behaving responsibly during this pandemic, but legitimate mistakes could be made, particularly when the lockdown rules differ from country to country and many new arrivals to the city of Glasgow will have been used to mixing with unlimited numbers of friends back home. Ultimately, it only takes a small number of irresponsible offenders to rapidly spread the virus under these living conditions and, while these students must be held responsible for their actions, the university must also explain why they didn’t consider actively restricting the size of the new student population when academics, such as Professor John Ashton, were making a strong case for limiting in-person numbers to a third of their usual size.
The obvious answer is profit; however Glasgow University struck a 60 million pound deal with private housing company, Sanctuary Housing, back in 2002 which transferred maintenance responsibilities at six of the largest halls, Murano included, in return for profit — all student rents are contracted directly to Sanctuary until 2035. It is possible that the Sanctuary deal contains a clause which effectively forces the university to fill spaces and would refuse the refunds that I proposed earlier in this article. This should now be clarified, as if that is the case, this should highlight the importance of universities’ maintaining full control over their own accommodation. Another possible explanation is simply that, in a year when universities realised that only offering online lectures would probably see their attendance figures drop, particularly amongst overseas students, they decided to conceal the truth from these prospective students, along with the rest of us, in order to maintain the revenue stream from international tuition fees.
Either way, it seems that the university consciously encouraged students to find a term time residence in Glasgow, when it was really in their best interests to stay at home. This is especially inexcusable since around 40% of the university’s intake already comes from the West of Scotland, and if this group alone had been advised to stay at home, halls would have been substantially less crowded and the risk of transmission reduced. Additionally the university seemingly failed to implement any of the simple measures, such as testing students upon arrival and dispensing free face masks and enforcing their use in communal areas, that scientific advisor Professor Sridhar was recommending in early August. Their response has been similarly slow, with many students complaining about food shortages and a general lack of support from staff immediately following the outbreak.
This could all have been avoided if the student body had not been encouraged to return to Glasgow en masse, but whether the universities themselves should have taken this decision, or the government, who doubtless wanted to avoid the economic impact that would result from curbing the “student boom”, the fallout from this outbreak is far from over. Admittedly, the university has made certain ‘generous’ concessions over the last few days, including setting up a food fund for those who are forced to isolate and a blanket first-month’s-rent refund for everybody staying in halls, but an extra few hundred pounds is little consolation for the many who are currently feeling isolated and alone, through no fault of their own.
