Why are we okay with students being locked up in their dorms?

[JKRowlingIsMyQueen]

I just heard about the students in Manchester who are not allowed to leave their dorms.

Why on earth is this allowed to happen? So the rest of us who are not students are allowed to get pissed in a pub, get on a plane and travel abroad and back etc., but if you are a student you are not allowed to LEAVE your dorms?

What science are these kind of rules following? The science of Boris needing more ammo to blame young people for spreading the virus?

I'm losing hope.

One of the insane things is that in many of the unis, there are staff coming and going, town people and tourists right outside halls etc. Locking them in won’t even work that well?! My only hope is that the locked down halls mean those students then get tested for antibodies and are immune and can get on with their lives. But that won’t happen will it? The unis won’t spend the money on that

@user1487194234

There is a huge difference between self isolating in your own home in your normal family unit and asking 17 year olds in a small room in a new city living with complete strangers to self isolate If people can't see that then I despair

Absolutely. I really worry about the mental health of these young people.

I genuinely cannot believe that every parent on here crying 'those poor students' didn't think this though and say to themselves - and their child - 'Covid will come into your halls of residence, and will spread. You will have to self-isolate, probably more than once. What will you do, and how can we prepare you?'

I said to DH multiple times I'm so thankful we dont have a uni age child as I dont think I'd be able to leave them in a new town, without knowing
anyone, without being able to leave their room. My sibling was very homesick when they went to uni which led to years of MH problems, and they weren't confined to their room!
Awaits to be flamed as a snowflake

@cantkeepawayforever but as everyone says, they are adults and make their own decisions. And they want to move on. It's tgat or spend another year at home doing nothing.

If they are being locked in, having key cards wiped, locks on fire escapes there's a 100 year fire disaster in the making ...parents need to go and collect their children. That's it, year's over, defer to next year or the year after that. These students quite clearly aren't going to be receiving any sort of education this year - or next year - and they're there only so their money student debt can subsidise the unis and student landlords.

We've all taken losses due to COVID - why shouldn't unis and landlords? Locking young people away and letting them take on debt to give cash to prevent COVID losses in the very wealthy is totally unacceptable. In fact, it is the epitome of the banality of evil.

@cantkeepawayforever Not everyone has parents to look after them that way. I didn’t when I went. Students are already at risk of mental health problems. My FIL is a University Dr. One year two of his students committed suicide. They have been lied to about the courses they are getting and are paying a high price for a much lesser experience than promised. I’m hoping that the pastoral support is there to see them through these first few weeks is really my point.

And a lot of these positive results is because some Unis are testing everyone when they arrive. So picking up asymptomatic cases and stopping the spread. It's not all about parties, it's because Unis have a good testing system.

The horror for me is the amount of people around me (at work) who think it's completely acceptable and almost deserved because young peopl were encouraged to go out and prop up the economy all summer and are now being punished for it! I feel like I'm going crazy trying to work out when society shifted to this level of callous thinking. It's a horrible direction to be going in 😞

[quote mumsneedwine]@cantkeepawayforever but as everyone says, they are adults and make their own decisions. And they want to move on. It's tgat or spend another year at home doing nothing. [/quote]
Yes, and like adults, they take the consequences of their decisions - they stock up, they prepare themselves for the likely periods of self-isolation, they moderate their behaviour if they want the periods of self-isolation to become less common. Like the rest of us. they are either adults, or children. If they are adults, then let them be adults.

@cantkeepawayforever

I genuinely cannot believe that every parent on here crying 'those poor students' didn't think this though and say to themselves - and their child - 'Covid will come into your halls of residence, and will spread. You will have to self-isolate, probably more than once. What will you do, and how can we prepare you?'

Probably the same parents as those who think schools are safe too.

Then the family should have decided not to send their child to university. This was absolutely predictable, indeed inevitable, and EVERY parent should have prepared their child fully for this eventuality and talked through strategies.
You don't send your child to University
You support your adult child's choice

Should only people in nice houses be expected to isolate?

People were not ok with Dom Cummings travelling cross country because he didn’t fancy isolating in his current house. Why would it be ok for students to do so?

Obviously they shouldn’t be locked in, or fire doors blocked but if you’re supposed to be isolating, you’re supposed to be isolating.

We (parents) were told there would be easy/regular/weekly testing and when some went 3 weeks ago the situation wasn’t as bad. Some labs and f2f was meant to be happening. 18-21 year olds most likely won’t get ill. The closures of whole halls and security guards is extreme imo

5 words: EAT OUT TO HELP OUT 🎉🎉🎉

Students and young people literally did their patriotic duty as the government directed them to. Then were immediately scapegoated for it.

Locking people in is the extreme part. Everyone has to isolate with a positive case (although even then it’s generally just the same flat) but it’s the first time we’ve locked people in.

@PeterRabbitt I agree. We have become a nasty nation. Rather than finding ways to make this work people just want to lock people up. Unis are trying though - most of them anyway.
My DD is having fun at the moment. Being careful & meeting outside in small groups each day. It a possible and most people are doing it right. Freshers flu is a real thing and any bug will spread when people live closely.
The bekind movement didn't last long.

No other adults have been treated like this

Surely they have - on cruise ships/in hotels all over the world.

[quote Spudina]@cantkeepawayforever Not everyone has parents to look after them that way. I didn’t when I went. Students are already at risk of mental health problems. My FIL is a University Dr. One year two of his students committed suicide. They have been lied to about the courses they are getting and are paying a high price for a much lesser experience than promised. I’m hoping that the pastoral support is there to see them through these first few weeks is really my point.[/quote]
Of course, for those students who do go away to university, the mental health and physical health support MUST be there, and I hope that the universities have those teams actively working with isolated students as we type. That's what i meant by 'having the support they need available' - universities MUST be providing for bopth mental and physical health and everyday wellbeing.

However, that isn't a reason why the students shouldn't be required to isolate when they are close contacts with confirmed cases - as all of us have to, by law.

I feel very sorry for students at the moment. They are paying full whack for courses despite not having any face to face teaching, tutorials and so on. Many of them were only told at the last moment, conveniently after they'd had to sign up and pay for accommodation which they wouldn't need if courses are being delivered remotely. Now they've been literally locked into their halls and flats, with many of them being Freshers with no ready-made friends or network to rely upon yet.

There is a generation of young people being very badly let down.

@cantkeepawayforever where are the rules about locking them up and keeping then prisoner ? Sorry, I missed that bit of legislation going through. The same rules apply to students as every other adult.

@CuteOrangeElephant

Students are adults. We wouldn't accept this for any other demographic but it's ok to treat every single student that lives in halls as if they are feckless.

This is collective punishment. We should not be ok with that.

Fully agree. My son started at Uni a few days ago. He's been sensible and has followed SD etc. He went out on Saturday evening to the college common room, saw it was busy and returned to his flat. It's completely unacceptable if he gets caught up in one of these crazy "everyone locked down" scenarios when he's done nothing wrong.

Locking down a particular flat/corridor is something that's obviously the right thing to do if someone in that flat/corridor tests positive. But locking down entire blocks is completely outragious.

@noblegiraffe I agree. If a close contact tests positive you isolate. But what has happened here is a few flats have cases and 400+ people have to isolate. That's like saying I get it and my 400 nearest neighbours have to isolate. I've probably never met them.

It’s obviously unpleasant and restrictive but aren’t they locked up with each other? So they have loads of company.

Locked fire doors?! Wow! [shocked]