Uni students coming home for lockdown

[Chocolatecake12]

As title says..... my ds is saying he wants to come home. His girlfriend came home yesterday, (different uni) and another friend came home today.
Out of his flat mates (Halls) only one out of 5 is going home.
I’m in two minds - id love him to come home, I miss him etc but I also feel he should stay until Christmas as government are advising.
He currently has two online lectures and two face to face. One if those is practical hands on.
He hadn’t had any advice yet from the university.

What are people’s thoughts? I’m not sure I’m Capable of seeing Things clearly right now!

He's paying over £9000 for his course plus accommodation fees, he's being offered face to face lessons, his flat mates are mostly staying with him, and at home he'd have lockdown and not meet up with anyone...

Won't he get more out of staying there? He's presumably coming home for Xmas next month anyway?

[quote MrsPernicious]Guidance says:
If you live at university, you must not move back and forward between your permanent home and student home during term time. You should only return home at the end of term for Christmas. We will publish further guidance on the end of term.

www.gov.uk/guidance/new-national-restrictions-from-5-november#going-to-school-college-and-university[/quote]
So pleased to see this

Obviously if his mental health is suffering, that would be different

@Sunflowers246

Obviously if his mental health is suffering, that would be different

Why the smiley face?

I thought you could meet up with one other person outdoors?

Oh, apologies i added that as I felt bad about me previous response. Sorry if that appears misplaced

@Sunflowers246

Oh, apologies i added that as I felt bad about me previous response. Sorry if that appears misplaced

Oh, I thought it was a kind of 'you could always say it's for his mental health even if it's not' type of thing.

I agree totally with your first post, don't feel bad. Made perfect sense, made me think the grass isn't always greener...

Thank you so much for all your replies. Lots of valid points for both sides - stay or leave.
For those that asked why he’d want to come home - I think he’s thinking he can do his online stuff from the comfort of home and get a few home cooked meals!! I’m also thinking he thinks he will be able to see his girlfriend and other friends however I would definitely be putting my foot down there and not allowing that.
My instinct is to tell him to stay However if he really wants to come home I won’t stop him. But I will make him aware it’s not going to be much fun here!

DD is over 600 miles away and from the start has been worried sick about being left on her own. They've no idea if Scotland will lock down, but one flatmate has parents going to collect her. Everything is online for DD, no face to face at all, so she's made the decision to come home. Also, we haven't socialised with anyone in the house since lockdown, so she knows she's distancing (mainly in two rooms, or chair in lounge 3m away from us), mainly using one of the toilets/sinks and we'll all be adhering to high levels of hygiene. Not sure if she's making the right decision as most of her friends are at uni, so it'll be just us and no cafes. However, she had work lined up 10 December (after online exam), but she's spoken to them and can start in two weeks.

It's not cruel. He has studying and lectures to do. It's what he went to Uni for after all.

No, it is absolutely not what our young people went to uni for. This was a part, but what about everything else? Where's that? The inter-relationships with others? The socialisation, the confrontation of ideas, the chance encounters, the coffee shop odd meetings?

What about them?

It's not only 'studying and lectures. You'd pay a lot less for that doing OU in yer mum's back room, if that's all you were expecting out of uni.

@Miljea

It's not cruel. He has studying and lectures to do. It's what he went to Uni for after all.

No, it is absolutely not what our young people went to uni for. This was a part, but what about everything else? Where's that? The inter-relationships with others? The socialisation, the confrontation of ideas, the chance encounters, the coffee shop odd meetings?

What about them?

It's not only 'studying and lectures. You'd pay a lot less for that doing OU in yer mum's back room, if that's all you were expecting out of uni.

He’s not going to get any of those back home during a pandemic lockdown either though is he? No coffee shop meetings that’s for sure! My DS is in his fourth year and was lucky enough to have those in the first three years but not so much now. He’s basically studying and going to lectures. Oh and working a PT job.

Mine are both staying. Ds has quite a lot of face to face stuff he doesn't want to miss but he said quite a few people on his floor in res have already gone. Dd is staying mainly because most of her friends are staying and they all live together.

If they had asked to come home, I would have let them though :)

If he has face to face stuff, it's probably better staying I would have thought

Namechange84 (why? 🤔)

"I teach at a university. This is actually against government guidelines and against my universities rules. Students are supposed to stay at their term time address for this lockdown.

The more students return to their parents’
homes all over the UK, the more cases will increase. Siblings will take Covid into schools. Parents into workplaces such as hospitals and care homes. They should really stay put. My university is telling students this very clearly. Unless it’s due to genuine illness or self isolation the usual absence policy will be applied. Going home is against rules and missing face to face teaching for these reasons will not be overlooked."

Oh, namechange 😉 we all know this is nothing to do with Da Rulz. This has everything to do with students paying fees to the unis and for Halls.

Please don't pretend otherwise.

My DS's 'MUST ATTEND/COURSE INTRODUCTION' week went, prior to his arrival, 9-3 Mon, Tue, Weds; nix Thurs; 9-1 Fri. Til he arrived. Booked in. Paid.

Then, suddenly-

9-1,Thurs. online. End of. 4 hours. Online. For 7 days 'course introduction'.

So please don't chuck 'government guidelines' at me.

I have 2 DDs away at uni, and they are staying put. As far as I know, there are not lots of students heading home. I hope they will find a way to have some fun, but guidelines or not, if they start getting depressed or are struggling in any way, and want to come home, I would encourage them to do so.

My DS is coming home to Guernsey where he will self-isolate for two weeks as per the rules here . He has been at uni since mid Sept has met 6 people in his flat and had one in person seminar. He has spent three weeks isolating in the flat out of six . There’s no way I would put him thru isolating for two weeks at the end of term and then for two weeks here . He can study here and have a normal life in 2 weeks once he has isolated .

If you mean why namechange...I didn’t name change for this thread, I’m just being lazy and haven’t switched back as I’d need to reset my password due to forgetting.

I’m sorry that’s your son’s experience of his university. That IS dreadful. But the university I teach at was not like that. Freshers was of course without its usual parties but Face to Face sessions and socially distanced social events did take place as well as Zoom sessions. In terms of accommodation fees, I genuinely have no vested interest in the financial side of that personally and of course would expect students to be reimbursed of Halls closed. Most of my students are mature students commute and the majority of our students live in private accommodation. From a teaching point of view I’m working just as hard as are my colleagues, in fact I’ve worked much harder and longer hours for very little or often no pay (zero hours term time contract). I do deserve to be paid for my teaching as I AM teaching. So students have to pay fees, as I did when I was a student. Our facilities are all open (library, gyms, refectories etc). The indoor gym and pool will have to close but the outdoor exercise areas are able to stay open as are the libraries and food outlets for takeaway. We loan out laptops. Counselling and other wellbeing is going ahead. We feed isolating students for free and they are assigned a named person from well-being to check in with them.

I am extremely clinically vulnerable and the majority of my family all work for either the NHS as doctors and nurses or in other healthcare fields. I truly believe that it would be very dangerous for all university students to be sent back home all over the U.K. and beyond. Cases would undoubtedly rise profoundly as a result. That’s something we cannot afford right now. It would be utter insanity.

If students ARE going to be told that they must compulsorily self isolate two weeks before end of term why arent we.being told that now.before thurs? My ds.has.had corona positive test three weeks ago, there is no way he would cope with self isolating again in halls for NO REASON. You are scaring a lot of students into bailing out now, whilst they can.

Communication.

I hope this isnt Lancaster you are at Name

No, I see the food is free and he didnt get a named support so it isnt Lancaster.
I wish you well Name, but I genuinely believe the student cases have spiked, looking at the figures for ds uni, and they will not necessarily be circulating the virus now to the same degree they were a month ago.

No, I’m not at Lancaster.

Everything is being passed through the grapevine at the moment and it’s equally frustrating for us as we want to prepare and guide our students as best as possible. I’m very very lowly teaching staff. I’m not Faculty. The people at the top of the tree have had online conferences with Vallance and the like and this is what has been mentioned as a possibility.

We’ve also got a lot of international students who (based on their home country rules) would have to isolate for 14 days any way so rough plans have been drawn up for all students to isolate in their bubbles so as to be allowed home for Christmas. I’m not in any way part of this decision making process and it only started making its way round the grapevine last week. I don’t know if this is definitely what’s going to happen and I’ve nothing in writing at all. It’s just leaking out in dribs and drabs from the top down.

Sorry, just went back to check where I first heard it. It actually WAS tentatively mentioned in an email from our Chancellor at the end of September as a possibility based on information from Gavin Williamson.

I’ve just googled and that information was freely available in the public domain.
However, it’s in the last 10 days that it’s really picked up momentum on campus and my own final year students told me that they have been told that this is what is happening and as a result no in person assessments are scheduled for the last two weeks of the term (our Semester 1 doesn’t finish until late January).

Sorry, to clarify by the “last two weeks of term” I mean the two weeks prior to the Christmas break...and that our Semester 1 has been extended to the end of January which isn’t usual for us.

I don’t really understand this self isolation for 2 weeks before they come hone, my daughter is in halls with a shared kitchen between 5 of them I am told this is her household and so she can’t come home to us as that is mixing households. So how does she self isolate then? She can’t stay in her room for 2 weeks, she needs to at least eat/cook/do laundry. Plus she is doing a PGCE so in a school 2 days a week until the end of term travelling on public transport and teaching several year groups.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/coronavirus-some-uni-students-may-have-to-self-isolate-in-run-up-to-christmas-education-sec-says-12085143

This is what seems to be coming to fruition, at my university. Scotland seems to be suggesting that students will be asked to remain on campus at Christmas.

Also in terms of “what about if they’ve already had Covid recently?” etc... I’ll repeat, I am a very, very lowly, zero hours, term time only, bottom of the rung lecturer. I don’t know. However, it makes absolute sense that my own students on my courses have been told that they would ALL have to isolate in their declared bubbles because across all three years, across all modules that I teach on, we have not had a single confirmed Covid positive case since early March. Apart from one member of staff who caught it from her child and isolated straight away in October, my department has been totally Covid free. I don’t think we’ve hit a peak overall on campus. Our numbers are very, very low. We may not hit a peak at all. We are way down the list posted above.

I don’t know the ins and outs of Lancaster other than the criticism they attracted but having an ex-colleague and friend at UCLAN which isn’t far away, they’ve only just started getting outbreaks crop up over their very recent Reading Week (which is a good thing as students didn’t have to attend in person any way and were easily able to isolate). I think Manchester, Nottingham etc did “peak” earlier on.

@Allywill

I don’t really understand this self isolation for 2 weeks before they come hone, my daughter is in halls with a shared kitchen between 5 of them I am told this is her household and so she can’t come home to us as that is mixing households. So how does she self isolate then? She can’t stay in her room for 2 weeks, she needs to at least eat/cook/do laundry. Plus she is doing a PGCE so in a school 2 days a week until the end of term travelling on public transport and teaching several year groups.

They’d be expected to isolate for two weeks as a household. So fine to share a kitchen etc. They’d be expected to stay in their flats, not their rooms. PGCE placement may end two weeks early (who knows, schools may also close earlier too). That’s fine as the hours needed to qualify can be made up later in 2021 as historically PGCE finishes much earlier than the school year anyway to allow students to didn’t pass placement another shot. My own PGCE finished in the June with my final placement finishing prior to the May half term, so there is leeway factored into PGCE.

And again, I don’t know for sure if this is what will happen. It’s not my idea (thank God).