Students full return to campus

[DoNotBringLulu]

This came up on my Facebook feed:

www.theguardian.com/education/2021/apr/13/university-campuses-in-england-will-not-reopen-until-mid-may

If this is true, Boris et al have some explaining to do.

@TheMerrickBoy nearly all of us know that academic staff are doing their best. The question is about the government policies and how VCs etc are interpreting it.

As I said, for things that require feedback my lecturers have been given very positive feedback. The total of my being unable to work outside my bedroom/away from DS or see other humans and talk about research with them still has me on the verge of quitting. But I know that the academic staff are doing all they can in the face of the pandemic, and it’s just bad luck where it fell.

Everything you say @TheMerrickBoy and @DelBocaVista

This has been the toughest year of my career, and I'm an old lag - been HoD with a year-long temporary disability & chronic & often extreme pain, taught full-time while doing my PhD ...

In my department, we were teaching some classes in person through to the end of term in mid-December. We were online for some modules because a) CEV staff; b) lack of safe spaces to teach in; c) prioritising the modules for Final Year students which required practical lab style teaching & learning.

In order to teach those modules fully in person, we moved other modules to online. Some modules we taught simultaneously online & in person - cEV staff Zooming in, or CEV/isolating/quarantining/overseas students Zooming in.

At my place, the university library has been open when government regulations/law permitted. When it had to e closed, library staff worked to post out books, or digitise materials. The library was open in the late summer/autumn interregnum, when we cam out of first lockdown, and has remained so over this lockdown.

So the OTT statement that Universities locked out students is just wrong, at my place at least.

But you know, in pre-COVID times, I used to come across 2nd year students in my department (arts & humanities) who had never been to the library!

My son's pattern at Bristol was go to the library every day and be in it all day - that was his life and work particularly when exams were looming. So the removal of full library access or indeed any library access in effect utterly changed university life.

I agree that the main thing is totally different rules across the country. the state should order people to do XYZ and make sure every student paying £9250 a year plus £7k rent is given exactly the same things - eg full library open or library closed - no differences, nothing at all. Just because it is Durham not Exeter or medicine not law, no differences.

I would also like the universities to have started legal action against the state back in March 2020 against the CV19 legislation and used their best scientists to prove the CV19 laws could not be justified rather than going over the top to be ultra careful. If enough universities in January had said - students even in halls can come back because en masse it affects mental health not to be back, the state would not have stopped them. No state action has been taking against those halls and colleges which did allow most people back as against those letting just about no one back.

I don’t often disagree with you. However the virus did not understand equality. Just about every friend of DDs who returned to Bristol got Covid in the autumn. They were fine, or at least she does not know anyone with long Covid, but they missed a lot of F2F either isolating when they were ill or when flatmates were ill. At the same time, and unfortunately, one of the hospitals in their trust was very overwhelmed. Who knows. Was it people returning from summer holidays in Spain, was it students bringing a critical mass of virus into the region.

I assume the Government’s scientists and statisticians have some idea, and this has helped inform their current approach.

DDs friends, because it is clinical medicine, have had F2F teaching through the year, but what with isolation, illness, disruption to clinics and the need for bubbles (essentially it has been 24 hours a day at hospital and in hospital accommodation with the same small group) and distancing, it has been tough. DD taking an intercalation which is 100% on line and sitting at home has no regrets. Universities and courses differ. Hers has a large proportion of overseas students and a lot of vital research, including on Covid which needs the lab space. Online learning is a pity, but probably, for staff and students, the best option.

I certainly agree with you on students catching Covid in the Autumn. My son has a group of about ten friends there or may be it is 15 and they are the ones in year 4 seeing each other - they have not been mixing much with anyone else. I think every single one except my son who lived with was coughed on and cooked with his covid 19 sick flatmate caught it. in fact he is pretty sure he will have had it but without any symptoms too. However that does not lead me to conclude the breaches of our rights and freedoms were worth it.

I accept most nations disagree with me and have taken the legal measures to stop people leaving the house. Most people disagree with me. It was interesting last night watching a psychologist talk about a cultic religion on a video in which she was brought up. She was saying she had a variety of emotions in the last year but one was being very cross about the CV19 laws and I felt the same and still do (eg not even allowed to sing at my daughter's wedding in a massive church, distanced and with only 13 guests last weekend) and she thought it was partly because there were so many restrictions as a child in her group eg no TV,m cannot cut your hair etc that she baulks at restrictions more now as a result. I was not brought up in a cult but I definitely seem to be cross than some about the rules. When we all became opted in to organ donorship in England I then opted out (even though before it was compulsory I was opted in). Yet I am an oldest child, very compliant with all laws (just about never even break the speed limit which annoys my sons).

Anyway I am sure I will calm down once compulsory masks and distancing goes and we let the people sing again.

I would also like the universities to have started legal action against the state back in March 2020 against the CV19 legislation

Doesn't seem like the best use of all those tuition fees.... I don't think, as a parent, I'd have been very happy about that.

Restaurants have litigated and other groups. Scottish churches instructed and paid solicitors and that meant the churches were forced to be open. Anyway universities have not done that, not even paid for one letter written by eg Bindmans even so there it is and now they seem to be letting most first years back into halls in most but not all cases for this final term of the academic year so that is better than nothing.

I wish there were a website where I could look places up to see what they did this year to predict for next eg will my sons' courses be 100% online as this year or not? It affects where and how you book, accommodation booked and paid for or not etc etc.