As Covid-19 cases rise, students are everybody’s favourite scapegoat. Matt Hancock blamed rising coronavirus infections on young people ‘socialising’, but is this a fair statement?
At first glance, there is some evidence to back his statement; the University of Sheffield has had over 1,000 cases since term began, with the university accommodation area of Endcliffe and Ranmoor contributing to the massive spike in cases in Sheffield. However, whether this is the fault of the students, and their ‘socialising’ is a different matter entirely.
Everybody’s heard of the rule-breaking parties going on, and people stretching the bubble system until it should rightly pop, but lumping all students together is an oversight. Parties or no parties, actively encouraging more than 4,000 students to move into student accommodation and to live basically all on top of each other means that attitude towards the severity of coronavirus doesn’t really matter. It is nearly impossible to properly socially distance.
Moreover, the advice is only ever consistent in its confusing nature – both from the University, which asked students to return and suggested it would be back to normal, and from the government, who’s advice consistently boils down to something which wouldn’t feel out of place in a satirical comedy.
The positive contribution of young people is also often forgotten. Young people contribute the most to the accommodation and food industries that have been hit hard by coronavirus. They often work in industries where it is difficult to practice proper social distancing, and which is often a thankless form of ‘front line’ working.
Additionally, student nurses who brought their graduation forward by six months in order to help in hospitals, and who were promised a six month contract, have now been told that there is no money to keep them on as payment for all their hard work. Alongside this, millions of students had to finish their degrees or A-levels online, from universities and colleges that had no prior experience with teaching online; students who did very important exams in what was already a very stressful work environment, some with no Wi-Fi or no desk. That’s before we even begin to unravel the mess regarding the 35.6% of students who were downgraded by one grade based mostly on, absurdly, the location of their school, only then to be told they could have their predicted grades after all.
To say that students have been failed by the Conservative government during this entire situation is an understatement. Obviously most people have struggled during the pandemic, but for the Government to encourage young people to go out and boost the economy, and then scold them for doing so, is cruel.
From encouraging ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ to Matt Hancock telling young people ‘don’t kill your gran’ on Newsbeat, young people have been gaslit. And after all that, it’s still their fault.
So no, Mr Hancock, the second wave and looming second lockdown has not been caused by those downtrodden students trying to find a little bit of fun in the wreckage of their education. It has been caused by the Conservative government who can’t decide for one minute what their stance actually is, and have left us, ashamedly, with Europe’s highest excess mortality figures. It is caused by a government which reduced public spending in the most deprived areas of the UK by 32%. It is caused by the very people who encouraged the public to go back to work and back to school, who begged people to go to restaurants all whilst waiting in the shadows with a pitchfork ready to strike the blame straight into the public when the next spike rears its head.
Image credit: Pippa Fowles
