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The Beeb says that the students at Manchester are being prevented from leaving their halls by campus security and the plod. Cooping 1500+ 18-19 years old up against their will is not a recipe for peace and harmony. How long before there is riot or someone sets the fire alarm off?
 
MickiQ said:
The Beeb says that the students at Manchester are being prevented from leaving their halls by campus security and the plod. Cooping 1500+ 18-19 years old up against their will is not a recipe for peace and harmony. How long before there is riot or someone sets the fire alarm off?
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Sounds close to unlawful imprisonment; think 18 YO me would have been out of there pdq
 
I used to be an external examiner at Manchester Met, better not say which Department, bad form and all that. As you'd expect, the staff were sound but the place was drowning in managerial bullshit and managers all too ready to spout/apply it. They also had a battle over redundancies at the Crewe campus while I was there. No surprise they are fucking this up so badly though, to be honest, it could be happening like this anywhere.
 
I suspect even at this very late stage, anybody issuing urgent advice to students to keep away from halls, not to sign a contract* and the rest would come out of it smelling of roses. UCU are calling on the government to do that and Labour are, well, who cares... but there's scope for someone to call out the emperor's new clothes. Very loudly and very quickly. Local authorities are in a cleft stick - don't want the new infections, but do want the income from students.

* Suspect it really is too late for that. Imagine anyone planning to go into halls would have signed up a while back??
 
Looks like the government has been attempting to pass the buck and the responsibility for dealing with this on to local Directors of Public Health and University/College authorities, not that this should come as any sort of a surprise

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Education Secretary Gavin Williamson and Health Secretary Matt Hancock wrote to directors of public health on Wednesday about the return of universities.
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In the letter, tweeted by Sheffield's director of public health Greg Fell, ministers said they should formulate "a robust outbreak plan" in collaboration with higher education providers.
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In the case of local restrictions, they said public health directors should ensure measures in response, such as closing some or all face-to-face learning "do not lead to a migration of students away from their term-time accommodation back to their family homes".
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I wonder how much chance there is of MMU going back to face to face lectures after the 14 days.

All lectures, seminars and classes for first and foundation year students at Manchester Metropolitan University will be online for the next 14 days
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MickiQ said:
The Beeb says that the students at Manchester are being prevented from leaving their halls by campus security and the plod. Cooping 1500+ 18-19 years old up against their will is not a recipe for peace and harmony. How long before there is riot or someone sets the fire alarm off?
Click to expand...
Or a lawyer gets involved
 
Are (m)any of the students testing positive ill though - actually really unwell, if not hospitalised? If not, it will reinforce that their age group is unlikely to be badly affected (long Covid notwithstanding), is there a method to the madness of corralling them together where they’re not going to infect the old folks back home?

I am so glad to neither be a student nor the parent or grandparent of a student, in this year of quite extraordinary headlines. I hope they do get to follow their dreams, and have a university experience they’ll remember for wonderful reasons far beyond what 2020 has delivered so far.
 
MickiQ said:
The Beeb says that the students at Manchester are being prevented from leaving their halls by campus security and the plod. Cooping 1500+ 18-19 years old up against their will is not a recipe for peace and harmony. How long before there is riot or someone sets the fire alarm off?
Click to expand...
I hear one Manchester Met student has emptied his only bag of rice onto the communal kitchen floor in frustration.
 
I'm all for soul-crushing cynicism, but the reason MMU and the council backed off is because of some lawyers using their pro-bongo hours for good over the weekend. While no-one does anything for totally pure reasons, there's plenty of left wing lawyers, and plenty of lawyers who are keen on upholding human rights as a common good rather than just to make money or build their profile.
 
killer b said:
I'm all for soul-crushing cynicism, but the reason MMU and the council backed off is because of some lawyers using their pro-bongo hours for good over the weekend. While no-one does anything for totally pure reasons, there's plenty of left wing lawyers, and plenty of lawyers who are keen on upholding human rights as a common good rather than just to make money or build their profile.
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I thought pro bongo had gone out of fashion along with fire juggling and tie-dye combats
 
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