Protests and lockdowns: Life on university campuses
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 2020
⏱️ 33 minutes
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Summary
It's been a turbulent time on university student campuses, with some erupting in protest against Covid-19 measures. Now, a million students will leave the bubbles they've lived in on campus to travel across the country. Can we bring them home safely?
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Guests:
Sian Griffiths, Education and families editor of the Sunday Times.
Izzy Smitheman, Student at the University of Manchester.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Clips used: BBC and Channel 4 News.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a passenger announcement. You can now book your train on Uber and get 10% back in credits to spend on Uber eats. |
| 0:11.0 | So you can order your own fries instead of eating everyone else's. |
| 0:15.0 | Trains, now on Uber. T's and C's apply. Check the Uber app. In a few weeks it'll be time for the annual exodus of the lesser spotted university student to begin the migration home for Christmas. |
| 0:37.0 | But this year will be unlike any other. |
| 0:41.0 | University students in England are being asked to return home for the Christmas break during the week after the |
| 0:46.4 | National lockdown ends on the 2nd of December. |
| 0:49.2 | The Department for Education says universities should stagger the departure of students to prevent the spread of coronavirus as they make their way home. |
| 0:56.4 | A million students will leave the bubbles they've lived in on campus to travel across the country? |
| 1:03.0 | The risk now is that when they go home, |
| 1:05.0 | they take the virus and infect their communities. |
| 1:08.0 | Can we bring them home safely? |
| 1:10.0 | And in a year, marred by a global pandemic, is the campus experience worth the risk? |
| 1:17.0 | Those other lovely things that you do as a student, where you explore your identity by doing lots of sports or drama. |
| 1:24.0 | Well that is not possible at the moment and it's very sad that it isn't possible. |
| 1:28.0 | You're listening to stories of our times from the Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 1:32.0 | I'm Manveen Rana. Today, how do we get a million students |
| 1:37.7 | home for Christmas? Last week protests erupted at Manchester University as students who'd been cooked up in |
| 1:58.3 | halls spilled out onto the streets in frustration. |
| 2:15.0 | What happened was that overnight metal fencing was erected around some halls of residence in Fallowfield in Manchester. And the first that I knew about it was when some students got in touch with the paper |
| 2:20.0 | and were very alarmed and was saying, we've woken up and there's fences all around us and we feel like we're being penned in and we don't know what's going on |
| 2:29.2 | It's like a prison and please help us that's Sean Griffiths. I'm the Education and |
| 2:35.1 | Family's editor for the Sunday Times. She spoke to a number of students who'd |
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