Life of a Student in Lockdown (2)
- Lucy Pummell
- May 26, 2021
- 5 min read
A Series of Lockdowns: Lockdown 2 November - December 2020
As a student, the UK’s second national lockdown couldn’t have been more different than the first lockdown that I had experienced. For one I was living in a different part of the country, experiencing the whole lockdown in my university city of Manchester, and secondly I was living in a very small house with six other girls.
As you can imagine, at the best of times, without any laws restricting wether or not you can go outside, such living circumstances have the potential to cause disagreements and catty behaviour. Imagine that… but when there is in fact laws in place meaning that you can’t leave the house.
Starting my second year of university unable to have live teaching, meet up with friends outside of my house and unable to make the most of the amazing city of Manchester was pretty awful. But, of course, all of us at the start of term were optimistic. By the end of October, on the very night lockdown was announced, my housemates and I had even thrown and organised a halloween costume party (for the seven of us, of course). Boris Johnson's lockdown announcement only slightly dampened the mood.
However, once the realities of yet another lockdown seeped in over following days, on top of a nasty hangover, people in the house naturally became more agitated. Understandably we all felt a little down. It seemed like we were back at square one again and tensions at the university were at an all time high despite Manchester being one of the biggest hotspots for coronavirus in the UK.
Form the beginning of 2020, and continuing into 2021 there was a series of student riots and protests aimed predominantly at the University of Manchester’s handling of the pandemic. As former residents of the Owens Park halls, where the riots took place, my housemates and all all felt huge amounts of sympathy for the current first years who were protesting. The press coverage at the time was intense, and rightly so because the events that were to follow now seem more like the plot of a dystopian film.
In an effort to control students’ movements during the lockdown huge metal barriers were put up around all the halls a Owens Park, penning in students like cattle. Naturally, students weren’t happy about being treated like prisoners and staged a riot where the barriers were symbolically pulled down by over 1000 students. There was also following outrage that a total of £30,000 had been spent putting up the barriers in the first place. Although this was a bad move to start with from the university’s part, things only got worse from then on.
Ironically, while this was happening one halls at Owens Park had experienced a flood which caused students to immediately evacuate and sleep on the ground. This had devastating results for the students effected by the flood, including damage of personal items like laptops, which are essential for the online learning that we have been doing for the past year. The lack of care for students welfare at Owens Park, paired with the resentment of having all teaching online, led to a rent strike at the halls too.
The UoM Rentstrike were striking against the aforementioned floods, but also rat infestations, high rent, lack of access to facilities due to lockdown and lack of support for students during isolation. The last point that they were striking against is particularly devastating considering that early in first term, in October, a boy in first year tragically committed suicide. These rent strikes involved students withholding their rent, and eventually after media and student pressure the university initially conceded a 30% rent cut which was later extended to include a 100% red rebate during September to January 2022.
The success of the UoM Rentstrike can largely by attributed to the students who participated in the occupation of Owens Park Tower accommodation. The occupation was darkly overshadowed by talk of students being denied food and having the wifi cut off by the university and round the clock security guarding the Tower. These actions were later relented after an intervention by the local Manchester MP Afzal Khan. It was only until the initial 30% rent cut that the occupation ended.
Throughout the time of the Tower occupation, there had also been a controversial incident of racial profiling of student Zac Adan who had been caught on camera being racially profiled by a member of security at the university. This once again led to protests and mass media scrutiny at the university that caused the forced suspension of several members of the university security staff.
These events are what I remember most prominently about the second lockdown in the UK, particularly because my second year house literally overlooks Owens Park accommodation site. However, these were only the incidents relating to lockdown that directly involved my university. Wider than the University of Manchester, throughout October, Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham was engaged in almost constant negotiations with the government arguing against Manchester being put into a higher tier in order to help suffering businesses. Eventually Manchester was placed into tier 3 before the following national lockdown, with Burnham being given £8 per person per day to budget for everyone in all of Manchester.
Throughout the second lockdown the animosity from the government towards northern cities seemed very apparent and republican northern attitudes rose exponentially. The disregard for the fact that 32% of children in the North West living in poverty and an unemployment rate of 5% is largely the reason for this. Anger towards Boris Johnson and the Conservative government led to bouts of graffiti such as ‘The North is not a petri dish’ and even ones saying ‘Hang Boris’. To say that there was high tensions around Fallowfield, Manchester would be an understatement.
All of these events almost made me forget that I was living under a national lockdown, despite them all having direct ties to the lockdown. Everything felt incredibly uncertain, and I have never felt like the university has cared about its students' welfare less. The idea that lockdown would continue until the end of 2020 was bad enough, let alone the thousands of deaths and atmosphere of animosity directed to students and northern city virus hotspots, like Manchester, from the government.
There is no wonder that arguments started to break out in my own house. We were all admittedly sick of each other, any one would be after months of sharing remarkably small quarters. The harsh winter months and missing home more around Christmas time undoubtedly didn’t help this. One way I think we managed to cope and take our mind off everything else that was going on, was by organising weekly house parties (again with only the seven of us). This was a fantastic way to let off some steam from the previous week and have fun. Planning outfits and getting ready for the party was also a really enjoyable thing to occupy our minds with during this time too.
Before I knew it, however, I was home for Christmas. Lockdown wasn’t quite over but things were more back to normal than they had been. My first term of my second year was over. There had been riots, protests, strikes, occupations and I hadn’t stepped foot into university. It was a very strange few months.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Manchester_protests_(2020–2021)
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