November 6, 2020 - 4:57pm
Freddie Sayers meets Izzy Smitheman, a fresher at Manchester University, who suddenly finds herself at the centre of a national controversy after having led a protest on campus last night against students being literally fenced in.
Her story is one of thousands of students who are having a nightmare first year at university nationwide.
She believes almost everyone she knows has had the virus at this point, and nobody she knows has had any serious symptoms.
The university has now taken down the fencing, after the students began pulling it down in anger.
She says the next stage of her political campaign will be to focus on fees — she has not even entered the university yet this year, has received no in person tuition, and feels that the experience is not worth the £9,000 a year it is costing her.
Thanks to Izzy for sharing her story.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeI thought Izzy Smitheman did a really good job in presenting the issues the students are facing and the unreasonable manner in which they’ve been treated.
Caging them in like animals was clearly the last straw. Yet another example unfortunately of those in power, be they politicians, police or university management, being seriously incompetent regarding how they are handling this.
https://www.staffnet.manche…
As has been obvious for at least 20 years, the universities are nothing more than money farming rackets. That said, even I am slightly surprised by their behaviour regarding students and Covid. If one good thing comes out of this, it will be that Issy and her friends gain an early awareness of the nature of authority and the sheer, unending incompetence of all governments.
If Universities were subject to the rules of the financial conduct Authority vice chancellors would all be serving time.
‘nothing more than money farm rackets [AND INDOCTRINATION FARMS]’
fixed.
Dear Izzy,
Welcome to Animal Farm in the Land of Authoritarianism. In this brave new world, we are all just animals, don’t you know. Except, of course, our overseers. They are above it all, demigods as it were, conditioning us to follow their dictates like sheep. Sheep, you say? Yes. Or, if you prefer, lemmings.
You can only break out if you are prepared to be a pariah.
Good luck!
Alexzander S.
Everyone is concerned about covid, no one seems concerned about mental health!
Also, a great example of how herd immunity will be achieved whether the goverment likes it or not, in the first weeks they all had it and then it just got better …
It should be OAP’s being locked away for their own protection whilst the fit and young get it, get over it and get on with their lives. Once enough have, it will be safe to let the OAPs out again. We have got this completely the wrong way round. It sounds like Manchester University campus is now already one of the safest places in Manchester for a vulnerable person to be.
PS What a charming and sensible young lady Izzy is – a real credit to her generation.
Heroes!
This is a pleasant young lady undergraduate- accepted at a good university .
Can someone please explain why she puts the word “like” in every “like” sentence ?
And why did she go to a university to be lectured on a screen when she could have stayed in her far more comfortable home with better electronic links and saved a shed load of money -getting the same lectures . Its not even that the university library is feely available- she is being ripped off with a poor product at an outrageous price. For which she will pay a 9% tax on her upper earnings for 30 years. When should could have got a degree on line and been far better off.
I feel the University was wrong to put up fences without any notification to the students.
Also, with the benefit of hindsight, should the Universities have asked the students to come at all? However there are consequences to that action – probably many Universities would run out of money and close. There would be no University “experience” for those students with distant learning.
I also like the bit that the students are adults, but it is the Universities fault that they did not expect that these “adults” would break the laws.
Perhaps it is a bit unfair to cross question Izzzy, and I know it is not Freddie’s style to confrontational but…
The Universities are acting under Governmental instruction, not only would they be short of money from residential letting profits and tuition fee’s, but they are under the threat of withdrawal of research funding too.
“She believes almost everyone she knows has had the virus at this point, and nobody she knows has had any serious symptoms.” Possibly true of her immediate student circle, but evidently not true of Manchester as a whole. Mind you, I was a student in Fallowfield 50 years ago; the student bubble endures.
In retrospect, I think Freddy has done a good job over the lockdown and after. I was rarely convinced by the lockdown sceptics, but at least I got to hear what they were saying. And I’m really glad the students are being heard.
Well… if covid fails to trigger university students, perhaps the era of infantile triggering is closing.
Nothing to see here, people. Move along:
‘The fencing was intended as a response to a number of concerns received over recent weeks from staff and students on this site about safety and security; particularly about access by people who are not residents.’
https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/news/display/?id=25255
Nothing to see here, people. Move along:
‘This was not our intention ““ in fact quite the reverse.
The fencing was intended as a response to a number of concerns received over recent weeks from staff and students on this site about safety and security; particularly about access by people who are not residents.
There was never any intent to prevent students from entering or exiting the site.’
https://www.staffnet.manche…
The University no doubt has a P.R./comm’s department, and they no doubt were sitting on the e-mail, or tasked with writing it, to tell the students why the fence was being put up, and ‘working from home’ took too long to inform them.
The ‘unauthorised visitors’ ‘version’ they put out too late is short on the truth, Universities have been warned with the increased ‘security’ level nationally and ‘lockdown’ the reduced availability of ‘targets’ for roving ‘terrorists’ to attack that student residential ‘halls’ were at increased risk. Of course telling the s-TOO-DENSE the whole truth would had triggered them into a lefty hissy-pissy fit too.
I believe this interview is a knee jerk reaction by a student, and Unherd should have waited for a response by the UoM before the interview.
‘I sincerely apologise for the concern and distress caused by the erecting of a fence around our Fallowfield Halls of Residence today.
This was not our intention ““ in fact quite the reverse.
The fencing was intended as a response to a number of concerns received over recent weeks from staff and students on this site about safety and security; particularly about access by people who are not residents.
There was never any intent to prevent students from entering or exiting the site.’
https://www.staffnet.manche…
Treated like animals? Mental health wise? The young today are such outraged sheep, and manage to be outraged by the wrong things but still go along with it, I think we were a tougher group – at her age I was living on the road virtually broke, on a different continent from family, who did not help me anyway. Then I did a year of Uni as a homeless person, one of two of the students who were homeless, he lived under a bridge, I in the woods, then I spent a few more years back on the road broke with the odd term of school here and there when I would settle for a wile to work. Odd days. Anyway, the mindset was very different once, I blame the cell phone which turned young people into having the umbilical cord uncut till 25 or so, when studies say they now become adults – but then they have just moved the cord onto some other person/group. Every one is dependent now, from birth to death the phone is where they turn for answers instead of being self reliant; in these days of cell phones it is the micro collective rather than ‘I, Me’ – the reason I never have had one, nor will, I could not be so linked up all the time where every movement was discussed and being an individual was finished so nothing is ever decided or done, except for talk..
The one sad thing I took from this video is the weapon of Modern state, FINES! They have you there, you are screwed, you are owned by them as fines just multiply the more you resist and never go away. Like struggling in a vat of honey, you cannot win. In the old days you just moved on if things were intolerable, but with the covid police state as UK has become resistance is futile, now being free has been criminalized and the Police are enforcing it.