Keir Starmer discusses the impact of Covid-19 on mental health with students from constituency
Following University Mental Health Day, Keir Starmer MP, leader of the Labour Party and Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras, met with student representatives from universities in his constituency to discuss the impact of Covid-19 on students’ mental health.
Source: Flickr
The meeting, held on 5 March, was hosted by Emma Hardy MP, Labour’s Shadow Universities Minister. Topics ranged from tuition fee refunds, “no detriment” policies and cancelled graduation ceremonies to equalities impact assessments, the state of the graduate job market and conditions in student accommodation. The Women’s Officer at Students’ Union UCL, Aarushi Menon, began by explaining that the pandemic has exacerbated factors in a way that affects students differently to the rest of the population. She highlighted that there has been a particular impact on certain demographics, such as lower-income students, those with family members who have contracted coronavirus and those who have to home-school younger siblings or children alongside their studies. She went on to discuss Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s failure to mention university students in his announcements and stressed how important it is for the government to consider refunding tuition fees.
Aisha Malik-Smith, president of UCL’s Labour Society, stressed that several policy areas exacerbate pre-existing mental health problems. She discussed term-time housing, drawing Starmer’s attention to the unaffordable prices of accommodation in his constituency of Holborn and St Pancras, highlighting the difficulties of navigating the private rental market at the age of 18. “It shouldn’t be that students use up all of their maintenance loan on renting a box room,” she stated. She suggested that the government should look into how student finance could be better distributed, and asked Starmer to support the actions of those who withhold rent as part of the rent strikes taking place across the country. She criticised those MPs who “have equivocated on whether they support rent strikes or not.” Starmer pointed to a disparity between the policies adopted by private landlords and university accommodation, stating that both must be pressured. Malik-Smith concluded that mental health services are “colossally underfunded,” and that conditions on campus, such as cuts to legal aid and cases of sexual assault, exacerbate mental health issues.
A UAL finalist discussed the need for some students to visit campus to develop skills that are vital to their degree, by working on physical portfolios. She stated that these students are worried that they will graduate without hands-on skills, which is having a detrimental impact on their mental health. In response, Emma Hardy MP agreed that employers may begin to question whether students have acquired adequate skills over the course of their degree.
A representative from LSE discussed how the university’s recent refusal to implement a “no detriment” policy was impacting students and called for the Labour Party to campaign for compulsory mitigating measures across all universities. She also highlighted the knock to morale of cancelling graduation ceremonies, suggesting that they were symbolic of “a light at the end of the tunnel” and “overcoming a horrible year.” Another LSE finalist called for the university to diversify its assessment methods, and for the Labour Party to take a concrete stance on tuition fees. A third LSE student representative discussed the precarity of students in private halls, suggesting that they are given no flexibility and are “bullied by companies profiting” and “live in bleak social isolation in box rooms.” She called on private halls to allow people to break contracts early but stated that management often refuses to speak to students.
A final-year UCL student aptly summarised that “the pandemic isn’t the cause of these problems; it has just shone a light on these cracks.” She argued that many soon-to-be graduates such as herself “feel like [they’re] entering a world that doesn’t have space for [them].” An undergraduate at SOAS suggested that “the pandemic has highlighted how problematic and unsustainable the current university system is,” and condemned “the complete separation between the government and universities,” stating that “the government has tried to keep itself separate and doesn’t seem to care.” She highlighted that the situation is particularly bad for small universities such as SOAS that are in “a precarious financial situation anyway,” claiming that the university had stated that it didn’t have the capacity to refund fees because the institution would go bankrupt. She concluded that “we need recognition from the government that universities aren’t businesses; they shouldn’t be run like businesses, they’re education institutions,” and warned that “we’re going to risk losing amazing institutions and the research that comes out of them.”
The final speaker, Yasmeen Daoud, Students’ Union UCL’s Welfare and International Officer, suggested that “students have been consistently ignored,” and expressed her sadness that graduation ceremonies have been cancelled; “students have been robbed of that – in terms of milestones in your life, there isn’t that graduation milestone, we don’t feel like we’ve completed something.” She condemned the “cultural competence” of health services and suggested that some students feel that university counsellors don’t understand their particular needs and circumstances. She suggested that both the university and the government see students “as a homogenous group of 18-year-olds living on campus”, rather than a diverse group of international students, postgraduates, those with caring responsibilities and disabilities. She called for individual circumstances to be acknowledged and for support to be offered “in an equitable way rather than an equal way,” and for an equalities impact assessment to be carried out.
Starmer thanked all those who contributed, stating that “the pandemic has made existing issues harder due to the additional stresses that it has put on you.” He concluded that “there is just not enough profile for the impact on students,” and “whenever the pandemic is discussed, particular groups are singled out but students not very often.”
Pi Media approached both Aarushi Menon and Yasmeen Daoud for comment on their overall impression of the meeting. Menon told Pi Media “I was glad to see that Keir and Emma were very much taking a backseat to listen to what we had to say. They seemed engaged and were asking questions, so I think that they did hear everyone's concerns. Now I just really hope that they're able to use this to push for some actual change for students.”
Daoud said, “It was great to see our local MP take such a genuine interest in student issues at a time when we’ve been ignored for so long. Both Keir Starmer and Emma Hardy engaged positively with what we all had to say and were very keen to work to tackle these issues.” She added that, since the meeting, she has received a follow up email from Starmer’s office regarding support for students in non-UCL accommodation: “I’m hopeful that with their support, we can work to resolve these issues and help improve the wellbeing of our students. Overall, it was an amazing opportunity and I’m grateful to both Sir Keir and Emma for giving us this platform to bring these high-priority issues to light.”