Comment: students as scapegoats

Do you ever feel that as a student you’re not quite considered a “real” person by society yet?

Whether it’s the workplace, the university, government or just society in general, I am increasingly led to believe that I am an incomplete individual stuck in limbo between adulthood and adolescence. Students seem to have increasingly fewer rights in the workplace, where we are expected to work 20 hour weeks as well as our full time-studies and where the ‘management’ (term utilised loosely) seem astonished when you tell them that you have lectures at various times during the working week. Yes, a degree. It’s not just a measure of temperature.

Everywhere you turn, students are marginalised; bitter and twisted middle-aged workers and local residents seem to feel terrorised by the plague of financial investment in, and rejuvenation of, many areas, including from my experience Jesmond in Newcastle Upon Tyne and Headingly in Leeds. So many of these so-called student haters were obviously students themselves many many moons ago, and are now reaping the rewards of such without being willing to see the merit in our generation being studious as they once were. Do they think that lawyers, accountants and doctors only had to attend university 20 years ago?

Property agents have often only responded to calls for routine maintenance to be carried out at a rented property once someone’s parents have called and made a fuss. This is an example that has affected more people than I can shake my irate stick at.

"Liberal Democrats in Newcastle actually include ridding students and multiple-occupancy housing from suburbs such as Jesmond in their manifesto."

Sadly, I have found that I am barely considered a real person even by my university. Universities often seem to forget who forms the main community of the college and who it is that brings enormous sums of money to the table. Far too often, I, among with my peers, feel that we are not taken seriously by some members of the academic community, and farces of administration are allowed to take place without recourse. Universities are supposedly trading as businesses and should be run as such. Degrees are the product and students are the consumer. While I’m by no means advocating reducing students to mere pound signs (if we are not considered as such already) in the eyes of university chiefs, perhaps a more corporate focus managerially could provide more satisfaction and a feeling that more attention is being paid to student voices.

In the local government in particular, students are made to be the victims of political games, where vote winning seems, at least to an outsider, more important than open-minded balance. Liberal Democrats in Newcastle actually include ridding students and multiple-occupancy housing from suburbs such as Jesmond in their manifesto. Support increasing demand for parking limitations so that some student households will only be eligible for one parking permit, if any at all. They’re certainly going to win votes from the student haters. But, why so much hostility? I really don’t understand it.