Why the University just doesn’t care about us
The University could have let us know about the mumps outbreak. It would not have been too much to ask for them to come round with a wagon, stopping outside the doors marked with a cross of lambs blood, calling ‘Bring out your dead.’ However, they didn’t. And as the last of the bodies are being cast into the pauper’s graves, people are beginning to ask why not.
The reason is quite simple. The University have other priorities, namely Campus 3, teaching ratings and our place in the national league tables. The students do not matter. When faced with a campus-wide epidemic of which just some of the effects are sterility, meningitis, arthritis, deafness and problems related to the pancreas and kidneys, what did the University do? Not much.
The University weren’t expected to do a medical feat on the par with raising the dead. But for all of their many means of communication (email databases, Outlook Express and college notice boards to name but just a few), there wasn’t much sign that the administrators in Heslington Hall had shifted themselves. Instead they sat back, poured themselves more coffee, and looked on indifferently as students with swollen throats staggered by the window coughing and wheezing.
The spread of infections at other universities was seriously limited. The other university administrations took a few simple measures to inform students and to put the necessary measures in place to confine the spread of the epidemic. Many of these universities are far bigger than York. Here at York, we are the sixth smallest university. It seems very difficult to understand why the small number of York students were left in the dark.
I cannot tell you why our university failed us. However, it remains perfectly clear that their priorities do not lie with us. To Brian Cantor, a student is no more than a statistic, preferably a statistic accompanied with some commendable results. Fortunately for him, statistics don’t get mumps. Its nice to feel valued, isn’t it?
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