Origins of a student lifeline
Toby Green talks to Nick Woodward-Smith, one of the founders of Nightline, the confidential listening service that has been running for nearly 35 years
In 1972 two York University undergraduates spotted a problem with their University. Students had somewhere to drink, they had somewhere to study and they had somewhere to hone their journalistic skills (yes, Nouse was around even back then). However what it lacked was support, a place where they could come and have a coffee and chat, somewhere they could discuss serious problems or just stress about a late essay. Nearly 35 years on, Nightline has become one of the focal points of the Student Union’s Welfare service, providing a confidential listening and information service that has helped countless students through the difficult time University can prove to be. Nick Woodward-Smith and Peter Hawkins have both moved on a long time ago, yet their legacy has remained, developed and grown.
At the time there were a few Nightlines in existence, yet the idea of the York version was to stretch for something different. Woodward-Smith saw these existing set-ups as “More like the Samaritans – we wanted to do something different. With the ones we had seen you always had to labour yourself and say you had a terrible problem in order to go and see them. We thought why couldn’t you set up a service to help people before they got in these situations? We wanted to make it a bit more friendly and informal, and help people to make contacts and friends. We didn’t just want people to come in for ‘counselling’ – we wanted it so they could have an excuse to pop round, anything from ‘I don’t know how to sort out my rent’ to ‘I’ve got a problem and I need a doctor quickly’.”
We saw a need to help distressed people and to help them socialise without having them see themselves as having failed in some way.
Today’s Nightline carries on this ethos: the service not only offers a place to “listen, and to give you the chance to think things over in peace” but also gives information about buses, good student bookstores, jobs and numbers for pizzas. To Woodward-Smith and Hawkins the key was to not make people feel stigmatised just because they wanted some help. “We saw a need to help distressed people and to help them socialise without having them see themselves as having failed in some way.” Woodward-Smith told me, “What was going on in other universities only seemed helpful in the extreme circumstances; we wanted to make an open house style set-up, similar to being in someone’s flat, very laid back and like a 24 hour party. One of our original ideas was to integrate it with a café, and make it a general meeting point on campus.” The café never materialised, yet on every other point the University seemed surprisingly helpful. “We approached them and got an interview with the Vice Chancellor. He was a fairly crusty individual, and we finally got an interview with him about 10am. We rolled out of bed after quite a heavy night and were offered huge tumblers of whiskey. To this day we can never quite remember what happened as it was all a bit of a haze, but out of the conversation we got given a starter flat in Wentworth.”
“The universities quick response was partly the era; it was the early 70s so we never really thought there would be a reason why two undergraduates couldn’t set up something like this. If we were starting out now we would see huge problems; then we just went into the chancellor’s reception and said we wanted to set this up and a few weeks later we had funds to get specialists in to train volunteers for 6 months. We didn’t have any problems in generating volunteers; we easily obtained the 100 we initially required.”
Whereas today any society needs to complete a number of forms for insurance purposes, back then this wasn’t an issue. “We didn’t have to fill in anything, no health and safety at all, none of that” admits Woodward-Smith “and to be honest we may never have survived in another era. We had what we thought was a good idea, and suddenly it was set in motion. Within weeks we had a flat and we had trained volunteers. I’m not sure we would have been bothered with all the red tape that exists today.”
Nightline took off quickly: “It became very heavily used and turned into a fun place, which of course was the original idea. We had some good volunteers who were very welcoming and people felt comfortable with the whole thing. The thing is, a lot of people didn’t have problems per se, but felt very uneasy at University. Remember the times were very different and only 3 or 4% of the population went on to further education. It was a big event and a lot of pressure. Many people dived straight into the social scene, yet if you didn’t depression could happen easily. Students were let loose at University and many didn’t know what to do and how to keep it together.” External influences also took their tool. “Well yes, there were a lot of drugs going around at the time which, coupled with alcohol, weren’t really the best for your mental state and well being.”
Woodward-Smith may believe that Universities are more clued-up on the issue of student depression nowadays, but he doesn’t think we have it any easier. “There are different pressures now and a stronger pressure to conform. When I was at university people were encouraged to go and do their own thing, people were expected to be different. Now it seems people who are different have a hard time. There is also much more pressure academically. Back then, getting to university was the achievement. Now to get a good job you have to get a good degree, get a good mark and also do stuff like work experience. Getting to University is only the start of it. If you feel you haven’t achieved, or done as well as your peer group, it can bring you down. The teaching system doesn’t help; in our day we would have one to one tutorials, now you can be one in a group of 20 to 30. That adds yet more pressure and you don’t establish an individual relationship with your tutor.”
Nightline went on to inspire other Universities to provide a similar service, and they have even been set up in America, Canada and Germany. In all, over 50 universities in England offer the service. “Nightline has seemed to have carried on and evolved in a very lively way, it hasn’t lost its relevance which is interesting because we hadn’t thought about how it would develop at all.” For Woodward-Smith however, helping one student summed up the ethos for York Nightline. “One person at the edge of the volunteer group was a fairly spaced out character who was flying for the majority of his University career on chemically induced propellants. One day he came in and asked us for information about mailing packages. It turned out he had wanted to send a package of chemicals to a friend of his in Leeds. However being a unique type, and possibly not quite rooted to the Earth, he addressed the package to ‘The Master of the Space Time Continuum.’
“The Post Office received this parcel and, unsurprisingly, were completely baffled. However they were obviously committed to the job, and in their enthusiasm they sent it to the person in charge of Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire, home to the Lovell Telescope and base for most of Britain’s space research. When the director opened it he was understandably distressed at finding mysterious chemicals, so they managed to track the package back to the University, found the guy responsible and arrested him. The great thing was that we not only helped him to send the package, but managed to find him a cheap lawyer at the end of it!”
Paddy Lukehurst (nee Chalmers)
I was at York at that time and remember something of the starting of Nightline as I had been a housemate of Nick’s the prevous year (More House). I am delighted to see that from those beginnings the scheme has brought help and friendship in so many places!!