Tutors with benefits: how “welfare” has been redefined
Picture this. You are in first year, living in halls a fair distance from your college’s porters lodge and have locked your key card in your room. The master card, which will let you back in, is in the room of your friendly college tutor, who is responsible for your welfare. You knock on their door at a perfectly reasonable daytime hour and bashfully ask for them for the mastercard. The door opens and a scathing glare confirms that the conversation will end quickly:
“Can you let me in my room please?”
“I’m having sex, fuck off.”
In a humbling and honourable act of contrition, the college tutor subsequently deigned to assist his desolate charge. This particular ‘tutor’, (who ironically enough we cannot name for welfare reasons), has a long and hilarious history of preferring the sexual escapade to ensuring a comfortable collective atmosphere in halls. It was perhaps such playful japery that ensured his entrenchment in first year accommodation in the first place.
Playing music so loudly that the student above complained, (twice, to security services, with the volume stalled at its loudest setting) and a basic failure to ingratiate themselves with the college staff and corridor populace are just some of the myriad crimes that are doing the rounds in the cosy circle of University gossip and frankly, makes the system, and the people that put him in the position, look like an absolute joke.
Other college tutors have taken their role of integrating freshers very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that one illusionable flower on our campus covets the dirty sock of the male college tutor that slept with her. I fail to see where welfare, their primary reason for being there, gets a look in.
All of this is rendered especially disgraceful in the light of colleges subsidising their student Tutors either partially or entirely. In essence, the idea is reasonable, if somewhat saccharine. Their accommodation gets paid for and in return they act as a sort of peacekeeper, making sure it isn’t too noisy, and lending a shoulder to cry on when the time is right.
The type of student who gets the placement is someone who has been active on the college JCRC, YUSU, or has thrust themselves wholeheartedly into University life. My college tutor in first year, Vanbrugh’s welfare godmother Joey Ellis, was assured and competent in her role, and it is sad to see some others not following her example.
The committee that decides on who gets lifted out of the financial mire is variously made up of provosts, the dean, the facilities manager, previous tutors and the like. How then can it go so drastically wrong?
There is one caveat in the system as it stands that needs drastic re-evaluation. Potential college tutors can only apply to two colleges, as first and second preferences. If the candidate fails to win either of these places (a common outcome in popular colleges such as Derwent and Vanbrugh), the application is not passed on to colleges with places left to fill. I’m all for college spirit, but surely some sort of co-operation between colleges would not go amiss here.
Such a change wouldn’t stop the fanciful employment of the college bike over the deserving student, but the opportunity of a placement elsewhere on campus would prevent students who really care about the welfare need of their younger peers being further short-changed.
However, systematic overhaul won’t transform the erring layabout into a responsible pseudo-guardian, and so college tutors themselves need to get a grip and stick to their job description.
A considerable financial burden has been lifted from them – an advantage so many hard-up students would kill for – and so they should at least act in a manner which suggests the rest of us, and above all the students paying through the nose to live in their company (often in inferior rooms) aren’t just throwing our money into their condom fund.
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This article is extremely unbalanced, drawing conclusions about the 20+ resident tutors on the back of what is basically gossip about one or two. Tutors work very hard and are on-call 24/7 and while they may not be voiciferous in announcing the hard work they do, that doesn’t mean it is not getting done. The very nature of the welfare service offered by college teams ensures that the good, often emotionally tiring work is kept anonymous and private. If students have a genuine problem then they should, of course, think about contacting their welfare team (or YUSU/GSA/ISA) to discuss it – I am sure it would be resolved.
This comment piece reads like the author had nothing to write and so chose to publish some idle chatter he had heard in the pub, which is hardly journalism of any sort.
More importantly, as only half of tutors are male and most colleges would never dream of allowing anybody other than the Provost (and maybe the Dean) to have access to a master key, the identity of the tutor is hardly well-protected is it? Not sure how this passed the media charter (Tutors are students as well).