Postgraduates have few staff benefits – but bear the responsibilities of the Covid frontline
Eleanor McDonald (not her real name) signed up to be a live-in warden in a student hall at St Andrews University because her PhD funding did not cover her rent and food. Meals and accommodation came with the job, but now so do abuse from drunken, unmasked students being told not to party, confrontations in narrow airless corridors, and students with serious mental health problems whom she has no idea how to help.
“We were told we would have minimal face-to-face contact with students,” she says. “That is not what has happened. We’ve been the only frontline Covid-19 policing force inside the halls of residence overnight.”
