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An unlucky cohort of undergraduates has been plagued by Covid restrictions, education strikes and finally a marking boycott
Emily Smith, a final-year geography student at Durham University, never imagined her already heavily disrupted university experience could end like this. She won’t be graduating this summer because half her work remains unmarked owing to a national marking boycott by lecturers.
She refuses to attend the “completion ceremony” Durham has offered her instead. Without an actual degree classification it seems like a “farce”. Like so many in this deeply unlucky cohort of students, she feels this is the last straw.
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Readers respond to Daniel Dylan Wray’s article about escaping the shadow of his abusive father
I was moved by Daniel Dylan Wray’s account of lone parenthood, domestic abuse and seeing his father for the first time across a courtroom (A moment that changed me, 1 February). I have a not dissimilar story, although I lived with my father, but I remember periods of parental separation as a welcome relief. In a similar Damascene moment, I went from angry teen to university, and, as a professor, I’m still there.
University was a door into another world. I fear that similar young people will not have a chance to experience those moments of relief, and support from public services, that I, and presumably Wray, enjoyed. The relentless attacks on financial and other support to lone parents, and the ensuing stigma, will make life almost impossible for families in similar situations today, as I outlined in the Guardian last year (Tories have shamed single parents and heaped financial pressure on them, 5 July 2022).
Prof Morag Treanor
Edinburgh
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