Do Student Safety Wristbands Help?
20th September 2017
Can students be trusted to be alcohol aware and consume alcohol safely?
Campus Living Villages, who run student accommodation across the UK, are giving out student safey wristbands containing student’s address and emergency contact details to help them get home safely at the end of a night out.
13,000 first-year students including undergraduates from the Universities of Birmingham, Exeter, Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool have been given the brightly-coloured safety wristbands to help them keep safe during Freshers’ Week.
According to an article in The Telegraph, today’s generation of snowflake students seem not to be trusted to avoid the pitfalls of drinking alcohol:
‘The scheme has been labelled patronising by leading academics amid fears they could encourage binge-drinking by lulling students into a false sense of security.’
‘It’s a bit like putting collars on dogs or cats, Frank Furedi, a Professor of Sociology and the University of Kent, said to the Daily Telegraph. It’s perfectly alright for five or six-year-olds, but when you treat young men and women like that you’??re assuming they are children who need to be subjected to this intense level of paternalism.’
The move by Campus Living Villages said the wristbands are intended to help taxi drivers deal with passengers who have had too much to drink. But there have been lots of criticism of the scheme, with many feeling that have claimed the students are being patronised.
Universities have duty of care to students and at Marshall E-Learning we feel a demonstration of this is to educate students on how to keep safe, not just give out wristbands. Students will always want to enjoy themselves especially during Freshers Week but there is a need for’?awareness about and the impact of excessive alcohol consumption.
E-learning gives an accessible and timely learning package for students that treats them as adults. This is a proactive approach that equips them with an understanding rather than a tag to send them home when they are incapacitated.
Vincent King, Assistant Director of Commercial Services at Brunel University, commissioned Student Induction Training‘ from Marshall E-Learning and has found the approach to be positive rather than patronising:
‘We want all our first years to feel like freshers in their first week, and that means having fun and making friends. However we also want to make sure that they feel safe on and off campus. Rather than patronising or preaching to our students our job should be to give them the information they need about the dangers of alcohol and drugs, so that they can make their own decisions. It’s early days, but we’ve already seen a really positive response to this approach.’
Carol Clutton from the University of Surrey, Student Support Services, has just rolled out their Surrey Student Induction e-learning module ahead of the new academic year. Here’s what she had to say about the module:
‘There’s certainly pressure on students and Universities to cover these topics as we want to be sure that we are providing relevant, current information to our students about important topics that are relevant to student life today.’
Each of the modules in the Student Induction Elearning Course programme offered by Marshall E-Learning has been designed with the student audience in mind. Everything, from the choice of language to the selection of voiceover artist, is hand-picked to maximise student engagement.
The courses look at subjects including:
- Alcohol and Drug Awareness
- Sexual Consent on Campus
- Diversity Training
- Social Media Savviness
- Getting Support
- Mental Health
- Employability
For those interested in finding out more about the online student induction programme or to commission the course for your university, please contact David Marshall on 0845 123 3909 or contactus@marshallacm.co.uk.
