OK, lets say you're a Uni VC... over the summer you have been advised that with social distancing you can bring students back to campus, which is good because without them there is a major shortfall in accom revenues... then evidence came in (aug) from the US that it wasn't...

going to be possible & would lead to lockdowns & maybe your advisors whispered that the levels of community transmission were so high there already it wasn't comparable... and then SAGE published its advice...

And its still sort of looking ok. But sept comes, and the schools go back and transmission rates increase to 3000 tested cases. And some unis go back and its becoming very clear - up and down the country - that there is no way that students are going to...

keep their distance, & even if the majority are responsible there will be parties with 100s at them, and hundreds of more minor rule breaks. AND THEN it looks like the whole community transmission rate is going up to US levels...

And the test and trace system has collapsed. And the test centre you have on campus is useless because it is reliant on the lighthouse labs. And then once students are back whole cohorts begin to have to isolate - all year 1s in law or nursing or whatever.

And this is beginning to look like a MASSIVE clusterfuck, and you may have caused 18,000 students to move around the country, congregating in this one place (which doesn't have infrastructure for highly social infectious students).

So... the question is this. How long before you admit that the unions were right and you should NEVER have come back in person? And finally. Given that you've brought them all to this locality, what do you do? You can't send them back home, but if they stay near/on campus...

then there will be more parties and more infections (and *whisper it - more reputational damage, god forbid!).

You have been the head of a MASSIVE policy failure. and there is no way out of it without declaring martial law and locking all the doors!