In need of a little tea and sympathy? Try your campus security team

When the fire alarm began sounding, the duty guard followed procedure: trace source of activation and investigate. That led him to a bedroom in our halls of residence – and to a student nonchalantly smoking on his bed.

The guard explained that tobacco wasn’t permitted on campus, and that he would have to report the sock wrapped around the smoke detector on the student’s ceiling in a failed attempt to disguise his misdeeds.

“Yeah, yeah,” said the student, not getting up. “Go on. Send your email.”

Since the UK’s “Freedom Day” and the lifting of all Covid restrictions, he isn’t the only student to have gone into Beastie Boys mode, fighting for his right to party. Having paid their £9,250 fees to mostly sit at home for the past two years, students now feel they’re due some well-earned revelry – especially with Covid cases beginning to once again rise, sparking fears of a return of restrictions.

The “I’m a paying customer” attitude is something I’ve seen flourish since 2010, when the Browne Review triggered England’s infamous £6,000 rise in tuition fees. And I expect that the air of entitlement that came with it will shoot up again now that students will be repaying their loans for 40 years instead of 30, above an earnings threshold of £25,000 (lowered from £27,295).

You can’t blame the students for taking it badly. While previous generations went to university for nothing (provided their school grades marked them down as a future cryptosystem pioneer, DNA database developer or TV comedian), some of the present generation of undergraduates will still be paying back their loans when they’re 61: the age when the average homeowner apparently clears their mortgage.

But as front-line staff, we guards can cop the rough end of the consumerist backlash – and not just in the form of passive smoking. One recent complaint our customers brought to us concerned the withdrawal of free lateral flow test kits. Despite our explanation that it was a government decision – it’s not like the vice-chancellor robbed them all to flog at a car boot sale – some students protested that kits should be covered by their fees.

Guards are experienced at handling misunderstandings like these, however. When we used to charge a re-entry fee to any fresher who persistently locked their keys in halls, we’d often be told that the penalty was out of order. After all, if you stay in a hotel, the bellboy opens your door for you whenever you want, and for free.

True, we’d say. But if you live in a flat, a locksmith will charge you around £100 for the same service. And he won’t carry your bag up the stairs and show you how to connect to the campus roaming wi-fi service.

Given current global events, it would be easy to write off UK students’ financial worries as first world problems. But I worry about the toll they take. This undergraduate generation doesn’t have the rosiest of outlooks even without the escalating loan repayments. With the climate crisis, the revived threat of nuclear conflict, unaffordable housing, and Grammarly hijacking all their YouTube ads, it can be easy for them to feel depressed or anxious.

Some are evidently doing all they can to line their pockets before the Student Loans Company comes knocking. We got a phone call one night from a very rattled member of the public demanding we hand over our CCTV footage to him. He’d just been sold a duff iPhone via a student listing on Gumtree and he wanted to find out who the culprit was. We broke it to him gently that we’re not legally allowed to hand over camera footage.

No less exasperated are some of the academic staff we encounter, who feel pressured to meet recruitment targets or have to burn the midnight oil to meet their workloads. We’re good listeners. And if lecturers need a tea at weekends, when the cafe’s closed, forget the £10 moped delivery service – we’ve got a kettle.

We might even be able to help them out if they prefer coffee. With UK student numbers rising, there seems to be a campus open day every other weekend, complete with banners, display stands and fixed, welcoming smiles. Trying to police a crowd can be nerve-racking, but at least we get to hunt around for dropped complimentary coffee vouchers. We’d give one up for a deserving case.

Our hot drinks and sympathy are also available to the students – and not because they are paying customers but because they are human beings. If a loud bang followed by a guttural howl alerts us to a student whose console has crashed and who has punched his walls in frustration, we’ll roll out the ice pack and words of consolation before we tell him how much a plasterer charges to skim a room.

We even stay polite during evictions. Take the fresher’s boyfriend who secretly lived in her house, enrolled on a course, dropped out, then refused to leave after the fresher dumped him. As instructed by a senior manager, we locked him out of the property. But our second instruction was to help him back in – once he’d set up an emergency payment plan. 

A weird shift, that one. But at least it has given us the title of our future hit podcast: From Bailiff to Butler.

George Bass is a security guard at a UK university.