Picture your stereotypical student: are they volunteering? The British media and public have a skewed view of students, and their lives, without realising that a lot of them are actually helping their local communities. Too often are students painted out to be messy, loud and most probably drunk.
Last year for example, the generosity of the students at the University of Sheffield helped Raising and Giving (RAG) – a committee ran by students to aid charities in South Yorkshire through events like Bummit and Spiderwalk – raised more than £202,474.
As well as this, 1310 students and staff were involved in Sheffield Volunteering, which targets areas of social and economic deprivation though activities organised by students.
In fact, Sheffield Volunteering became the first Student’s Union to receive a Duke of York’s Community Initiative Award, which recognises the hard work done for the local community.
Art: Jonathan Robinson
Unfortunately there are a minority of students who tend to give the rest a bad name – they disrupt residents in the local community through their excessive noise levels, drunken behaviour and litter.
Residential areas that are popular with students such as Broomhill and Crookesmoor are prone to high noise levels.
The Night Time Noise Service, which is run by the council and South Yorkshire Police, helps local residents to deal with excessive noise caused by residents, alarms and even animals. The service runs seven days a week until the early hours of the morning.
Tracy Lovett, Noise Officer at Sheffield City Council, said the high level of noise at night is “the biggest problem caused by students”.
She explains: “The concerns that are raised to us are that students living in certain areas deem themselves to be living in a student area rather than in a residential area.
“Many students live in houses of multiple occupation often adjoining family accommodation which in itself can cause conflict due to noise. There is often also a lifestyle difference with students having social gatherings mid to late evening prior to going out and then causing noise when they/their friends return to the properties in the early hours.
“In the main I have to say that once someone is aware that they are causing a problem we don’t usually have to re-visit.”
The University is also tackling the noise pollution at night through the introduction of noise management plans at the Endcliffe and Ranmoor student villages along with the ‘Staying Up, Keep It Down’ campaign throughout the University.
This campaign, run jointly by the University and the Students’ Union, reminds students to be considerate to neighbours and flatmates by keeping noise levels at a minimum with constant reminders across Student Union publications.
The communities councillor for Sheffield City Council, Michael Rooney, says that students are not fully to blame.
“I think most people understand that not just our students are loud but that the indigenous population is loud,” he said.
“Blaming the loudness at night on students is unfair though I accept that the University is trying to remedy it.”
Although it isn’t just University campaigns that are helping the local community – Synergy, a society for Christian students, has several initiatives throughout the campus and local churches, for example Agape.
Agape is a group of students who express their faith through love – they facilitate clubbers by handing out free bottles of water, even going so far as helping them to the nearest taxi rank if they are too drunk to help themselves.
They volunteer three nights a week at the popular student socials – Tuesday Club, Roar, Climax and Space – on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday nights.
On a typical week, Agape volunteers will get through 18 crates of water (each one including 24 bottles). This equates to 216 kilos of water being handed out.
Hannah Parrott, the executive of Synergy, said: “It has been suggested that a bottle of water has the potential to reduce the risks associated with drunkenness.”
The actions of Agape may not seem a lot compared to the huge amount of money raised by RAG, but these actions could have a positive impact on the NHS with fewer students having to go to hospital with dehydration, hypothermia or due to being attacked on their way home. The students involved with the initiative sometimes accompany clubbers on their way home to ensure they return safely.
The volunteer work of RAG and Agape may counteract many of the student stereotypes, but why isn’t the rest of the student population involved with the community?
It seems that students may be too busy – remember that for most first years at university, it is their first time living away from home and trying to balance a social life, assignments and deadlines along with trying to look after themselves can be stressful to say the least.
Students also have the added stress of money – many have to get a part-time job to fund their way through their degree as in a lot of cases loans don’t stretch far enough, although sometimes students do not have the time due to their university workload.
One student who thinks that generally, students have enough to worry about in regards to money, exams and their workload is Hannah Campbell, a first-year here at the University of Sheffield.
She said: “I do volunteer work at home, helping to run dance classes in a deprived area for kids after school, and I definitely don’t have time to do it at university.
“There’s only so much that you can do without it starting to affect your own life and we have to take it easy especially when we have exams and coursework to do.”
Charlotte Sidwick, another first-year, disagrees. She says: “The majority of students, including myself, do not aid their local community as much as they perhaps should, reason being too much partying and fundamentally procrastination.
“On the other hand the opportunity to volunteer is never going to disappear – it isn’t like a deadline for an essay in that there’s no urgency to complete it so students put it off.”
There are around 50,000 students in Sheffield with around 25,000 at the University of Sheffield alone, so if every student in the city did just an hour’s worth of volunteering from working at their local charity to helping schools, it would make a huge difference.
However students are making increasing efforts to help out the local community while they continue their studies, and often, hold down a part-time job as well – the actions of the majority need to be recognised more.