We asked UoB students if they are planning on going home for Christmas in the assigned travel period

Driving Home for Christmas (in the government assigned travel window, of course)


It’s normally that time of year when UoB students are preying for the last Fab tickets and making the most of the time they have left until leaving for Christmas.

However, this time round, we’re stuck in a national lockdown, instead, with no Fab and most preparing to stick a swab up their nose before leaving. How times change!

In a poll carried out on our Instagram, we asked UoB students if they planned on travelling home for Christmas in the government assigned travel period, as well as if they are going to use the lateral-flow testing facility on campus.

A strong 67 per cent answered “Yes” to planning on using the new rapid asymptomatic testing site, leaving 33 per cent of students not using the tests.

The results from whether students would head back home in the travel window were more of a close call – a Studexit even! 59 per cent answered “Yes”, whilst 41 per cent answered “No”.

It seems UoB students are divided on whether they want to spend any more time with their families (a whopping 6 weeks), or wait it out in a Tier 3 area, where the only sense of student normality is heading to Aldi, or going on walks with Tinder dates at Cannon Hill Park.

Maybe another incentive to leave between the 3-9 December is the dropping of admin fees for students travelling on the train in this period.

In a Twitter post, which has since been retweeted by the university, the Dept for Transport announced that students can now rebook their tickets without paying additional fees – every little helps right!