I came back to my halls to find all my stuff missing

When Boris issued a state of national emergency and laid out his lockdown guidelines, Leeds students were forced to make a big decision. Do you stay in your halls with your new mates and ride out the pandemic with kitchen parties and Deliveroo or do you go home and face the boredom of playing scrabble with your mum for the foreseeable future?

Either way, we all had the same hope that COVID-19 would pass soon so we could resume our uni life.

Bad luck, then, for Ethan Morris, who returned to Charles Morris to find that all his stuff was gone.

Ethan Morris

Ethan first thought something was strange when the fob for his flat wasn’t working. After getting it fixed to find his room completely stripped clean, he was told that that his “room had been logged incorrectly as empty” and the cleaners had removed his possessions ready for next semester.

Not a big deal, then, if you had time to take all your valuables back home before lockdown hit, and the cleaners just threw out the odd leftover towel, or your collection of outdated freshers flyers for Mint Warehouse and Space.

Unfortunately for Ethan an expensive guitar amp and coffee machine were among the casualties, but at least the cleaners did have the honour of leaving him his toothbrush.

Ethan Morris told The Leeds Tab: “[I’m] just pretty shocked that it even happened to be honest, [I] thought my stuff would be safe in my room, but clearly not.”

Ethan was then forced to go on a bit of a Leeds Uni version of Storage Hunters, only for his own stuff. When he was directed to a room supposedly containing his items, “the majority of it had gone” and only a broken lamp and clothes airer remained.

After further investigation it became obvious that all his items, including amp and coffee machine, had been left in the corridor outside his room when it was emptied. In that case, then, I’d definitely check on the roommate at the end of the hall. They’re always the suspicious ones that steal your cutlery, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of Ethan’s roomies that’ll be helping themselves to luxury home-made lattes next year.

A University spokesperson said: “We are sorry for this mistake and have been in contact with the student to offer our apologies, and compensation for the items lost.”