With the clocks going back at the end of October, and the rush of cold this past week in Edinburgh, the effects of the upcoming winter are truly beginning to be felt, but is the shift in the clocks really necessary still and how does it affect student lives in particular?
When looking at the history of Daylight Saving Time (DST), it is actually a relatively new idea with its origins in 1916. Yet many of its benefits no longer strike the same chord of importance in society. DST is primarily used in Europe and North America and emerged as a means of increasing productivity in the morning and conserving energy by allowing for that extra hour of light in the morning rather than the evening. However, this twentieth century idea neglects key aspects of modern society. So, how does DST impact Edinburgh students?
Darker evenings have a significant effect on many students’ mental health. Many student academic timetables revolve between the hours of 9am and 6pm, with social activities encouraging student life to centre around the evening, rather than the earlier hours. This results in a shift in attention towards the later hours for student productivity- so that extra hour in the morning is not necessarily appreciated or felt by most students. That’s not to say that it’s not a useful tool for many others in society and for some university students, but that for many students it adds to a sense of poor mental health.
The other significant problem highlighted by these earlier hours of darkness is street safety and the number of women who feel unsafe walking alone. With the earliest the sun will set this year approaching, when between the 9th and 19th December sunset will take place at just 15:38, I spoke to some of Edinburgh’s student population on their thoughts.
The cost of living in Edinburgh and the financial pressures created by fears of walking alone at night, must be considered. Much of the more expensive accommodation is closer to the main campuses, creating shorter distances for some students to walk to and from classes in the dark, thus less time out on the streets in the dark. Whilst harassment and assault can happen anywhere regardless of how far you have to walk, certain students are therefore disproportionately exposed and affected by these earlier dark hours.
Young Scot Cards are an essential tool for free transport, but harassment and discomfort is not limited to the streets, and the buses are only free before midnight. Ubers and taxis are simply not a possible expense for many students with the steep financial costs of the city. One student who lives further out of the city centre shared how this affected her, “I’ve lived further out for both years of uni, however, I used to only walk home first year and now I only ever Uber. I think it’s mainly because feeling unsafe now doesn’t end when you’re in the vicinity of home because there’s no staff working 24/7 or no cameras… I’ve increasingly had to rely on male friends to walk me home which makes me feel a lot less independent.” Another student recognised, “After Sarah Everard’s murder when an actual ‘curfew’ was suggested that’s like a physical implementation of something that actually already exists physiologically. Plus this shows that law enforcement which is meant to keep women safe not only can’t protect people effectively but also actively suggest that women change their behaviour rather than addressing men/ trying to make spaces safer.”
DST highlights the wider issue of women’s safety within society, but earlier sunsets also serve as a reminder of the anxiety that many students in general feel in the winter. For many, mental states are worsened not just through a decline in productivity but a sense of loss of independence and safety too.
When speaking to another student they recognised the importance of street safety and DST as part of a wider intersectional issue, “Discourses about protecting women on the street can easily be radicalised on issues of street safety…It’s such a tricky thing because it’s not to diminish a sense of a lack of safety but for instance in London a young man is more likely to be attacked on the street at night than a woman, yet policing is targeted in the interest of (primarily white) women to keep them safe and almost directly against black men. And who gets left out of the whole policy discourse? Women of colour.”
DST as an early twentieth century tool was imposed before women even had equal suffrage to men in the UK (1928), and progress on attitudes towards mental health over the course of the century was gradual. With this in mind, we must ask ourselves – how well does DST fit into modern society’s needs?
Illustration by Camila Sanchez Rodriguez