I’M A STUDENT at the University of Sussex and want to write from the very minority perspective of a uni student who DOES follow lockdown/ Covid guidelines - and explain that my reward from not illegally partying every night is pure and utter loneliness.

Meeting people, making friends to now go to the pub with is an impossible task and feels quite frankly, embarrassing. The ignorant, rule-breaking students are met with friendship, parties and drunken memories. We are then labelled as the "idiots who need to loosen up". This, needs to change.

Being a girl who never thought she’d suffer with loneliness at university, now facing this is a hard pill to swallow as I’ve had the what I now see as privilege to have always had friends. However Covid has turned that reality into a distant dream.

I watch from my flat window as 40 to 50 students each night flood past in a drunken heap, screaming, cuddling, kissing and laughing in their groups. Am I angry? Yes. Am I envious? Even more so.

Since the age of 14, I’ve dreamed and fantasised about my university days. Drunken parties and cool friends. Have I had any of those visions. Absolutely not. Yet have my peers? Yes, seemingly nearly all of them.

That's the point, this would be so much easier if all students were in the same boat. Yet that couldn’t be further from the truth. The music, cheers and laughter of parties are going on around me remind me of this.

Over 100, 000 people have died in the UK alone and there is unimaginable strain on our NHS. So of course I don’t go. I sit at home, doing what I should.

However this all becomes exceedingly difficult when the students with the careless attitudes seemingly get zero repercussions. Everyone knows the threats of huge fines yet have I seen these happen consistently as punishment? No.

Police attend our campus each night and the odd story of a fine or arrest floats about yet why are the majority getting away with this?

I do not blame the university. I feel they do try and stop this but the approach isn’t working. Ignorant students are causing harm to wider society but also their peers. This is what I want to illustrate.

On top of this, then being a rule follower leaves me with a label of "loser" or "boring" and I’m sick of it.

So I want to get the word out to the rule-following students, I hope something changes and we feel less alone and isolated as it is not OK. Ultimately though, to the students who do turn a blind eye to the pandemic we are living in and attend parties anyway, you are really damaging your peers. You are really damaging society. Then having the cheek to label us as the "idiots who need to loosen up". Simply isn’t fair. You need to be stopped.

I am bitter? Yes. Is this fair? No. Any students who feel the same. Please contact me via The Argus.

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