Nottingham Trent University have issued an apology after an image of a skull was superimposed onto their dedicated coronavirus advice page.
The image, pictured below, was one of the first things an NTU student would see upon logging into the NOW webpage, the online workspace for all NTU students.
Sam Harris, 20, a second-year Politics and International Relations student at the University told us he believes it could highlight how little the University cares about the mental wellbeing of their students.
“For me it shows a lack of professionalism and really worried me about the amount at which the university actually cares about students during this crisis,” he said.
“Given the fact we are seeing hundreds of people die every day in this country and thousands across the world, and they have used a skull within the photo, or even copy and pasted a picture with one in already, is appallingly inappropriate and shows no care or compassion to the students that have lost family and friends from this outbreak,” he added.
Sam also worries that this image could have a negative effect on the mental health of students, already affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic.
He said: “People are stressing and falling into worrying circumstances while worrying about exams and assessments and this is the icing on the cake showing the university have either no care or no understanding of what students are going through.”
“It’s an appalling thing to see, regardless of whether it’s an accident or not.”
“Thousands of students will have seen it either consciously or subconsciously and I wonder what that’s doing to people’s mental health and how their work will be affected in this already concerning crisis,” he added.
NTU recently moved all their classes online, meaning the number of students being exposed to this image may have increased over the past week.
A spokesperson for the University responded and said: “We received a complaint about an image used on an internal student information system.
“We have removed this image and apologise for any offence which may have unintentionally been caused.”
By Faith Pring