On 3rd December, the Students’ Guild announced its decision to shut Exeter Nightline. The news will be devastating for many, especially current volunteers. We know the closure will have been a difficult decision. However, as two former coordinators of Exeter Nightline, we feel it’s important to share why Nightline mattered and to provide context to Exeter students – and anyone with an interest in supporting student mental health – on why such a treasured and vital student group has closed.
We know the closure will have been a difficult decision. However, as two former coordinators of Exeter Nightline, we feel it’s important to share why Nightline mattered and to provide context to Exeter students…
University nightlines are student-run listening and information services that operate during the night. They have existed since the 1970s, and Exeter was one of the first. Each nightline runs independently, usually under a student union, and is based on the principles of empathy, confidentiality and anonymity. Exeter Nightline mattered to the students who phoned or messaged us: it offered a unique source of peer support during the night when other services are unavailable – the ability to talk with a trained, empathetic listening ear, a fellow student, for up to two hours. To give an illustration of the scale of demand, Exeter Nightline took 303 calls during the 2024-2025 academic year, many of these lasting longer than an hour.
Nightline also changed the lives of the students who volunteered with it. Throughout its operation, Exeter Nightline trained thousands of students in active listening skills and promoted awareness of mental health across the university. It ran workshops for the Guild, organised events with Wellbeing Services and student societies, and shared useful welfare tips on social media. Nightline was an integral – but often overlooked – part of student life. For psychology students, it offered a placement opportunity to gain real-world experience in mental health. Most freshers will have seen a Nightline poster in their first-year halls. Nightline’s number is on the back of every student card.
Nightline also changed the lives of the students who volunteered with it.
The direct cause of the Guild’s decision to shut Exeter Nightline was the closure of the Nightline Association (NLA). The NLA was an umbrella charity set up in 2006 to coordinate the work of UK university nightlines. It offered advice to nightlines and doubled-checked their internal policies, accrediting them. However, nightlines remained a diverse collection of student-led groups, each one running differently depending on its partnership with its university and student union, as well as its own legacy of decades of student volunteering. In 2023, York and Manchester nightlines were closed by their student unions in close succession over concerns about volunteer welfare and policy disagreements. This led to greater scrutiny of how nightlines in the UK were run. In January 2025, the NLA announced it would close due to a lack of funding and many nightlines across the country suddenly faced a crisis of confidence from student unions, concerned they were now on the hook for groups which sometimes dealt with serious calls about mental health.
The direct cause of the Guild’s decision to shut Exeter Nightline was the closure of the Nightline Association (NLA).
Managing risk is something we were always acutely conscious of as nightline coordinators. Each year, Exeter Nightline answered a small number of calls from students facing a mental health crisis. Reducing student suicide was a founding purpose of the nightline movement. Nightline trained its volunteers extensively to handle difficult topics, including regular training from experts. Policies reflected helpline sector best practice. Our volunteer welfare processes were used as a model for other nightlines and we worked transparently with Wellbeing Services to support our volunteers. Exeter was a successful, award-winning lifeline.
There is risk involved in a lot of things that are worthwhile, and we saw first hand how Nightline changed lives. Exeter Nightline ran safely thanks to the dedication of students giving up time during their studies to build something important, and we were often left in awe of this as coordinators. With Nightline’s closure, Exeter is losing the work of hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours. We continue to believe in student volunteering and that the out-of-hours peer support nightlines offer is powerful. We are not alone in believing this; numerous UK nightlines continue to run and, despite the crisis in its country of origin, the idea of university nightlines is continuing to expand across Europe.
Exeter Nightline ran safely thanks to the dedication of students giving up time during their studies to build something important, and we were often left in awe of this as coordinators.
Now Exeter Nightline has gone, at least for the immediate future, students and those who care about student mental health will need to consider the following questions: how can the work of Nightline volunteers be preserved and used to improve student welfare? How and why was such a valuable and special service allowed to close? How can the crisis in student mental health be addressed? We want to emphasise that there are still many sources of support available at Exeter. Wellbeing Services offers professional mental health support to students and can be accessed by phone, email or walk-ins. Although it’s disheartening to lose a thriving and well-used service, it’s important that every volunteer feels immensely proud of the difference they made and the way they live and breathe the values of empathy and compassion.
A spokesperson from the Guild issued the following statement: “With the Nightline Association closing nationally, many SUs are having to review their services. After pausing Nightline this term to reflect on how it could safely continue, we, your Students’ Guild, have now made the incredibly tough decision that Nightline Exeter cannot continue in its current form. Without the national body, it’s become much harder to guarantee the training, safeguarding and independent checks a service like these needs. We want to make sure whatever comes next is safe, sustainable, and genuinely supportive. We’ll keep working with the University to explore new ways to offer peer support and to champion better student mental health.”
