This is where my 19-year-old cousin is currently a student. Luckily, these weren't her halls, but they could just as easily have been.

Obviously, this is grotesque and abhorrent overreach from an ultra-authoritarian regime that is starting to make the NKVD look like boy scouts, but I don't think this raid was "random", insofar as it could have happened to any group of young people playing Monopoly (this is genuinely what they were doing). That is to say, I don't think it's incidental "they" are so brutally targeting universities.

The thing the overlords want to stamp out above all else are human communities. That's clear, because whilst you're "allowed" to have close contact with one or two people - those you live with and others in your 'support bubble' - what the iron boot has really come down hard on are large and interconnected, structured human networks - communities.

This is because the overlords want to strip our lives of all joy, colour, and meaning, and what seems to be far and away the most meaningful, enriching, and life-affirming facet of human existence is the feeling of belonging to, and having a role in, a community. This is really what we are hardwired to need above all other things. Forget fame and fortune, riches, travel, or even "love" (in the romantic sense) - above all else, humans need a community, and thrive when they are fully integrated into one.

Because of the way modern life has been devised, we almost never experience the level of community integration and engagement we really need. That's why soap operas are so popular. They're surrogate substitutes for the community we wish we were part of ourselves.

However: there is one period in our lives where we come very close to experiencing the close communal bonds we're designed for, where we're connected to and live alongside dozens of other people, and where all aspects of our daily lives are closely intertwined - and that is at university.

Never at any other point do we get the opportunity to live with dozens of other people, and be closely connected to dozens more, who we eat, work, and socialise with every day, for a period of years. This experience, in the Western world, is pretty much completely unique to university.

A nationwide study was done a few years ago where they asked people what had been the happiest time of their lives. People didn't say, getting a dream job, going travelling, getting married, or having children. They said, being at university.

Because of this, because the traditional university experience gives people a true taste of what it means to be fully immersed in the human experience and how meaningful and fulfilling that is - it has obviously been priority targeted for extermination.

Maybe at first glance, that the universities are imploding doesn't seem like too much of a tragedy - many are nothing but exorbitantly overpriced degree mills, churning out useless qualifications whilst enriching the coffers of fat-cat Vice Chancellors. And I agree - they've profoundly lost their way where quality of education and value for money is concerned.But that students still flock to them en masse shows they are offering something very valuable that is not really accessible anywhere else. Being part of a real human community.

These Manchester students could have stayed at home, "safely", with their parents, with no risk of the police kicking their doors down at two o' clock in the morning, But they chose not to, and they still choose not to. None of them have run off home because of this. That's how strong the pull of community is.

They are obviously not there for the nightlife, since there isn't any. They're not there for the lectures, which are all online. They're there for what humans really need and what the overlords despise above all other things - strong, effective, supportive communities.

And to give "lockdown" due credit, I am very pleased to say that mine has never been stronger. My cousin would clearly say the same.