College Tribune polls encouraging for the left in UCD

by hs sp Wed Nov 06, 2002 13:15

Nice ideas iosaf but unfortunately in this capitalist world most of us need to work to eat, and we need access to univesities and the accredetation for same reason. We can't all afford to live in squats, some people have families. Congratulations to CFE again.

by james redmond - socialist alternative (personal capacity) Sat Nov 02, 2002 00:03 antrophe at hotmail dot com

Yeah, opposition to GATS and so on has always been something which the left have tried to make relevant to people, and especially in the context of college activism, something leftist students have tried to make an issue within the colleges.
However, it is quite difficult to fight the abstraction that is GATS, without any root in reality. In UCD, with the opening of the new Commerce building all the no-logo-esque descriptions of educational institutes taking on the appearance of malls, theatres sponsered by Unilever and AIB, the Smurfit school of business, the Fergal Quinn school of busines and Tony O'Reilly hall. In UCD we have it all in a concreted reality. The re-introduction of fees despite the governments attempts to provide a justification in arguments about wealth redistribution, has to be placed in a wider context and that is part of a wider process of attacks on education, and most fundamentally on the provision of public services. If fees are an attempt to create a situation which facilitates easy privatisation and increased interference from the private sector in public education, then the most effective way to resist this changing nature of education is through action against fees.

by iosaf Fri Nov 01, 2002 19:34 iosaf at email dot com

that public transport should be free
=so you jump the barrier.
that education should be free
=so you join a library /attend seminars / sneak into lecture halls. [remember a university just accredits study with examination and "degree"]
and if you are capable of teaching = you do so.

if however the students want to better their lives and those of the wider community they should widen their anti-education fees campaign, as has been suggested to them.

That would mean "militant" (????¿?) student action against the subversion of educational institutions by multi-national corporations many of whom have launched educational services "to bolster or compete directly" with state sponsered education.

It also might be worth pointing out that most students are wasting their time and actually hindering the prospects of "postive individuation" and developement of their abilities by being in institutions like UCD in the first place. So I really can´t agree with Luke (who thinks I´m an asshole anyway) that the only people who benefit are the students.
Arts students learn nothing and just go on to become unhappy twenty something year olds wondering why they didn´t get a "proper" job. Or they go back to the institution and pursue postgraduate qualifications so they can go on pereptuating the whole charade.
Agricultural students and they are a fearsome lot in UCD no(?) learn very little that couldn´t be learnt in a similar length of time on a farm, not always the same farm, they could wander from farm to farm for four years no?
Science students now maybe they can justify the four years spent in UCD, and afterwards having actually learnt something they mostly go and get jobs with multi-national-corporations.
Free and wider access to third level education went from being a "wish" to a "right" by an emergent post 1960´s european and lately Irish middle class.
That class developed to meet the employment demands of post war european reconstruction.
We no longer need such a class, so I see no reason why so much effort is put into its preservation by young fine minds.
We ought to be rethinking the purpose of education and indeed its timing. The notion of forcing youngsters at their most maleable and impressionable age through such formidable conditioning worries me greatly.
If students don´t want to pay fees, very well.
Neither did I, I was a scholarship student.
But if students really want to be worthy of education then they must think deeply on its significance and wider social effects.
...........manners maketh man..............
...........mol na oige is tiocfaidh siad...

by Luke Fri Nov 01, 2002 16:39 luke387 at eircom dot net

If you ask train/bus users 100% of them would like to see free train/bus. Why should the tax payer pay for you to go to college when it's the student that will benefit in the long term?

by Jack Fri Nov 01, 2002 16:12

Well done . Your poll just prove's that people don t like paying for things. No shit people would rather get free college then pay for it.You must be learning a lot in UCD. Well done

by UCD Student - CFE Fri Nov 01, 2002 16:10

This is a clear mandate fro the students to push ahead with more militant tactics.

The CFE should now seriously step up fight against fees. There should be no compromises with so called "class reps" that oppose the CFE on the SU Council.

The CFE should put forward their own programme for militant action against fees and tell all unrepresentative SU hacks to fuck off.