If deadlines are making you resemble Rudy Giuliani at a Trump press conference, sweat not! We’ve trimmed this week’s most cutting-edge student news into bite-size pieces for you to read in those precious few moments between stress-eating and tweeting about how much work you’re not doing.
Students to Receive €250 Brown Envelope from Government
Congratulations one and all, for finally suffering enough to warrant a government payout. When you turn 100 years old in Ireland, you receive €2,540 and a letter from the President in commemoration of your living so many years under a permanently right-wing government. Well, students, we’ve been officially deemed to have suffered enough to receive less than 10% of this and a nod from Simon Harris! This week, it was confirmed that students who have been *forced* to pay the €3,000 registration fees for a year of sitting at home watching ‘Zoom University’ will be given a €250 refund. What can we do with this juicy credit note you ask? The list is rumoured to stretch from ‘this year’s fees’ – all the way to ‘this year’s Student Centre levy’!
UCD Pulls Provisional Grades
UCD, the band famous for hits such as the ‘non-existent no detriment’ and ‘half effort, full fees’ have this week released their latest attempt at a bougie, alt record – ‘grade sans appeals’. Reportedly following on from the anti-student vibe of their previous hits, this new single will explore their decision to axe the two week period in which students can appeal before their final grades. Much like any below-average 70’s rock band on LSD, UCD is tripping into the mysterious realm of clairvoyance. The band’s ‘vision’ expects students to defy the laws of time and ‘engage with extenuating circumstances now’, presuming they can foretell (weeks before final papers are due) that they’re going to face difficulties. ‘Stick it to the man’? – nah bro let’s ‘Stick it to the kids’.
Student Accommodation Policy “Not Working,” says Man Responsible for Irish Universities
It’s been a few weeks now since Simon Harris turned-Tom Cruise and endeavoured to take on his very own departmental ‘Mission Impossible’ – somehow giving third-level institutions more ‘autonomy’ all the while simultaneously enforcing stronger governance and accountability measures. Basically, here is your freedom to do (or continue to do) whatever you like, but once a week I will pop up in a national newspaper and criticise you for it. Last week it was the lack of on-campus hours, this week’s instalment is criticising universities student housing policies in Mission Impossible – Rogue Accommodation. Cruise has said that the state’s policy on student accommodation was not “robust enough”. This would be an interesting criticism, were it not from the one person in Ireland with the most opportunity to actually fix this problem.
Irish Women Struggle Against Image-Based Sexual Abuse
Not much can make the Newsround abandon its endeavours to make comedy out of (or rather point out the comedy in) recent news events. This week however, thousands of young Irish women were subject to one of the cruellest invasions of privacy possible, and one of which the consequences are long-lasting, far-reaching, and no laughing matter.
There is no excuse for sharing a photograph, given to you in confidence, to one or to many online. These women, some underage, did not give their consent to have their private pictures published, and yet, they now exist online, likely permanently. Whatsmore, many of these women have experienced being ‘blamed’ for taking such pictures in the first place, instead of those men who consciously choose to share other’s intimate photographs online. The only reason we know about these photographs is due to a “leak” – meaning this is not everything, and this is not the end of this problem.
It is legal to share images of others online and it remains legal even if they are sexual in nature. This problem must be recognised for what it is – sexual abuse. And we must stand in recognition and solidarity until it is made a crime.
Gemma Farrell – Assistant News Editor
