N UAC HT
February 18 2020
Good Samaritan aims to aid students’ mental health with free hot meals By Shauna Mc Hugh The atmosphere on campus on a Sunday afternoon is one unbeknownst to many students, who either go home for the weekends, are working, or even a lucky few who are just sleeping in. However, many people who frequent the place at this hour could tell you that it’s often a stressful climate, full of students who would rather be anywhere else. “Generally, the people in college on a Sunday really have to be there for whatever reason, and not by choice”, Lily Magennis explains. Thanks to her culinary skills and generosity, however, Sundays at NUI Galway have recently become more bearable for the unlucky students who have to spend their weekends studying on campus. From 3 to 7pm every Sunday, Lily Magennis serves free hot meals in The Hub to the students of NUI Galway. It all started back in September as a “happy accident”, when she was forced to return home early from her job at an Italian summer camp after breaking her finger. Desperately in need of something else to do, Lily found employment with the college’s Socs Box, and began cooking for many of the University’s society events. Not satisfied with this busy workload during the week, Lily decided to continue working on weekends; “I use whatever ingredients we have left on a Sunday and try to recycle it and make a decent meal”. It’s not shabby leftovers that Lily serves, however. Lily has extensive cuisine experience, which is reflected in the quality of her dishes; “I’ve been working in a kitchen since I was 17, and I’m 23 now. I originally started out as a kitchen porter, but often did many other
things for the kitchen team”. Lily’s exploration into cookery “started as an accident, like all good things”, she says. She’s now capable of creating many innovative meals on demand: “Pasta, rice and potatoes are all provided for free by Socs Box, not many people know about this” she shares, “Those form the base for so many good dishes. There are also always meat options and vegetarian options available on Sundays. If a vegan ever shows up, I’d be happy to prepare something for them too.” There’s now a select amount of people who always show up on Sunday for her food. There’s a group of Chinese mature students who are regulars, and DramSoc have also been in a few times if they have rehearsals on campus at the weekend. There has also been a surge in the number of people showing up. “Lots of friendships have been made there”, Lily enthuses, “I love the Chinese masters students, they’ve even offered to help me open a restaurant in Thailand someday! My friends from Anime Soc come and help a lot too.” Friendship is what first inspired Lily’s love for cooking as a child; “I grew up in a particularly poor part of Cork. My Dad left when I was young, and so my mam had to work a lot, so I cooked for myself often. I used to cook for my friends too. It would just be some meat and potatoes but it was like gold to them. A lot of my friends were going hungry, that’s what inspired this for me.” Serving meals on Sunday has now become a means for Lily to help a wider community that may be struggling. “Students, especially ones doing Masters or PhDs, often don’t have time to properly care for themselves. People can just come in to eat or talk - as far as mental health
goes, it’s amazing how far a hot meal and a chat can go, which has been a happy side effect of all this. I would never judge anyone who wants to come in and talk. I’m a 6ft 4” trans girl from Cork, I’m the last person who can judge!” The BA Connect with Film, Geography and Archaeology student is now trying to balance this commitment with studying for her last ever semester; “I’m in final year now, so I can’t devote as much time to it as I’d like. I usually spend 12—15 hours a week between prep, clean up and buying ingredients. In semester one, it was just me, now I get help from other Hub staff. This weekend, Anastasia will be doing all the work, and I’m just helping out. The official hours are 3-7pm, but I’m happy to stay beyond that. I just want people to eat.” While a free hot meal is enough of an enticement for most students, it’s not all that Lily offers, as she often shares her culinary tips and tricks too; “If anyone wants to learn how to cook, I will teach them! I can show people simple things like how to sharpen a knife on the back of a mug, for example, or sometimes I teach people how to dice onions.” With the service on a Sunday only growing in popularity, Lily has a vision for expanding this initiative; “I’d love to do more days of the week. If people are around on Friday evenings, I’d do something, or I could do breakfast on Monday mornings”, she tells SIN. The only thing holding Lily back at the minute, she says, is what she perceives as an unfair allocation of the college’s funding; “I’d love more funding for this, like 100 euro of the student levy goes to the Kingfisher, which not all of us use, so why not give more to something that could feed everyone?”
Private school students more likely to attend third level education By Rachel Garvey A recent study in The Sunday Independent has shown that fee-paying students are up to three times more likely to attend top universities. The data recorded by the Sunday Independent showed that “less than 10 percent of pupils sitting the Leaving Cert attend private schools, yet 30 percent of these students make up the incoming student populations in Trinity and University College Dublin in 2019”, These statistics show the proportion of private school students are attending some of Ireland’s top third level institutions. The figures show that 51 percent of students from public schools will go on to
attend university. In comparison, 70 percent of fee-paying students went on to a higher institution. Ireland’s top art colleges have a particularly high proportion of students from fee-paying schools. For example, Sunday Independent’s recorded data showed that 23% of students who attended Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art and Design had come from a fee-paying school, while that number is 20% for the National College of Art and Design. The Irish Times conducted a recent survey which showed that students from private schools dominated most of the popular courses at third level. These private schools also made up half of the 25 schools who had the most students progress to third level. Carl O’Brien of The Irish Times conducted an inter-
view with Professor of Equality Studies at UCD, Kathleen Lynch, who stated “access to grinds and trips to Irish colleges are among the ways better-off students can secure an educational advantage”. The lack of these benefits can be seen as a potential barrier to further education for those who can’t attend private, fee-paying schools. This is something that university student bodies are keen to address, as seen by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) slogan, ‘Break the Barriers’. Statistics also showed that most students don’t leave their own county to go on to third level. Around 90% of students in Dublin stayed in the county for college. That figure is 72% in Galway, and 78% in Cork.
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‘Urban Gaeltachts’ could be key to promoting Irish language in NUI Galway By Dean Keating Over the summer, the creation of an ‘Urban Gaeltacht’ on Nun’s Island was proposed to NUI Galway. The plan was meant as a “Serious step in the national revival dream: an urbane Irish-speaking community” in the world’s only bi-lingual Irish city, according to the founder of UrbanGael, Bréanann Ó Catháın. The proposed project would be home to a literature museum, poetry house, Irish speaking schools (Gaelscoileanna) and Irish speaking apartments (Gaelárasáin). The Gaeltacht would also seek to contribute to the economic growth of Galway by attracting a tech-class through the creation of a “Tech Hub” in the heart of the Gaeltacht. UrbanGael has described this as a plan for a “Gaelic Silicon Valley”. The project would also be environmentally friendly, with a proposed bird sanctuary, in keeping with the Island’s Irish language name “Oileán Altanach”. The proposals also include a financial plan about how the University could achieve this in a financially sustainable manner. Nun’s Island was proposed because of its significance to two famous martyrs of the Irish language: Maolra Seoighe and Saint Colmán. Maolra was executed because the courts refused to understand his testimony of innocence, delivered in the Irish language. Similarly, Colmán was murdered by German barbarians who did not understand Irish. This comes against the backdrop of former NUI Galway President Jim Browne dropping the Irish language requirement for the NUI Galway presidency in 2016, which received huge backlash at the time and sparked several student protests. UrbanGael’s Mr Ó Catháın described the decision to drop the Irish language requirement as the beginning of a series of rollbacks for the Irish language at NUI Galway and an undermining of NUI Galway’s status as the only bilingual Irish language university in the world. He notes that the protests to re-open the university’s Caifé Na Gaeilge, which raised concerns over the lack of spaces for Irish language speakers within the NUI Galway campus, showed the popular support among students for the Irish language and their rejection of these language rollbacks. Speaking at the Caifé na Gaeilge protests, Students’ Union President Clare Austick said to fellow students “Going forward, we must protect the spaces we have for Irish speakers on campus. We must also encourage more spaces to become available for people to engage in the Irish language”. Amidst all the hype of this year’s General Election, it is worth noting that the plan has seen cross-party support in the Galway City Council and County Council, as well as reactors in the student media and wider national media. It is hoped that this proposal will be a part of the Nun’s Island master plan, which will include a €200 million redevelopment of the urban quarter.
