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UCD TRIUMPH OVER HIGHFIELD
Observer Digest NEWS SU Sabbatical Candidates line up Candidates declare intentions to run in the SU’s elections next month PAGE 5
FEATURES Dropping out is hard to do What do you do when faced with the ultimate university decision? PAGE 10
Doctor in the house Dr McSeamy is here to answer all our love questions PAGE 13
SCIENCE & HEALTH Just Friends? Can men and women really just be friends? PAGE 18
Belfield the most expensive campus to live on CLAIRE LEYDEN A survey compiled by UCD Students’ Union has revealed that UCD campus student residences are the most expensive on-campus accommodation in the country. The survey results reveal that campus residences in UCD are over eight per cent more expensive than their city centre Trinity equivalents, despite many places remaining unfilled. Students in UCD can pay up to €5,324 for campus accommodation while their Trinity counterparts face a charge of €4,916. Students in NUI Maynooth pay €4,180 for campus residences while those in UCC cost €4,881 per year. The survey also found that students living in Belgrove and Merville are paying approximately €452 a month for much more basic living conditions than those available off campus. Many first year students have opted out of living on campus this year, choosing instead are finding cheaper accommodation elsewhere. As a result, on-campus accommodation has been Continued on P5 >>
2nd February 2010 ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY... 1941: Wrestler and UCD toilet door hero... uh oh! Looks like it’s Groundhog Day...
Observer The University
VOLUME XVI ISSUE 8
NE QUID FALSE DICERE AUDEAT NE QUID VERI NON AUDEAT
2nd February 2010
IRELAND’S AWARD-WINNING STUDENT NEWSPAPER
Scheduling conflict could mean Christmas Eve exams NATASHA WETTEN
C
hristmas exams in 2010 could run on into Christmas Eve in a bid to resolve the scheduling conflicts around Orienta-
tion Week. The start of the 2010-2011 term has been provisionally deferred by one week, to accommodate scheduling conflicts which see Orientation Week clashing with the first round CAO offers. Problems had arisen when it emerged that UCD’s Orientation Week clashed with the first round of CAO offers, due to be issued this year on 30th August. There were concerns that university authorities may have to scrap Orientation Week in its current format due to the fact that students would only receive notice of their place in UCD halfway through the scheduled Orientation Week. However at a meeting of the University Undergraduate Programme Board last month, it was formally proposed that authorities scrap the original academic schedule, which had intended for orientation to commence on Monday 30th August. It was then proposed that orientation begin on Monday 6th September, with the first week of classes beginning on Monday 13th September. After twelve weeks’ tuition and one revision week, the final exam period would thus start on Monday 13th December and end on 23rd December, one week later than usual. However for this plan to work, it will require condensing the current elevenday exam timetable into a ten-day one. If the traditional eleven-day progamme can not be shortened, it would mean that
Students perform a traditional Malaysian dance at the annual Malaysia Night last Saturday in the Astra Hall. Photo: Catriona Laverty exams would end on Christmas Eve as they cannot be held on Sundays. Proposals were also put forward to begin the exams a day early on Saturday 11th December should the timetabling issue fail to be resolved. According to the written proposal
from the meeting, the main concern with the potential overlap of Orientation Week and the CAO offers being released was the inconvenience that the clash would have on incoming students. It was agreed that allowing students only one day to accept an offer and to begin
their registration would cause too much stress, as well as adding extra pressure to university staff. It was also felt that students would be ill prepared for life in UCD without undergoing the complete orientation process.
Reg charge ‘a form of fees’ – universities BRIDGET FITZSIMONS The heads of the seven Irish universities have admitted for the first time that the student registration fee is a veiled form of third-level fees. The admission, which came at a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Science last Wednesday, 27th January, has brought the debate on fees back into the public forum. The committee heard submissions from the university presidents after UCD Students’ Union President Gary Redmond, along with Trinity Students’ Union President Conan Ó Bróin, had sought a hearing on how the registration fee – formally called the ‘student services levy’ – was being spent by each college. Redmond and Ó Bróin supplied details of the breakdown of the registration fee they have obtained from the two univer-
sities, which revealed that around a third of the fee – about €550 per student – was being spent on covering administrative costs for matters such as registration and examination, as well as funding conventional student services. At the hearing, UCD’s Dr Hugh Brady described the registration fee as “a fee… a non-tuition fee”, while Provost of Trinity, Professor John Hegarty, claimed a link between the rise in the registration fee and the fall in grants paid to universities by the government. DCU’s President, Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski, called the level of questioning put by the Committee as “robust”, but stated that the reintroduction of formal tuition fees was “inevitable”. Following the meeting, Redmond and Ó Bróin expressed relief that the leaders were “finally admitting it [the misallocation of services funds] in public,” with Ó
Bróin describing the universities’ earlier denial as “ridiculous.” Redmond said he had “suggested that these are fees by the back door since September almost,” and that the current labelling of student services is “absurd,” and “nothing short of a farce.” Redmond added that while he was “not going to accuse anyone of creative accounting or ‘cooking the books’ – that’s for the Comptroller and Auditor General of the Public Accounts Committee to do – but it appears to me that the figures that I was presented with, and that my predecessors were presented with, are vastly different from the figures that the Joint Oireachtas Committee were presented with.” While both Redmond and Ó Bróin agree that a charge for registration administrative costs, student services and examinations is fair, they have
complained that universities have been slow to define what they consider to be a ‘student service’. Redmond revealed to The University Observer that UCD had deemed library and IT services to be ‘student services’ for the first time in 2008, while they had previously been considered “a core academic service.” The two Students’ Unions have proposed that either the registration fee be cut in line with investment in student services, and that should the fee remain at €1500 or above, that it be spent entirely on student needs. The committee has invited Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keeffe, to appear in front of them as his earliest convenience to further discuss the breakdown of the registration fee. Ó Bróin has called for “a bit of honesty from the Minister and the universities” when the matter is discussed again.