Students Against Fees TCD - Statement -Easter Sunday Banner Drop 2016

national | education | press release Tuesday March 29, 2016 14:32 by cr - Students Against Fees

Students Against Fees today organised a banner drop during the Easter Sunday Parade. This was an attempt on the part of our campaign to challenge the hypocrisy surrounding the official 1916 commemorations.

Today the Irish government is celebrating a revolution which declared the importance of “cherishing all the children of the nation equally”. The Students Against Fees campaign believes that education is a right and should be free, in keeping with the revolutionary vision of 1916. How can the Irish state, claiming the legacy of fighters for the oppressed such as Connolly, provide lucrative tax breaks for the rich and corporate Ireland but exclude access to education based on the ability to pay?

Students Against Fees demands no increases to fees and that any plans to introduce a student loans system be scrapped. Any further attacks on education and students will be firmly opposed by a democratic campaign of students themselves. We refuse to continue to be easy targets for successive governments who have forced us to emigrate in our hundreds of thousands. We encourage all students concerned for the future of education to join our campaign and assist the fight against the commodification of education.

Full statement posted at http://saftcd.blogspot.ie/2016/03/statement-easter-sund....html is as follows:

Students Against Fees today organised a banner drop during the Easter Sunday Parade. This was an attempt on the part of our campaign to challenge the hypocrisy surrounding the official 1916 commemorations.

Since the beginning of the economic crisis, successive governments have continuously forced the cost of education on to students and facilitated the transformation of higher education into a privilege rather than a right.

Now with the publication of the Cassells Report imminent, and the two largest parties in the current Dáil advocating a student loans system, it seems that the next step for the Irish state is to saddle students with debt upon their graduation. We have seen the catastrophic effect of loans on education in countries such as the United States and the UK, where the cost of education is inordinately high and excludes students from working class and low-income families.

And yet the Irish government is celebrating a revolution which declared the importance of “cherishing all the children of the nation equally”. The real spirit of 1916 lies with those committed to transforming society for the better. The Students Against Fees campaign believes that education is a right and should be free. How can the Irish state, claiming the legacy of fighters for the oppressed such as Connolly, provide lucrative tax breaks for the rich and corporate Ireland but exclude access to education based on the ability to pay?

There is a deeper process in education across the globe whereby the university is being turned in to a factory. We are seeing the effects of this in Ireland with the growing influence of corporate benefactors in universities, with less and less space for radical and critical ideas to flourish. This year in Trinity we have seen the Fossil Free TCD campaign prevented from organising in the Blackstone LaunchPad space on the basis that this is a “place for capitalism”. It is clear that profit and commodification are more and more becoming the driving forces in higher education.

Students Against Fees demands no increases to fees and that any plans to introduce a student loans system be scrapped. Any further attacks on education and students will be firmly opposed by a democratic campaign of students themselves. We refuse to continue to be easy targets for successive governments who have forced us to emigrate in our hundreds of thousands. We encourage all students concerned for the future of education to join our campaign and assist the fight against the commodification of education.