UCD Students Win Their 1st Victory in Anti-Cuts Campaign

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday December 05, 2003 16:47 by Oisín Kelly - UCDSU Education Vice President sueducation at ucd dot ie Office G19, Student Centre, Belfield, D2 / SU Office, 2nd Floor, Earlsfort Terrace, D2. 7163111 (Belfield) / 7165515 (Earlsfort Terrace)

Earlsfort Terrace Library Hours Extended

Today the UCDSU has learned that the Earlsfort Terrace Library opening hours will be extended to 10pm in the new year.

This week hundreds of UCD students occupied the main library in Belfield over night in protest against the 10% in the University's budget. Students have also occupied to keep the library open after it's closing time 3 times before- twice in Belfield and once in Earlsfort Terrace.

The Earlsfort Terrace library serves about 2,000 UCD students. The Faculty of Medicine, School of Nursing and some of the Engineering Departments are the main users of the Earlsfort Terrace campus in Dublin's City Centre.

This is a victory for the campaign. It is a victory won by the hundreds of students that participated and organised the protests in the past number of weeks. It's a clear example of how we win gains in our education- through the action of students, not by 'asking nicely' or viewing the College Authorities as 'our partners'. The recent library protests have been the first since the late 80s, and the Earlsfort Terrace protest was the last library protest there since the 1960s.

The library has been successfully used to highlight the 10% cut in the budget It is now important that we step up our anti-cuts campaign in the new year. The effect of the cut is not just felt in the library. There are now less tutorials in a number of Departments. For example last year in History there wer tutorials for the compulsary course for 2nd year- now there are none!

It will also be important to strengthen the links with the workers in the University. The library protests have been greatly successful as they were, in effect, joint action with the library workers against cuts in the service. We will also have to broaden the campaign by demanding that no public services are cut- after all we're not just against education cuts.