UCC president to meet students about fee plans

THE president of University College Cork (UCC) is due to meet students leaders today as opposition mounts against controversial plans to introduce a €65 graduation fee.

The meeting comes a day after UCC’s Young Fine Gael branch presented the university’s vice-president for External Relations, Eamon Sweeney, with thousands of student signatures calling for the charge to be scrapped.

Chairman of UCC’s YFG branch Robert O’Sullivan said they collected about 2,500 signatures as part of their on-campus Enough is Enough campaign.

A further 3,000 were collected as part of the Cork Student News’s online campaign, he said.

A few hundred students marched on the vice president’s office yesterday afternoon and handed the petition in to his office.

“I would call on the president of UCC at this stage to abolish the fee or to enter into negotiations with the students’ union to bring the cost down, and not take the easy option of placing another unnecessary tax on students,” Mr O’Sullivan said.

Yesterday’s protest was the second on campus this week against the controversial new charge.

The petition gathering exercise was supported by UCC’s Students’ Union, whose president Eoin Hayes is due to meet with Dr Murphy today to discuss the issue.

Mr Hayes is also due to meet other senior members of the college management team later.

The students’ union has written to UCC’S Governing Body asking it to examine the impact the introduction of the fee might have on the university’s ability to attract students.

It is also considering recommending graduates boycott UCC’s Graduates Association.

The introduction of the fee was announced on April 1. Any student wishing to attend their graduation ceremony will have to pay €65. It will allow the student and two guests to attend the event and the reception afterwards.

A spokesperson for the university defended the move and said that the cost of all previous conferrings, which topped some €200,000 last year, has been borne by the university.

He said UCC has been faced with a severe financial crisis and its core exchequer funding has been reduced which has resulted in the most severe cost-cutting exercise ever witnessed across the university.

“The fee now being proposed will cover the university’s costs. There will be no element of profit,” he noted.