Your view: Students show contempt with Christmas party during pandemic
âA huge numberâ of UCC students held a Christmas party on November 18. To do so was to ignore the health crisis facing our country, says a letter-writer.
An open letter to UCC students who organised and attended their Christmas Party.
A huge number of UCC students held a Christmas party on November 18 to celebrate the season of goodwill.
Neither the Students' Union nor the UCC authorities supported the event.
You assembled, in groups, in the hundreds, outside many of the local pubs near the College from 9.30am onwards.
You wore festive Christmas jumpers as the event appeared to be well planned, as in previous years.
You stood packed closely together. You laughed, joked, and larked about, compressed together in your collective purpose to get into the pubs to drink together for the rest of the day and into the night.
Many of you clearly had âa few on boardâ before you arrived to queue and many of you drank as you waited. Some of you were still queuing at 1pm, still packed tightly together, celebrating.
I donât know what it was like inside the premises.
Each of you, who attended, made the choice to be present and to behave as you did, individually and collectively. As third-level students, each of you understood the current public health advice.
Each of you was aware of the crisis facing our country. None can claim ignorance.
You knew what you were doing and you clearly didnât care.
What better way to show total disregard for social distancing.
What better way to spread the virus.
What better way to give two fingers to your neighbours in the communities around UCC.
What better way to put the lives and health of your neighbours, your fellow students, your lecturers, the security, catering, library, cleaning, and other staff who worked hard to get you back to college.
What better way to snub the state which provided subsidies and financial support to you during the pandemic.
What better way to show your utter contempt for those suffering in packed ICUs and hospitals in Cork and throughout the country and for the frontline health workers caring for them.
You have brought shame on yourselves, your families, and on your university.
In spite of all of the measures implemented, I cannot raise my voice to sing at church! At a match, I can scream to my heartâs content â albeit outdoors.
 Whilst I attend morning prayer, where social distances are adhered to, masks deployed, sanitisers flourish, and only every second or third pew is available, etc., I am told by the powers that be, that I cannot sing to the Almighty.
Perhaps, at this time, in this generation more than ever, ought we not to sing to God â or, to Jesus; ought we not all the more sing out and sing forth our praises to God, in worship? Perhaps, now more than ever in this generation, ought we not to be able to raise our voices â even in song, as they would in other venues, but sing unto HimÂ
We need to cap rents for three years at least; they have gone sky-high, resulting in mass evictions and emigration and the loss of Ireland's skilled workers who are the backbone of this country.Â
The Government needs to clamp down on vulture funding and other international investors who are buying up land and houses which should be used for our own citizens. They are driving people out of their own country a huge clampdown is in need.
In his November 22 letter, Jim Cosgrove tells us that in dealing with Covid, the government is 'a dithering shambles where courageous leadership, honourable selflessness, and regular clarity of purpose, irrespective of the variability of the situation, is gone AWOL'.
What that ignores is that Covid death rates in Ireland are one of the lowest in the EU since the start of the Covid pandemic.
The death rate from Covid in this country is, in fact, little more than half the death rate in the UK with whom we share a border and a common travel area.
That is not due to those involved being a dithering shambles.
It does say that the Irish people involved in dealing with Covid have had leadership and clarity of purpose that is as good if not better than those in charge in many of the countries of the EU.
I'm dreaming of a quiet Christmas, unlike the ones I used to know.
In last Friday's Irish Examiner GAA historian Paul Rouse penned a very interesting article about the first-ever Cork County senior hurling championship in 1887.
The story was built around the fact that this competition was never actually finished.
Most of Paul`s piece surrounded the semi-final between Cork Nationals (later to become Blackrock) and St Finbarr's, which was never concluded, while only a passing reference was made of the team who had already won its way to the final. That team was Passage which is my own club.
He correctly states that this championship had 22 entrants with the Aghada club fielding two teams.
Passage defeated Charleville in the first round of that championship and in the following rounds disposed of Cloyne, Inniscarra, and Little Island in that order. These victories set up a semi-final against a highly fancied Tower Street team. Passage, however, prevailed on a score of 3-4 to 1-6.
However, the ongoing dispute between Cork Nationals and St Finbarr's in the other semi-final left Passage without an opponent in what should have been a historic occasion.
As my own great-grandfather, Ned Cadogan, was chairman of the Passage club at that time, I have heard many stories passed down to me relating to that episode.
It was quite understandable that there was a lot of bitterness in Passage when Cork Nationals were awarded the county title particularly when they had not even reached the final and were the cause of the dispute when they would not accept a decision by the referee. Passage had, of course, won five championship games while Cork Nationals had only won three.
Since that decision 144 years ago there has been a perception in Cork GAA circles that the big clubs, until recent years, held too much sway in the running of our games.
All clubs, big and small, have a major role to play in the success of our great association, but I must say it has been very satisfying in recent years to see the smaller clubs in our county strutting their stuff in county finals on the big stages in PĂĄirc UÂ Chaoimh and PĂĄirc UĂ Rinn.
