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Let’s get fiscal

May 18
Posted by admin in Uncategorized

With the Fiscal Compact referendum looming, Cormac Duffy argues the case for a cautious yes vote


To many, the impending referendum on our ratification of the Fiscal Compact (with the catchy formal title being the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union) is the strongest case for wanting to dwell in some fantasy Carlsberg world, with an omnipresent Option C. To take the most cynical tone, as many will between now and May 31st, a yes vote is one to shackle us further to the domineering sway of the European Union, while a no is a death knell for our role in the global markets. Can’t we just have a ‘sometimes’ option on the ballot?

That said, the truth is that we should not approach this with the trepidation we did previous referenda. This treaty is a concise, accessible plan for economic stability in the Eurozone, which may give it the potential to engage voters in a way that the tome of jargon that was Lisbon failed to. In fact, the worst thing the yes side could do is patronise the electorate by shouting the word “Jobs!” at them again à la the first Lisbon referendum. Clearly explained as what it is and taken on that one criterion, as a plan for getting the continent out of the dire straits it is currently floating in, there is a lot to be said for the treaty.

The media spectacle that complemented our planet’s financial meltdown meant that we all know what went wrong and how it was allowed to happen. The treaty aims to respond to this by setting limits on public debt levels, as well as deficit levels, with mandated balanced budget legislation. The proposed debt ceiling of sixty per cent is one that Ireland held mostly throughout its boom years, only to be hoisted well over it by the need to socialise bad bank debt to keep the markets (and the EU) happy. For these extreme, unanticipated cases, the treaty establishes the European Stability Mechanism, a formalised bailout fund of €500 billion. A common criticism has been that this entrenches austerity over stimulus as the go-to policy in a downturn, but room is left for stimulus as long as it is tenable to do so within the existing target. High stimulus spending often only increases debt levels, making it difficult to access money markets due to high yields on what are now risky bonds, making the situation far worse than it started out. The adoption of the treaty itself is likely to send a strong signal to money markets about our commitment to stability, a step along the process of restoring our international standing.

The accumulation of public debt is a domestic problem, one that arises from a political willingness to keep the masses appeased with current high spending, putting the short term ahead of the long term. In as much as the policies here are relatively more technocratic and less pressured by the public, they’re more likely to be a fair judge of how our debt accumulation should go, particularly in comparison to the parochial vote-buyers that too often fall into power.

Yet that hits on the problem. The treaty, no matter how you put it, is a surrender of sovereignty. While that word alone will get the republican left foaming at the mouth, the sovereignty we lose is real policy power, not just symbolic identity. The common currency and earlier agreements removed our capacity for independent monetary policy; now we are constraining our fiscal policy, but it is a trade-off. To reap the gains that we get from our shared currency, capital markets, and powerful union, we have to accept that the risks of our policies no longer affect just us. While this time around, the centre was bailing out the periphery, we do not want to end up in a future situation where we are bailing out a country for their flippant behaviour.

At that point, the only question is whether or not you believe the European project is still something we want to be part of. Each referendum and each crisis we face is a functional spillover to a more centralised union. Many have made the interesting argument that we should use this referendum as a bargaining chip to get better terms on our bailout, especially given how stringently we have stuck to its terms so far. While there is a lot to be said for pursuing this for our long-term stability, we have much less bargaining power than we did with Lisbon and prior treaties. Although the former status quo was unanimous passage of treaties for implementation, that is no longer the case. The Fiscal Compact, approved by all EU countries bar the UK and Czech Republic, is to become a reality; our decision is whether or not we want in, and whether or not we are happy to be in the slower part of a two-speed Europe. In that sense, the yes option seems pertinent. What it will come down to is how we weigh our own sovereignty and independence against fiscal stability, and while a no vote is not the end of the world, it should warrant us to rethink our place in the future of the monetary union.

The University Observer

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Choosing Blindly

May 18
Posted by admin in Master

Students learn principally through interactions with people (teachers and peers) and instructional materials (textbooks, workbooks, instructional software, web-based content, homework, projects, quizzes, and tests).  But education policymakers focus primarily on factors removed from those interactions, such as academic standards, teacher evaluation systems, and school accountability policies.  It’s as if the medical profession worried about the administration of hospitals and patient insurance but paid no attention to the treatments that doctors give their patients.  With over half of fourth graders doing math problems from their textbooks daily, we surely ought to care about what’s in those books.

There is strong evidence that the choice of instructional materials has large effects on student learning—effects that rival in size those that are associated with differences in teacher effectiveness.  For example, in a large-scale methodologically rigorous evaluation of the differential impact of four leading mathematics curricula, second-grade students taught using Saxon Math scored on average 0.17 standard deviations higher in mathematics than students taught using Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Mathematics.  By way of comparison, the difference in the impact on student achievement of a teacher at the 75th percentile of effectiveness compared to an average teacher is only 0.11 to 0.15 standard deviations.  But whereas improving teacher quality through changes in the preparation and professional development of teachers and the human resources policies surrounding their employment is challenging, expensive, and time-consuming; making better choices among available instructional materials should be relatively easy, inexpensive, and quick.

Administrators are prevented from making better choices of instructional materials by the lack of evidence on the effectiveness of the materials currently in use.  The vast majority of materials either have no studies of their effectiveness or have no studies that meet reasonable standards of evidence.  Not only is little information available on the effectiveness of most instructional materials, there is also very little systematic information on which materials are being used in which schools.  In every state except one, it is impossible to find out what materials districts are currently using without contacting the districts one at a time to ask.

This scandalous lack of information will only become more troubling as two major policy initiatives—the Common Core standards and efforts to improve teacher effectiveness—are implemented.  Publishers of instructional materials are lining up to declare the alignment of their materials with the Common Core standards using the most superficial of definitions.  The Common Core standards will only have a chance of raising student achievement if they are implemented with high-quality materials, but there is currently no basis to measure the quality of materials.  Efforts to improve teacher effectiveness will also fall short if they focus solely on the selection and retention of teachers and ignore the instructional tools that teachers are given to practice their craft.

In our Brookings Institution report, we show how this problem can be fixed by states with support from the federal government, non-profit organizations, and private philanthropy.  First, state education agencies should collect data from districts on the instructional materials in use in their schools.  The collection of comprehensive and accurate data will require states to survey districts, and in some cases districts may need to survey their schools.  In the near term, many states can quickly glean useful information by requesting purchasing reports from their districts’ finance offices.  Building on these initial efforts, states should look to initiate future efforts to survey teachers, albeit on a more limited basis.

The federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics should aid states in this effort by developing data collection templates for them to use through its Common Education Data Standards (CEDS), and providing guidance on how states can use and share data on instructional materials.  The most recent version of CEDS contains 679 data elements for K–12 education, none of which relate to instructional materials in use.

Organizations with an interest in education reform should support this effort.  For example, the National Governors Association (NGA) and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) have put their reputations on the line by sponsoring the Common Core State Standards Initiative.  Research based on current and past state standards indicates that this initiative is unlikely to have much of an effect on student achievement in and of itself.  The NGA and CCSSO should put their considerable weight behind the effort to improve the collection of information on instructional materials in order to create an environment in which states, districts, and schools will be able to choose the materials most likely to help students master the content laid out in the Common Core standards.

States facing severe budgetary pressures may be reluctant to undertake new data collection efforts.  Philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lumina Foundation for Education could have a major impact by providing the start-up funding needed to collect data on instructional materials and support the research that would put those data to use.

In 1955, educational psychologist Lee J. Cronbach wrote that “The sheer absence of trustworthy fact regarding the text-in-use is amazing.”  It is more than a half-century later and we still don’t know.  How can we tolerate ignorance on something that is as critical to student learning as instructional materials?

Matthew M. Chingos and Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst, who are research director and director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, are the authors of Choosing Blindly: Instructional Materials, Teacher Effectiveness, and the Common Core.


Education Next

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Hacked off

May 17
Posted by admin in Uncategorized

With the recent arrest of an Irish student for hacking, Emer Sugrue takes a look at the trend of incompetence in technology, and the treatment of those who expose it.

While hacking is not as glamorous or all-powerful as portrayed in fiction, it is still a problem faced by official institutions. Last month Donncha O’Cearbhaill, a first-year Trinity student, was arrested for allegedly hacking into and recording a conference call between the FBI and SOCA, the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency. The call was to discuss international plans for dealing with the hacking groups Anonymous and Lulzsec, of which O’Cearrbhaill is a member, and he duly put the contents of the exchange on Youtube. He has been charged in the US with one count of computer hacking conspiracy and one of ‘intentionally disclosing an unlawfully intercepted wire communication’, facing up to fifteen years in prison if found guilty. For context, the average time served for murder in Ireland is twelve years.

This was not O’Cearbhaill’s first offence. Last year he hacked into the Department of Foreign Affairs simply by guessing their passwords. Three of the passwords used by these government officials was ‘password’. The alleged hacking above stretched Mr. O’Cearbhaill’s supernatural hacking skills even further. The Gardaí have an email system designed specially by the foreign consultancy firm Accenture at a cost to taxpayers of sixty-one million euro, which is apparently so faulty that it is standard practice to forward emails to private unsecured Gmail accounts, which is what one hapless member of the Gardaí’s Computer Crime Investigation Unit did with the details of the conference call. O’Cearbhaill already had access to this Garda’s account because he had, once again, guessed the password.

A University Observer recreation of what hacking may or may not look like

The question is not whether it was illegal or even wrong; of course it was. It’s the digital equivalent of breaking into the Taoiseach’s office just to tip-ex “HA HA HA” on his desk. But if the person breaking in was a security expert and Enda Kenny didn’t know how a door worked, there might be a better use for the burglar than letting him rot.

This astonishing level of technical misunderstanding is endemic in world institutions. The generation in charge has very little understanding of computers, despite the huge number of social and criminal interactions that take place through them. This was not a dedicated terrorist organisation using the information to blackmail or destroy, it was a bored teenager doing it for a laugh. The CCIU not only couldn’t stop him, they couldn’t choose a more inventive password than ‘password’. The huge gaping flaws in the system have been exposed with no malice, and instead of making an effort to fix the system, they are throwing the people who revealed it in jail.

If this is the kind of lazy incompetence at the highest levels of our state, it’s hardly surprising that that same generation of people managed to destroy the country. We have seen the institutions of this country collapse around our ears in the last five years. They have mismanaged the government, the banks, the hospitals, and the police, and we are the ones who have to pay for their stupidity. We are the ones who face unemployment, fees, pay cuts, and tax increases to cover for the mistakes they have made. And when someone comes forward and reveals that the emperor has no clothes, they are punished. We are in a society that always shoots the messenger.

This isn’t corruption, it’s incompetence. Corruption isn’t good, but it implies that the corrupt are at least able to achieve something if given proper motivation. Incompetence is worse, because it can’t be either fixed or deterred. If we continue this tactic of shutting up whoever dares to show a flaw in the system, whether it is in law enforcement, government, or finance, we are doomed to repeat these mistakes over and over again. In the lead-up to the economic crisis many people cried out about what was going on, and how it couldn’t last, and they were silenced and scoffed at. Do we need a technological crisis before hackers are taken seriously?

Here’s a suggestion for any institution finding themselves hacked: Hire the hackers. Hire the people who find the loopholes; they clearly understand the system better than you do. Hacking is not as thrilling or mighty as it is often portrayed to be. It’s not a femme fatale in a catsuit fighting to recover her identity, it’s not a Hollywood nerd who’s only pretension to intellectualism or unattractiveness is a pair of glasses, nervously typing in an abandoned warehouse, ready to pull a gun out when the bad guys arrive, and it’s not a terrorist group trying to take down the indulgent bourgeoisie. Hacking is some teenager dicking around on a laptop while drinking Revamp, and if he can outwit a system purpose-built by highly paid officials, they are the ones who are at fault.

The University Observer

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Paper Textbooks on Borrowed Time in Colleges, Exec Says

May 17
Posted by admin in University

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

Brian Kibby, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education as as universities seek to make textbooks more affordable for students, they’re increasingly interested in digital content and adaptive learning. He says: “I was at a mid-tier state school about 6 or 8 weeks ago speaking to the school of business. And this is a school where it’s a good school, but it is not the University of Illinois, and it was not an affluent private school. So this is a school with largely working parents in a reasonably good business school. So at that school, 70 percent of the students in the business school had an e-reading device of some kind outside of a personal computer. At that point, were the vast majority of students using e-content of some kind? No. But — I think I may be in the minority here — I believe in less than 36 months, the idea of having a print product will be far from the norm on most college campuses across the country.”

http://www.convergemag.com/curriculum/QA-McGraw-Hill-Higher-Education.html

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Educational Technology

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The working student

Mar 30
Posted by admin in Uncategorized

The Vice-Chancvellor of the University of Melbourne in Australia, Professor Glyn Davis, recently wrote about some of the financial pressures on students. In Australia, he said, 44 per cent of students are also in employment of some sort or another while undertaking their studies.

In fact, some work done in Ireland has suggested that a remarkably large percentage of students doing full-time degree programmes are also working in jobs that are, statistically, counted as full-time jobs. The impact of this can be seen in class attendance, and no doubt also in the inability of some students to devote enough time to course work and revision.

As financial pressures increase this is unlikely to get much better, and it may be time for universities to review how they structure their courses. The assumption that students are available without competing pressures during what one might loosely call office hours is not necessarily a valid one any more, at least for some students. How this can be accommodated within higher education practice is now an issue that should be addressed. Otherwise we may face a system in which a major proportion of students is not properly engaged with the learning process.


University Blog

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SU Elections: Campaigns and Communications Officer Analysis

Mar 30
Posted by admin in Uncategorized

Emma Fortune is a competent and experienced candidate with an ambitious and varied manifesto. With regard to campaigns, her policy seems to be continuity with increased involvement on the ground: she does not bring anything radically new to the table. In communications the feasibility of production of a weekly web show and the true impact of viral media are questionable.

Her concern over pay is understandable; however it may prove an issue for student voters. Fortune clearly has a passion for the role and for UCDSU and her marketing experience could indeed prove invaluable. A competent public speaker, she seems sure of her capability. However her manifesto is ambitious and it is difficult to imagine that she will have time to deliver on every promise during what may prove a challenging year with a new government.

Lacey seems to have the most succinct manifesto. He appears confident in his aims for the office and has set clear goals. He aims to improve the way UCDSU campaigns through regeneration of the format of campaign weeks and increased involvement in lobbying alongside USI.

With communications, he does not promise any radical changes. His ambitions for Class Rep training are commendable, but the actual impact on cost is unclear and students may question his opposition to the use of other Dublin campuses. Lacey is a confident candidate with a passion for campaigning for students and a track record of achievements in his position as Sports Officer; however his confidence could initially be mistaken for arrogance and so first impressions could have a significant impact on his campaign.

Lee’s manifesto clearly differs to that of her competitors. She does advocate the continuity of campaigns with regard to access to education and student nurses’ pay, but disagrees with the current campaign format entirely.

Lee’s allegation that campaigns have been “dire” may seem overly harsh even to critics of the SU. However, she does present a valid argument with regard to the lack of student awareness and involvement that needs to be combated. Her desire to move toward direct action, peaceful though it may be, may concern students. Her determination to move Class Rep training back to campus to cut costs may prove popular and her clear passion for the redevelopment of campaigns is commendable. Lee is a fresh face with a different approach; however this approach may prove too different for some students to support.

~

Name: Emma Fortune
Age: 21
Course and year: 3rd Year Commerce
Do you drink, smoke or take drugs? I drink and smoke, but I don’t take drugs.
Who are the President, Registrar and Bursar of UCD? The President is Hugh Brady, the Registrar is Philip… Sorry I’ve totally blanked, and the Bursar is Gerry O’Brien.
How do you rate the performance of this year’s officer? I think he has dealt so well, he was probably one of the real backbones to the education not emigration march. I think he was very good.

Review
Emma Fortune has wealth of experience in both UCD and UCDSU having served on numerous committees and crews; she is the incumbent Business PRO.

She recognises that UCDSU can be perceived as a clique but thinks “it’s more of an image than an actual thing […] I think it’s viewed as exclusive but I think that there need to be more people involved.” Fortune is eager to “break the view, but I would like to maintain the camaraderie that exists between the officers”.

She is supportive of the USI and believes that this year they “empowered the regular everyday student to know that they could bring about change”. As a full maintenance grant student, Fortune spoke at the USI-organised “Education not Emigration” march last November.

If elected, Fortune aims to improve communications by bringing viral media to UCD. Through weekly web shows and iPhone apps linked in to Twitter and Facebook, she hopes to change the way that UCDSU communicates, though she admits that she would not “get rid of posters”. These technologies are already in place, but she believes that they have not been fully harnessed and aims to do this. She also hopes to utilise campus media in order to spread campaigns on the ground.

In terms of campaigns themselves, she will continue to oppose the rising registration fee, cuts to student grants and cuts to student nurses’ pay. Fortune would also continue to promote the voter registration campaign. She believes that the experience she has gained studying marketing will be invaluable to the SU in reaching target audiences and promoting campaigns.

Fortune is eager to cut the cost of Class Rep training, but says that: “Until I’m in the job, I can’t make a definite decision.” She acknowledges that there “has to be another way of doing it that we can cut costs”. In her position as PRO she has experience dealing Class Reps and aims to utilise this: “I’d be very active meeting my Class Reps […] it’s not 100 per cent there and hopefully that’s what I’ll do next year.”

Fortune is not opposed to taking a pay cut but would prefer to negotiate the rate: “I couldn’t take a €100 pay cut. I live away from home; I pay rent; if this happened I think that Sabbatical positions would be kept for the wealthy.”

Fortune cites her creativity and her experience as that which sets her apart in the race. “I think both the other candidates are very strong but I just think I have the edge in that sense,” she says. “I know my stuff.”

~


Name: Brendan Lacey
Age: 22
Course and year: 2nd Year Business and Law.
Do you drink, smoke or take drugs? I drink and smoke. I don’t take drugs.
Who are the President, Registrar and Bursar of UCD? The President is Dr. Hugh Brady, the Registrar is still Philip Nolan until August and the Bursar is Gerry O’Brien.
How do you rate the performance of this year’s officer? In terms of what Pat’s managed to achieve with the problems he’s been faced with, I think he’s done a great job.

Review

Brendan Lacey has, in his own words “been involved at almost every level of the Union bar Sabbatical Officer”.

As the first UCDSU Sports Officer, he has been involved in the organisation of numerous events on campus this year, most notably the recent Sig Fest.

He has been active in campaigns with the USI, an organisation that he believes has “consistently delivered on its aim to fight fees and represent students”. He would “love to hear the debate,” regarding USI membership and welcomes criticism of UCDSU. “We can grow and learn a lot when people are criticising us,” Lacey explains.

He believes: “Campaigns have become stale and communications can be a lot more effective.

“We need more than posters and texts,” he says, promoting the idea of apps for smartphones and Facebook. If elected, he would encourage students to become involved in improving the SU website which he believes is “ineffective”.

Lacey has a definite vision for campaigns: “I think waiting for things to come on to our doorstep isn’t good enough anymore. We need to get out and set our agenda from day one.” He hopes to continue to fight fees, lobby against the introduction of a graduate tax, continue the campaign for student nurses and push for a solution to the graduate jobs crisis, amongst various other campaigns.

“We’re brilliant in the SU at getting things done, we’re not so good at telling people about it and that’s what we need to improve on,” Lacey argues.

With regard to class raps Lacey is eager to ensure that accountability is not “a buzzword that nobody ever explains”. He aims to set clear goals for Class Reps and give them the support to achieve them. He hopes to create a handbook containing advice from Sabbatical Officers, which will allow reps to deal with student issues on the spot.

As regards the training weekend, he wants to “keep the good points and bring down costs”. He would attempt this initiative through “campus swaps” with other universities, though not Trinity College or DCU, as he believes that this would defeat the purpose of going “off-campus. A university is purpose built for training students,” Lacey explains, citing the cost of hotels with conference facilities as that which has driven costs upward in previous years.

Though admittedly under financial strain, Lacey will accept a pay cut should he be elected: “I’m not the president, if he cuts my wages I’m happy enough with it.”

He is confident that his ideas and experience set him apart from his fellow competitors: “I’ve got the best new ideas and I’ve got the most experience to deliver on them.”

~

Name: Suzanne Lee
Age: 21
Course and year: 2nd Year Mathematical Science
Do you drink, smoke or take drugs? Yes, I do all three.
Who are the President, Registrar and Bursar of UCD? The President is obviously Hugh Brady, but I don’t see it as my duty to know who they are. I’m paying to go here, surely it should be them making themselves known to me rather than me having to go and find out who these people are.
How do you rate the performance of this year’s officer? Before I started this campaign I went and read Pat de Brún’s manifesto from last year and looking at it, I can’t remember anything that he’s actually properly followed through on, but that isn’t to say that there isn’t. The officers seem to be grand individually when you go to them with anything, but in terms of working together and pulling off stuff, they don’t seem to be able to do that.

Review
Suzanne Lee is an active campaigner involved with Shell to Sea, Free Education For Everyone (FEE) and the Alliance for Choice to name but a few.

She criticises what she believes to be the “lack of transparency” in UCDSU and the actions of USI in condemning the group of students who occupied the Department of Finance at the November 3rd Education not Emigration March. Lee does not believe USI is worth the affiliation fee, but does not see this “as a reason to leave it, I see that more as a reason to change it”.

She believes that there is a severe lack of communication between the Students’ Union and the student body. “For a Union that’s supposed to represent however many people, they’re not very good at telling you what’s going on,” Lee argues. She cites the failure to publicise the referendum on changing the title of Women’s Officer to Equality Officer as one example of their inefficiency in this regard.

“I think in terms of campaigns, UCD has a lot of them need to be re-vamped,” Lee states, deeming the standard of campaigns this year to be “dire”.  “Nobody is consulting students on what they want campaigns on,” she explains. If elected, Lee aims to promote peaceful direct action in place of “silly letter writing campaigns” to fight rising reg fees, student nurses’ pay cuts and promote more effective mental health awareness.

Lee is prepared to discuss her own experience with mental health issues in the campaign for change: “No one else is doing enough to end stigma, no one else is doing something about this, so it might be hard, but I’m going to have to talk.”

With regard to Class Rep training, Lee’s policy is simple: she will hold it on campus. She dismisses the argument that off-campus training is important for ensuring a collective audience: “[If] you run for that job, you should be focused,” she says. “When you get trained for a job […] you get trained on the job, and I don’t see why this should be any different.”

Lee states that her involvement with FEE will not influence her agenda if elected: “If I’m doing something for someone, I will listen to them rather than people in the background.” She acknowledges that her policies differ from other candidates’, but insists that this will merely encourage her to lobby more effectively rather than walking away.

She has stated in her manifesto that she is prepared to take a pay cut if elected.

Lee believes that she will bring a much-needed fresh perspective to the role: “I actually want to work for [students], not further my career or better my CV.”

What is RON?

RON stands for Re-Open Nominations and will appear as an option at the bottom of voting ballots. Students would vote RON when they are dissatisfied with the candidates running for election and seek another election so that alternative options may be pursued.

Students can thus vote for RON as they would any other candidate and its votes are also tallied and weighted in the same manner as they would be for other candidates. If RON is elected, the Union Returning Officer will invite nominations again and organise another election as soon as possible.

RON is especially pertinent in cases where a candidate is running unopposed and students seek an alternative to this candidate. This enables the situation to be more democratic, as it prevents students from being elected by default.

There has been a particularly strong RON campaign for this year’s race for Education Officer, as many students are unhappy that Sam Geoghegan is the only candidate actively running for election.

The University Observer

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SU Elections: Presidential Analysis

Mar 30
Posted by admin in Uncategorized

This year’s presidential election race is proving to be a stark contrast from last year where Paul Lynam ran unopposed. It marks a break from tradition in terms of candidates, with two of the three candidates, Brendan Lannoye and Lorcan Gray, having no prior experience within the Students’ Union. All three candidates have political experience however, despite all of them being just 20 years old.

Pat de Brún arguably has the benefit of being the only candidate having already held a Sabbatical position, but admits that some of the main campaigns of his tenure, including the Fight the Fees campaign, fell short of their ultimate aims. However, these shortcomings are unlikely to debilitate his chances of obtaining the presidential office.

What is obvious is that the vast majority of priorities in de Brún’s manifesto have already been in the pipeline, such as the fight to reduce re-sit/repeat fees, the introduction of a 24-hour study area and the introduction of an SU Mobile App.

While de Brún comes across as a good public speaker and has a wide knowledge of UCD trivia, Lorcan Gray’s referral to “Hugh Brady and the lads”, and “that Labour lad” is hardly the type of vocabulary and university knowledge that would be expected on an incumbent Students’ Union President.

Gray’s involvement in FEE and the Socialist Worker’s Party may win him some votes from activists in those areas, along with those who are disillusioned with the current state of the SU. However, despite claiming to bring “a new and fresh approach in the campaigning of all fees and cuts to education”, Gray contradicts this manifesto statement by saying that he intends to get more students out on the streets to protest against student fees. He seems to care more about criticising the current Sabbatical team than with regards to student welfare.

Brendan Lannoye, the presidential candidate who calls the body he hopes to preside over the Student Union as opposed to Students’ Union, claims in his manifesto to have calculated up to €296,940 that could be cut from the Students’ Union budget. However, in his interview he clarifies this claim, saying it won’t be cut, but re-allocated.

It is debatable whether Lannoye’s proposal to donate €100 of his weekly wage to the Welfare Fund is an attempt to buy votes, or is genuinely for care of student issues.

What points towards the former is that unlike de Brún, he mentions very little about care for student welfare, and instead is focusing on overhauling both the Students’ Union and its affiliation to USI. However, his impressive ability to adeptly defend everything in his manifesto and his honesty and professional tone is attractive in terms of voting, and it isn’t difficult to imagine him at the helm of the SU.

~

Name: Lorcan Gray

Age: 20

Course and Year: 2nd Year Arts

Do you drink, smoke or take drugs? I drink and take drugs occasionally

Name UCD’s seven vice-presidents? You mean, Hugh Brady and the lads? I just know Students, because he sends around that email. It’s hardly the best communication on their part

Who are the President, Registrar and Bursar of UCD? Hugh Brady’s the President. The other lads? Again, [I don’t know] it’s due to a lack of communication.

What is the most important part of the position of President? It’s to oversee the whole Union – the four other Sabbats, the Exec, and the likes of that, and also to be a mouthpiece for the Union and to organise students. It should be to organise them into particularly a fighting force, but also a political structure that actually means something and actually works, and respect the Constitution in that sense.

Review

Lorcan Gray emphasises his belief that the Students’ Union needs him as President to transform it into a ‘fighting union’, referring to the fact that he is an active member of FEE (Free Education for Everyone) and hopes to continue the fight to cap the university contribution fee and to combat graduate unemployment. Additionally, the idea of a ‘fighting union’ is referring to his desire to fight “the hacks” as he refers to current Students’ Union Sabbatical Officers.

Gray cites his experience in campaigns such as Shell to Sea and the anti-war movement, as well as his involvement with the Socialist Workers’ Party at UCD, as being among the reasons why he feels he has what it takes to be the SU President for 2011-12. He admits that he is running in conjunction with C&C candidate and fellow Socialist Worker’s activist Suzanne Lee. In addition to this, he says personal skills that would benefit him for the role include the fact that he has spoken at many public events.

He says: “Again it’s the age-old question: who knows the Sabbatical Officers? Who knows their Class Rep? The Class Rep goes for a piss-up at the start of the year and then organises a handful of parties, and that’s it; puts it on their CV.” Gray is critical of the performance of this year’s Sabbatical Officers and claims that the Sabbatical positions are mainly a stepping-stone for the officers into politics.

Gray is adamant that USI did not do enough for student issues in the political arena after the march in November, yet believes the €5 paid by all full-time UCD students to USI is worth it: “We’re paying them over €100 grand, but we’re also paying Brady over €200 grand and giving him a free mansion.”

Gray says that he would like to improve on the performance of this year’s Students’ Union by getting more students out on the streets in protests, and states in his manifesto that he does not believe that campaigns such as the TellYourTD.ie campaign are effective in ensuring student issues stay near the top of the political agenda.

Gray says his top priorities, if he is elected, will include moving Class Rep training back to campus, and to create mass student assemblies with a view to involving students in the decision-making process. He also emphasises his belief for the necessity of a transparent union, and his desire to end what he believes is the cliquish nature of the Students’ Union.

He says that he stands for “genuinely free education and for a new and fresh approach in campaigning for the scrappage of all fees and cuts to education”. His other priorities include the preservation of student nursing salaries, and to fight the cost of healthcare on the UCD campus.

~

Name: Pat de Brún

Age: 20

Course: Law with Politics, year 2, currently on sabbatical as the SU Campaigns and Communications Vice-President.

From: Carlow

Do you drink, smoke or take drugs? I drink, I smoke, unfortunately, but I don’t take drugs.

What are the names of UCD’s seven vice-presidents? First of all the deputy president or Vice-President for Academic Affairs, Philip Nolan, second we have the Bursar, or Vice-President for Finance, I think, Vice-President for…is Áine Gibbons, Vice-President for Research is Des Fitzgerald, Vice-President for Students is Dr Martin Butler, Vice-President for Staff is Eamon Drea, Vice-President for University Relations.

What is the role of president? To be the chief spokesperson of the SU, financial controller of the SU, and then in real terms, the team leader, control the direction of the SU; People managing. It’s dealing with the highest level of negotiations, if there’s someone involved in the HEA, the minister, the President of the university, that kind of thing.

Review

De Brún shows a vast knowledge or the workings of not just the Students’ Union but additionally of the university itself, being able to cite the titles of all seven university Vice-Presidents. Aside from being a Class Rep and a former Law Programme Officer in the SU Executive Committee, he is currently completing his tenure as SU Campaigns and Communications Vice-President. De Brún is also very familiar with the workings of the USI, and expresses his belief that the affiliation fee paid by UCD to USI every year is worth the cost.

Top of de Brún’s priorities as stated in his manifesto include the creation of a transparent union and to fight cuts to the third-level grant, as well as endeavouring to have the cost of re-sit/repeat fees lowered and the establishment of more internships and work experience for degree programmes, of which he says: “I want this to be driven through university policy.”

He cites the University of Limerick as an example, where 33 per cent of students are currently on work placement. He intends to fight for an optional intern year for degrees that do not have an obvious work experience pathway, and believes it will free space in the university, as well as help university finances.

De Brún says that he is not running for president for personal gain, but for care of students, and says that his stated aims as president are in the interest of the Union and not for prestige: “Nothing in my manifesto is there as a vote-getter.”

Commenting on the performance of this year’s Students’ Union, de Brún says that he regrets what he perceives to have been a slackening on the part of the SU following the November 3rd protest, which he feels wasn’t improved upon until the second semester.

“There weren’t visible achievements for the rest of that semester,” he says. “We were tired, and there’s no excuse for that because we’re paid officers, and the students are paying our wage.” De Brún is, however, confident that more people will take an interest in the SU elections this year than before due to the general election and a “spirit of voting”.

“I’m there to serve the students,” he adds. “If I set my aims out on an agenda for the SU at the start of the year, then I will stop at nothing for that to be achieved.” De Brún says that his ideas as are all achievable, despite admitting that the campaign to have the registration fee capped was a failure this year.

De Brún says that he does not feel the image of the Students’ Union as a clique is a fair assessment, stating that the majority of his friends are from outside the Union, and that he barely knew the other sabbatical officers until he took office.

~

Name: Brendan Lannoye

Age: 20

Course and Year: 2nd Year History and Politics

Do you drink, smoke or take drugs? I don’t smoke, I don’t take drugs – well, there was one Amsterdam trip.

Name UCD’s seven Vice-Presidents? I’m not sure.

Who are the President, Registrar and Bursar of UCD? The Registrar is Barbara Proctor, or has that changed over yet? David Carmody is one of those as well.

What is the most important part of the position of President? The President needs to set the agenda for the year. Obviously, there are a lot of administrative roles he sits on, about 40 committees; there’s a lot of nitty-gritty stuff and that’s all incredibly important. But I think the President, through his actions, and through what he does, can almost set the mood of the college, and I think it’s incredibly important for the President to be out there talking to people, because it’s students who own the Union.

Review

Brendan Lannoye is running on the slogan “fight the clique,” referring to the perceived cliquish nature of the Students’ Union – or ‘Student Union’ as the potential President refers to it as, in his manifesto, on posters, and throughout his interview with The University Observer. Lannoye believes that cliques are formed in the Students’ Union that merely provide policies that benefit them as a platform for a political career: “Cliques are grand…but we want to have policies that don’t favour them ahead of everyone else.”

Lannoye cites his experience in politics as well as involvement in UCD societies as some of the reasons why he feels he has the ability to lead the Students’ Union. However, he believes his most important attribute to be the fact that he is a student and knows the workings of university life. He believes that while being a Sabbatical Officer for a number of years may gain you the political experience necessary to run the Union, being on sabbatical for a number of years (he cites former SU President Gary Redmond’s five-year sabbatical as an example) does not qualify the person as a student.

Furthermore, Lannoye is keen to emphasise that he wishes “to bring the Student Union [sic] back the students”. He states in his manifesto that up to €296,940 could be cut from the SU budget (although in his interview, he claims that these funds could be re-allocated, and not cut), and cites electoral reform and Class Rep training as two of the areas in which he would re-allocate SU funds.

Lannoye also aims to eliminate the perceived careerism that exists within the SU by pushing for the constitutional review group (which is to be set up during the next academic year) to look at a proposal that would prevent Sabbatical Officers from being re-elected. However, Lannoye also states that the review group would have full independence on the basis that it is the students of UCD that own the Union.

A key proponent of the Re-Open Nominations for Education Vice-President campaign, Lannoye still wishes to reform the Students’ Union elections to make them more cost-effective, but admits a RON campaign would heighten electoral costs for this year’s race. His electoral reform includes following the Trinity College model of running elections through the Student Information Service (SIS), and he says the basis for his support of the RON campaign is that he believes the more people that run for office, the more likely it is that the best person for the job will be elected.

Lannoye claims that current Students’ Union lacks honesty, on the basis of rumours, and says: “Rumours don’t come out of nowhere.” On this issue, of Sabbatical Officers and what he perceives as a sense of careerism among the ‘clique’, he says: “To be honest, if there was someone making private gains out of their role in the Union, I would do everything to get them out of office as soon as I could.”

The University Observer

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SHSU students give the gift of technology

Mar 29
Posted by admin in University

By Sarah Thompson, Huntsville Item

In a Huntsville elementary computer lab, Sam Houston State University junior Calvin Laws balanced his 6-foot, 2-inch frame on one of the lab’s child-sized chairs next to his newfound third-grade friend and helped the boy access an online textbook. Laws is a part of the small group of students from SHSU’s computer science department who volunteer their free time to refurbish discarded university equipment to donate to rural school districts. On this day, student volunteers were given the opportunity to deliver 21 Dell desktop computers to the school children of Huntsville Independent School District’s Samuel Houston Elementary campus.

http://itemonline.com/local/x814633178/SHSU-students-give-the-gift-of-technology

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Educational Technology

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The wiki generation

Mar 29
Posted by admin in Uncategorized

If you are like me, you may be getting a bit tired of the prefix ‘wiki’ appearing everywhere. I have to confess that it has taken me until today to find out what ‘wiki’ actually means. Actually, I still don’t really know, because there are various suggestions out there on the internet. The two most commonly given are that ‘wiki’ is an acronym that stands for ‘What I Know Is’; or that it is Hawaiian for ‘quick’ (or rather, it is half of that, as the Hawaiian word is apparently ‘wiki-wiki’).

Of course what made ‘wiki’ famous is Wikipedia, the online open access encyclopaedia that you and I can edit. It is now one of the two or three most frequently accessed internet sites, with literally millions of articles. It is the last (or sometimes first) resort of students writing essays, or of people wanting reasonably detailed answers on whatever interests them.

The academic and expert communities have always been divided on Wikipedia. Now nearly ten years old, the website has been criticised for inaccuracy and sloppy oversight. In 2006 some of the original founders moved away and created a new site, Citizendium, which was also to be written by volunteers but which was to have more careful and expert monitoring and checking. It hasn’t worked, because some years on it still only has 15,693 entries, and of these only 155 have actually been subjected to the kind of scrutiny that was to be the chief characteristic of the site. Meanwhile Wikipedia keeps growing, and it is now said that for many users of the internet it is the only site they visit if they want to have quick information. Whatever is on Wikipedia, right or wrong, is now the only authority many people ever get to know.

I recently chatted with a group of academics who all declared that it was their belief that the academy needed to fight the use of Wikipedia with all the energy it could muster. But there are others who take a different approach. So for example the Association for Psychological Science is organising its members to edit, correct and monitor Wikipedia articles relevant to its field, thereby creating a more accurate set of articles. Other groups have also been formed to work on a voluntary basis to enhance quality control on the site, including a group of academics in Imperial College London. A research team in Carnegie Mellon University has produced a learned paper suggesting ways in which Wikipedia can be enhanced as a reliable tool (‘Harnessing the Wisdom of Crowds in Wikipedia: Quality Through Coordination’). It may be that a gradual change of approach by the higher education community is under way.

Information gathering and distribution on the internet is constantly reinventing itself, and Wikipedia may yet be replaced with something different. But in the meantime it is there, and it is the information framework that most people now use and believe. There is very little point in fighting that, but there may be much to be gained from a better organised academic engagement.


University Blog

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Infographic: Evolution of the Noble Librarian

Mar 29
Posted by admin in Uncategorized

The library has always been a storehouse of knowledge. The first stacks contained papyrus scrolls, which evolved to handwritten books, then printed books; today the volumes found in libraries are stored as printed material, electronic data, and multimedia presentations. Librarians have made a similar transition, from shelf managers to catalogue clerks to the professionals that today oversee the management of and access tools for many forms of media. There has been a single, consistent element for every librarian in every manifestation of the library. Knowledge is only passed on when it can be retrieved; librarians have always held the key.

Master Degree Online.com

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