Labour Youth commends the two victories of the Take Back Trinity movement
Labour Youth welcomes the Board of Trinity College’s decision to make concessions on two of the Take Back Trinity Movement’s demands – to scrap the unfair €450 charge for supplemental exams and granting fee certainty fees for postgraduate and international students. Labour Youth further commends the power of the Take Back Trinity movement and the broader support for it from around the country.
Labour Youth’s chairperson, Chloe Manahan said:
“Over the last few weeks, we have seen student power quite unlike anything that Ireland has seen in recent years. The unrelenting efforts of students involved in the Take Back Trinity movement has been nothing short of incredible. Their activism has extended to solidarity with the workers in Trinity, who have been consistently fighting funding cuts and outsourcing. Those workers face increased precarity and the casualisation of their work, just as students combat the commodification of their education. This movement has been a manifestation of the hurt and disappointment that students and young people have experienced in Ireland for a number of years.
“Today is a victory for that student movement, of which several Labour Youth activists have been involved. The success thus far is a lesson to others about what can be achieved through people power. The problems faced by students in Trinity is part of a broader problem where young voices are silenced and ignored when it counts. The work being done by these students has served as an inspiration to other students and young people and has triggered similar action in other colleges around the country.”
“Labour Youth expresses its solidarity with the students in Trinity in their continued efforts to have the rest of their demands met and with those who are trying to ask for better elsewhere in the country as well as with staff facing cutbacks in their institutions.”