It’s all too clear we students are being ripped off

So, we’re in a recession, you might have heard. And according to the endless conveyer belt of suited and booted financial experts, the best place to hide away from the effects of this is inside the ivory tower surroundings of a third level institution.

Apparently, hiding away under your bed, and emerging once all the pandemonium is over isn’t a workable option.

We all know that money is tight at the moment – it’s a sad fact that we all have to deal with – but as students we should feel somewhat fiscally safe inside the walls of DCU. But we don’t.

We should be able to avail of cut-price, subsidised student offers, and the savings that go along with being a student, but we aren’t.

And we should be able to make the notes that we withdraw from our bank accounts stretch further than they would do out in the big bad world, but they don’t. Most certainly not in DCU anyway.

The fact is that the finance experts and their snappy ties have got it slightly wrong: the place you want to shelter away in during this economic meltdown isn’t in just any third level institution. The best place to be tucked away is in any third level institution bar DCU.

Only at DCU do you find a university so anti-students, in terms of the cost of simple, student essentials, that you really have to wonder whether Ferdie would prefer to just get rid of us all and use the land to develop the Ballymun Disneyland. Prices certainly wouldn’t have to be changed if the development did happen that’s for sure.

How else can DCU justify the cost of essentials like food and printing – costs that it is impossible to avoid?

How can they charge just under a tenner for a roast dinner with potatoes and vegetables and feel that is right to make a breadline student pay that? And how can the university justify the opening cost of €150 per hour to any club or society that wants to utilise the Hub on the weekend?

There is only one way I feel that the suits that run the university can justify making us dig a little deeper than students at other institutions, and that if we as students of DCU are blessed with facilities that are worth paying that little bit extra for. But we aren’t fortunate enough to be blessed with these, nothing of the sort.

And there is no point kidding ourselves that the truck delivering the so called “facilities” has broken down on the M50, unable to call for help for the last five years.

From derelict buildings like the Henry Grattan, which should really be on the National Heritage Society’s watch list by now, to broken computers and lights, and software and equipment that is years – and in some cases – decades out of date, we aren’t offered the facilities that would allow us to get to the level of competency essential for getting employment in our chosen careers, making DCU’s selling point as being a truly hands-on university anything but laudable.

It’s all too clear that the old “Rip Off DCU” vibe, saying, feeling, and way of life isn’t going away anytime soon. And that even in the middle of the financially hardest time for students in decades, the idea of DCU actually helping our pockets is just an idea; a dream, if you will.