The Evidence is Stacking Up

Good morning and welcome to the fourth issues of this year's edition of the University Express. I hope you enjoy and appreciate all the hard working and effort me and the rest of the editorial team put into bringing our newspaper to you on a fortnightly basis.Over the past number of weeks, the University Express has been investigating the topic of racism in UCC. We had received a number of emails and Facebook messages in relation to incidents of racism on campus and around the likes of College road and Western road. These messages were difficult to read, as both international students and students of different ethnicity were often finding it difficult to fit in and, at the end of the day, didn’t know where to turn. After receiving a number of such e-mails and messages, the topic came up in a staff meeting of carrying out an investigation into whether students deemed racism to be an issue in UCC and whether people had experienced or witnessed racial prejudice on campus. We created a survey and with the help of the Students Union, who were very enthusiastic and interested in the survey and its possible findings, we distributed it to every student with an active student email account. The survey was available to complete for students for a full week. While the uptake was not as high as we would have hoped, I still believe that the data gathered is important in understanding that racism still very much exists on campus, and while it may not seem like a big deal now, it could potentially lead to a larger issue in the future.One morning, while we were establishing whether an investigation was necessary, a video of a young man racially abusing and attempting to fight an employee at a local fast-food outlet in Cork (I am not going to say their name here, but if you’ve seen the video you know what I’m talking about). The video had spread across almost every social media platform and was very quickly garnering interest from larger media outlets in the city, such as Red FM and the Examiner. This video really highlighted the issue we face here in UCC. While I understand that alcohol was involved, from what I’ve seen in the video it is never acceptable to treat another human being like that. The fact that the young gentleman tried to physically attack the employee is disgusting, wrong and everything UCC stands against. This type of behaviour goes against every ounce of ‘Independent Thinking’ the university tries to instill in us and it was disheartening to see that in the eyes of many, that remains how much of us students are seen. Animalistic and ever so slightly deranged.Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to read this issue of the University Express and I hope you all have a fantastic week.