UCC Immigration Crisis

A huge influx of migrants within University College Cork has caused tensions to run high on campus in recent days.Many members of what is arguably the university’s most vulnerable subgroup, Arts students, have been attempting to migrate en masse to science courses, putting intense pressure on the Department of Physics and the Department of Biological, Earth, and Environmental Sciences (BEES) to deal with transfer applications in particular. As well as causing stress high up in each department, many science students have vocalised their concerns regarding the “disturbing” trend.“I understand that they mightn’t be happy where they are,” one anonymous physics student claimed in a statement, “but I don’t want them coming in here and taking my seat in the lab, and then maybe taking my job in the long term.”Many factors have been used to explain the sudden migratory trend. Economics students have put forward the theory that this is a result of the increased pressure on young people to get a college degree, therefore forcing them to accept a place on a course in which they have little or no interest.  Students of social sciences believe its root may lie in the strain that the anonymity and uniformity associated with Arts can put on students. One student, who hopes to transfer to a chemistry-based course, spoke to Byline about his decision to apply for transfer:“People don’t understand that I’m just as capable of studying science as they are. Many of us got the same qualifications in the Leaving Certificate. I want to work hard and move on with my life. We’re all scientists, and I think we could get on really well.”Others have responded to these claims as being “horseshit”. Self-proclaimed ‘Keeper of the Course and the Scientific Way of Life’, Noel Shatter, is vocal on this subject.“They’re just different to us! They think differently, they act differently – the sciences and the arts have nothing in common. They’re going to come in here with their crackpot, airy-fairy notions, and they’ll destroy this institution from the inside out!”While students of Government have remained largely unhelpful on the issue, the School of Law has issued statements in an attempt to reassure aspiring scientists that the Arts students are well within their rights to apply for a change of course at this point of the year, and have pointed out that there remain spaces to be filled in several scientific studies courses. Mr. Shatter has rubbished these claims.“We have our own problems,” he reasons. “Our own kind who actually wanted science from the start, and didn’t get in, for example.”UCC staff hope to reach a solution in the coming weeks.