The UCC student body have been staging sit-ins in the Boole library to protest the inadequate opening hours in the days leading up to exams.
UCC switched to a semester-based system which sees exams split between December and May as opposed having all the exams in the Spring, which was the norm up to now.
Despite this significant change, the library is closing at 9:15pm on weekdays and 5:45pm on weekends with the Christmas exams looming.
Needless to say, students are far from happy and have been staging ‘studying’ protests over the last few nights. It started on Sunday with a one hour sit in, and after negotiations with the university failing to reach an agreement, another sit in was arranged on Monday until 11pm.
The library was kept open in the past as late as 2am in the days leading up to exams in years gone by, and it’s absolutely disgraceful for UCC to introduce semester exams and fail to adjust the library’s availability appropriately.
The protests, in numbers at least, have been a huge success, with two of the three floors of the library being filled for the sit-in with significant numbers on the top floor.
Who knows how packed it would be if the Arts students ever went in there.
Keep it up everyone.