Meeting Against Fees.

antrophy

The education minister Dempsey is stepping up plans for an overhaul of third
level education and we can expect an announcement by the end of the month.

With this in mind a hastily pulled together Campaign for Free Education
meeting is being held in Synge Theatre, Hamilton building in Trinity at 7pm
this Weds 21st of May. The meeting is hosted courtesy of Trinity Anarchist
Society and will feature activists from the CFE Group in UCD. .

Ring me (James: 085 7198001) for any further details. If you can not attend
i will forward minutes on to you. Keep tuned to indymedia posting at
http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=49011 for breaking news and
details of meeting.

Last summer the government increased registration fees for students by 69%,
this amounted to nothing more than an introduction of fees through the
backdoor. It now plans to either introduce fees or student loans by
September. Either way, the government plans for free third-level education
to be a thing of the past from next September. This will mean thousands of
students dropping out of college, poverty conditions for those remaining and
thousands of young people being denied access to college. We cannot lie down
and accept this attack on education. We have to be willing and able to take
serious mass action against fees and demand free education for all.

The CFE has been one of the most formidable opponents of fees and cutbacks
in education since the summer. It has organized numerous on-campus
demonstrations in UCD making it a place of hostility to visiting government
figures. The CFE has blockaded the Minister for Education in college
buildings for hours; organized a successful occupations of the N11 motorway,
the Departments of Finance, Education and Transport; carried out a
successful sit- down protest outside Dail Eireann. All this brought
invaluable media and public attention to educational inequality and the
danger of fees.

We believe education is a right and not a privilege. We believe in free and
equal access for all, regardless of socio-economic status, to primary,
secondary and third level education. We recognize that the present education
system does not offer this and call on all students to secure your right to
a free and accessible education of the highest standard. We must shift focus
away from responding to the government's agenda, and force them to respond
to ours, an agenda where educational opportunity is not mitigated by your
economical and social background. Educational inequality is not something
that magically appears in third level but is evident throughout the
education system. The points system illustrates this.

Where students with unequal resources and crap school facilities are pitted
against those who can afford private tuition and attend exam factories on
Leeson Street. Students are forced into a rat race for a limited number of
college places because the government are unwilling to adequately fund the
colleges.

The Campaign for Free Education is a network set up last summer by students
in UCD to fight the reintroduction of fees by getting students involved in
collective mass action against the government. It is now essential that
students, both in secondary and third level form an network to mobilise
opposition against this government. The years of complacency, respectability
and negotiation in the student movement must end, and action must begin.

We need to show the government how serious we are on this issue, through a
campaign to mobilise students and others and involve students in actions
such as blockades, mass occupations, school and college strikes and more,
which directly affect and upset the government

Download the above poster as a PDF:
http://www.geocities.com/antrophe/trinity.pdf

Beyond Protest Towards Resistance: First Year of the CFE:
http://www.educationet.org/z0281.html

CFE Homepage, complete with resources, news, articles, forums and analysis:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~sapdfs/index.htm