Wednesday, 19 June 2013, 5:20 am

The Irish suicide prevention charity ‘Turn the tide on suicide’ or ‘3Ts’ has stepped up its ten year campaign to create a suicide prevention authority. 3Ts’ most recent campaign involves the placing of artwork in public places to raise awareness of the lack of mental health services in Ireland and also to highlight the broken promises of successive Irish Governments when it comes to addressing the prevalence of suicide in Irish society.  The Charity has also produced a video, highlighting the effects that suicide has on society, with over 700 deaths in Ireland attributed to suic...

Dear Sir, It is with trepidation and worry that I write to you today upon matters most troubling. I have noticed, along with my contemporaries and peers, an alarming rise in the number of times I have gone to the atm only to realise that some foolish blaggard seems to have emptied my account and drank its contents, then leaving me with his illgotten hangover! My question to you today sir is WHAT is THIS GOVERNMENT doing to keep my account full so it can be spent upon the finer things in life, like brandy and poor-people whips? And where was my Student Union when I woke up to find myse...

We all like to think we are born free, but no man is an island. For many, University is the first taste of proper community, a shard of light penetrating the solipsistic self-involvement that typifies the individualism so often apparent in adolescence and the Leaving Cert. It is here that we first start properly evaluating our place within the world, our politics and our activism. Students' Unions have often times been a key driver of this most human of student pursuits – the quest to improve ourselves and the world around us. We have lost sight, in the last 2 decades, of what i...

Dear Angie, I’ve just started college but I’m feeling unsure about the course that I’m doing, basically my story is that my parents didn’t approve of the course that I took on, they said that I would never get a job out of my degree so we ended up having this huge row which ended with me slamming the door and shouting,’ BUT THE WORLD NEEDS MORE SINGER- SONGWRITERS AND BLOGGERS MOM AND DAD’. Now I don’t know what to do, some of their words really hit home, maybe I will end up destitute on the streets like they said I would, with nothing to my name but a cardboard box and an...

UL students’ lives have been thrown into disarray by crowds of young people wandering around campus. The fresh faced young people appeared in the University during Week 1 and despite repeated attempts by long-time students to get rid of them, they have stubbornly refused to leave. “It started off as a bit of a nuisance,” said 3rd year student, Sean Fleming, “But after four days they were just starting to get in the way. Now three of them are living in my house in Cappa! I mean, they have their own milk and food, but still.” The problem of random young people taking over cam...

Education is a right, right? It would seem so, young Padawan, and yet why then are we taking it for granted? Last week, our new First Years wandered fresh from the Leaving Certificate into an uncertain world of possibility and probability. In recent years, we marched on the Government and shouted “No to Fees”, all the while missing the lectures and labs we so aggressively tried to protect. In a meeting with Education Minister Ruari Quinn last year, I had the opportunity of quizzing the minister on his pathway to leadership being marred by a lie and the deception of the powerful voti...

Dear Sir, I would like to make a query about the ULSU logo. A few years ago, the ULSU invested in a brand new logo. After an exhaustive process of consultation, a brand was created. This brand was to be used on all Union signage, publications and publicity. This logo was universally well received and became very recognisable as a symbol of our collective Students’ Union. In recent times, this logo has been subsumed by the “Wolves” logo adopted by Clubs and Societies. We all recognise the necessity of Clubs and Societies to have a recognisable brand, but it was many peoples’ un...

It is amusing to observe the novelty with which they progress about their business; notebooks in hand, keen to find the Jonathan Swift before it disappears. Then you have the undulating precision in which every syllable their lecturer utters is noted, creating notes which will later be reviewed in the fine surrounds of our warm and brightly lit library. For many, this is all but prolonged. The rigors of Freshers’ Week instil a set of expectations among the minds of many- downing a cheap naggin before going to the Lodge to shift all around with gay abandon. After all, college is abou...

The celebrations to mark UL’s 40 years as an institute of higher education will be ubiquitous this year. The University is deploying every publicity tool at its disposal to mark the occasion. Forty years ago, the National Institute of Higher Education was founded in Limerick on this site, contained within today’s Main Building. It’s very easy to speed through UL’s history, remarking on its university status in 1989. But as we focus so closely on celebrating an anniversary, it is instructive to look back on the year we were founded. 1972 was a year of international instability and se...

It is not lightly that a person takes up the job of being editor of a newspaper, even a student one. An Focal has been part of campus life since 1991. Its original editors placed a declaration of principles in their first edition, a fact that has long been forgotten. There was nothing particularly innovative about such a move; Orson Welles has been inspiring similar gestures since 1941. But this year, as An Focal becomes the responsibility of full time students, it is perhaps suitable to re-state those basic principles which make us do what we do. For many years, the editor of this newspaper w...