OVER 1,000 students from Carlow RTC staged a walkout from the college last week in protest at what they claim is a lack of adequate facilities for students in the college.
Around 1,200 students left their classes at 11.30 a.m. last Wednesday and marched through Carlow town centre, eventually ending up at the local town hall where over 500 registered to vote in the Carlow area - the transfer of their voting rights from their own localities to Carlow was an effort to force local public representatives to take action over what the students' union has described as the "severe" problems facing the college.
According to Damien Keogh, president of Carlow RTC students' union, students have been scheduled for lectures in classrooms which do not even exist; the college has delayed the appointment of lecturers to a number of key courses and overcrowding in the college is now so severe that the ratio of library seats to students is now 24:1.
The time tabling problems arose when students were directed to Rooms 888 and 999 in their schedules, and to Portakabins A and B. The union says that these rooms and portakabins did not even exist until last week, six weeks after the start of term, when the college authorities commenced the construction of a "portakabin village" to facilitate classes.
In addition, students studying construction, civil engineering and architectural graphics have had no lectures in services or materials technology since the start of term because of the college's failure to appoint lecturers to these subjects.
"This problem has occurred in various forms every year for the last four years and students are sick of it," says Damien Keogh. "Basically, they are not receiving the proper facilities they require to carry out their courses."
Keogh says that the college should have anticipated such problems. "It's major disorganisation on the part of the college," he says.
USI's education officer, Malcolm Byrne, says that Carlow RTC has been "left behind" in terms of facilities. "Quite frankly, it's fairly disgraceful that students are being scheduled for classes that don't even exist," he says. "Some students are missing up to 10 hours of lectures per week because of this." Byrne also says he has seen better primary school libraries than the library in Carlow RTC.
The college is the subject of an internal review by the National Council for Educational Awards.
The registrar of Carlow RTC, Brian Bennett, said that the college - was in negotiations with the Department of Education for an increase in its allocation to accommodate the increase in student numbers. Speaking of the students' complaints, he said that "very few" remained to be addressed and he had asked the students not to continue with the walkout at a meeting last Wednesday.
He said the problems in services and materials technology had been caused by the sudden illness of two lecturers and additional staff had now been recruited in their place. "That made it quite difficult for us so we are organising a recovery programme for students in the areas they missed."
Bennett also said that construction had now commenced on temporary buildings to accommodate classes and the college had received the go ahead for a new library/learning resource centre.
