Every time this type of thing comes up, someone or some group jump up to defend students. So, first let me clarify. I know that most students are generally good, decent honest people. However, it seems recently that more and more bad eggs have been getting into the basket.
As one of the generally good students, you won’t be exposed to, or possibly even aware of, the actions of the bad students. This can lead to genuine arguments about students being good, hard working etc.etc. However, when you see it from the other side (ie. living in an area heavily populated by students, but not being one yourself), you quickly realise why students get a bad name.
I experienced this personally, and also still have friends living in student areas who are still experiencing these problems. In one case recently, a friends car had the driver’s side wing mirror kicked off one night. The area he lives in is heavily used as a shortcut by students coming back from a local night club.
I’ve seen apartments which were, quite literally, wrecked by students after arriving home drunk. And, I don’t mean wrecked in the just dirty sense – I mean wrecked in the furniture broken sense.
The latest I’ve heard from a friend living in student accomodation is that furniture is now being thrown from balconies, boxes of glasses are being dropped down stairwells from several stories high to smash in the main foyer and, the old favourite, apartments getting completely trashed. Worse than this though, is that the students have no respect for authority any more, and are getting away with doing this a lot of the time. During this week (which is rag week in UL), the police have been out to the campus village this person lives in every night.
UL security staff don’t inspire confidence or respect either. For the most part, they are unwilling or unable to deal with difficult situations, such as rowdy and possibly violent drunken students. This job then falls to others, who have less exposure, experience and training to deal with. In my experience in UL, some security staff were helpful and useful, but others were, and still are, utterly useless. One example would be security not leaving their security hut while on duty to deal with situations like parties in the villages. For the most part, they are meant as a deterant, but this is no longer working.
I would personally like to see criminal charges being brought against students who are caught committing criminal acts, such as wrecking apartments. In the case where the culprits can’t be found, then those who rent the apartment should have to cover the full cost of the damage, as well as being promptly evicted from the property. The reasons, in my opinion, behind what I see as the worsening attitude in students are
- Lack of respect for money
- Getting away with causing damage with little or no recourse
Firstly, students don’t know the value of money, because everything is provided for them. This is particularly true, for the most part, in campus accomodation. The prices for this accomodation are higher than the rental accomodation in the surrounding areas, but it does provide extras such as refuse collection, bills, internet connection and maintainance all included in the price. It is also perceived by parents to be a better place for students to get study done. Because of this, the accomodation is paid for by the students’ parents, and so the students themselves have no sense of the value of the accomodation they’re staying in.
In the second case above, the students are not getting caught for causing the damage (see paragraph on UL security staff above), and so are not being sanctioned for it. In the case of damage to an apartment in campus accomodation, the students living in the apartment are responsible for covering the cost of the damage. Often times, this results in the students losing their deposits, which were paid by their parents. So, without getting evicted (if it happened in your apartment, whether you did it or not) or expelled (if you were caught causing property damage) the student really doesn’t suffer any punishment. This just sets a precedent saying authorities are light on students which just encourages those who would commit these acts to commit them.
I was one of the “students are generally good” category when I was in college, and I would still like to believe that, for the most part, students are decent people. But, this is slowly being eroded by the general lack of respect and bad attitude being shown by a growing number of students. If these are Ireland’s future, then I can see our future being drunken bar brawls, rising crime rates and an even more overloaded justice system.
