Anger at students' exclusion from graduation

The Equality Authority is investigating the exclusion of asylum-seeking students from a college graduation ceremony in Dublin next week.

The 21 students have completed courses to FETAC Level 1 standard at Ballsbridge College of Education, and are due to graduate next Wednesday along with about 300 other students.

However, the college principal, Mr Evan Buckley, has made it clear that these students, who are in the State as "unaccompanied minors", will not be invited to attend the ceremony in the Burlington Hotel next Wednesday.

Almost half the teachers at the college are threatening to boycott the event following a staff meeting on Tuesday at which a Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) request to the principal that the students be allowed attend was discussed.

The students, aged between 16 and 18, have come from about 10 countries, including Liberia, Angola, Moldova and Georgia. They attend the college as part of the Back To Education Initiative (BTI) programme.

Mr Laurence Cooke, co-ordinator of the unaccompanied minors BTI programme at Ballsbridge College, said staff were "very upset".

A number of possible reasons have been given for the students' exclusion, including the fact that alcohol will be available in the hotel, though not in a room where the ceremony is to take place.

An argument has also been offered that these students are attending on a part-time basis while others in the college attend full-time. However, unaccompanied minors attending other colleges in the City of Dublin VEC were invited to take part in those graduation ceremonies.

A senior member of staff at the college, who did not wish to be named, said the decision not to invite the students was "marginalising the marginalised". He said this was particularly evident as one of the affected Ballsbridge students, a Somali student aged 17, said he was not formally told by the college authorities he could not come to the ceremony.