Who cares about apathy?

`A sizeable number of students aren't too worried about money matters" and consequently aren't very interested in student campaigns, according to a motion to be put to USI congress.

The motion, from the national students' union's cultural committee, bemoans "the ever increasing apathy amongst students in our colleges" and asserts that many students "don't feel USI's campaigns are relevant to them".

USI's annual congress starts next Monday in Westport, Co Mayo, and continues until Friday, April 2nd.

The cultural committee's motion calls on union officers to "develop a campaign that every student can identify with and feel informed enough to take an active part in". It also demands a more visible USI presence in each member college.

Another motion laments USI's "poor PR and public image" and says that "for many years the public perception of students' unions has been one of organisations rife with in-fighting or used as a platform for politics".

One of the more unusual motions to go before congress calls on USI to negotiate an agreement with CIE, whereby the semi-State transportation company would provide free - or heavily subsidised - transport to student protests.

The motion from the University of Ulster students' union says the turnout at national student protests is poor because of the financial cost to some student unions of sending a large delegation to the capital.

The motion calls on USI to come to an agreement with CIE and Ulsterbus, under which the transport firms would provide "very low cost or free protest-bound transport" in return for the national student union's "annual co-operation".

The UU union acknowledges that "student protests in the form of mass gatherings are arguably outdated methods of awareness raising" but insists that they are "nonetheless the most effective" way to highlight issues.

The transportation motion is echoed in a less political manner by Dublin City University's student union, which will call on legislators to "radically" reduce public transport costs for students "in a similar way in which it was lessened for old age pensioners with the introduction of the free travel scheme".

The Cork IT delegation to the congress will propose a motion calling on the Government to allow students from outside the EU who are studying here to work part-time. The institute's student union will call for "this discriminatory barrier" to be lifted immediately.

An education sub-group of the union will look for congress's backing for a lobbying campaign seeking the introduction of mature student quotas in as many college faculties as possible.

The motion notes that mature students are "grossly underrepresented" in third-level education in this State, with just two per cent of students classed as mature, compared to 20 per cent in many other countries in the developed world.

The motion also calls for enhanced grants for mature students from disadvantaged backgrounds and for account to be taken in the student support scheme of the "special costs for mature students with dependent children".

The congress will also hear calls for the restoration of medical cards and the payments of rent subsidies to all students and for the establishment of a Housing Court "to deal speedily with tenancy disputes".