Sir, – The University College Cork student body takes great offence at the comments in the “What’s not?” section of the article “Your city by city guide to student life”, Results 2013, August 14th) regarding Cork people being “smug, arrogant and insular”. The comments are unfair and unjust considering that Cork was voted one of the friendliest cities in the world (Home News, August 6th).
Every other college in the article got an average of four to five lines in the “What’s not?” sections, while UCC received 12 lines. We find this to be an unfair bias against our college. We feel the article concentrated too much on the negatives in Cork and UCC, considering that UCC was awarded the first five-star university rating in Ireland.We feel that quoting from an unnamed Twitter account describing Cork people is poor journalism, especially from one of the senior broadsheets in the country.
If anyone doubts the welcome of Cork people, I would extend to them an invitation to our Fáilte Fest on September 14th, or to our R&G week in February, at which, last year we raised the most money for charity in the history of Irish colleges (€42,000). – Yours, etc,
PÁDRAIG HAUGHNEY,
President,
University College Cork
Students’ Union,
College Road, Cork .