Students’ Union critical of proposed changes to UCD graduation ceremonies

Plans to remove Latin from UCD degrees and conferring ceremonies by the President Andrew Deeks has caused a backlash among academic staff and the Students’ Union.

Yesterday at the UCD Academic Council, which meets once a semester and deals with changes to academic issues and procedures the President brought forward a proposal to remove Latin from the UCD conferring graduation ceremony.

The proposal was met with opposition from both staff, students, and the Students’ Union representatives present. The motivations behind the decision Deeks claimed in a briefing document were ‘to reflect the global engagement of UCD’. The document, from a University Management Team working group outlined the ‘The current Latin parchment is in line with the academic tradition of the NUI. It can, however, burden students with translation costs, in particular international students. It can also be perceived as out of step with UCD’s role as a globally engaged University’.

However, both students and senior change spoke out against the proposal, saying it would bring UCD outside of international norms and traditions. A source from the Council outlined that ‘fifteen maybe twenty people who spoke, all of whom were in favour of keeping Latin, from veterinary to medicine’.

The Education officer of the Students’ Union Lexi Kilmartin requested a vote be taken on the issue but said the President refused to hold a vote. ‘I also formally expressed our dismay at not having a vote and it to be noted in the minutes that we disagreed very strongly with it in the minutes, on behalf of the student population in UCD’.

‘It was disagreed with very vocally with most people in the room, nobody spoke to say they should get rid of Latin. Yet he [Deeks] still refused to put it to a vote’ said Kilmartin.

‘We are very unhappy with the process. He isn’t going through the proper channels, it’s very dictatorship like … Academic Council is a decision-making body, it’s all heads of schools and their opinions were completed disregarded’ Kilmartin concluded.

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