Occupation

so I'm sitting in the UCD library right now, writing you this post. There has been protests the past few weeks about cut backs to library hours. Two weeks ago we had the first study in, we stayed an extra hour after the libray closed, there were about 250 students who stayed. Last week we stayed for two hours after the library closed and we had about 300. This week, we are having a sleep over occupation of the library. I have no idea of the numbers since many a people left before I even got here. [i went to radiohead to night and was let in at 2 am by security and ready in the back emergancy exit] It about 4 right now, most people are still up and wondering or chatting. There are a few brave souls who are attempting to sleep, there even is a tent!!!

Teh great thing is studying actually happened. The first two were silent protests and majority of people got work done expect for all of us staring amazed that it actually worked. This night I'm not sure much work got done since the library had been occupied for 4 hours before I got here. But a few people were still studying when I got here.

I did hear of twister, an obsitcale course and other random activities that took place.

The way I'm posting right now is kinda cool, the computers are connected to the internet via the library server but there is not address bar. Someone had somehow got on to indymedia adn left it on. but you could only get to linked sites from indymedia. So ready went into the ontario one and published a story saying that we were using there site as an exit point from the server. We wrote www.google.com in the short post and published it. from that I was able to type in blogger and get here!!

I feel slightly brain dead right now, it is quite late, and fuck I'm in the library . . .I have exams in a few days so I should be studying or sleeping but nothing of the sort is taking place. Its not like I was going to bring books to radiohead, and its not like I'm going to leave and miss the first over night occupation of the UCD library.

I do have a bit of a rant actually and hopefully my sleepy state won't prevent me from going on about it. Ok two weeks ago at the student union council meeting ready adn I proposed that the union support the allaince for choice demo. Adn for the union to support the alliance for choice and there aims. Basically we were asking for the union to take a pro-choice stance.

well that motion was "misplaced" so we tried again, the protest was over but we still were asking for the same thing. It was not misplaced this time and everyone on council received it in the mail and were ready. The student paper was also informed so both ready and I got calls and were quoted in the paper. The paper wanted my pic, but I said HELL NO - the last thing I needed was for the pro-lifers to have a face to the LGBRO . . . ahhh

anyways, it occured to me several days ago that I was going to radiohead the same evening as the meeting. This is a huge problem since I would have to be ther for it to go through. We thought about dropping it, but really we had made so much noise to have it in, and I was continuously getting encouraged to drop it so of course the last thing I coudl do was drop it.

we came up with a contingent plan, there is this possiblity of transferring speaking rights, and I knew this great girl who would kick some serious ass. I met her in the staff and studnets against sexism campaign, she is from the states and is doing her Phd here. She is a serious feminist raised by a feminist adn a great talker.

so the constituion says both the person who proposes the motion and the one who seconds it has to be in attendance. adn it also says that both of those people are able to transfer speaking rights to non union memebers. so here was the plan, show up and stay as long as I could - so I was in attendance. and write a letter transferring speaking writes to this other girl.

so this is waht happened via the grape vine, after I left [i did stay an hour and a half as we talked about so many stupid ass issuses, which I truely believe were being draged on by the right to avoid having the motion brought forth] the motion was brough forward, adn first they argued that it was onconstituional since I was no longer there. But that eventually went thorugh, again a ploy by the right. Actually this one guy who normally chairs the meetings said that he would not chair because he is too biased. which at first I thought was really good of him, but what it really metn was that he coudl take part in the meeting and slow the whole process down.

so it was fianlly agreed that it coudl be brought forth, but then there was a debate on wether or not it should be debated on since the right was trying to say that the union was already non directive and this motion would change the policy adn that required a referendum. so basically they just wanted it not to be voted on. The spent the night debating on wether or not it could or shoudl be debated on. ahhh and my poor friend who wasted a good part of her night comign down to this damn meeting and not being listened too. Everytime she said anything people would stop her saying that they hadn't agreed yet wether or not this was something they could talk about.

fuck how the right tried to silence this is unreal, actually it wasn't just the right, so many of the "lefties" are not as lefty as you might like. If it did go to vote, there is no wasy we would have passed it, so it is better that it didn't. but at least people are talking about it more and we could bring it back up nex semester if we choice to and hopefully get more support by then.

I bet its past five now, its getting really quite, I think I'm going to go look for people that I know and stop being a computer geek at this occupation.

nite nite