Do It Yourself

Students at the University of Limerick have to cross a very busy road on a regular basis, and no one in authority would act on their repeated requests for a marked pedestrian crossing. Thanks to the quality education that they have received, the pupils knew that they would have to do it themselves if they wanted it done. So they did. And now everyone's all upset.

"Very immature" said Robert Gallagher of the Limerick County Council. "Potentially very dangerous."

Sweet Jesus, but that was the point, wasn't it? The place where the students had to cross was not marked, it was risky to dash across the road there, and they asked for a marking to make it safer. Now they've done their own painting, and the road authority people say that's what's dangerous. According to St. John O Donnabhain, the student union president, they've asked for the painted crossing until they were blue in the face, and once a student landed in hospital after being struck by a car, the kids took matters into their own hands. It's all about safety, although there's a little bit about civil disobedience in there as well.

So over at the Groody roundabout, fifteen students armed with paint cans (and one would hope the appropriate tools to make straight "zebra stripe" lines) took up brushes and went about the job on Wednesday night. Thousands of college students who must cross there every day on their way to school discovered the newly marked crossing on Thursday morning, and then the Limerick County Council found out. Like proper adults, they fussed and fumed and accused the students of being very bold indeed.

How dare the kids show up the adults? There's a request already in train with the planning department and some fine day the crossing will be marked. And isn't it time that the history professors stopped teaching about the Home Rule issue, and how the British government kept promising to install Home Rule but it would have to come later? The next thing you knew, Padraig Pearse was reading his proclamation and all hell broke loose. Such talk gives impressionable young minds some immature and dangerous ideas.