President of DCU, Brian MacCrath and Chief Operations Officer, Declan Raftery made the final decision to postpone ‘Beg, Borrow, Steal’, enterprise society chairperson, Shane Carter said.
‘Beg, Borrow, Steal’ was postponed due to the volatile situation in Europe following the terrorist attack in Paris. The trip was to begin on Wednesday the 18th, with Berlin being the final destination. The decision was made on Tuesday night to postpone it due to a bomb threat on Hannover.
Una Redmond, manager of the Office of Student Life (OSL), expressed difficulties that the university may have encountered had they of let the trip go ahead. “We would have difficulty, either locating students or maybe notifying parents or families that their children were safe or not, as the case may be.”
Some of Esoc’s committee travelled to Berlin prior to the trip being postponed. This may have implementations on funding as the society made use of flights and accommodation for a trip that was postponed.
No decision has been made by the OSL about whether they will reimburse Esoc or not. However, Remond confirmed that there will be an inquest into the matter.
“The students that have travelled to Berlin, they had already paid for it. I think we need to look at that and the SLC (society life committee) and the university have said that they will look at that. What that means exactly, I can’t say at the minute,” Redmond said.
“I would only deem it fair that we would be reimbursed as if the event actually ran because we already had teams in place,” Shane Carter said.
Redmond said that no immediate action will be taken to cancel any further club or society trip because the threats are not a static risk.
“The nature of this is that you or I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. We will monitor the situation as it goes, but at the minute there are no plans to cancel any trips,” Redmond said.
‘Beg, Borrow, Steal’ is rescheduled for February 10th, with all participants still committed. “We’re not going to have a problem running the event at capacity in February,” Carter said.
Hayley Halpin
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