DPR News
Open Day 2022
On Saturday, October 8, UCC opened up its doors to welcome back prospective students and their families and friends to the first in-person Open Day since 2019! The sun showed up and so did the people, over 6,000 of them!
And this year, in line with UCC’s steadfast commitment to sustainability and our pledge to commit to leave no one behind, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals provided the lens through which we offered over 300+ unique events. In addition to the information stands and programme of academic and student services talks, attendees were also able to book onto SDG-themed events including a courtroom simulation in our Moot Courtroom, a guided bike tour of our campuses and environs, as well as a very special Mock COP27, which was hosted by Dr Fionn Rogan of the ERI and opened by Societies President Mair Kelly. The event had almost 70 senior cycle delegates on the day from all over Ireland, including Mayo and Donegal, and UCC’s 98.3FM Siún Ní Mhuimhneacháin and Cian Pierce created a wonderful podcast episode on the event. We were honoured to be joined by Caitlin Faye Maniti, Jack McGinn and Mohammad Naeem, the current President, Education Officer and Regional Liaison and Support Officer of the Irish Second Level Students’ Union (ISSU) as well as a very special guest of honour, Rayaa Onog Ponnie, a TY student from Christ the King who is Ireland’s representative on the Eurochild Children’s Council.
UCC’s Clubs and Societies put together a fantastic showcase of what they do and some really interesting collaborations came about including one between the SAMH and Scribble societies, in collaboration with the Jigsaw mental health charity, where attendees where invite to write or doodle a message of positive affirmation on a large jigsaw board. Another highlight of the day was the multilingual flash mob where students of UCC’s School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures as well as the Department of Theatre came together with staff in unified protest against sexual violence and victim blaming. Inspired by the viral performance of The Rapist in your Path by the Chilean theatre company, Las Tesis, they danced, shook, punched, and roared in 11 different languages, including Irish, Chinese, Bulgarian and Irish Sign Language. Through their highly emotive performance and the power of the language and languages, they showed our solidarity with victims and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence all over the world. The performance also created the opportunity to create and raise awareness on UCC's Bystander Intervention Programme with flyers being distributed to the Open Day attendees. The multilingual flash mob was very generously jointly supported by the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences and the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Unit.