Ireland Calling
by John SpainRSS 
Recent Posts
- Abortion reform Irish style - Women still have no rights over their own bodies, continue to travel to the UK for procedure
- We’re total abortion hypocrites - proposals for new legislation were laughable
- Catch 22 for Irish abortion law - navigating Ireland’s rigid, Catholic influence legal framework and Savita Halappanavar’s case
- The late Baroness Margaret Thatcher had her good points
- Letters from the tax man - the mounting cost of Ireland's property tax and running the country
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Last week the results of the Leaving Certificate here examination were published. This is the exam that Irish kids do in June as they finish their last year in secondary (high) school.
The results, which arrive in August, determine which university they can get into and what course they can do, or what kind of job they can get if they decide not to go to college (presuming they can find a job, of course).
So how a youngster does in the Leaving Cert opens doors into the future -- or slams them shut. It's probably the most important exam they will do in their lives. The pressure to do well is enormous.
Kitchen garbage thrown down the stairs, sofas floating in the pool, vomit on the carpets, furniture wrecked, cigarette burns and beer stains everywhere, and numerous arrests for vandalism and being drunk and disorderly … the reports in the Irish papers of the gross behavior of Irish students in California this summer has enraged people here at home.
From what I have been reading on the web, many Irish Americans are really mad at what has been going on. But let me tell you, that is nothing compared with the feeling of people here who want the guilty students named, shamed, deported from the U.S. and thrown out of college in Ireland.
What really alarmed me, however, was the report which said that the worst problems had occurred in San Diego and Santa Barbara, where the drunken parties and wanton vandalism of the Irish kids this summer have caused havoc. Irish students are said to have caused $20,000 in damages at a resort in Santa Barbara.
