Students in Tralee Institute of Technology walked out of lectures en masse last week in protest at arrangements for their end-of-semester exams.

The students left their classes at 11 a.m. last Thursday and continued their boycott for the rest of the day. They were protesting the fact that their colleagues studying business studies and information systems management had been asked to sit up to six of their third- and fourth-year exams over a period of five days. The students called for the exam timetable to be extended over 10 days. A compromise offer from the authorities, which would have scheduled the exam timetable over eight days, was rejected on Wednesday by the students, who voted it down by a margin of nine to one, at which point they decided to boycott their lectures.

Student representatives held another meeting with the business studies department after the protest and emerged with a new offer from the authorities - a nine-day period for their exams.

The president of Tralee IT's students' union, Sean Collum, says the students are likely to accept the latest offer. He is happy that they have gained four days study as a result of their protest.

"The students felt so strongly about this they had offered to give up their traditional post-exam weeklong holiday to facilitate the exams being rescheduled over a two-week period," Collum says. "They value exam results more than a week of holidays. Even though the current problem affects a minority of students, everyone supported the protest because they know they could be the next to suffer." RO'S