The Socialist Society at Queen's are running a candidate for the post of women's officer of the student union. Aideen McMullen will be running in the election which will take place in May.

One of the main issues Aideen will be standing for is free creche facilities for all students at Queen's. Currently it costs £64 a week for students to use the creche facilities. Although non-working students can apply for help with the costs from the Education and Library Board, they still must shoulder at least £20 of the costs.

This discriminates against mothers who wish to attend the University and we will be building a strong campaign on this issue over the next few weeks and hopefully we can get Aideen elected to fight these injustices.

The Socialist Society has been very active this year campaigning to raise awareness of the key issues affecting students.

We have done a huge amount of work against the occupation of Iraq and our intervention on the Students' Council has committed the union to support the international day of action on 19 March as well as to support the call for an end to the occupation and a socialist Iraq. Also, the Students' Union now supports mass non-payment of the water charges and has agreed to affiliate to the We Won't Pay Campaign.

Omagh Socialist Youth have been actively campaigning on the issue of racism, particularly on the rights of migrant workers.

We have done this along with Youth Against Racism (YAR) who have built a strong base of support among school students in the town.

The conditions in which migrant workers are forced to live show the scandalous exploitation that is taking place. Employers bring them here under contracts that force them to live in accommodation they provide. There are cases of 6-12 workers living in two bed room ex-council houses - while, at the same time, the council is knocking down 60 house.

As well as stalls on the issue, we have intervened in a number of local meetings arguing a socialist case to end this exploitation. One was a meeting called by the Omagh Ethnic Minority Group and Omagh Trades Council to discuss the conditions of migrant workers.

Another was organised by local schools. Six YAR members intervened distributing leaflets and taking part in the discussions. This included a workshop organised by a religious nun where our message about what causes racism and how to deal with it was very different from what she said.

The nun suggested that racism is part of human nature, something we have to learn to control. However, we explained that racism is stirred up by the ruling class to divert anger away from the capitalist system itself.