Student associations at four universities in Taipei and New Taipei City yesterday began the sale of discounted railway tickets targeted at students who plan on returning to their hometowns to vote in the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections.
The student associations at National Taiwan University, National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) and Fu Jen Catholic University are offering discounted seats on two Taiwan Railways Administration trains, one bound for Taitung County and the other bound for Pingtung County, the National Taiwan University Student Association said.
The trains are to depart from Taipei Main Station at about 6pm on Jan. 10, the association said.
ROUTES
The Taitung train would make stops at the Yilan County, Hualien County and Yuli Township (玉里) stations, while the Pingtung train would stop in Hsinchu, Miaoli County, Taichung, Changhua County, Douliou City (斗六), Chiayi City, Tainan and Kaohsiung, it said.
From now through Tuesday next week, students at the four universities can purchase discounted tickets online, it added.
Students at the universities from low-income backgrounds can sign up to ride for free, and students from low-to-middle-income backgrounds can apply for 50 percent off the already discounted price, it said.
Any remaining seats would be open to the public starting on Thursday next week, it said.
To help subsidize the tickets, the organizers said that they are calling for online donations.
“By going home to decide their own future, young people are not just casting a vote, but can also influence family members or peers,” association president Tu Chun-ching (涂峻清) said.
As part of the initiative, the organizers are also sharing stories about Taiwan’s democracy movement, NTNU Student Association president Chen Liang-chun (陳亮均) said.
“As [the organizers] pay tribute to the forerunners of democracy, [the organizers] also urge young students to protect together Taiwan’s hard-earned democracy and freedom,” he said.
CHALLENGE
“For students, the relative cost of returning home to vote is even higher” than for others, NTUST Student Association president Tang Yi-hsin (鄧憶欣) said, adding that election day falling on the day after final exams makes it more difficult for students to travel to their registered residence in time to vote.
“If the wish is that different groups have an equal opportunity to express their voices through the mechanisms of democracy, then it is necessary to propose a solution to the extra costs,” she said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching