With the SU Sabbatical campaigns behind us, the one that will obviously be recanted to freshers for years to come will be Aaron Heffernan’s bid for SU President. He is now the yardstick by which all joke candidates will be measured, and they will be found wanting. It was a campaign that worked on every level, from his grand opening of the arts block to his secret gig in the SU bookshop, and yes, the tragic death of his bodyguard Prudence at the hands of a grizzly bear on the Arts Block ramp. Despite the fact that his main policies were to personally help each student with their assignments, introduce new animals into Trinity’s ecosystem, and free the “Guantanamo babies” from the crèche, People genuinely wanted him to win, and he would have had he not dropped out of the race.
That a joke candidate should have received such huge support compared to the very serious and experienced Ryan Bartlett (albeit with a lacklustre campaign) showed that there is a lack of engagement generally between students and the Students’ Union on a policy level, that students would prefer a candidate who ran as an elaborate joke to candidates who were serious and hard-working in trying to come up with policies that they felt would genuinely benefit students. Most students this newspaper spoke to over the course of the election were unsure of what it is that the President of the Students’ Union does, beyond harbouring an ambition for politics, according to the stereotype.
Trinity's own Obama. Photo: Holly Acton
Students largely don’t really have much to say about the Student Union, it’s not that they’re alienated by it, they just don’t care. They prefer the fun of a joke candidate because the effects that the SU President has on their lives is brief, indirect and subtle. However, it is not the responsibility of students collectively to give a damn about something just because an elected body of their peers says they should. It is up to the Students’ Union itself to demonstrate its own relevance. It is not students who should feel bad for wanting to vote for Heffernan, it’s the Students’ Union that needs to learn from the Heffernan campaign that it needs to shed its reputation of being a self-serving clique and engage with students on a level that is not condescending, and does not carry the presumption that students should care. Most of all though, admittedly difficult as it may be, it should try to not be boring. The more that students are able to work together, the more clout we have on a political level, and the easiest way to do that is through the Students’ Union. It is up to the Students’ Union to prove it.
