Shauna Watson
Music Editor
I love it this time of year. 11pm on Facebook, the night the elections officially begin amid a flurry of like pages, events, photo tagging and general election banter. I’m embarrassed to say I find it more thrilling than the lead up to Trinity Ball. As I sat next to one of my housemates refreshing the homepage for another candidate to emerge or a sneak peak of someone’s campaign poster to pop up, she exclaimed her bewilderment at my reaction as she felt not a tingle of excitement for the whole election season; “It’s a load of bollox. There’s enough idiots approaching you for something between Trinity and Henry Street without having the same annoyance in college.” Granted, the ‘idiots’ (or charity workers if you’d prefer) who bide for your time and money with their pleasant faces and charm are quite annoying but there’s nothing better than being approached by someone in Trinity to tell you that they want to make college a better place for you in exchange for a tick of a box.
I’m pretty much left on an island with my silly craze as another friend questions the relevance of the SU in our lives for us to care that much; “For me, nothing has changed since the President of the student union has. The biggest thing that I’ve noticed is that I don’t get the 128 to college anymore and that’s nothing to do with changes in the SU.” Someone else notes the importance of representation at a national level but is adamant that the people who run are usually egotistical, who merely aim to enhance their CV. More often than not, this might well be the case but for every two or three climbers on the title ladder there are, there’s at least one person who is genuinely passionate about the position and feels that they see a need for change and have the capacity to make a difference. Yada, yada, we just want to see the claws out.
Not every student is on either side of the spectrum regarding the interest in the SU elections. Many students can’t seem to identify the intrinsic need of the students’ union within Trinity. One student suggests abolishing the SU; “The only people who care about the election are those running in it. Utter waste of college funding.” Another agrees that the whole system needs reform. “Do we really need to spend so much money on Ents for example?” One student expressed his exasperation when he learned how much allowance is given to each candidate during elections “If that much is given to each person for campaign materials and eleven students are running, that’s a lot of money that needs to be invested somewhere else. They’re all hacks and the majority of them have been fighting for this since their first day of college.” Regardless of their motives, the race between the candidates is the one that we watch. So may the best hack win.
