USI President John Logue (left) and ‘No’ campaigner Eamonn Bell during last night’s USI Referendum Debate. Photo by Andrew Murphy/DUPA
Leanna Byrne
Deputy Editor
Yestermorning, the Students’ Union opened the polls in the USI Referendum. Approximately 750 votes have been cast with another two days of voting before polls close on Thursday evening. However, despite the fact that we are only half way through the voting period, last night’s referendum debate represented the climax of a long and arduous campaigning period.
Last night, The Phil and The University Times joined forces for a debate on the motion ‘This House Would Disaffiliate from the Union of Students, Ireland’.
David Byrne opened the debate by calling the USI a ‘bureaucratic, undemocratic mess’. He called the USI ‘bitter’ because Trinity refuses to conform to USI norms, demanded the ‘No’ side explain how they were going to reform the USI and even slated them for threatening to ‘cut off access to crucial resources’ such as welfare training. If I had to compare Byrne’s speech to anything it would be a verbal blitzkrieg of some sort.
‘No’ Campaign Manager Jack Leahy was next up. Of course, the highlight of this speech was his attack on former SU President Ryan Bartlett. Things got slightly heated when Leahy alleged that Bartlett was against the USI all throughout last year and had shirked away from his duties. He ended by urging the audience to acknowledge that the USI are the sole national student representatives and that there is no element of the the USI set against change.
Ryan Bartlett took us through the ‘steps of knowing USI’ and pinned most of the interest of members in the USI down to the free trips offered to USI gatherings around the country. Bartlett went on to say that he ‘hated being mislead and lied to’ and claimed to not have had an input into many of the USI’s activities last year. He felt that the occupations were ’embarrassing’ and that they were only staged to get attention from the national media. ‘USI are a one trick pony’ was probably Bartlett’s most memorable phrase of the evening.
Eamonn Bell was by far the most passionate speaker of the night in outlining his personal reasons for supporting the NO side. He spoke eloquently about principles of solidarity and was very vocal in his criticism of some USI members who failed to appreciate the need for collectivism in the student movement. In the current context of the student movement, Bell argued that it would be ridiculous to disaffiliate from the national students’ union as we would be isolating ourselves from the rest of the country’s students at a time when we need strength in numbers.
Ricky McCormack closed the disaffiliation argument by criticising the USI’s use of scare tactics. He claimed that the No campaign was based purely on fear and that the USI was afraid of TCDSU leaving because the other affiliated colleges would ‘see the cracks’ in the USI edifice.
One point that McCormack and USI President John Logue seemed to clash the most on was whether or not policy comes from the ground up. Logue referred to himself as the ‘implementor of policy’. He spoke about changing the national campaign; using the USI to target the politically vulnerable politicians and ‘playing local politics’. Logue attempted to distance the current USI administration from the criticisms directed at last year’s President Gary Redmond and focused on what he saw as the successful beginning to his tenure as president of the organisation.
In the setting of the debating chamber, Byrne and McCormack thrived. They were the best speakers, but at the same time does that really matter in the broader context of the referendum?
At the end of the day, as fantastic a debate as it was, we must remember that a debate where the majority of attendees have already made up their mind can never be considered representative of the general feeling on the ground. At the beginning of the debate there were 26 students who were uncertain about which way to vote. After the debate that number reduced to five. It’s nice to see that 21 students found the debate helpful, but in the broader scheme of things one would hope that 21 votes don’t have a notable impact on the referendum outcome.
Additional reporting by Clementine Yost
