Emer Gerrard | Staff Writer
Tom Lenihan, current President of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union, last week decided to pull out of the election race for the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) Officer Board 2014-15. Lenihan was running for the position of Vice-President for Campaigns in the upcoming elections. His fellow candidate was Dublin Institute of Technology Students’ Union President Glenn Fitzpatrick, who is now running unopposed for the post.
Lenihan told The University Times that he made the decision to withdraw due to “personal reasons”.
He went on to say, “I did not want the campaign to affect my job and I could not find the time for it.” Previously, when asked if he believed that campaigning for the position would affect his ability to serve the remainder of his term as TCDSU President, Lenihan told UT: “I am committed to my work as SU President. It comes first and it is important to me that campaigning does not interfere with fulfilling my role and what I want to get done in the SU.”
The elections for the one-year paid position will take place on April 1. Lenihan said that he was initially drawn to the position as “successive governments, political parties and individual college boards and governing bodies have let students down” and as a result students “do not feel they are represented and are left with no other choice but to accept it”. Lenihan believed that his experience in the past year would make him the ideal candidate and said that he wanted to be “another choice” for students.
A prominent part of his campaign focused on disaffiliating himself from politics. This perhaps formed an attempt to remain removed from the long-standing political presence of his family in national politics, as well as endeavouring to dissuade the notion that the positions on the USI Board are merely a step on the ladder to the Dáil.
From the opening page of his manifesto, Lenihan claimed “I have no ambition to run for national politics”, continuing, “I am not a member of a political party and have never been active in one”. This signified a break from the past, with three previous generations of the Lenihan family forming part of the Oireachtas as members of Fianna Fáil from 1961 to 2011.
Some had voiced surprise at Lenihan’s decision to run for the position on next year’s USI Board following the controversy which surrounded the first half of his term as TCDSU President. After being caught cheating in his summer exams last year, a motion to impeach him was put before Trinity students. However, it was ultimately defeated by just over 1,000 votes.
