James Cotter | Contributing Writer
This year’s Leadership Race sees two candidates running for the new position of Communications and Marketing Officer, previously known as Communications Officer. Yesterday’s Dining Hall Hustings marked the beginning of this year’s series in which both candidates, Aifric Ní Chriodain and Jemma O’Leary disagreed on the officer’s new ‘marketing’ responsibilities, in particular with regard to Ní Chriodain’s proposed seeking of headline sponsorship for the SU.
Following yesterday’s Dining Hall Hustings, both candidates posted statements to their campaign’s Facebook pages after O’Leary said she disagreed with Ní Chriodain’s intentions to, as O’Leary phrased, “sell out” the union. According to Ní Chriodain, the reason the position’s duties have been expanded to include marketing is “all down to the struggle for student funding” and that “in the face of 22% cuts to the Student Hardship Fund this year alone, headline sponsorship is crucial to maintain this core student service.”
O’Leary meanwhile posted that “sponsorship is hugely important, but not as important as real engagement”. In the statement released on her campaign’s Facebook page, O’Leary stated that “TCDSU makes an annual profit of between €80,000 and €100,000”, rejecting the idea that the Union “should prioritise offering businesses ‘headline sponsorship’ of Union services” while struggling to convince a large percentage of the student population that the elections for the Sabbatical Officer positions are worthwhile.
While Ní Chriodain claims that €5,000 in sponsorship is a number she knows “is attainable from multiple businesses” in return for one week of pull ups and poster exposure in the Arts Block as well as one week of email and social media exposure, O’Leary states that the first Comms and Marketing Officer should first prioritise addressing “glaring problems of engagement with its own members” and then promote engagement with “external corporations.”
According to Ní Chriodain, her proposed headline sponsorship could fund “twelve months rent, sixty-six months of electricity bills, one hundred academic text books or one thousand hot nutritious meals”. Meanwhile, O’Leary claims that the “SU is at the forefront of fundraising for the hardship fund” and if elected, “this will only improve.”
Funding for the Hardship Fund is likely to arise again as a key discussion topic as the Leadership Race progresses.
