In 2013, following a referendum, members of UCD Students’ Union (UCDSU) voted for their university to leave the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), the national representative union of students’ unions. This decision was a major blow to USI. They lost out on a significant amount of revenue from affiliation fees from students, and lost the manpower and support of thousands of students from the largest university in Ireland.
Somewhat surprisingly, however, USI did not allow the loss of UCD to have a negative effect on its work. Significant progress has been made on all of the reforms that were requested by UCDSU in 2013, with most of them fully implemented. Individual students’ unions can now allow students to vote directly on who is elected USI President, the structure of the fees unions pay to be members of USI was reviewed, and USI now employs both political consultants and a full-time commercial development executive. Similarly, USI has also changed their campaign structures, and has introduced delegation leaders with a view to encouraging delegates at their national congress vote according to their own students’ union’s mandate.
With this in mind, today and tomorrow UCD students will be voting again to see if students wish to re-affiliate with USI.
There are currently two Facebook like pages: the anti-USI “No to USI”, detailing the reasons students should vote to stay disaffiliated, and “UCD Students – YES to USI”, that explains what USI has done over the last number of years, and what they feel UCD has missed out on.
The first Facebook post on the no page said that “USI have failed to implement the democratic reforms agreed by the 2013 UCDSU and USI Presidents”, something that flies in the face of the obvious and marked progress that USI has made on all five of the reforms agreed.
Megan Fanning, one of the UCD students behind the “No to USI” page, disagreed on the progress made in relation to one of the reforms, saying that simply allowing individual students’ unions to directly elect the USI President was not what was agreed: “The then President of USI, John Logue, promised that that open elections would be brought in and we simply do not believe that it is good enough to say that it is at local level to implement them as we feel it defeats the entire purpose of this reform if one university votes at a local level and others do not.”
One of the most important things that the yes side highlights is that, without affiliation to USI, UCDSU has no input to Higher Education Authority (HEA) and Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI) board meetings, at which USI has representation. The no campaign claims UCDSU does not need USI to have a national impact, citing the “What’s in the Pill?” campaign, a drug harm-reduction campaign which arose as a result of co-ordination between Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union, DIT Students’ Union, UCDSU and the Ana Liffey Drug Project. But largely, UCDSU is absent from national policy making. Jack Leahy, the Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Quality Assurance of USI, pointed out that local students’ unions exist to work in “institution-specific contexts”. “I’d certainly regard UCDSU as being very effective at that, but the fact of the matter is that the sector’s preference for a single student voice for Higher Education students has made it impossible for them to be involved in national policy-making. Since disaffiliating, they have not had any engagement with the HEA, QQI, or the governance of SUSI”, he said.
In the lead-up to the marriage equality referendum in May 2015, voter registration days went ahead in universities and ITs across the country. USI, through its own Make Grá the Law campaign, directly registered 40,000 students in the immediate lead up to the referendum, a number which does not include the work of individual unions who conducted their own efforts, according to Annie Hoey, USI’s Vice-President for Equality and Citizenship. USI handed out a further 10,000 registration forms, which they did not process, but which indirectly led to many further registrations, according to Hoey.
The sector’s preference for a single student voice for Higher Education students has made it impossible for them to be involved in national policy-making
There are roughly 150,000 USI members in the Republic of Ireland, meaning the union managed to register almost 27 per cent of its membership base. This number stands in contrast to claims from the no campaign that USI registered just 5.3 per cent of its members, a figure based off of a late November count published more than six months before the referendum. UCDSU, meanwhile, registered 4,500 students. Based on HEA figures from the 2014/15 academic year, that would represent 18.1 per cent of UCDSU’s membership of 24,812 students.
Fanning noted that their voter registration figures, which are still shown on their Facebook page by way of a widely shared bar chart, are incorrect: “We have admitted that our voter registration numbers were wrong. It was an honest mistake and one which we have noted.”
On the other hand, the no side states that USI “rushed” the holding of a referendum, as the referendum was announced with roughly two weeks’ notice. They also say that “bypassed our class reps and union officers”, and that it was a “deliberate attempt to shut down debate on campus and prevent opposition voices emerging”.
Grace Williams is one of the leading campaigners for the yes side, and believes that the rushed nature of the referendum should not be called into question, as that is procedure in UCDSU. Speaking to The University Times over the phone, Williams said, “The thing about it being a rushed referendum is not actually the fault of the yes campaign. It is actually a problem with the way that referenda are called in UCD, and is standard procedure with there being two weeks notice for a referendum.”
Kevin Donoghue, the President of USI, said that he felt this argument was “disrespectful to the democratic process”. “Individual students should be allowed to effect change”, Donoghue said, “and one of the fundamental things of democracy is being able to collect signatures”.
Fanning disagrees, however, and points to two referendums held last year by UCDSU, one on marriage equality and the other on changes to its constitution, and the significant build-up to both: “Nobody, bar the Yes side, knew that this was coming until it was announced, fourteen days before the polling day. Our Student Union President was not consulted nor was the University Management Team, in regards to a referendum which alters the fees that students pay this should have been done.” In comparison to marriage equality, which was a widely discussed national issue, and the constitutional referendum, which had a working group and months of submissions, she points to how there has been little to no discussion about USI in UCD before the two-week period.
She went on: “Signing sheets for the allowance of the referendum were simply passed around lecture halls and students signed them without hearing anything about the organisation and its pros and cons.”
The no side have also described the move to re-affiliate on their Facebook page as “a money-grabbing effort on the part of USI”, though Williams is quick to refute that: “This isn’t USI coming in and asking UCD to give all of their money over, this is something that UCD students have asked for when they called the referendum, and we have made it quite clear that this was a student led referendum.”
The wording of the referendum is something that Williams stands by as well, as she believes that the referendum cannot be referred to as a money-grabbing effort when they have always disclosed where the money will come from, and who the financial burden is on: “We will accept 100 per cent that there is a cost to being in USI, and I think we’ve been quite frank and open about that. The reason that we worded the referendum the way we did is that we wanted students to be aware of the fact that USI membership does have a cost to it, and the fact that we put the cost of that into the wording of the referendum was putting the ownership and the responsibility of the cost back onto the students if they want to take up USI membership.” The referendum is worded as “do you support the affiliation of UCD Students’ Union to the Union of Students in Ireland, funded by a €5/€2.50 (full-time/part-time) student levy?”
The no side also point to the fact that the most recently available public accounts from USI on its website are from the 2012/13 academic year. Another year of accounts, from 2013/14 approved by USI’s congress last year, have yet to go online on its transparency tab, something which certainly paints it in a bad light. USI assure us that they regularly present financial statements to meetings of sabbatical officers, known as national council, and point to the fact that delegates of member unions can see its accounts at its congress every year.
As a side note, the no campaign worries that UCD’s Registrar has not been contacted to confirm the university’s agreement with a fee increase – of €5, mind you – but it is hard to imagine a university objecting to its students paying more money as a result of a democratic referendum.
Joe O’Connor was the president of USI following UCD’s disaffiliation in 2013. Speaking to The University Times, O’Connor explained how the loss of UCD affected USI at the time: “We were definitely weakened initially, in losing UCD. It diminished the influence we had, and was quite damaging at the time. It was noted by ministers and board members at the HEA and SUSI, that we had lost UCD.”
We were definitely weakened initially, in losing UCD. It diminished the influence we had, and was quite damaging at the time
As to the circumstances surrounding the original disaffiliation, it was a referendum brought about by a vote at UCDSU’s council. “At the time, Rachel Breslin didn’t involve herself too much in the campaign,” explained O’Connor. “But eventually, close to voting, she came out in favour of staying affiliated, after talks with John Logue and developing a programme of sorts in about five different areas.” Breslin was the UCDSU President at the time, and Logue was the USI President. Paddy Guiney, who was UCDSU’s Vice-President, took a leave of absence to campaign to stay in USI, while Eoin Heffernan, the Ents Officer, was heavily involved in the no campaign. O’Connor admitted that “there was quite a divide among the sabbatical team”.
O’Connor also feels that part of the reason some students are so against USI is that they are unaware of a lot of the work USI does: “An awful lot of things students’ unions do for students aren’t always easily visible or recognisable unless you’re very involved, such as helping with mental health or academic issues. Similarly, you don’t always see issues that USI tackle unless you’re very involved at a high level.” USI officers are in frequent contact with government ministers and other bodies on student matters and issues, though often these issues may take years before a satisfactory conclusion can be reached, such as the agreement recently reached for pay increases for student nurses, after three years of ongoing negotiations with the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and Brendan Howlin.
When asked if he thought it was time for UCD to re-affiliate, O’Connor definitively stated that he didn’t think they should have left at all: “I don’t think it was a good move for UCD to leave in the first place. I think it was damaging on both sides. At the core of it, UCDSU was in significant financial difficulty at the time, and although no student there would pay more to USI than any student in any other third level institution, in total UCD was paying a lot of money in membership fees to USI. Many of the “No to USI” campaigners felt that they had to leave and concentrate on more local, UCD-based issues for a while and then consider re-affiliating further down the line.” And that’s exactly what the Yes to USI side hopes will happen when the students vote on the referendum on March 8th and 9th.
Correction: 12:39, March 8th, 2016
An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated the name of a UCD Vice-President at the time. He is Paddy Guiney, not Guinan. It also stated that the original disaffiliation referendum came about as a result of a petition, but it was brought about by a council vote.
