For continuing students, the complexity and opacity of Trinity’s internal administration is par for the course. However, for incoming students, Trinity’s poor communication with students about the processes of starting here will rapidly emerge as a point of contention and stress in their College experience.
Although coordinating 16,000 undergraduate students and numerous postgraduates and staff is an unenviable task, Trinity’s administration process is often unnecessarily laborious. However, the problems lie primarily with the lack of clarity and information provided about dates, timelines and expectations for how to register and organise your college admin requirements. Much of the confusion faced by new and existing students would be mitigated with clear updates on what to expect, as well as information when delays are encountered in processing applications.
The accommodation offers for on-campus housing this year were a vivid example of the lack of clarity and confusion that surrounds Trinity’s internal administration. Though offers were distributed by email in mid-May 2015 for the subsequent academic year, the 2016/17 accommodation places were not sent to students until mid-June. No update or information regarding the delay or the expected date was provided to students. A quick glance in the freshers’ group on Facebook reveals that incoming students have been equally in the dark, whether it be about when they are supposed to register, when they should pay or when basic information, such as timetables, would reach them.
Cancellation of the societies’ mailout this year demonstrates further disregard of students’ need for information. For an incoming fresher, the mailout provided useful information as to what they could expect in their first week of university, where to locate societies and what societies were available to them. Cancelling the mailout due to time concerns and potential data protection constraints is not proportionate with what the mailout meant to students: more information about what they would experience, at a time when everything is new, strange and intimidating.
A simple email last May explaining that accommodation offers were unavoidably delayed but would be released in mid-June would have sufficed. Managing the demands of tens of thousands of students is a difficult task. Providing them with clear and updated information on timelines and expectations is not.
