Before the past few weeks, it would have been hard to believe that University College Dublin Students’ Union (UCDSU) was once a union at the forefront of social change in Ireland. Just last year, UCD students voted to remain outside of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) in a referendum that saw less than a tenth of students vote. Three years earlier, UCD students had voted to disaffiliate from USI in a campaign that, above all else, centered on the need for UCDSU to stay focused on local issues over national ones.
At the time, that was perhaps prudent, considering the mountain of debt that the union had gotten itself into. But it was nonetheless indicative of a union that had seemingly turned inwards – one that had, over some period of time, developed an aversion to its past self.
This was the union that, in 1979, sold condoms during a time when the sale of such contraceptives without a prescription was illegal. This was the union that, in 1988, published abortion information in its welfare guide even though the litigious Society for the Protection of Unborn Children had threatened it with legal action. (The society did good on its threat and took UCDSU to court in a case that was later joined by Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union and USI.)
Even considering the union’s recent past, that this same union last year elected Katie Ascough as president was jarring. The discord between the reaction of outsiders, who were maddened, and UCD students, who were seemingly non-plussed, was altogether mystifying.
But perhaps that was the high-water mark. This past week saw UCD students head to the polls in droves to impeach Ascough, in part motivated by sabbatical officers who harked back to the politicised union of old. UCD students, typecast as disengaged outcasts by the rest of the student movement, made sure their voices were heard. Every kind of movement has its vicissitudes – the ups and downs that permeate the past and present. It seems that Ascough’s actions may have prompted what this particular one needed: repoliticisation.
