The role of President of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) has always remained somewhat ambiguous, especially when compared to the specific briefs enjoyed by other officers. Indeed, more than any other role, the office can be defined by the personal priorities of its incumbent.
This year is no different. The four candidates, with competing visions of what the union should deliver, have their own views on the problems facing the union and the president’s role in shaping solutions.
Balancing the demands of both local and national issues has long been a complex task for TCDSU presidents. Current TCDSU President Kevin Keane and former TCDSU President Lynn Ruane will be remembered for distinctly outward-facing viewpoints, while last year’s President Kieran McNulty strove to strike a balance between the national and the domestic. Speaking to The University Times, Keane reiterated the importance of tackling the varied challenges of the presidency with equal fervour: “It’s that two-handed approach of managing and overseeing national campaigns and advocating for trying to improve the student experience in Trinity.”
Increasingly, TCDSU presidents have had to bridge a divide between a student constituency that supports a more pro-active and political union, while another cohort wants a president that will keep their attention fixed on Trinity’s numerous domestic issues. This year’s winner will certainly be judged on his navigation of challenges as varied as the implementation of the Trinity Education Project and the aftermath of the repeal the eighth referendum.
If the paucity of candidates this year demonstrates anything, it is that the issue of student engagement shows no sign of disappearing
It’s also important to note that for the third year in succession, in what increasingly appears to be turning into a prerequisite to running for president, the race will be an entirely male-contested campaign.
Third-year Irish student Shane De Rís is perhaps the most experienced of the candidates, having served as JCR President and TCDSU TSM Convenor in 2015/16. No stranger to union politics, he was also McNulty’s campaign manager. De Rís has a history of involvement in student activism, and in his first year he led a campaign against College plans to introduce hefty student charges. In an interview with The University Times, De Rís said that he is the best candidate because he has “fought for students before”. This experience, he said, will prove invaluable if he’s elected.
Michael McDermott is a final-year nanoscience student, best known for running the popular “Trinity Collidge” Facebook page. Currently serving as PRO of the Trinity Space Society, he is also running for Editor of The University Times. If his experience is sparser than the other candidates – he confesses to having little previous involvement in student life – and his campaign decidedly less serious, he might just be the antidote to flagging union engagement. “The fact that we’re making a joke”, he said to The University Times, doesn’t mean “that what you’re saying isn’t serious”.
Fourth-year law student Seán Ryan is a former TCDSU class representative. Speaking to The University Times, Ryan said his main goal is to create “an environment that will allow other students to flourish as much as I have in my time at Trinity”. Though well versed in the intricacies of council and union elections as a member of Bryan Mallon’s presidential campaign, he has little experience in any major leadership role. Despite this, Ryan told The University Times that his “passion and desire to help students” sets him apart from his competitors.
The fourth and final candidate for president is Paul Molloy, a final-year philosophy, politics and sociology student who is currently serving as Auditor of the College Historical Society. Like McDermott, Molloy has no formal experience in the union. Nevertheless, he told The University Times that his time as Auditor and his “dealings with students and with college” have informed an outlook that focuses on the “student voice”.
The issue of disassociation from TCDSU was one which reared its head this year. Rather surprisingly, two of this year’s candidates endorsed the movement in principle
Last year’s presidential race brought student engagement with the union to the forefront, with the urgency of the issue borne out by an exceptionally low voter turnout on election day. If the paucity of candidates this year demonstrates anything, it is that this issue shows no sign of disappearing. Speaking to The University Times, all four candidates emphasised the importance to the union of an outlook that focuses, in the words of McDermott, “on students’ interests”.
But the idea of “student interests” is an intangible and much-contested one. Where last year’s candidates were comparatively free to set their own agenda – Keane made repeal a centrepoint of his campaign – this year’s looming preferendum on supplemental exam fees will likely ground the terms of debate in issues more relevant to the average student, whether the candidates like it or not.
The issue of disassociation from TCDSU was one that reared its head this year. Rather surprisingly, two of this year’s candidates endorsed the movement in principle. McDermott’s view, he said, was that leaving would be a “bad move”, but that the “right should be there”. Ryan said it was “not feasible”, but that “in an ideal world people would be able to opt out” of TCDSU. De Rís and Molloy both expressed their opposition to the idea.
This year’s candidates seem to recognise that the tide is turning away from national issues. Most candidates echoed Ryan’s promise to bring the union back “between the four walls”. For Molloy, the main concern was that student issues are often “drowned out” by national issues, while McDermott, whose page has a history of skewering TCDSU’s more activist exploits, pointed to the futility of allowing the student body to be “divided by politics we aren’t even influencing anyway”.
On the issue of supplemental fees, De Rís stated unequivocally that College should find the money “somewhere else that isn’t in students’ pockets”. While De Rís pointed to his involvement in the referendum campaign against proposed student charges in his first year, Molloy and Ryan focused less on experience and more on the strength of their feelings against such a charge. Ryan noted that the proposed changes add the possibility of “financial penalisation”. In a common theme, McDermott set himself against the grain, arguing that it is the cost, rather than the principle, of supplemental fees to which he objects.
However, since the funding crisis became a mainstream issue, it has become a key part of the manifestos of presidential candidates.
Nevertheless, none of the candidates felt unable to fully ignore national issues, touching in different ways on one of the most popular issues among students: the upcoming referendum on the eighth amendment. Both Ryan and De Rís expressed their desire to see the union involved in shaping legislation, the latter promising to ensure that government doesn’t “put choice on the back burner”. If Molloy was more measured, suggesting that the president shouldn’t “offer their opinion” on controversial issues like repeal, McDermott’s attitude was the most pointed riposte to the union’s current stance. TCDSU, he said, shouldn’t waste time trying to represent so many different views and that time would be “better spent somewhere else”.
If repeal is a pre-occupation, so too is higher education funding. There has been little movement on the topic of university funding since the publication of the report of the government’s higher education funding working group, commonly known as the Cassells report, in July 2016. Students and staff have shared their frustrations publicly, even as the issue has fallen further down the national agenda.
However, since the funding crisis became a mainstream issue, it has become a key part of the manifestos of presidential candidates. McNulty, for instance, created a lobby group on the issue and spoke to the Oireachtas Education and Skills Committee. Keane too found room in his manifesto to call for an increase in the National Training Fund to finance the third-level sector.
Yet as progress has stalled on the issue, frustrations have grown among candidates about the union’s current work on it. De Rís in particular expressed concerns that the “SU has been largely silent” on this issue, referring to October’s March for Education, organised by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), as “a glorified jamboree”. This year’s march saw 6,000 students take to the streets, down from the 10,000 of the previous year.
Unsurprisingly, Molloy, Ryan and De Rís are united in their rejection of an income-contingent loan system, with Ryan in particular lamenting the “lack of urgency” on the part of the government. Molloy highlighted a recent study in the UK suggesting that “75 per cent of all the loans won’t be repaid” and called a publicly funded system “the most sensible way” of tackling the problem. McDermott was the least fluent on the issue, admitting that he was unaware of the Cassells report.
All of the candidates highlighted the yearly shortage of student accomodation, though many treaded gently around the problem’s complexities
Closer to home, finances have become a key preoccupation of union presidents in recent years after TCDSU posted a succession of deficits. Keane was elected on a mantra of efficiencies, controversially calling for a cut to The University Times print budget. This year, candidates found themselves at odds on the issue of the union’s financial future. Ryan and McDermott questioned whether tough choices undermined the union’s role to serve students, while Molloy endorsed the union’s new, more frugal approach, pointing to excesses like class representative training. For De Rís, there are “a lot of inefficiencies that have to be addressed”, but he credited McNulty for the work restructuring the union during his term.
All of the candidates highlighted the yearly shortage of student accomodation, though many treaded gently around the problem’s complexities. De Rís and Ryan both referred to the need for creative solutions within TCDSU, though De Rís added that “there’s no magic solution” to the issue. McDermott went a step further than this, offering perhaps the most realistic appraisal, as he suggested that the crisis has become “too big for any one group to effectively deal with”. He suggested instead that students should be mobilised to lobby TDs and Dublin City councillors rather than organising TCDSU-led campaigns.
Molloy was the most outspoken of the candidates on the accommodation crisis, adding that TCDSU’s lobbying on the issue “will be the biggest campaign going forward” and that he would like to see an additional focus by the TCDSU lobby group on the problem.
For Keane, his preoccupations still lie with national issues. Speaking to The University Times, Keane also spoke of the vital role that lobbying will play during the future president’s term, stating that it will be a “really important feature of the year coming” on a myriad of issues, including accommodation and abortion legislation.
Overall, this year seems likely to mark a departure of sorts in the TCDSU presidency, away from the large-scale focus of the last number of years and towards a philosophy that trains its sights on College first and society second. And while issues such as the eighth amendment are unlikely to go away, they may well be eclipsed by more local issues in the long term.
Matthew Murphy is an Assistant Sports Editor and will edit the presidential race for The University Times. Ciaran Molloy is an Assistant News Editor and will act as chief presidential correspondent.
