Though it seems the dust has already begun to settle on this year’s Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) elections, there is still quite a lot to be reckoned with. For one thing, it was only on Thursday that the publication of sexual harassment allegations forced one of the presidential race’s main contenders to withdraw his candidacy, mere hours before ballot boxes were set to be opened. As they say, a week is a long time in politics.
This is surely the most scandalous development in Trinity’s student political sphere in recent memory. It is also unquestionably part of the seismic cultural shift we have seen since the Weinstein scandal first broke in the pages of the New York Times in October. That there was enough palpable outrage for Sean Ryan to get the sense that this issue was not just going to go away, even if he did end up winning the election, is testament to this, too.
But there was also the kind of ignoble outrage that you might have hoped a campus like Trinity’s might avoid. Though it’s done facetiously more often than it is not, there is a reason that these 47 acres are regularly labelled the most liberal in Ireland. Two years ago, TCDSU foisted consent workshops onto the national stage – and now they seem almost commonplace.
That so many were willing to countenance suggestions of ulterior or even conspiratorial motives behind the allegations is more than disappointing. It is nauseating. Then, that multiple candidates, campaign managers and prominent student campaigners were willing to throw the term “fake news” around and pillory various student publications is at least on the same spectrum of odiousness.
Put it this way: if your default campaign tactic is to howl the phrase invoked by Donald Trump – of all people – to deliberately undermine the institutions of democracy, then TCDSU really does not need you. Criticism of the media and the way allegations are reported is fine. That, too, is part of democracy. But be nuanced. Think of your own way of speaking. And don’t feed the cliches that have ensnared the way we talk about politics in the 21st century.
