It shouldn’t have been a nervous count night for Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU), as it waited for the result of a preferendum on student fees. The fact it was – and that for a while it looked like students might actually endorse fee hikes – is a testament not to a certain breed of Trinity student with more money than sense, but rather a botched approach to direct democracy.
A preferendum was always a curious move – students might have been expected to oppose fees in the vast majority of circumstances. But the litany of options – wonkish and complex – added layers of ambiguity to a vote that, at its heart, was always a little muddled considering the strange fusion of the entirely separate issues of modular billing and exam fees.
Indeed, a preferendum was a cumbersome tool to assess the mood of students who are already well versed in the frustrations and genuine financial anxieties that often come with studying in Trinity and in an underfunded higher education system.
For TCDSU, the votes of thousands of students might be a comforting bulwark in the face of Trinity’s ire, but it was something of an unnecessary rigmarole to rally students around an issue many will have intuitively supported.
And while there are good reasons for holding preferendums – this show of strength to College being one – the problem with the preferendum is that it presented quite a simple choice as a multifaceted puzzle to be deciphered by voters.
This, compounded by the decision to opt for first-past-the-post, risked the worst of all possible outcomes: a confused student voice with no clear opposition against fees. Luckily, students saw sense in the final days, putting their votes behind option 3 and securing a majority in opposition to fee increases. But it was close enough to seriously scare TCDSU.
The union now must decide where to go from here. No doubt, the result will be trumpeted to Trinity’s senior officers and a referendum – to make the stance binding – will be planned. But if there is to be a serious clash with College in the future, students need to know exactly what they’re fighting for.
