Amidst one of the most tumultuous weeks in living memory for Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU), Education Officer Alice MacPherson announced, with relatively little fanfare, that Trinity students would go to the polls for the second time in little over a month to vote on whether TCDSU should boycott, divest and sanction the state of Israel. Voting started in those two referendums today.
While motions like this one have been adopted by the union before – most famously its boycott of apartheid-era South Africa – the development of TCDSU, over the past year in particular, indicates that the students behind the petition may well find that the time for the adoption of mandates such as this one has passed.
The union’s capacity to effectively influence international issues has been called into question before and emerged as one of the main arguments against last year’s preferendum on Irish unity. People questioned whether TCDSU should be wading headlong into such a divisive issue. Meanwhile, a significant number of students expressed bemusement that this issue was being debated at all, especially as the union faced no shortage of problems closer to home.
Since then, the Student Union Opt-Out Project has also gained momentum and submitted its petition to allow students to disassociate from the union at the same time as Students for Justice in Palestine. Ironically, this campaign is something the students wishing to opt out of the union would rail against.
The campaign is also facing a sea change. Students seemed to want a more local union that will put their problems first
The Students for Justice in Palestine campaign has been impressive – it has galvanised support and grabbed headlines over the last year. But the campaign is also facing a sea change. Students seemed to want a more local union that will put their problems first.
Nowhere was this change of priorities more evident that in the recent TCDSU elections, in which all four candidates for president predominantly campaigned on local issues. Moving away from national and potentially fraught political campaigns that have characterised union elections in the past, they sought to connect with voters on the issues that most affected them on a daily basis.
During his campaign, the President-elect of TCDSU, Shane De Rís, concentrated his efforts on addressing issues within College, organising his campaign around the slogan “Refocus the SU”. Throughout the elections, he bemoaned inaction on part of the union with regard to fighting for the issues that affect students on a day-to-day basis. He placed particular emphasis on the challenges posed by the chronic lack of student space and the potential difficulties facing the incoming Trinity Education Project. Speaking to The University Times in February, he argued that the union “needs to start fighting harder on the front within college”, identifying a widespread perception that “the SU isn’t working” for the average student.
While not overtly hostile to the idea of political campaigns – De Rís praised the union’s efforts in both the marriage equality and repeal campaigns – his manifesto reflected what is undoubtedly a growing desire on the part of the majority of students to focus on the issues that affect them within College. He encapsulated this view succinctly, telling The University Times, that the union exists “to improve students lives”.
Perhaps predictably, as the patently anti-establishment candidate, the eventual runner-up Michael McDermott was particularly scathing of TCDSU’s past tendency to involve itself in campaigns such as boycott, divest and sanction. In an interview with The University Times prior to the election, he expressed concern that students are being “divided” by “politics we aren’t even influencing anyway” and argued throughout his campaign that the union must move away from overtly political stances.
Addressing the question of boycott, divest and sanction directly, McDermott strongly rebuffed the calls for a referendum on the matter, stating “that’s something that I really hope [the election] doesn’t get into”. McDermott has a long history of skewering TCDSU’s more political mandates on his superb Trinity Collidge Facebook-meme page, and his commentary on the boycott, divest and sanction matter was typically incisive. He suggested that such campaigns more often boil down to whether or not “you personally agree with the sentiment” of proposed mandates, rather than identifying the issues which the union can most tangibly “have an impact on”.
Throughout hustings, candidates were repeatedly questioned on how best to remedy falling engagement with the union. Candidates’ focus on local issues was a marked change of pace from past TCDSU elections and certainly seemed to present a new direction for the union.
Failure will likely spell the end of a political union for the foreseeable future, as students demand a more inwardly focussed representative body
It’s likely this locally-focused attitude will become increasingly prevalent, especially given students’ rejection of the additional charges which College, in its desperation to create new revenue streams, has sought to introduce.
That’s not to say that students have lost their famed activist spirit. Simply look at the ferocious response to the proposed supplemental exam fees. Nor have they become mere tools of the establishment, as Nigel Farage so brashly suggested during his visit to Trinity. Indeed the growth of Trinity’s society culture means that student activism is thriving. In recent years, many of Trinity’s most prominent student campaigns have been driven not by the union, but by societies and grassroots movements, such as “Strike for Repeal” and “Aramark Off Our Campus”.
Clearly then, there is more at stake here than in the standard union referendum. It comes at a crucial time in the development of TCDSU, where its future direction still sits on a knife-edge. Success may well pull the union back towards the well-worn track of overtly political positions, forcing the incoming sabbatical officers to navigate what is becoming increasingly tricky terrain. By contrast, failure will likely spell the end of a political union for the foreseeable future, as students demand a more inwardly focussed representative body, ready to tackle an increasingly revenue-obsessed college.
Correction: March 22nd, 2018
An earlier version of this article spelled Alice MacPherson’s name incorrectly. It has since been corrected.
