The Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) passed a motion at council tonight that will mandate the union to take “reasonable” action if the demands of the Take Back Trinity campaign are not met tomorrow.
The motion was passed with an overwhelming majority. The motion stated that the GSU supports the Take Back Trinity campaign and its demands, that the GSU supports individual members who take reasonable action as part of the Take Back Trinity campaign and that the GSU will take reasonable actions in support of Take Back Trinity should the demands of this campaign not be met. The union promised it would escalate to industrial action if necessary.
Tonight’s motion follows a similar motion passed at the first GSU council in October 2017, which stated that the “GSU will explore industrial action (strike, non payment of fees etc) if the proposed 5% increase is approved” in response to the suggested postgraduate fee increase.
The President of the GSU, Shane Collins, encouraged students to stand in solidarity with the undergraduate students’ struggle to oppose supplemental exam fees, asserting that “the College are turning undergrads into cash cows too”. He emphasised the importance of this evening’s council ahead of tomorrow’s decision at the College Board in relation to supplemental exam fees, stating that students would be “naive to think it is certain that this will go through tomorrow”.
“We need to be sure that we’ll do whatever it takes – that we’ll take back Trinity and take it back now”, he said.
The motion was passed following lengthy discussions regarding the specifics of the industrial action, the extent to which the GSU would support the demands of the campaign, and the wording of the motion
The Take Back Trinity campaign has dominated College in recent weeks. Collins has lobbied for postgraduate students to receive fee certainty from College, as part of the campaign’s main demands. The University Times previously revealed that Prendergast is now open to fee certainty.
