Provost Patrick Prendergast will meet with Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) and the Graduates Students’ Union (GSU) today, as College seeks a way to mollify student anger over supplemental exam fees.
The meeting, which took place in House Six this morning, saw TCDSU President Kevin Keane and GSU President Shane Collins discuss the three demands of the Take Back Trinity campaign.
It’s rare for senior College officers to meet sabbatical officers outside Trinity offices and rarer still for Prendergast visit House Six for a meeting with TCDSU. The morning’s meeting lasted 40 minutes.
Speaking to The University Times, Keane said: “Today’s meeting was very productive. The Provost has recognised that the university has to listen to the demands of students.”
The Take Back Trinity campaign has three main demands: a full reversal of the decision to introduce supplemental exam fees, that there is a freeze on postgraduate and non-EU student fees and that there is no increase to on-campus accommodation prices.
Calling the meeting “worthwhile”, Keane said he was looking forward to “further meetings to solidify the university’s acceptance of our demands”.
In an email statement to The University Times, former TCDSU Education Officer Jack Leahy said: “Meetings between the Provost and student representatives take place in House 1 as a matter of course. There’s no question of location, and I recall being excited to have the opportunity to represent students in such a powerful location. On reflection, though, it does reflect something of a power dynamic. House 1 is the site of official business in Trinity, and everywhere else is secondary.”
“It strikes me as a conciliatory gesture, which is welcome, but it also reflects that this meeting is very much on Kevin and Shane’s terms as a result of recent protests”, Leahy, a former Deputy President of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), said.
The meeting came after Provost Patrick Prendergast intervened on Wednesday night, following a surge of protests across campus, to acknowledge that College would consider alternative proposals to supplemental exam fees, modular billing, postgraduate and non-EU fees.
Collins has pushed the issue of fee certainty – which would see tuition fees remain fixed for the entirety of a postgraduate degree – all year, in the face of College plans for a five per cent increase in postgraduate fees.
A proposal for fee certainty, compiled by Collins, has been sent to O’Kelly, alongside Vice-Provost Chris Morash and the Chief Financial Officer, Ian Mathews. O’Kelly has endorsed the proposal for fee certainty for students in multi-year programmes, according to an email sent to the GSU and seen by The University Times.
