This year’s Trinity College Dublin Students Union (TCDSU) elections is notable for the newly diverse range of candidates putting themselves forward for election, delivering a welcome reprieve from the worrying paucity of women seeking office in previous years.
However, while many had hoped that the diverse nature of this year’s contest would grant the candidates a unique opportunity to rely on their own individual life experiences to identify a broader range of issues, it is notable that yet again the pervasive question of student engagement with the union has dominated the discourse in almost every race.
Indeed, the question of engagement has disproportionately influenced the debate in successive elections now. In last year’s contest, presidential candidates were forced to tackle an additional element of the issue, with a campaign to dissociate from the union gathering pace at the time.
At Thursday’s Media Hustings, candidates in the education, president and welfare races were each questioned on how they proposed to boost engagement with the union, with each candidate in turn seizing the opportunity to express their concern at the falling levels of interaction with TCDSU. The most vocally critical of these candidates was Daire Hennessy, who, perhaps unsurprisingly given the anti-establishment tone of his campaign, was particularly scathing of the union’s inability to engage with the students it represents. He has emphasised the perceived disconnect between the union and the voters in almost every hustings, repeatedly promising to prioritise and “address the engagement issue first” if elected.
In truth however, the question of engagement is one which has become little more than a touchstone for candidates, with many using it as a crutch in the early stages of elections to help them ease into the more complex issues arising later in the race. The issue has become something that must be addressed, but in the broadest sense possible.
Over the past two years, it has become something of a right of passage for candidates to express concern over the issue, while failing to address the issue in a meaningful way. Most, while more than willing to lament the inability of the union to reach ordinary students, fail to offer any tangible solutions to combat this, beyond the occasional vague pledge to shift the “focus onto local issues”. As a consequence, candidates often face a lack of scrutiny over their ability to handle the day to day challenges posed of a sabbatical officer, with detailed debate often dispensed with in the interests of time.
The question of engagement is one which has become little more than a touchstone for candidates, with many using it as a crutch in the early stages of elections to help them ease into the more complex issues arising later in the race
Interestingly, despite the lengthy, but fruitless, debates on the issue over the past few years, it may be that the reasons for the lack of engagement with the union are obvious, and almost entirely unavoidable: That our understanding of engagement is somewhat flawed.
When we talk of the perceived disconnect between the union and students the discussion almost always turns quickly to low voter turnout and the occasional inability of council to reach quorum. However, this is an immensely limited understanding of how students interact with the union. For reasons that few have been able to articulate, turnout in elections at every level, from those on a small scale such as TCDSU’s, to general elections, often struggle to engage the populace and get out the vote. If we are to use this as our measure of people’s engagement with governments and unions then we are condemning ourselves to perpetual discussions about falling engagement and endless arguments over the role these organisations play in society.
Indeed, TCDSU almost certainly suffers from the compact nature of Trinity’s campus. Benefitting from the such a confined space, Trinity students will often note that they are better integrated with College life by comparison to their peers in larger, more spralling college campuses elsewhere. As such, students are inclined to demand that the union play a more pervasive role in College life. Part of this expectation is a more immersive electoral contest.
However, surely evaluating the level of interaction with the union by focusing solely on the ability of candidates for election to get their vote out is an inherently limited method of assessing its success in engaging with its constituents. Rather than focusing on electoral turnout trends and the intensity of council debates, a more appropriate method of engaging students with the union is to ensure that they are aware of the services that it offers.
Interestingly, despite the lengthy, but fruitless, debates on the issue over the past few years, it may be that the reasons for the lack of engagement with the union are obvious, and almost entirely unavoidable: That our understanding of engagement is somewhat flawed
Undoubtedly, the union often fails to effectively communicate the myriad of services that it offers students, and all too often there is more of a focus on advertising grand projects than publicising the smaller, but more necessary, student-centric plans.
Indeed, there are ways in which the union could seek to make its activities more transparent, consequently boosting engagement. Beyond a Twitter hashtag that is somewhat inaccessible for those present and a weekly email that is notably incoherent at times, the union almost entirely fails to communicate the mandates it adopts at council to students, nor does it advertise the issues raised by faculty convenors and class representatives. This problem is not intractable.
While these methods may not increase turnout in elections, they achieve a more important aim of increasing the visibility of the services the union offers, boosting engagement in real terms.
Ultimately, it seems clear that the current trend of candidates singing from the hymn sheet in criticising the question, yet failing to offer concrete solutions, cannot continue. It is imperative that we adopt a more nuanced approach to questions of engagement, lest we be saddled with an eternally meaningless debate that promises to raise its head every election season.
