Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) council began almost an hour late this evening due to difficulties admitting class representatives to the virtual meeting room on Zoom.
Council, which was due to begin at 7pm, suffered long delays as each class representative was required to be verified and admitted individually to the Zoom call. The meeting subsequently started at 7.50pm, and went on for over three hours.
The Zoom call began at 6:30 PM to allow students to sign in – as is usual practice when Council is held in person.
The original Zoom link only had the capacity for 100 participants and a new link was sent at 7pm. At 7.30pm there were still around 150 students waiting to be admitted, according to an email sent out to class representatives from the secretary Cian Walsh.
While waiting to be manually admitted class reps were put into breakout rooms before council officially started at 7.50pm.
Some 252 students were present at the beginning of council. By the end, over 100 students had left the call early.
In an email statement to The University Times, Chair of Council Yannick Gloster said: “Due to the account not having access to 500 people zoom calls, we were unable to start the zoom meeting on time. This issue has been fixed for the future. We are learning as we go along but otherwise the council was super successful seeing amazing engagement from reps!”
In a statement to The University Times, Education Officer Megan O’Connor said: “I am so delighted to finally be able to attend Council #1!”
“With a high attendance of over 240 Class Reps, it took some time to individually admit everyone. The Electoral Commission had to do this and cross-reference it with the list of elected reps for the year, to ensure we are maintaining the integrity of Council. This is to ensure everyone in the Zoom call is permitted to vote in the elections as per the Constitution.”
“This is something where we are all learning as we go and will ensure it becomes smoother by next Council but everyone stuck with us and we are so delighted to be up and running!”
“There was also a very unfortunate power cut across campus which impacted us a little but we were back up and running in no time”, she added.
This is the second council to be held virtually since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with the first virtual meeting held in April.
TCDSU Council meets once a month and is made up of sabbatical officers, part-time officers and class representatives. Council members have the power to mandate sabbatical and part-time officers to take policy direction, and to direct the policy and actions of TCDSU as a whole.
Jennifer Ní Chiara also contributed reporting to this piece.
