Voters at the Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) AGM tonight rejected a motion which would have seen Mazars Consulting carry out an audit of the union’s accounts, officers, processes, strategic plans and constitution.
The motion was proposed by GSU president Gisèle Scanlon and Vice-President Abhisweta Bhattacharjee, but was met with sharp criticism from postgraduate students at the meeting, and was ultimately voted down.
Scanlon said that Mazars have “already looked at parts of the union”. She praised “how clinical they can be with the simplest of things”, and said that “some of the advice, even casual advice, has helped us”.
Speaking against the motion, history and humanities representative Tenaya Jorgenson said that “we’ve seen the privatisation of the universities and how that’s looked”.
“Listen to your constituents”, she said. “We’re the ones experiencing everything.”
Conor Reddy, a co-founder of TCD PhD Workers’ Rights Group, called the motion “farcical”.
“We should listen to postgrads … we could do with a bit more listening in this union rather than giving money to Mazars.”
Several attendees hit back against the motion in the Zoom chatbox, with Reddy writing: “What do Mazaars [sic] know about how a union should work?”
“Other professional services firms like KPMG have done all they can to undermine unions in this country”, he added.
Scanlon defended the motion, saying she was “a welfare president” who put students first. But, she added, “you have to improve processes and improve the union”.
“Any advice we get, even if we have to pay for it”, she said, is “valuable”.
“It isn’t throwing money away, it’s investing in building something.”
Dale Whelehan, another PhD student present, wrote in the Zoom comment section that “former advisory boards, such as TCDSU, which doesn’t cost money allows you to gain valuable insights with people with Union experience without having to pay large amounts of money to an external company which have no lived experience of a Union formal”.
Caitriona O’Brien, another postgraduate student, wrote: “Or possibly room for part time works for some postgrads – put the money back in our pool – especially say management/ accounting postgrads who are writing the research stuff that places like Mazars are using in their work?”
Scanlon’s report was rejected by postgraduate students at the AGM, after questions were put to her on her handling of a survey of PhD students which has sparked controversy over recent months.
The AGM had gotten off to a shaky start, with confusion arising about how postgraduates would vote during the AGM.
Questions were opened to the floor, in particular regarding a PhD survey, which the union and the TCD PhD Workers’ Rights Group had worked on together.
The president released the data from the survey with little warning yesterday, to the surprise of many in the workers’ rights group.
