Voting in the Provost election preference poll and the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) executive elections will take place at the end of this month via Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU)’s online voting system, the union announced today.
Voting in the USI executive elections will run from March 26th to 4pm on March 29th. Voting in the Provost election will begin on March 29th and close on April 2nd.
TCDSU hustings for USI executive elections will take place on March 26th at 6pm, while TCDSU hustings for the Provost election will take place on 29th March at 7pm.
The vote will decide which candidates student representatives on College Board and University Council will vote for. Four union members currently sit on University Council and three members on College Board. However, the education officer sits on both Council and Board, so the union has six votes in total.
The rest of the electorate consists of nearly 900 professors and the other members of Board and Council.
To be eligible to vote students must register with a Trinity email address. If students have previously registered to vote for sabbatical officer elections or class rep elections they are already registered and do not need to do so a second time.
Delegates representing students’ unions will vote at the national USI Congress for their preferred candidates next month. Many unions, including TCDSU, mandate their delegates to vote en-block for candidates, while some others allow a free vote.
Three senior members of TCDSU have launched campaigns to run for positions in the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) executive this year.
Two of this year’s sabbatical officers, Megan O’Connor and Hugh McInerney, are running for Vice President for Academic Affairs and Vice President for the Dublin Region respectively.
McInerney is the current TCDSU ents officer and O’Connor is the current education officer.
Muireann Nic Corcráin, currently undertaking a master’s degree in speech and language processing and a former Oifigeach na Gaeilge in the union, is running for Vice President for the Irish Language.
Last year, TCDSU council voted in favour of a motion that mandated the Electoral Commission to conduct a Provost election preference poll, which will determine which candidate will receive the votes held by TCDSU representatives on University Council and College Board.
The motion was proposed by Dylan Krug, a third-year class representative for environmental sciences, and was seconded by TCDSU Deputy STEM Convener Bev Genockey. Some 86 per cent of attendees voted in favour of the motion.
Speaking in favour of the motion, Krug said it was important that student representatives “vote in line with the majority”.
The election will affect “Trinity students for the next ten years”, he added, and it was important that the next Provost “represents students’ needs”.
Genockey added that she and Krug brought the motion to Council “in the interest of transparency”, so that all students can be involved “rather than just class reps or people who knew this was going to run anyway”.
TCDSU Education Officer Megan O’Connor said that the vote would use the single-transferable voting system, so “if the person we are voting for is knocked out of the race we would then be voting for the person [who is] second-most popular”.
