This week, JCR president-elect Eva Craig sat down with The University Times for a wide-ranging discussion on the challenges faced by freshers during the pandemic and her plans to utilise the power of community for next year’s first years.
Craig, a BESS student from “the depths of the west coast” in Sligo, knew when she was 16 that she wanted to get involved in student politics. Spending a week interning with the Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) and at this newspaper during her transition year, she decided that she wanted to contribute to the “amazing work” that students were doing.
Craig, who ran unopposed for JCR president, follows in the footsteps of her brother Jonah, who served as the JCR and later the SU Ents Officer.
Describing her “unique” first year in College, Craig preferred to focus on the positives from what has been a challenging time for all students. “I’m so lucky to be in Halls,” she said. “I absolutely love it.”
Despite the pandemic, she said she’s “met so many people,” and is grateful for the current JCR committee. Their “online events, being so friendly, [and] checking in on all of us freshers [has] made my first year so much better,” she said.
Craig wants to provide the same service to students next year, especially since the coronavirus will likely still be around in some form or another.
“I know that a lot of people have been finding it really hard to make friends, to focus on their work, to keep up motivation, I know international students are missing home.”
So she hopes to take advantage of the “beautiful community,” that exists in Halls. “Everyone’s going through a lot of the same problems,” she said. “We can all provide support for each other.”
Even “talking about the weather, as silly as it sounds,” helps take people’s minds “off of study, off of COVID”.
Craig describes a policy, which was “literally the first thing I wrote down” when creating her manifesto as a goal of creating Facebook groups and chats to alleviate anxiety associated with getting home safely and going out at night.
She referenced a recent United Nations UK study which found that over 80 per cent of women aged 18-24 have been sexually harassed in public spaces, pointing out how much fear exists in simple day-to-day activities for women.
She said that this year there have been so many times when she wanted to do something as simple as go out to Tesco to get snacks, but didn’t, because she felt “too scared” once it was dark. She hopes her plan will allow the power of the Halls community to be utilised so that people can let each other know when they make it home or can ask if anyone wants to walk to the shops at night.
Discussing her virtual run for JCR president, Craig said that while “campaigning door to door and meeting everyone would have been so much fun,” she nevertheless enjoyed the campaign. She also felt lucky to be unopposed, joking that some of her friends who ran in contested races “looked much more stressed”.
Craig was thankful for her supportive and hard-working team who wanted to “give everything,” despite the lack of a challenger. She even had some enthusiastic friends back home in Sligo “asking if they could vote,” even though they weren’t Halls students.
Describing the current JCR President Alex Clark as “an absolute legend,” she explained that conversations with him about the role provided the motivation she needed to run for the presidency as opposed to any of the other roles which she was also interested in.
Craig would not be led into making promises on what College will look like for next year’s first years, saying that, unfortunately, “no one person can tell us”. But she hopes that antigen testing can help get life closer to normal.
Having participated in the regular testing available to Halls residents this year, she called it a “brilliant scheme,” adding that even if the accuracy of the results is not 100 per cent accurate – it’s a pilot scheme for a new way of testing for the virus – that it helps to “take a lot of anxiety away,” which is so necessary for today’s students.
“You never know if you have COVID unless you get tested,” she said, so this kind of scheme can “take away some of that uncertainty”.
Asked if she has a message for Trinity’s newly-elected Provost Linda Doyle, Craig said she is “so excited for her,” but knows that an enormous amount of work will be required from all kinds of leaders next year.
“There’s going to need to be a lot of effort put into helping integrate everyone back into normality,” she said, but added: “I’m sure she’s going to do amazing.”
