The Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) has voted in a new oversight board, after the union’s President Gisèle Scanlon ordered the outgoing board to resign over the summer.
The new board includes former provostial candidate Prof Jane Ohlmeyer, Director of the Trinity Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Prof Sarah Alyn-Stacey and barrister Conor Duff.
Some 91 per cent of attendees at this evening’s AGM voted to approve the new board.
All former board members were ordered to resign by Scanlon in an email sent in September. She wrote: “As you are most likely aware, the term limit for a position within the GSU Board is three years and as the current Board was constituted by my predecessor Shane Collins on July 5th 2018, your term in office has now regrettably concluded.”
According to GSU bye laws, “the mode of appointment of voting members of the GSU Board shall be through the Nominating Committee”, and the Nominating Committee “shall present nominees which shall be approved at AGM”.
The old constitution also does not indicate that the president has the power to dismiss Board members independently.
The new board members appointed today were Abhigyan Ashok, Prof Sarah Alyn-Stacey, Conor Duff, Ola Elian, Sonja Heppner, GSU Oversight Officer Jonathon Murphy, and Prof Jane Ohlmeyer.
According to an email sent out to postgraduates from the GSU, Ashok has “experience in economics” and works “primarily in the fields of freedom of expression, and private and commercial law”.
Alyn-Stacey is an associate professor in the Department of French and is the founding Director of the Trinity Centre for Medieval and Renaissance. Duff is a practicing barrister and graduate of both Maynooth University as well as Trinity.
Elian is a youth worker “skilled in advocacy, community outreach, and project management. Hepner is a trainee Solicitor at William Fry and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the School of Law.
Murphy is the GSU’s newly-appointed oversight officer who sits on the board as a representative of the union. Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin and the Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub.
GSU Board members are appointed by the Nominating Committee.
Scanlon’s move to dismiss the old board came after Trinity’s Capitations Committee voted to withhold funding from the GSU. This decision was made based on a report from the then-GSU board that cited a lack of engagement from the union with an investigation into alleged constitutional breaches, including at the aforementioned EGM.
The board’s former Chair John Walsh told The University Times at the time that Scanlon’s move was unconstitutional and that her conduct amounted to “a comedy of errors”.
Walsh, who was speaking in a personal capacity as the board had not had time to consider the development, said the board was operating off the old constitution.
