The Graduate Students’ Union’s (GSU) overdue AGM took place this week with considerably less fanfare than one would have come to expect. The most perplexing outcome of the meeting wasn’t a questionable voting process or a leader apparently allergic to scrutiny – it’s the fact that the union is now mandated to back Students4Change, a tiny group of radical undergraduates, without having any formal partnership with Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU).
With fewer than 100 attendees and all motions passing overwhelmingly, it’s clear that President Gisèle Scanlon has flushed out her critics and, after a year of butting heads with the Postgraduate Workers’ Alliance, is rarely challenged by her constituents anymore.
This Editorial Board has repeatedly criticised the fast-and-loose attitude to democracy and proper order in the GSU, but clearly, members aren’t equally concerned. Students4Change Chair László Molnárfi himself described the partnership as a “democratic alliance”, which plainly isn’t true, since the motion is retrospective – Scanlon and the unelected Molnárfi have been publicly working together for weeks already, most notably on a campaign to scrap in-person exams. But if attendees of the AGM had an issue with this, they didn’t say so.
Nevertheless, the motion is questionable beyond acting first and mandating later. Students4Change, with fewer members than most College societies, can hardly claim to be representative of undergraduates’ needs and interests. One proponent of the partnership pointed to the cumbersome bureaucracy of TCDSU. Certainly, TCDSU has its difficulties with getting things done, but surely it’s in undergraduates’ best interests for College’s two official students’ unions to work together, pool their resources and maintain the lines of communication they have with those at the top?
Relations between the GSU and TCDSU were exceptionally poor last year, but now the two unions have the opportunity to work together constructively again. In the absence of a new Memorandum of Association between TCDSU and the GSU, postgraduates – who are members of TCDSU, but the union generally prioritises undergraduates – are worse off.
Neither group benefits from a poorly run union partnering with a fringe lobby group. If the GSU wants to help undergraduates, it should mend fences with TCDSU before turning to splinter groups.
