László Molnárfi has been elected as President of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) for the 2023/24 academic year.
Molnárfi was elected on the first count and received a staggering 1,059 votes out of a possible 1,867 – a total of 57 per cent of the vote. Tilly Schaaf and Zöe Cummins, the other two candidates, received 431 and 279 votes respectively.
Speaking after the announcement, Molnárfi said: “Thank you so much to everybody and my campaign team, I would like to give a special shout out to my campaign managers and everyone who voted for me”.
“This is only the beginning of the process”, Molnárfi continued. “Now we will begin the process to bring the union back to grass roots.”
A third-year PPES student and the current Social Sciences and Philosophy (SSP) Convenor for TCDSU, Molnárfi focused his campaign on a return to grassroots initiatives and radical action on behalf of students. Introducing himself from the beginning as wanting “a movement that recognises that change doesn’t come from individuals on committees but from collective action on the ground”, he continued to press home this message across campaigning and Hustings.
Speaking to this newspaper on why he decided to run, Molnárfi stated that he had “seen countless times when students were let down by the Union but our Union simply refused to engage, instead focusing on performativity and posturing”.
“What we can do is turn the Union back and bring it back to the grassroots. That’s my style of working that I adopted in my dealings as SSP convenor and equally as chairperson of students4change where we ran many campaigns”, he explained.
Molnárfi added at the time that his main goal, if elected, would be to set up a food bank. “I can talk to you about campaigns, and that’s what I will do, but what I want is a practical idea.”
“We have a duty to support students and their wellbeing and when we are constantly under attack, we only have ourselves. Setting up a food bank is an act of mutual aid and through it we can alleviate the cost of living crisis”, he explained
