In her third year of studying Political Science and Economics, Bhargavi Magadi knows what it’s like to deal with college services and the burden often placed on students. She is grateful for the support they provide but believes that they need to be made more accessible. “Trinity has all these different services and supports for students, but in reality, it’s incredibly hard to actually access them.” She considers herself both Indian and Irish, having moved to Ireland when she was eleven years old, and she hopes to use her personal and professional experience to advocate for increased accessibility on campus.
Magadi says her lived experience at Trinity is what inspired her to run for Welfare and Equality Officer. During our conversation, she acknowledges how disability services have benefitted her personally, and that without accommodations “I literally could not do exams, I could not pass my tests.” At the same time, she is critical of how they operate and points out instances where they have failed her, and where they fail Trinity students generally. She wants to put the administrative burden on the administration itself, not the students it is supposed to help. Through dealing with Trinity’s student services she “found that the support system could be so much more practical and helpful if they […] just expected students to do a little bit less work […] to be able to access them.” This problem, she believes, could be solved through increased information and better communication.
In addition to her personal experience in dealing with college services, Magadi cites her previous volunteering experience as making her aware of student issues. She speaks excitedly about spunout, a website whose mission is to provide young people with information about welfare, education and other issues. Her work with spunout taught her the importance of “making sure that information that is provided to students is accessible, easy to find, and it’s publicised as much as possible.” She plans to bring the experience she gained from volunteering to the role of Welfare and Equality Officer, to ensure “that every student […] in the college is aware of all the supports and reasonable accommodations that there are”.
In making disability services more accessible, Magadi hopes to destigmatize disability and break down the stereotypes that surround it. She points out how they are supposed to cater to all types of disabilities, not just physical. Even though mental health is “something that every student struggles with almost, […] a lot of students believe that the disability services aren’t for them”. When asked about the practical steps that could be taken to increase accessibility, Magadi suggests that they should send out “information to every student at the beginning of the year, also continually”.
While she has many of her own ideas on how to improve student welfare, Magadi pays due credit to the current sabbatical officers, praising Hamza Bana’s efforts to decolonise the campus and “bringing racial issues to the forefront of Trinity”. She also acknowledges the current Union’s work on LENS reports, having recently targeted the various departments that failed to accommodate students with disabilities. While Magadi plans to continue campaigning in the same manner, she emphasises the need for more permanent change. “Oftentimes, the Student Union will fight for an issue, and then the next year they have to fight for the same issue all over again”.
Magadi has already begun to consider the changes she would implement if she were elected. For example, she wants to mandate disability services staff to schedule follow-up meetings and regular check-ins, something that she did not receive despite being told otherwise. She stresses the importance of these check-ins to ensure that students not only receive the accommodations that they are entitled to but also that “students are finding their accommodations useful”. In her manifesto, she advocates for removing “one-size-fits-all disability supports”.
In addition to improving disability services, Magadi also wants to tackle accommodation issues. Campaigning for rent freezes and putting pressure on Trinity to mitigate the housing crisis is only one part of her plan; Magadi also wants to hep students navigate the housing market as it currently stands. She reiterates that Trinity has services but that it does not advertise them enough. Taking the Accommodation Advisory Service as an example, Magadi believes that it should be expanded “so that it suits the need, specifically, of international students” who face the additional challenge of moving to a new country. She offers a number of ideas as to what this would look like in practice, with a page for student testimonials being one of them. Magadi is optimistic that “even though […] we can’t resolve the housing crisis, we can help”.
Describing herself as queer, Magadi wants to destigmatize queerness as it falls outside the binary. She says that, though “everyone in the LGBTQ+ community faces discrimination”, there exists a certain hierarchy within the community, “of marginalization, or acceptability”. As the Welfare and Equality Officer, Magadi wants to tackle this issue and raise awareness about all expressions of gender and sexuality. In conjunction with this, Magadi wants to work with Trinity Inc (Inclusive Curriculum), Trinity’s sensitivity and unconscious bias training project. Her goals are to improve the curriculum and eventually make it mandatory for staff. A first step would be to include a greater variety of experiences, “racial experiences, non-binary experiences, trans experiences”. She emphasises the importance of the curriculum and how unconscious bias lay at the root of many of the issues that marginalized communities deal with. Making it mandatory for staff is particularly important as they are in “a position of authority […] and they have a responsibility of care to students”. In the meantime, and to encourage both staff and students to take part in the curriculum, she wants it to be promoted and “regularly flagged”.
Bhargavi Magadi is one of four candidates running for the position of Welfare and Equality Officer and sets herself apart from the other candidates with her personal experience of student services, which she believes provide inadequate support. Improving these services is an important aspect of Magadi’s voting platform, but she knows that this is only one part of the work that the role will entail. To make lasting change, she will “take action and be proactive” in lobbying the college and elected officials who have the power to transform institutions.
