I agreed to meet with Callum O’Kelly, the 19-year-old running for President of the Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU/AMLCT), under Front Gate before we looked for a place to conduct our interview. He arrived with a backpack slung over his shoulders and a hard printed copy of his manifesto in his hands, which he shuffled around as he put his hand out to greet me. Starved of on-campus quiet spaces, we looked around for a while to find a proper place to chat before we settled on the benches just beyond the campanile. There, we sat down and I interviewed him on his Presidential campaign and why he decided to run.
Callum O’Kelly is a Senior Fresh BESS student studying business and politics. Although he may not be a familiar face to students involved in the intricacies of union politics, having never held a position in the union before, he has spent his time in Trinity working a full time job outside of college as well as operating as the business manager for Trinity News. In this managerial role he says he has been able to “work well within student bodies and student teams” and has secured advertisement commitments for the paper from businesses like Doyle’s pub on College Street.
O’Kelly’s manifesto outlines several key demands he plans on fighting for if elected. The first demand, which, I gathered from our conversation, he seems most invested in, is an “End the Squeeze” campaign to address the student cost of living crisis. O’Kelly wants to ensure there is a substantial meal available to all students on campus for no more than four euro and plans to make the college commit to a rent freeze on the current rates for student accommodation for the next two years. When asked how exactly he would strategise to achieve these ambitious demands, he stated “I intend to present [our] demands to the college, and if they are unwilling to meet us in good faith over them… and are unwilling to work with the union to deliver results for the students, then I don’t see what other recourse we have beyond direct action”. O’Kelly seems to look to the last two years of union strategising as an example for his own Presidency to follow, claiming that direct action and the college’s tourism income provides students with “a lever to pull” if the college starts dithering on important issues.
O’Kelly, when probed about his stance on the politicisation of the Students’ Union, affirmed the political nature of the Presidential role, claiming that the Union is an “inherently political organisation” and that if students want to achieve genuine change, people need to rally and “to take political stances”. Responding to students who may feel alienated by this position, O’Kelly said that it would involve “a careful balancing act” but that he would be a President for all students.
Returning to his manifesto, O’Kelly emphasises the importance of reforming student LENS reports, which are individual documents that record the academic accommodations that students with disabilities are entitled to. In the past, Trinity has proven itself to be inefficient in correctly accommodating for LENS reports which O’Kelly plans to amend by enforcing a “lecturer duty” with the relevant college staff to ensure that all lecturers check LENS reports before they begin their class so that students don’t need “to explain their existence every time they need an accommodation already provided for on their LENS report”. In our chat, O’Kelly spoke about several students he has heard from who feel as if they’re LENS reports have not been respected and that he pledges to work with the disability officer and College admin to ensure that his ideas on reforming LENS are “implemented as actual ironclad policy within the college”.
When I asked Callum why he wanted to run for President the response I received was surprising. He explained how he is the first person in his family to go to college, how he’s been working in the same pet shop since he was 15 and how he got into TCD through the Trinity access program, an admissions scheme that aids students from disadvantaged backgrounds when applying to Trinity. However, according to him, “Trinity has a long way to go for someone like me” and that the core of his campaign was “the belief that the Students’ Union’s job is to stand up for students and say, we belong here and these are our demands, because at the end of the day, the college is nothing without its students”.
On a final note, O’Kelly spoke about what he would do differently from his predecessors. One of his five central demands is “No Slide Back Into Apartheid” which pledges to work from the foundation established by the BDS campaign to keep the college committed to its total divestment from Israel. Previous Presidents have been criticised for failing to adequately cooperate with the BDS committee. O’Kelly intends to have a “completely open and healthy dialogue and relationship with BDS” stating that they play a huge role in pushing the college to divest from Israeli companies and institutions.
O’Kelly, along with four other candidates will be campaigning throughout the week until November 28th when voting ends and the student body selects their next President for the rest of the current academic year.
