Almost every Trinity student has likely crashed out from frustration with the College’s disorganised bureaucratic system. Whether issues with an incorrect timetable, attendance, Erasmus or otherwise, it can feel impossible at times to get in contact with the correct person. Even before entering Trinity, simply communicating with the Academic Registry can feel like a pointless effort. At such a pivotal chapter in our lives, where the future can feel so uncertain at times, it seems like there should be a much easier and quicker way to receive guidance and assistance from our university.
In practice, Trinity’s bureaucracy is quite formal, and in many cases can feel detached from the student body. Its governance, based on a series of formal rules and processes, is heavily influenced by tradition and history. The complex layers of Trinity’s leadership can cause delays and confusion amongst staff and students, and efficiency appears dependent on how well someone can navigate the systems.
Trinity functions around a variety of teams, assigned to various tasks. At the top is the Provost (currently Linda Doyle) and a senior leadership team supporting her, in charge of handling day-to-day academic affairs. The Board is the ultimate authority, fueling the high degree of internal autonomy unique to Trinity College, and then the University Council, working under the Board’s oversight. Lastly, the Faculties and School Governance are creating this multi-layered structure. Clearly, with all of these different levels, there are strategic processes in place for students and staff to resolve their needs. However, the lack of student presence and detachment between the top of the hierarchy and the student body can lead to numerous issues.
When dealing with such a large, longstanding, and prestigious institution, it feels like the university can become more concerned with the bigger outside issues. In order to remain in line with universities like Oxford or Cambridge, Trinity’s leading powers at the top of the bureaucracy may prioritise external quick fixes to appeal to prospective students and meet the priorities of developing universities, like sustainability and technology. Trinity’s centralised power and strong executive force allows for changes to be pushed through faster, but change should be coming from the bottom up.
The centralised power is far removed from reality; they aren’t in labs and classrooms, or responding to students’ concerns. Instead, they rely purely on reports and metrics to reflect efficiency and satisfaction with the university, causing them to miss the small details. Although the leadership structure is meant to be rigid, with a clear flow of power through each system, students get lost in the mix. Resources are rarely readily available, with out-of-date information and links that fail to launch displayed across students’ portals and college websites. Even the details that might seem so minuscule, like out-of-date websites, unavailable links, and misinformation on issues should be standardised across the university, and a lack of clear guidance for students’ futures makes a huge difference in the overall experience. One student describes her complicated experience applying for Erasmus. “When you look at the Erasmus application for Trinity”, she explains, “they’re all misleading and out-of-date information that didn’t apply to the current application.” This is an issue across Trinity programmes and websites; it can feel impossible to find a clear and up-to-date answer for issues in any context. At this point in time, Trinity should have these flaws smoothed over, but instead students are stuck chasing around professors, tutors, student mentors, and module directors just to find the right person to ask.
In many ways, centralised power pushing through quick reforms has allowed Trinity to keep up with evolving university standards. Despite some of the lower rankings Trinity received this last year, it seemed to excel in some of the newer categories, such as global engagement or international outlook. On the outside, this might look good to employers or prospects, but inside, students are still struggling. Mallory Murphy, a Senior Freshman international student, explains that “for a school that’s so heavily populated with students from other countries, the administration puts very little thought into accommodating them. For example, they wait so long to announce exam timetables.” Even a non-international student, Nora Hegarty, expressed a similar annoyance: “Trinity administration’s late publications of exam time tables have significantly added to the exam season stress and pressure.” This is a prime example of the surface-level changes to higher powers in the university bureaucracy while students and faculty struggle to manage college work on top of troubleshooting administrative issues.
It is time that Trinity looks into shifting its bureaucracy to include students’ voices. This does not mean adding more committees or programmes for student representation, but changing the power students have, as well as where and when they are heard. Much of the student involvement on campus exists in student-to-student work that is completely removed from official university governance. In-order to resolve students’ concerns more effectively, students and administrators need co-owned committees with specific responsibilities. This way students can have a clear say on the high impact areas like student services, teaching and assessments, and other programmes. With outlined responsibilities shared between student representatives and current leaders, there would be clear published results and resolutions of student-facing issues.
Alongside these structural changes, overall accessibility to student resources needs to be improved. Students should be solely focused on achieving high marks and overcoming challenges in their courses; therefore, Trinity must provide up-to-date information, standardised procedures to navigate their questions and concerns, and offer accessible independent career and academic advice. At the same time, students need to do their part by learning about their student representatives, voting in elections, and keeping track of what the university communicates. All parties need to contribute in order to improve the university across multiple fronts.
The current administration takes care of many issues that do not directly involve students, but are essential to keeping the College functioning, such as funding, administrative operations, research strategy, and budgets. These are tasks that Trinity could not exist without, and for this the leadership deserves recognition. However, meaningful collaboration, bringing change from the inside out and bottom to top, is what truly shapes students’ experiences and ultimately sets Trinity apart.
