Contesting the position of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU/AMLCT) President is Jonathan Hoffman. The Senior Freshman Ancient and Medieval History and Culture student first got involved with the union last year as a Class Representative and regularly speaks in Comhairle during debates and motions. Hoffman is also active in student life outside of the union. Hoffman is an active member of the Trinity Entrepreneurial Society (TES), with his group start-up winning TES Dragon’s Den 2025. Hoffman is also a debater, and sits on the Robinson Subcommittee of the College Historical Society (the Hist). From plans to establish a new broadcasting service, to restructuring the “machinery of the Union”, Hoffman’s ambition and enthusiasm for the future of the Union is embedded into his manifesto and intentions for the year ahead. Speaking to the University Times, Hoffman reflected on the issues facing students today, the values a President should have, and his three pillars for change.
Hoffman cites the potential of the Union as his primary motivation to run for President. “The potential of the union is so huge. You have this organisation with over twenty-thousand members. You’ve hundreds of people who are willing to get actively involved in the running of it. You have a budget of over a million euro a year, which I don’t think a lot of people realise, and I don’t think we reach the potential we have there. I think there’s so much good about the union, but it also needs a lot of change to put it in a positive direction.” Based on this, Hoffman has created “an exciting plan to really build a Students’ Union that works”.
Hoffman explained how the TCDSU President has three main roles, they are the Campaigns Officer, Chief Executive Officer, and Co-Treasurer of the Union. Hoffman expressed how his entrepreneurial background has prepared him for this role; “I’m used to spending and allocating resources when they are tight”. He went on to share that “I think sometimes we maybe put too much emphasis on the ability to hold a megaphone, which is important, but I think we need to remember there’s a lot more to being president than just leading a protest”.
Hoffman’s manifesto is built around three central pillars, with “14 branches [for his] entire plan”.
Hoffman’s first pillar works to “stop the waste of students’ money”. Hoffman’s manifesto says, “There is no SU money, only your money”. Speaking to the University Times, Hoffman said, “I don’t think a lot of students even realise that they’re paying for the Union. You haven’t had a financial statement published since the year 2022/2023, which I think is mad. I think students’ money matters, they’ve a right to how it’s being spent”.
Hoffman aims to introduce “student” and “standard” pricing in all SU operated shops and cafes, “I think that’s just a no-brainer to save students’ money, to better value it, and to spend it better on the services that matter to students”. Hoffman added that, “I don’t see why a tourist should be coming here getting a drink for €1.80, when they’d pay €3 anywhere else […] I’m surprised we’re not already doing this to be honest”.
Also under this first pillar is Hoffman’s ambition to establish an SU Treasury “to review and reduce examples of wasteful SU expenditure and reinvest that money into the services that matter to you”, as his manifesto explains. Additionally, Hoffman wishes to “end the ClassRep sleepover” which costs the Union “tens of thousands of euro every year”. Hoffman is addressing the annual Class Representative Training which is an SU-funded overnight trip held annually for newly elected Class Representatives, which cost €28,002 in 2024, according to former Education Officer Eoghan Gilroy. Hoffman states in his manifesto, “Where training of Class Reps is required, we will conduct it on campus, and at as little cost to you as possible”.
Student opportunity is the second pillar of Hoffman’s vision. He wishes to create opportunities for students to showcase their talent by establishing a student broadcasting service by the name of TCT (Teilifís Coláiste na Tríonóide). TCT would have three primary departments: TCT News, TCT Sport, and TCT Cinema. TCT News would be a service of “video-based journalism”, that would be a way of “giving opportunities to student journalists who are more into that sort of stuff than writing, to camera operators, to graphic designers”. Hoffman believes that “we need to embrace media in the way that students consume it”. “There aren’t many students who will read an article about an SU debate or Comhairle, but they might watch a highlight reel. […] If more people know what’s going on in the Union, we’re more accountable, the Union works better as a whole.”
Hoffman also wants to offer opportunities to sports journalists and film students, through the TCT Sport and TCT Cinema departments. “The amount of talent in Trinity is insane, I think we need to show it off. We have the ability to help do that, and give people these great opportunities.”
In addition to this broadcasting service, Hoffman wants to fix the TCDSU website interface. “One thing we want to do is create the SU digital and design service as kind of a sub-department of the Communications Office, to give computer science students an opportunity to actually redo our entire website which right now doesn’t work as it should.”
The third pillar is the structure of the Union. “The third one is to build a Student Union that works, which is kind of what I think for a lot of students is the more boring side of stuff […] but I think it’s really, really important.”
Hoffman believes that a “reorganising the machinery of the union” is needed for several reasons. Firstly, Hoffman noted that “about four hundred Class Reps are elected; if you go to any meeting of Comhairle, there’s not four hundred people in the room […]. So we have a huge Class Rep absenteeism problem”. Hoffman expressed how “a lot of Class Reps are elected on promises to kind of plan course nights out or organise hoodies or email lecturers”, which “means that a lot of people elected as Class Reps are not actually willing to sit through hours of meetings and different motions and procedure and elections and all this. That’s kind of a very core problem”. As well as this, Hoffman believes that there is “an issue of disproportionate representation” within the current Comhairle structure. “I’m in a course of around 12 or 15 people. I have one class rep. There are courses with, like, 40 people, and they have one class rep. So it means that I’m getting kind of three or four times as much of a vote as them.”
As his manifesto expresses, “The SU simply does not work as it should. The leadership is disjointed and without a coherent direction, Comhairle is dysfunctional and unrepresentative. You deserve better”. Hoffman said he would rather see the Union be made up of two bodies, an Executive and an Assembly.
When asked about what this new SU Executive would look like, Hoffman described a “hundred member assembly which is elected on constituencies based on faculty, and then year group. […] So it means, first of all, we fix the issue where one student’s vote is worth more than the other; [and] two, they’re only elected to do that legislative work. They aren’t there to do hoodies or lecturers or nights out. They’re just kind of nerds like me who are willing to kind of sit down and read motions, are willing to have that debate”. Hoffman clarified that “Comhairle is losing no power in this at all. It’s going to work alongside it. But I think it’s better for students and it’s better for accountability as well”.
Furthermore, Hoffman believes that “there is no such thing as a mandate by compulsion”. Therefore, he plans to introduce an SU Membership Registry. This registry would “allow students to withdraw their name as a member of the union”. Hoffman acknowledged that this withdrawal of membership would be purely symbolic due to the compulsory financial contribution of each student, but he expressed that “it’s an important symbolic thing, because I think appreciating the rights of association of students are important, and it also actually strengthens our mandate, and it helps students hold us to account”.
Beyond his manifesto, Hoffman believes that being a good President is about “listening, having a vision, and being willing to take accountability and responsibility”. In response to a question about how his presidency may reflect that of past presidents, Hoffman shared, “even though I had a lot of disagreements with her, I had a lot of respect for Jenny [Maguire]. I thought she was always willing to talk and listen to people, even if they disagreed. I think she was focused on issues not personalities, which I think is good”.
Central to Hoffman’s vision for the Union is an “emphasis on it as a service”, as he believes “it’s a privilege to have these jobs”. Furthermore, Hoffman would like to see the Union “embrace an action-oriented approach to governance”, where “we’re not just pointing out an issue, but we’re actually providing a solution as well”.
As President, Hoffman would “hit the ground running”. “I would want to see the Union adopting our new unified visual identity so that we’re a new, streamlined, better working Students’ Union. I think we do need to sound, look, feel, and work like a different organisation.”
