It seems as if no time has passed since Eve Martin’s name was called as the winner of the Education Officer race at the Grand Social back in February. Tucked at the end of a first-floor corridor in Teach 6, she now sits at a desk overlooking the very steps on which her candidacy was announced five months ago.
When asked whether her perspective had changed since then, Martin answered that it hadn’t – at least not yet. The feasibility of her policies was something she’d carefully considered when writing her manifesto: “I didn’t want to be the sort of candidate that makes a lot of grand promises of things that I didn’t actually believe were to some extent attainable”, she said, jokingly adding, “after I have a few more meetings that might change.”
Exactly to what extent these promises are attainable remains to be seen. After all, she and the rest of the Sabbatical team only entered office at the end of June. Martin has been “easing into the role”, having introductory meetings with people around College and trying to get organised. All these efforts, she explains, are in preparation, “so that when the chaos descends in September, I’ll be in a good position to get things done”.
Gaeilge
Speaking on the Irish language, Martin highlighted recent meetings between herself, the current Sabbatical team and Pádraig Mac Brádaigh, Leas-Uchtarán don Ghaeilge at Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn (AMLÉ). Although many assume that everything to do with Gaeilge is the responsibility of the Oifigeach Na Gaeilge, Martin believes it is beneficial to have it coming from the education side as well: “As the Education Officer, I’m in a lot of discussions and rooms that the Oifigeach Na Gaeilge might not be in.”
“If we want to be successful in reviving Irish in all aspects of life, it needs to be coming from every member of the team,” she emphasised.
Modular Billing
Martin is taking over the office from Buster Whaley, whose efforts on modular repeats she aims to carry over. This is, of course, already expected of her, as Whaley proposed a successful referendum making lobbying for modular billing a long-term policy within the Union. This mandates TCDSU to lobby for the policy. If officers fail to live up to that mandate, the Oversight Commission can push for a motion to censure or impeach the officer.
While the modular billing system will allow students to retake individual courses rather than resitting the whole year, credit carrying would enable these failed modules to be taken in tandem with new courses. This would make it possible for students to progress into the next year, despite failing modules.
Whaley succeeded in having the modular repeats aspect approved in principle by the board, meaning that College is looking at their technical capacities to enable that. The other aspect of the modular billing system, carrying failed credits, however, wasn’t discussed last year. “That’s something I will be continuing to try to work on and get College to think about in the incoming year,” Martin states.
Erasmus
Beyond continuing work on long-term policies, much of Martin’s ambitions, and the work she will be doing this year, centre around themes of streamlining and centralising and more long-term policies. These include her wish to reform Erasmus – an area where little to no progress has been made, despite many of her predecessors stating similar aims of reform.
When asked how she hoped to succeed when her previous Education Officers who had run on similar manifesto points had failed, Eve said she wasn’t directly aware of what steps had been previously taken. She did, however, highlight how circumstances have changed within the College with Trinity Global becoming more involved in the management. Martin believes that this development “offers the opportunity for that centralised approach”, and aims to reach out to Trinity Global.
AI
Another key point in Martin’s manifesto was the wish to establish a College-wide AI Policy. “As it currently stands, there is no one set policy that is just related to Gen AI”, she highlights.
“On the College website they have a set of advice and guidelines around Gen AI use in teaching and learning, but this isn’t a set, binding College Policy. Their strategy thus far has just been to amend various pre-existing College Policies in order to include reference to Generative AI – say the Academic Progression Policy, the Academic Integrity Policy and Late Submission Policy.”
Martin wants to change this in order to ensure that all students are treated fairly and aren’t punished for use of Gen AI if the guidelines were unclear – or even non-existent. Consulting the recently published HEA guidelines on the use of Gen AI in higher education institutions, international universities’ best practices, in addition to a College-wide survey, she aims to create a universal AI policy throughout College that will ensure every student is treated equally.
This becomes complicated, however, when considering to which degree each school’s expert judgement should rule the extent to which Gen AI is used. Depending on whether you operate within the School of English or the School of Mathematics, the answer to what level of Gen AI use is acceptable, or even encouraged, can vary greatly – and perhaps justifiably so.
Under the current circumstances, each school, even to the module level, have quite a high degree of autonomy in setting guidelines for the use of AI, Martin explains.
“The crux of the issue is trying to craft a policy that is broadly applicable enough, and in the correct ways, to prevent unfair treatment of students but to still recognise the different uses and applications of it in different Schools”. This is no small feat, she admits: “I’ll get back to you on that one, once I figure it out.”
Considering her emphasis on creating fair and universal AI Policy within the College, little attention has been paid to how the Union itself should operate under these new circumstances. The Students’ Union, Martin confirmed, has no internal code of conduct or policy regarding the use of AI so far.
When asked about whether she believes there should be one, and whether not having one questions the integrity of the Sabbatical Officers, Martin answered that she wasn’t sure whether she could “envision what sort of role most of us would be using AI for, that would require for there to be a policy around it,” acknowledging that it may be subject to change in the future.
“I think they’re quite different circumstances than in an academic context,” she said, “again, if it became a situation where we thought it (creating a policy) was necessary, and we still chose not to, that might be a different scenario.”
While Martin admitted that the use of AI for dealing with casework wasn’t something she had thought of, she highlighted that general data protection and confidentiality of casework is something they try to be aware of all the time, “so that guideline already kind of exists”.
“I would hope any officer that might do that would know it was a bad idea, jeopardising the confidentiality of students coming to them for help,” she said. Nonetheless, she maintained that there was no need for the Union to develop an internal AI Policy or Code of Conduct, for the time being.
In an interview with the University Times, Postgraduate Officer Ava Tuohy indicated that because of the amount of casework dealt with by officers, an internal AI policy is something she would support, so students may expect to see one soon.
The Electoral Commission
While Martin has been heavily involved in the Students’ Union, serving most recently as STEM Faculty Convenor, it will be her first time sitting on the Electoral Commission (EC). The EC has a big role within the Union, though many students may be unfamiliar with the exact reach of their power.
“To my knowledge”, Martin explains, the EC are “responsible for the facilitating and running of our elections, be that class rep elections, referenda, the sabbatical elections. They also run Comhairle and all of the elections that run there.”
“And then their other duty is to interpret the constitution, so if people submit requests for constitutional interpretations, say regarding the actions taken by the union or something like that, the EC provides them with that. Also, when any motions are being submitted to Comhairle, they are reviewed by the EC to ensure that they are constitutional.”
“They do a hell of a lot of work for volunteering roles,” Martin noted.
All but one of the seven members of the Electoral Commission are full-time students. Martin, as the Education Officer and therefore the Secretary of the EC, is the only paid, full-time member of the Electoral Commission. However, the Chair of the Electoral Commission, who also serves as the Chair of Comhairle, is paid for each Comhairle.
Martin was then asked whether she believes that the EC is democratic, as she is the only member of the EC directly elected by the student body. Martin said that she thought so: “Our class reps are elected, and we trust them and this system to represent all the students, all their constituents.” Adding, “If we didn’t trust the class reps to be representative of the student body, then that sort of undermines the entire system that we are working on here,” she said.
Considering the inherent intricacies connected to the act of interpretation, along with the fact that the EC primarily consists of volunteer, full-time students, Eve was questioned on how she would aim to maintain a coherent line of interpretation which prioritised the well-being of the Union and the student body at large.
In response, Martin said she believes the size of the group in itself partially aids in this: “It’s not just one person we have interpreting the constitution”.
In her personal opinion, the constitution isn’t being interpreted with any intention, “it’s sort of just to say how it applies to this situation, not how it applies to best benefit anyone. I don’t think that it is or should be with any intention – for better or for worse.”
Expectations
Conclusively, Martin was asked whether there was any campaign point or policy that would prompt her resignation; could she not achieve it before a reasonable time. To this, Martin responded that she doesn’t “envision that”, joking, “plus, the EC would hate to run another bye-election.”
Pushing further on what level of accomplishment would be considered fair to expect of a Sabbatical Officer, Martin answered that it varies from different officers’ goals and roles. For herself as a casework officer, she said it was a serious responsibility: “As much as there is policy-facing things that I would like to do, I would also think that if some of them were taking longer than expected or meeting different blocks on the way, then the benefit of them (policies) versus resigning and no one having an educational casework officer there to help them would balance (out)”.
“I’m aware that it’s a huge and extremely important aspect of the work you do, that is not highlighted as much,” she said.
This casework, then, will be something the new Education Officer promises students to keep up with and handle with care. Martin also looks forward to running Class Representative elections and training, and ensuring high engagement. “I think that’s laying the foundation for a lot of the work that we do throughout the year, so I’d like to see that go really well in the beginning of the semester,” she said.
Finishing, Martin said: “I’m really looking forward to this year. I hope I can get a lot of the things I wanted to do, and that people elected me to do, done,” as she stood up from behind the desk and rushed off to her next meeting.
