Jack Leahy
Next year’s sabbatical officers will come into office facing some of the most formidable circumstances in living memory: an unprecedented economic crisis, the highest level of student contribution since the abolition of fees in 1995, 65,000 unemployed graduates and the emigration epidemic.
That is the context for the election taking place next week. Trinity students need leadership and innovation to exempt them from the negative effects of Ireland’s changing complexion.
These are the qualities that I believe I can bring to the role of education officer and my experience reflects this. My term as finance and services officer of the students’ union has been an extended response to student financial hardship: in September I convened an emergency meeting with the Senior Tutor and the fees office to successfully negotiate an exemption to the unanticipated commencement fee due upon registration; I initiated the introduction of Clever Cuisine, a scheme that offers Halls students four meals a week for €10; the inaugural finance and budgeting week engaged students on matters of personal finance.
As news editor of The University Times, I’ve spent the year challenging College on decisions made at committee, Board, and University Council and have endeavoured to develop an understanding of the priorities of both students and College and the points at which those interests reach confluence and conflict alike. I was the first journalist in the country to report full details of Trinity’s pioneering admissions pilot and for this I was invited to speak on national radio.
Moreover, as a committee member with numerous societies, a former chair of oversight in the SU, a Student2Student peer mentor and a founding co-director of the National Media Conference, my experience reflects the most diverse range of College experiences of any candidate in this race.
Your education is your preparation for life. In an era when College is forced to value your education according to its price-tag, you need an education officer who can ensure that your degree reflects a quality experience in a creative and innovative environment. To achieve that, I want to use the role of education officer to address some of the major problems in how Trinity operates.
65,000 unemployed Irish graduates says to me that our education has to offer us more. The jobs are there, but employers are looking for skills that aren’t always part of the traditional undergraduate programme and not having a broad skill-set is giving us a disadvantage.
‘Employable Skills’, my flagship manifesto point, takes its impulses from this premise. Put simply, I want to bring professionals into Trinity to train you in the skills that they value as employers and innovators. The ability to design a website, manage a project, conduct your work proficiently in a foreign language or work with Excel to an advanced level will make you more attractive to an employer or internship provider. I have already garnered significant interest from companies and individuals who work professionally with these skills who are willing to provide these seminars free of charge. In addition, if College’s existing resources can be effectively harnessed, we could have an excellent skills education programme that can vastly increase your chances of getting a part-time and graduate job.
For a lot of students, it could be as simple as expanding the range of options available to them. Trinity’s connections with the likes of Deloitte, Accenture and Google should be valued, but these companies appeal to a relatively narrow range of competencies. By bringing in companies in PR, publishing, research, and humanitarian organisations, I will help students with a different set of skills meet the employers looking to train and hire them.
Christmas exams will dramatically improve the educational experience of students in subjects like Pharmacy, Engineering, and Science who are required to sit up to 14 exams in a single two-week period. College has a responsibility to provide the best possible academic environment for its students and the persistence of this situation is a failure of this responsibility. Successive attempts to introduce Christmas exams have failed due to their all-embracing nature; decision-making academics in the arts and humanities have never been convinced of the merit of changing their assessment structures when many departments only issues three or four summer exams.
If elected, I will launch a school-by-school and faculty-by-faculty review, soliciting the views of students, academics and administrators, to push for Christmas exams where they are needed. While I would be willing to campaign for any students who collectively express a desire for semesterised examinations in their course, the priority has to be to address unreasonable exam workloads and the associated affect on performance.
800 words is not enough to explain to you why I should be your education officer. I’ve spent the campaign period asking questions as to why the John Stearne Library doesn’t reflect the unique working schedules of the students it purports to serve, outlining a vision for a resource through which students can share their experience of modules with younger years, agus ag déanamh cur síos ar chonas mar a thabharfainn tacaíocht do chainteoirí Ghaeilge. I’m about supporting nurses and midwives, campaigning for a better library and making it easy to solve the nagging problems that affect you every day.
Whatever your interest, I will be an education officer who is on your side.
