In interviews with The University Times, candidates for Vice-President of the Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) have emphasised the importance of making the union more of a community for postgraduate students, while also calling for a better relationship with Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU).
Both candidates, Elisa Crespo and Stacey Juengling, expressed their desire to extend the union’s engagement with postgraduate students, and ensure that the role of vice-president continues to be a source of support for students.
Crespo recalls the difficulties she had after first arriving in Trinity from Spain, and the support network the GSU provided: “When I got here, it was scary, because I didn’t have a house, I could speak English, but it wasn’t my main language, so some things were hard, especially with all the Dubliner accents.”
However, after discovering the GSU, Crespo “felt this was my place and everyone made me feel very welcome, and helped me to find a house, and helped me with everything they could”. Crespo wants “everyone to feel as welcome as I did”.
Juengling faced similar difficulties coming to Trinity: “In my first week here, I used [current Vice-President] Gianna immediately because there were some discrepancies in my course, I was very worried”. Describing the “amazing” potential for the GSU to act as an “immediate support system”, she outlined the responsibility of the vice-president to support and facilitate students in resolving their difficulties.
The GSU made me feel like this was my place and everyone made me feel very welcome
After a successful vote at the last GSU Council, the GSU is mandated to lobby for the necessary funding for a third sabbatical officer, which would lead to the splitting of the vice-president’s responsibilities.
Stating that she “fully” supported lobbying for a third sabbatical officer, Crespo isn’t confident that such a position will be created any time in the near future. Noting the difficulty of “budgetary constraints”, she said: “I suppose it’s more of a long-term goal than something we might be able to achieve if I’m elected.”
Commenting on the need for a third sabbatical officer, Juengling said: “There’s been a lot of questions about how do you get funding for the role. But I feel like that the population of grad students is huge, and considering the amount of representatives that the SU has, I think it just needs to be a general relook at what the SU has.”
For her, this is something that the GSU urgently needs. “I don’t necessarily think it should be something you raise money for, it should be something that is allotted to the GSU, just based on population”, Juengling said.
Both candidates called for better collaboration with TCDSU. For Crespo, it is crucial that both the GSU and TCDSU are able to represent students, whether as undergraduates or postgraduates. Crespo said: “I think the SU and GSU should work together because they represent graduate students, but we also do it, and more than that, we are here to create this community.”
While calling for a better relationship, Juengling is clear that the distinct roles of the GSU and TCDSU mean that a merger between the two unions just wouldn’t be “feasible”. The different needs of postgraduate students and undergraduate students, according to Juengling, mean that the GSU has a role in college that can’t be fulfilled solely by TCDSU.
Juengling criticised the “weird animosity” that exists between TCDSU and the GSU and prevents them having a better working relationship. “Why would we fight against each other when you’re all using the same types of services?”, she questioned.
Molly Kenny, the Education Officer of TCDSU, said that she did not agree that there was any animosity between the unions: “I have never met any of the candidates running for the VP position, so I think to say that there is an animosity – they should probably just come down and say ‘hello’.”
Co-operation between the unions can only enhance support and advocacy for the students of Trinity
Katie Crowther, the current President of the GSU, said that “in history, there has been a fear factor” in the relationship between the unions: “There’s a little sister and a big brother relationship, and the big brother brings a lot more institutional knowledge, has more experience doing X, Y and Z, and I’ve been trying to shed that. And I have very clear lines of communication with the SU president, and Gianna has very clear lines with the people she works with in the union.”
Gianna Hegarty, the current Vice-President of the GSU, said that she fully believed that a “productive and positive relationship between the GSU and SU” is “essential”. In an email statement, she said that “cooperation between the Unions can only enhance support and advocacy for the students of Trinity” given that both unions “advocate for a variety of issues that affect both student groups”.
The role of the GSU vice-president is to support postgraduate students in College, and this is the focus of both candidates. If elected, Crespo wants to help “increase financialisation” of PhDs. She notes that this isn’t just an issue for students, but also something that detrimentally impacts College too: “This is a problem and it’s affecting Trinity in a really bad way, because when you look at why our universities are placing in the standards, what they look at, they always look at research, so research should be a big concern of Trinity”.
In a bid to make the GSU more accessible, Juengling wants to introduce weekly podcasts for students, because “a lot of people don’t read emails”. A podcast instead would mean that “if you want to keep up with the GSU, that’s a great way to do it”.
Eleanor O’Mahony and Edmund Heaphy also contributed reporting to this piece.
