The news that Trinity is to introduce a new academic year structure, including an Christmas exam week, should not have come as the surprise that it did to students. College has been running open forums about the Trinity Education Project over the past few months, encouraging all students and staff to offer their views. The Vice-Provost, who serves as Project Sponsor, came and spoke at a council meeting of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU), updating class reps on the project, answering questions and urging reps not only to come along to the public consultations but to tell their classes to do the same.
Despite this, no students were in attendance at the forum on a revised year structure held on April 18th.
This lack of engagement can suggest two things: that students were aware of the forum, and simply did not wish to contribute, or that the efforts to reach students were simply not enough.
Students do appear to care, however. Since the news that University Council has approved the structure, there have been strong reactions in Facebook comments. Students cannot be painted either wholly as annoyed or happy with the new development, but can certainly be described as opinionated, with thoughts as to how this will affect their course, or even themselves in the future if they will still be in college in 2017/18, when the new structure comes into effect. Student ignorance of the project cannot be truly blamed on the College, either. While traditionally derided for not engaging with students, this project has seen the College reaching out, both through official union structures and in a more wider sense.
The lack of student response sets a worrying precedent going forward, one in which it becomes increasingly harder to argue that involving students is worthwhile. The formal process of working with TCDSU also appears to have failed – one would think that, with student representatives from almost every course already in place, getting widespread feedback on such a huge development would not be so difficult.
With more important decisions to come out of the Trinity Education Project, decisions that will affect students that are now in their freshman years of college, the average student, and TCDSU, need to recognise the importance of engaging, because if the College makes unpopular decisions we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.
