The incoming President of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), Síona Cahill, may have been quietly hoping that Trinity’s Alexander Cosgrave would be elected to the newly created position of Vice-President for Postgraduate Affairs on Friday.
For one thing, Cosgrave was the only candidate put forward by Trinity’s Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) – one of the country’s two specifically postgraduate-focused students’ unions, and the only one to represent members of USI. (The other postgraduate-focused union is based at the University of Limerick, whose students’ unions are not affiliated with USI.)
This is doubly significant considering the election platform of Oisín Coulter, the incoming President of the GSU. In March, Coulter bridled openly at what he described as USI’s ineffective representation of postgraduate students, and promised a review of the GSU’s relationship with the national union.
At one point, he went so far as to accuse the union of failing to pay any attention to the postgraduate issues of the moment.
In years past, Coulter was also one of the founders of the Students Against Fees group, whose members tossed sharp elbows with USI officers at public meetings over the national union’s efforts to solve both the funding and housing crises.
If the promise of a relationship review does not immediately arouse feelings of foreboding within USI, then its officers haven’t really been paying attention.
For one thing, Coulter has proven this year that he is unencumbered by conventionalism. Arguably one of the primary forces behind the riotous Take Back Trinity campaign, Coulter helped upend the recent orthodoxies of the student movement – something that resulted in an unprecedented climbdown from College and the introduction of fee certainty for postgraduate students. Who knows what could happen if Coulter sets his sights on USI?
Meanwhile, Coulter has flirted with the idea of joining other national unions, such as the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) and SIPTU.
The election of Cosgrave would have meant that the GSU had an insider on the USI officer board. Though Friday’s result may not end up posing an exigent threat to USI, it surely will make Cahill’s life all that more difficult.
