Tom Lowe is the first person ever to run for Communication Officer as the job was only changed to its current incarnation from Deputy President after the elections last year. Lowe is twenty-one and from Shankill in Dublin.
Lowe has worked for Trinity News for the last two years helping them make their newspaper, he says this has given him an impetus to want to run his own newspaper and he thinks that he can do some good work as editor of The University Times.
The Communication Officer has the responsibility for the production of The University Times and Lowe says that as editor he intends to improve on the work done this year with the paper. He says that “there were great strides made over the last year in the paper” but he says that it takes more than a year for a paper to reach the top quality. Lowe is clear that he is keen to maintain the principle of editorial independence that this paper has established.
Lowe has been at the head of a campaign called Save Freedom of Speech in Trinity which was opposing some wording on the Senior Dean’s powers to seize publications in college that was included in a draft terms of reference for the Capitations Committee. “I was mandated by the Trinity Publications Committee about three weeks ago to go out there and do it” says Lowe.
Lowe puts a lot of importance on hearing from students and listening to what they have to say. “Communication is a two way system” says Lowe and he believes that class representatives can sometimes be voting on their own view rather than representing that of their classes’. He wants to provide an online feedback system so students can make their views known.
When asked how he thought the incumbent Robert Donohoe was doing as Communications Officer, Lowe said “he has done well.” Modernising the communication systems in the Union is something that Lowe feels could have been done better by Donohoe. But Lowe is confident that he can achieve some of the things that he says Donohoe has not managed to do.
