Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union’s (TCDSU) council lost quorum this evening, after members raised concerns that people had entered call just to record their attendance but had not remained.
First-year law class representative Daniel Walsh requested a call for quorum, and it emerged that there were not enough members of council present to constitute a quorum for the meeting. The meeting was adjourned and existing motions were moved to the next meeting.
An extraordinary council has since been called and will take place on Friday at 7pm.
The request for a quorum call followed a challenge by first-year PPES class rep László Molnárfi to the Chair of Council Yannick Gloster over the conduct of a vote to adopt a long-term policy on College’s investments related to weapons and arms manufacturers.
A procedural motion was brought forward to challenge Gloster’s ruling that the vote had been correctly run.
The number of people present to meet quorum for council is 120 members.
As the vote was taking place, Deputy STEM Convenor Bev Genockey asked how many people had voted for and against the long-term policy motion, and how many abstained.
Gloster said that 29 out of 128 people present on the call had abstained.
Genockey said that people may have logged onto Zoom for “attendance purposes” and didn’t intend on abstaining. Gloster said that there was no way to know whether members of council who were present in the call were still at their computers.
Walsh then called for a poll to see if council had lost quorum. After the vote was finished, Gloster announced that council had indeed lost quorum and all existing motions would be pushed forward until the next meeting.
In a statement to The University Times, TCDSU Education Officer Megan O’Connor said: “Quorum was called during a discussion and although there were sufficient people in the call, an insufficient number of attendees responded to the attendance poll. Seeing as Council was then deemed inquorate, it ended.”
“We immediately launched a petition to hold an emergency meeting of council which requires 1/5 members as per our constitution and as 1/5 were present still in the zoom it immediately passed and EC is now set as this coming Friday at 7pm where we will take the remaining motions from tonight’s council.”
In a statement to The University Times, Genockey said: “It was definitely a strange and confusing time for a lot of people at council. I suppose the most interesting thing is that the 128 or so participants in the zoom when quorum was called, would certainly lead you to believe we would meet quorum (to the best of my knowledge it was 100 or so required).”
“The individual who called for quorum was completely right to, but the result was certainly surprising.”
Jody Druce and Jennifer Ní Chiara also contributed reporting to this piece.
