This year’s Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) election period has now been cast, with some relief, to the back of students’ minds, and packed away, like old campaign t-shirts, until next year. However, arguably just as important – if infinitely less well-publicised – is the upcoming Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) elections, which, it seems safe to say, will be one of the most important in recent memory.
After the College’s decision in September to increase postgraduate fees by five per cent, in a bid to raise €2.5 million, this year’s GSU has been convulsed by the issue. Meeting after meeting has seen students wave their fists angrily at a College they feel hasn’t listened to them.
College’s decision has been described at different times as “unacceptable”, “fiscally irresponsible” and a measure which will result in “education becoming again something for the elite”. Prof Eunan O’Halpin, a Board member, appeared to sum up the collective mood best when he told The University Times that “College seems to be behaving like a cross between Mick Wallace and Nama”. Strike action has been mooted repeatedly. In January, the GSU voted to lobby for a “more transparent and explicit” tuition fee structure in College. It is, to state the obvious, a highly contentious issue.
The upcoming Graduate Students’ Union elections will be one of the most important in recent memory
It is also very fluid. Just over a month ago, senior College staff attempted, with some success, to convince postgraduate students of the necessity of the fee increase. Ian Mathews, Trinity’s Chief Financial Officer, “played victim to a certain extent” when defending the hike. What can you expect, he asked, after government cuts to funding?
This, then, is the situation that confronts Oisin Vince Coulter, Jamie Farrell and Dr Gogoal Falia, the three candidates running for two GSU positions. Opposition to the increase is vehement and vociferous, and the GSU will need to argue strongly and effectively against the fee increases. However, with College seemingly unwilling to budge on the issue, it will need to do even more than that. Uncontested presidential candidate Coulter, a founding member of Students Against Fees, will have to figure out how to best plot a path through the leaning tower that is the College’s administrative structures.
Closer to home, the GSU has its own financial qualms
It is a task, riddled with nuance, that will require both strength and subtlety. Farrell or Falia, who will compete for the position of Vice-President – and who will sit on College committees – will also need to find a way to help the GSU battle effectively with College. The impact this decision would have on students’ mental health would see a strain on the GSU, which already struggles to deal with all the casework that comes in, with just the vice-president to deal with all education and welfare issues for the entire postgraduate community.
Closer to home, the GSU has its own financial qualms. With funding from the Global Room running out, it’ll take political and financial dexterity on the part of the new officers to secure the future of only the second dedicated graduates students’ union in Ireland.
This year’s elections, in all, come at a pivotal time in the life of postgraduate students. GSU elections may lack something of the accessibility of regular TCDSU elections, but with such a huge issue facing such a large group within College, there is nothing to say that next week’s election will not prove just as decisive.
