Yesterday marked the commencement of the annual NUIG student elections for the positions of President, Welfare Officer and Education Officer. While many members of the Literary and Debating society will be excited, generally these times of year are of little interest to most students. The general student completes his or her course without once coming into contact with a member of the Students Union. The average student would probably find it difficult to tell you what the Students Union even do. That being said the elections are important and it is crucial who represents the college and who makes decisions about student welfare and education. Students should be interested, but are not- whether it is due to apathy and indifference or a lack of knowledge about the students union. Perhaps if students knew that the Students Union of Ireland are continuously defending free fees for Irish students from government policy makers who are trying to put limits and conditions on our free fees scheme they might reconsider their lack of concern. Perhaps student leaders have a responsibility to articulate more effectively to the student community the goings on of the unions. Whatever the reason for disinterest in student politics the turn out yesterday was at a usual low.
One possibility for students not voting might have been that the result for the most important position, that of Student President, was already decided. There were three candidates running for the position of president but two of them were “joke” candidates, who ran questionably funny satirical campaigns. Both portrayed themselves as budding fascist dictators who were prepared to take dramatic action should they win. “I wish to liberate the students from their naïve attachments to concepts like democracy and freedom, and embrace la Vida Buena an evil tyrant can offer them” ran a line from Sean Butlers’ manifesto. A second year Arts student who has ran as a joke in a previous student election, Butler says he would combat student apathy “with incentives like guns and tasers. You’d be surprised how much people start caring when they’re staring down the barrel of an Uzi, facing a life sentence in the acid mines.
Juxtaposed beside posters of friendly faces all spouting the same old rhetoric about improving conditions for students in every way imaginable, these farcical characters brought much needed humour and humanity to the election. Butler, in his military uniform complete with sword and sunglasses made the serious candidates appear amateur. The other “joke” contender for Student President was Mike Spring, a man whom I have had the pleasure of speaking to from time to time. Hailing from Kildare this History and Sociology student is definitely capable of running a serious campaign, but this is his second satirical crusade. When asked by SIN newspaper why he was running for president and why students should vote for him he replied “because I feel that the student body has languished under poor guidance for too long. The student body is an awesome prospective force whose potential is constantly sapped by weak management from those above. I have sat through three different presidencies in my time here and haven’t seen one decent student riot… I hope to change all that… I believe in death, destruction, chaos filth and greed. I am the embodiment of the morals and ethics that dictate our time. I stand strongly in favour of arbitrary violence, discrimination, reckless abandon, haphazard governance and casual prejudice. People have traditionally demonstrated a propensity for these traits in their leaders, so I think I’m the guy for the job.” Wow, Mike. Read Nietzsche or listen to punk much?
The only serious candidate for the presidency was Muireann O’Dwyer, a Final Arts student who is studying English and Philosophy and currently the Societies chairperson and former auditor of the Human Rights society. Her manifesto included the usual speel about re-establishing the Union presence on campus and forwarding the student agenda but to give her credit she didn’t let the fact that there were no other real competitors affect how her campaign was run. Talking to people who know a lot more than me about this, (and I would trust their opinions more than campaign posters) I gathered that she is a very adept person who has already done a lot of positive work for NUIG and the college will benefit from her presidency. Her website is here if you are interested. What I found interesting is her stand on student apathy- “Students are more uninformed than apathetic, to be fair. As for combating it, first find out what students want. This can be done through a survey… Second, give the students what they want.” Parking spaces for SUVs maybe? Cheap beer? In any matter I’m sure she’ll be a good president. Here are the results: 1578 people voted (less than 10% of the amount of students attending NUIG), 234 voted for Butler. 274 voted for Spring, 88 voted to reopen nominations and 936 voted for the new president, M O’Dwyer. When I saw those results this morning I was surprised to see the joke candidates got so many votes since everyone voting for them knew (hopefully) that it was a wasted vote.
Looking at the posters and manifestos of the candidates involved in the other positions- Welfare and Education, it is difficult to see many differences between them. And that is what Hustings is for- the Hustings debate last Wednesday is designed to give students a proper sense of the candidates and how effective they’ll be as union members. This gives people a view of the policies behind the candidates, and perhaps just as important- the candidates behind the policies. Everyone has similar ideas and there are only so many ways you can phrase them. Hustings tells a lot about who’s prepared and who has plans to implement their ideas and not just manifesto pipe dreams. Regan and Fahy won Welfare and Education respectively. Personally if I had a vote I would only have voted for a Welfare candidate who saw that the kayak clubhouse needs to be re-opened for parties and Aisling Fahy seemed like a good bet for Education?
Last year there were four serious candidates for SU president. The fact that there was only one this year should be shocking, but it isn’t really. It’s embarrassing and depressing that out of such a huge college only one person thinks that they would be able to represent and make decisions for the college. Is this evidence that it doesn’t matter who is president? Last years President James Hope, who I met once or twice always seemed busy. The job is not an easy one, or a well paid one, but it is rewarding and it does make a difference. Many students ask themselves why they should bother voting. The main reason would be that every full time student is a member of the Students’ Union during their time in college. The union gets part of your registration fee; therefore you are paying a registration fee. By voting you are getting to decide how that money will be spent by voting for someone whose manifesto you agree with and by giving no preference to the person whose policies you disagree with. That’s why, at the bare minimum, a student should vote. There are of course a multitude of other reasons. Maybe, like Sean Butler suggests, people won’t care until they are suffering, or maybe the students are just uninformed. Either way the state of student politics in Galway has a long way to go.
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