Looking back at your own election manifesto, do you feel that this year has been a success?
I think from what I said I would do for my manifesto last year, it’s definitely been a success. There’s a lot of points that I wanted to get done as I have since done so, the likes of the Student Safety Watch that’s been established and we were active during RAG Week, so I was delighted to get that up and running.
The relaunching of the T Fund, the Transgender Assistance Product Fund, and I was really happy to get that off the ground. In the likes of mental health and student safety, I think I’ve done a lot in promoting it, running campaigns, doing different bits and pieces.
But for my main manifesto points, yes, I am really happy to say that I think my main goals I’ve achieved already, but now we have until the end of June to get the rest done or to get more done. So I’m still excited to see what more we can do
What would you say was the biggest obstacle you personally faced this year?
The biggest obstacle is the policies that are in place at the moment in the university, because about 60% of my job is case work and that means students coming to me with issues and going through the discipline process, so the likes of sexual violence, bullying, harassment, racism and what I’ve seen, and what has been really disheartening, is that the policies and procedures that we have say in the student code of doesn’t empower and often doesn’t help students and doesn’t allow them to get the justice that they deserve.
That’s incredibly hard to support the students to go through these processes with them, and then at the end of the day for them to be basically failed by the system. So that is incredibly frustrating and like that, there’s work that I’ve been doing on this. I’m sitting on the committee that’s reviewing and redoing the sexual violence and harassment policy, so to be integral and at the core of creating that has been incredibly important for me, because I see the effect that it has on students.
What would you say was the biggest issue facing students under your mandate?
Oh, accommodation 100%. I mean accommodation is always going to be massive for us, and I think trying to find and understand the root of the problem. A lot of what we do and what a lot of what I do is casework, helping students deal with landlords, advocating for students, but then also working trying to work from the top down.
This involves meeting with government ministers, working with the Union Students of Ireland to lobby the government and to make actual, genuine change. For myself, I was the one who came up with the idea and organised the Dunlin launch protest. I designed the leaflets that we handed out and were given to Minister Simon Harris. So trying to make a genuine change while also reacting to the dire situation that students are in at the moment trying to do. The fixing measures and then the reactive measures and trying to get a balance of that all in the one go that that’s been I would think the biggest issue.
What would you say is your proudest achievement that you’ll take away from your term?
My proudest achievement is definitely the things that I can’t tell anyone, and that is the casework. I mean the massive national campaigns, the marches, giving out to governmental ministers, all of that is fantastic, and I think we’ve done really good work in it.
But what I am most proud of is the individual students and the young people that I’ve helped that I don’t get to talk about at the end of the week because it’s all confidential. But those wins that I’ve been able to achieve alongside students in those cases, is whar sustained me through this job and is what I’m going to take away – that I actually managed to make a difference in a good few students lives, and that that can mean the world to just one person.
What’s one piece of advice that you would give to the person in your role next year?
The one piece of advice I think coming into this job is you’re going to get all the training, you’re going to get all the know how. You can learn names, structures, procedures, policies, everything you can read up to educate yourself coming into this job. But I think the most important thing is that you care. That you genuinely care about people and about students. If a student can come into your office, sit down on the couch and feel safe enough to talk about their issues and feel like they’re being heard and understood, that’s the most important thing. That is the crux of what I do. And at the end of the day, that’s all you really have to do in this job is to create that space for students and to make them feel like there’s someone on their side.