Welcome to the second to last student council of the 2017/2018 academic year! March council kicked off swiftly; it began with a letter of correspondence from DIT Student who questioned the plebiscite vote. The letter voiced concerns over the amount of members campaigning, and asking who paid for the materials used during campaigning.
As the letter only came in during noon of the day of council, executives were not given sufficient time to think of the best way to deal with this therefore they were granted 5 working days to think about how to respond.
This month, no representative from USI had attended council, however a printed list of updates was printed and given to all councillors (yours truly did not recieved one- sad face).
In relation to USI Congress, the selected delegates were announced, and it was also annoucned that the t-shirts would be pink.
With the recent developement of the TU Law of 2018, being signed into law, there were many questions from council. At the moment, the plan stands to have DIT apply for designation in the first week of April and there is a high probable chance of getting this. It is important for our SU to get ready for merging with the other two student unions.
It was asked how council would work, post-merging however unfortunately, at the moment, this is comletely unknown. The biggest question on everyone’s minds was the future name of TUD. The current names up for consideration are confidential, but council felt that students should know what the process is. The plan is to have the name and logo before September 2018. Another question was posed, asking whether this merge would have an effect on the student levy. If a levy is passed post TD, the negotiations would change. As for the final question, what name would be present on future degrees, all degeress would be a TD degree (with the name, obviously, to be confirmed).
An update concerning Grangegorman/Broombridge was given; a letter of concern to the governing body with a specific request for DITSU, Socs and Sports to hold a presentation on concerns over the Grangegorman/Broombridge developement. However it has been made clear that the governing body is not interested in letting them to go through with this therefore unforunately has fallen through. They will however give an update on any further developments at the next meeting.
The highlights from Officer updates and reports are the following;
- From the VP for Education announced that the timetable for Summer exams will be available the week of the 9th of April.
- VP for Welfare was asked about any developements of bettering the disability services, and it was responded that she is doing her best to arrange a meeting with them.
- The elephant in the room was the absence of the postgrad officer, which sabbaticals felt was council’s right to know that this was due to the officer choosing to boycott the Student’s Union. While the reason behind this was not disclosed, President Boni said he will try to meet with the officer informally to try to resolve his issues. Councillors posed questions, asking who would be stepping up to temporarily fill the postion? The role has been delegated and spread across other sabbats. However they hope to have him back quickly. However, due to this, he will not be attending Congress. Council had unanimously decided that they would write an official letter, voicing their displeasure as they feel he is politically accountable to the Union and he failed to be present at Council. Said letter would first be sent to Chair for review and then circulated to all council memebers.
In the second half of the session, 8 motions were debated and voted on
- Access to Information, regarding the impeachment process
This was simply regarding making the information of impeachment more avaliable, as any and all information should be avaliable should someone want to find out more about this. The motion was voted for. - Award for School Rep. While the wording of this motion was amended slightly, it was still voted in favor.
- Cessation of Support to Aramark: this motion had the most debate around it. Aramark have a contract to provide food in UCD, Trinity and DIT. Every campus of DIT has them except Kevin Street. Those against the motion felt that this would only make a negative impact with the company, while not actually bringing about any chance. There was a fear that we would end up seeing the prices of the food raised and the quality going down. Those for the motion argued that there are plenty of other companies out there that could be hired by the college. It was also felt that as students, we have power over the company and only we can intiate change; companies cannt be socially responsible until impacted economically. In the end, the motion was voted in favor.
The following motions won without debate:
- Maintaining Contact with Class Reps Policy
- Parity of Service for all Students
- Process of TUDSU Merger
- School Reps on College Boards
- Technological University for Dublin Students’ Union Policy
You can find details about the motions on the ditsu website if you want to read about them in more detail!
And that concludes the March student council, leaving only one left for this year, due to take place in late April! Remember to keep up with updates of DITSU on DITSU social media, and that when it comes to Student Council, even if you are not a councillor, you can still attend council to keep up to date and know what’s going on in your union.
Visual Artist, student at DIT, and writer for DITSU.tv
I've been writing for DITSU.tv for 2+ years now, still ongoing
I mainly cover events but also like to write a few helpful, lifestyle pieces and here and there
