Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) have seen 216 of its class rep positions remain unfilled. The announcement was made in the weekly TCDSU email, where a spreadsheet with all unfilled positions was opened to students. Applications are now open for these positions to be filled, with TCDSU constitution rules stating that the first nomination for each course will be elected.
TCDSU has seen 171 classes fail to fill its single rep position. Six classes have seen only one of two reps elected, with 13 classes seeing either of their class rep positions filled. Two classes also saw only two of their three positions filled. One class has seen none of its three positions filled, while two classes have seen only one of its four class rep positions filled. A final class has seen only half of its 4 positions filled.
It is still unclear how many class reps were elected on Friday. When speaking to Trinity News, Education Officer Aimee Connolly noted that “our management system has been in need of an update and so we do not have an accurate representation of how many reps we are actually meant to have, due to several classes that are not in existence being included on it”.
She did note that “we now have over 260 class reps, with a maximum capacity of what I would estimate to be around 400, meaning our engagement this year has increased”. Speaking to Trinity News yesterday, Connolly said: “We will be opening our unfilled positions tomorrow and I would hope that we will surpass 300 class reps”.
She went on to note that “engagement has been up this year – we have seen some classes heavily contested, with several classes having over 10 people contesting and one class even having over 20 nominations”.
She also noted the work of “Alice [MacPherson, former TCDSU Education Officer] and Gillian [Kiely, former Chair of Council]’s report on class rep elections from last year, we ensured polling stations were easily identifiable and that polling times were well suited to students and circulated sufficiently”.
“We had a strong presence on the ground during Freshers’ Week which garnered a lot of engagement from students in nominating themselves. Myself and Stephen [Sheil, Chair of Council] will be writing a report on this year’s class rep elections and making a number of recommendations for next year’s election period to further improve the process.”
