Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) claim to have recorded the highest ever number of nominations for Class Representatives.
In an email statement to Trinity News, the union reported that 790 undergraduate students have put their names forward to sit on the union council.
Sadhbh Brennan, chair of both the union council and electoral commission said that this number of nominations represents “a significant boost in engagement this year in comparison to previous years”.
In past years, however, the union has not released data on the number of nominations that they have received.
The number of positions filled, the metric by which the success or failure of the class rep system is usually judged, will not be released until after the elections have taken place.
Last year, following elections, 216 class rep positions within the union remained unfilled.
TCDSU did, however, state that only 18 more Reps are needed in order to have 100% of Health Science students represented at Council.
This year the class with the highest number of nominations is JF BESS, with 37 first years contesting 4 positions. A close second is JF Biological & Biomedical Science, with 35 students on the ballot.
TCDSU has said that they will continue to accept nominations from classes with unfilled Class Rep positions until the first Council on October 1st.
The first student from any class with a vacant position to email their interest to the Union will from today forward be automatically elected.
The union has struggled with student engagement in the past, with the number of class rep positions filled used by many as a measure of students’ interest in engaging with the union’s mechanisms.
The role of a class rep involves speaking on behalf of the other students on your course at meetings of the union council, updating them on the actions of the union and organising social events.