Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) council has formally approved the full integration of postgraduates into the union.
A motion proposed by Education Officer Eoghan Gilroy seeks to “fully incorporate postgraduates into the union’s structure and initiatives”.
Postgraduate students and researchers have not had union representation in Trinity since the dissolution of the Graduate Students Union (GSU) in 2022.
The motion mandates the establishment of postgraduate faculty and school convenors as well as a part time officer for taught postgraduate students, and that a motion to amend the constitution to reference the integration be brought to council “by the end of the academic year”.
The motion will create a Postgraduate Researchers (PGR) Assembly to address postgraduate specific issues which the union is “not currently adequate to fully address”.
Speaking in favour of the motion postgraduate activist Jeffrey Sardina said that the creation of the PGR assembly will allow the rest of the TCDSU to “focus on student issues” while postgraduates “focus on worker issues”.
“We are workers, we are not students,” he said.
Gilroy said that he enjoyed working with postgraduates over the last few months but wants the PGR assembly to “give [them] space” to work independently of him.
The assembly will elect a PGR Officer, who will be employed on a contractual basis
to “manage the administrative matters related to enacting the mandates of this role”.
The integration strategy will be reviewed by the PGR Officer, the Education Officer, and the Chair of Council at the end of each academic year to “allow for continuous improvement and adaptation”.
The passing of this motion is part of the TCDSU’s plan to formalise the representation of postgraduates, which was announced in August.
