Deirdre Leahy, a final year occupational therapy student hailing from County Cork and one of four candidates in the Welfare and Equality officer race, is running a campaign centered around her practical experience as a health science student.
Leahy has been consistently involved in Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TDCSU) throughout her time in College, having served on the 2022/23 JCR Welfare team and the 2023/24 Welfare and Equality committee.She has served as class representative since the beginning of her third year.
Leahy cites her educational background as an occupational therapy student as to why she is deciding to run for the position, in particular her time on clinical placement which she believes has given her the necessary experience to fulfill the role.
“I think it matches so well in my course, like occupational therapy is the practical experience, the closest I can imagine to actually being a welfare and equality officer. I’ve had 1000 hours of clinical placement and the kind of theory is around helping people do what they want to need to do.”, she said.
“I’ve had mental health placements where I’ve had the practice of one to one — people disclosing things, how to deal with that, the practice when it actually happens. And then also, the more theoretical, bigger side, occupational therapy is all about equity, or if you have a disability, if you’re from a marginalized group, the social model is what we talk about, where it’s the bigger picture, like changing more environmental, bigger things to help the individual.”
She also added that her time as a JCR Welfare Team member and being a user of the disability service gives her a well rounded perspective for the Welfare and Equality officer role.
“I have a unique experience of sitting on both sides of the table. I’m with the disability service myself, I’ve no shame saying that. I’ve also been the person on the other side of the desk as an occupational therapy student and also as on the JCR welfare team, and I think the experience of seeing it on both sides, knowing that is kind of the personal piece of when you’re doing case work.”
Leahy stated that the lack of representation of health science students within the sabbatical officer roles is leading reason for her campaign, noting that in the past ten years “only three percent of sabbat officers were health science students”.
“It’s health science, arts and humanities and STEM, so that’s a third of the college that have only had two sabbatical officers represent them in the last 10 years. That doesn’t sound like representation, although you can represent people that you’re not the same course as, of course, but the numbers just don’t match. There needs to be more health science representation.”
Even with her desire to be a representative for students within the health science faculty in particular, Leahy was also keen to ensure that her campaign is for everyone.
“Sometimes there’s the perception that accessibility only affects people in wheelchairs and only affects a small few number of people. But true accessibility – we talk about in particular universal design, it helps everyone, so it would help all students, because I think the welfare and equality person is important to represent every single student.”
A key point of Leahy’s manifesto is her aim to digitise the booking system for appointments within the College Student Health Service, which currently only takes bookings via phone call.
“It cannot be the best system to rotate through those three numbers on a website and ringing them at 9am hoping that the receptionist picks up. My GP at home, you go online, you book a slot online, and then you click it, and you’re done. And it’s a lot less stressful, because I know some people find it really hard to phone for things and also just it’s way more accessible.”
When questioned on how this process of digitising the College Health booking system could be achieved, Leahy said she believes it “shouldn’t be a massive undertaking”.
“There’s already other college things that use an online booking system. I understand it will take funding but it’s 2025, that is the way a lot of things are being booked now and I think it will ease a lot of stress, because if you have a 9am lecture, when do you get the time to ring to get a college appointment?”
Another notable aim that Leahy has included in her manifesto is the establishment of an “inaccessibility report form”, where students and faculty would be able to directly inform College and the Union of areas and instances of physical and/or educational inaccessibility within Trinity.
“There’s just so much inaccessibility on campus. This report and an audit would be a first step. See, these are the problems, and the second step is okay, now figure out the solutions to solve them. Because there’s no point in just saying that’s inaccessible and then walking on,but the first step would be information gathering.”
Outside of the realm of accessibility, Leahy also hopes to collaborate with the Ethnic Minorities officer to create an Ethnic Minorities Week on campus, which would include events such as guest speakers and discussion groups.
“There’s a sentence used a lot within the disability community – “nothing about us without us”. So if I was doing it, I am a white woman, I would make sure to consult the ethnic minority officer with every single choice with that, and put the voices where the voices matter in that scenario, and work with them.”
With the campaign period kicking off on Monday 17th February, you can expect Leahy’s campaign to have a particular focus on improving overall accessibility on campus and within College services, while also attempting to appeal to the typically less-represented cohort of health science students.
