A town hall held by Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) left many attendees with more questions than answers as union sabbatical officers downplayed their responsibility for a campaign which saw effigies hung and beaten around campus last week.
While Education Officer Eoghan Gilroy chaired the discussion, it was President Jenny Maguire who fielded most questions which centred around the intentions and planning behind the campaign, and questions of culpability.
Except where directly challenged, Welfare and Equality Officer Hamza Bana, the primary spokesperson of last week’s campaign, remained seated and largely silent throughout proceedings.
In contrast with feverish calls for accountability on social media in recent days, the opening of the floor was met with a long silence at the beginning of the evening as attendees hoped for others to ask the first question.
This was broken by a query as to why a town hall was being held only after the events of the campaign, whereas no effort was made to consult students prior to the campaign.
Gilroy, who played no apparent personal role in organising last week’s events, took the greatest degree of responsibility seen by any union representative for the rest of the evening.
“The campaign last week was not informed by members, it was not informed by members’ experiences,” he said.
“It was ill-informed, misjudged, all of the above [and we’re here to] make ourselves accountable.”
An equal degree of remorse was not shown by any other officer in the course of the evening.
Despite claiming not to be “the sole organiser of this campaign” – Maguire called herself a “guest star” – a refusal to name others, and a failure to minute meetings, left Maguire and Bana as the only individuals answerable for its planning.
The evening offered no clarity as to how the campaign was conceived of, planned and executed, revealing a laissez faire approach to its organisation which concerned many.
Maguire outlined that a proposal to tackle the “immediate policy failings” of the new Dignity, Respect and Consent (DRC) office was first raised at Union Forum in January.
The planning of this was then delegated to a smaller subgroup of eight people, then to a smaller group of five. It was not made clear why new groups were created for the same purpose, nor the membership of those groups.
Maguire struggled to explain why meetings of these groups were not minuted, but claimed that it was “not a deliberate choice” not to keep a record.
Maguire further stumbled when asked whether she would “take back the action” given the choice. Though “as president” she said the action was “unrepresentative”, “hurtul” and a misstep, she added that as a private individual, her thoughts on the campaign would “remain private”.
She declined to offer a personal apology for her role in the organisation of the campaign, saying instead that “the apology of the union is, as head of it, my apology”.
Pressed by Harper Alderson of the University Times that the campaign had been heavily shared on Maguire’s own account, Maguire did not personally apologise, insisting “I am head of this organization, and that apology is my apology”.
Last weekend, President-elect Seán Thim O’Leary revealed that the original plan as described to them “was to have those effigies hung by the neck” from sabbatical officers’ House 6 office windows facing onto College Green.
Hamza Bana chimed in on only one occasion to explain why this plan was abandoned, while a similar one still went ahead, but struggled to answer without help from Maguire, who clarified that there were concerns that this would too closely resemble a suicide.
Trinity News asked Bana whether, with this in mind, the effigies were instead construed “to look more like a lynching”.
Bana responded: “I didn’t say that.”
Trinity News: “So that it would look like it was not self-inflicted, but that it was inflicted by others.”
“I wouldn’t say it was inflicted by others.”
Bana did not respond to Trinity News’ question as to how else a body could have been strung upside down.
Beyond the offensiveness of the campaign imagery itself, the efficacy of beating effigies as a strategic choice was questioned.
“Does the SU seriously believe that an image of a uni student beating this straw man with a stick would drive a junior Dean to sit down with his aides and say, You know what, let’s change it. Do we think that is effective?”
Maguire argued that: “The provost and the junior Dean see a million different issues every single day, and you’re just trying to get their attention on this.”
The meeting ended after just one hour, the room having been booked for the succeeding hour, leaving several students with hands raised, which officers offered to answer outside the hall.
There was a general air of discontent with the town hall, which was widely felt not to have addressed key concerns and only raised more.
An emergency meeting of council will take place this evening to discuss motions of censure against Maguire and Bana.
Additional reporting by Mia Craven.
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