The SU is waiting for broad student buy-in, the students are waiting for something to buy into.

By University Observer | Mar 24 2025

For several years now, ‘engagement’ has been the buzzword of every UCD Students’ Union Election. How do you plan to increase attendance at events? How will you improve the issue of student apathy? Why do you think UCD students feel disconnected from their union? Yet, the fact remains that UCD students are simply not engaging with the union at the same level as they have in the past, or indeed to the extent as they seem to in other universities, Trinity College Dublin being the closest example. 

In times gone past, nearly every student on campus would have known the name of their SU President (though admittedly a product of notoriety in certain cases). Now, that simply isn’t the case, the blame for limited engagement often placed on a post-pandemic climate. In Molly Greenough’s year as SU President from 2022 to 2023, she introduced the 2023-2025 Strategic Plan for the Union’s post-covid recovery period, a long-term plan for tackling the ensuing engagement crisis. 

The October 2024 update on the strategy states “The disruption to campus life and the transition to remote learning reset student and stakeholder understanding of what a Students' Union truly is and what it should offer. With students largely absent from campus, the essential role of UCDSU in advocating for student needs and supporting their university experience became less visible.” This Strategic Plan was built on four key pillars; promote awareness of the SU, drive participation and engagement, represent student outlook on key issues, and activate a clear vision for ‘The Student Experience’. The goal? A return to basics; “to maximise student understanding of the value of their SU and to harness student empowerment to actively shape their own university experience.” 

Yet, Greenough’s predecessor Ruairí Power arguably had the most visible Presidency in recent years, in the semi-pandemic era of 2021 to 2022. Power’s ‘It’s not Me it’s UCD’ campaign protested key issues for UCD students, including the accommodation crisis and the severe backlogging of UCD’s counselling services at the time. On February 14, 2022, following a successful awareness campaign which included dropping a banner stating ‘Its Not Me it’s UCD - 12pm Monday’ and another stating ‘Nothing Sexy About Commercialisation’ from the top of the Newman and Tierney buildings, over 400 students turned out to protest with UCDSU at O’Reilly Hall.  

Power’s open letter to the CEO of Dublin City Council Owen Keegan regarding reports of 571 Purpose Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) facilities being granted permission to operate as short term tourist accommodation gained national coverage, with Keegan’s sarcastic reply “that if you genuinely believe that excess profits are being made in the PBSA market I am surprised the Students Union has not entered the market itself and provided lower cost student accommodation for its members” putting him firmly in the hotseat with several students’ unions, and all the major government opposition parties. UCDSU and the PBSA crisis became a national conversation. 

This year’s sabbatical officers have only a few months left in their tenure, and yet protests and campus-wide campaigns have been largely absent. Current sabbatical officers have centred their work at board level, and they have previously claimed that lobbying university management to achieve change is working effectively for them - a positive sign for the relationship between the University and those who represent its students. 

However, the lack of tangible evidence of these changes for the average student leaves them in the dark. Be it a lack of information from the Union on what they have achieved, or difficulties feeling the effects of bureaucratic policy changes that take place out of sight when big issues, such as campus rent increases and being priced out of student life, continue to occupy student minds. 

One thing that SU protests have always achieved in the past is attention. Staging a protest and hanging a banner from the top of one of the most frequented buildings on campus is hard to miss. A stagnant banner hanging outside the James Joyce Library is easy to ignore. 

Even if this year’s union has found effectiveness at university board levels, they have struggled to gain national media attention, and have admitted to difficulties attaining conversations with TDs and Ministers. When communication lines are closed, and huge issues exist that require immediate solutions, the question begs; what are they waiting for? 

One explanation offered by current Sabbattical Officers is that to do an effective protest, there needs to be a critical mass of students ready to engage with the union, ready to turn up and support them, which currently the SU doesn’t feel is the case. 

Following a build up of tensions between the University and UCDSU last year, protest had become a frequent event on campus; SU President Martha Ní Riada was forcibly removed from a ceremony awarding Nancy Pelosi an honorary doctorate, and the Tierney building was occupied. By the time last year’s executive elections came around, engagement did indeed seem to be on the rise. There was only one uncontested race for full-time officer positions, and the elections proved to have the highest voter turnout since the pandemic.  

The Palestine Solidarity Encampment led by last year’s SU team, UCD BDS, and Academics for Palestine in May gathered huge numbers and sustained support, securing an agreement with UCD which is already beginning to be implemented. Over a hundred students then turned up for the USI Pre-Budget Walkout in October, proving that there is, or at least was then, an appetite for action amongst students in UCD. The stage was set, and the time had arrived to build on these successes, but post-October, the Union fell quiet and campaigns failed to materialise into action. 

If the SU were waiting for a critical mass of students to protest, it certainly existed in October. The Students’ Union Action Group for Housing was created this year in response to the dire state of accommodation on campus, and the SU has hinted that actions should be expected before the end of the year, but the momentum has now stagnated. With no other initiatives by the Union evident to reach those currently disconnected students, it is difficult to see an alternative to just getting out on the ground and putting plans in action, with whatever support base they currently have. The SU is waiting for broad student buy-in; the students are waiting for something to buy into. 

On the other hand, multiple Sabbatical Officers have claimed that engagement is at its highest since pre-Covid levels, pointing to the 10% voter turnout levels at the last referendum in November and high voter turnout for last year's executive elections. However, does one day of voting, one day of clicking a link you had sent to your email, speak to the consistency required for a true measure of engagement? Measuring the tickets sold for events and turnout is perhaps a better method. The 2024 UCD Ball in April 2024 sold just 792 tickets, but the Freshers Ball in September 2024 sold 1,448 tickets, and the Christmas Day night out in November 2024 sold 2,398 tickets; a steady increase for event attendance over the past year. Yet still, five out of the six full-time officer positions are uncontested this year. 

A true measure of engagement with the Union must consider every angle, and the whole point is it must reach the apolitical students, the apathetic students, and the isolated students, the students who don’t already follow the social media pages. How do you do that? Make tangible changes, or make some noise.