"Putting U Back In UCD"
Tia Cullen is a General Nursing student who has completed three years of her degree and currently serves as the UCD Students’ Union Education Officer, but is now running for the office of President. Tia previously served as a Class Rep, and then as Health Science College Officer in the 2023/24 Academic Year.
When asked what motivated her to run for President, Cullen says she has “seen how the union can benefit students, but I’ve also seen a lot of things that I’d like to change about the union.” She continued, “I feel like I still have a lot more to give in terms of being in the driving seat and actually driving the strategic direction of the union, and actually being the chief spokesperson and having more influence in terms of how the Students' Union can actually support students.”
Serving as Education Officer this year, Cullen navigates questions around the structure of UCD, UCD SU, and relevant boards and committees with confidence. She cites her experience within boards and committees as Education Officer as a point of difference for her candidacy, “I’ve been very involved within boards and committees across the university this year. I've worked directly with a lot of students in terms of casework and their academic journeys and what has been impacting their academic journeys.”
She believes she has a “very well-rounded view” of the issues most affecting students, but highlights, “I'm only one person. I think coming into an election you have a manifesto, you have ideas that you want to implement in terms of the Students' Union and UCD. But at the end of the day as the Students' Union President you're also there to listen to students.”
For Cullen, the most important part of the role of SU President is to empower students. How she plans to do so is as follows: “Empowering Executives, the Sabbatical Officers and the College Officers to fulfil their mandates and support them in supporting students. But also to empower the student body themselves to feel empowered to get involved in grassroots campaigning and actually pushing and being the change that they want to see in UCD.”
Cullen outlines four issues most affecting UCD students. Firstly, student experience, on which she doesn’t mince her words,
“I think the student experience in UCD is abysmal and I think there's a lot to do in terms of improving the student experience in UCD.”
The next most pressing issue is accommodation, noting UCD rents are “the highest in the country in terms of university accommodation,” whilst also highlighting a lack of digs legislation impeding students’ rights.
Accessibility, more specifically financial accessibility, is the third issue which Cullen raises. She points out the confusion surrounding the Student Contribution Charge, which according to the programme for Government was to be scrapped, but Minister Lawless has seemingly rolled back on this promise. Graduate and International fees are “extortionate” and are “not financially sustainable for students,” whilst SUSI is in need of an overhaul according to Cullen’s manifesto.
Student supports are the fourth key issue that Cullen raised, saying she wants to “push the university to invest in its student supports [...] The Health and Counselling Service is severely underfunded. The Counselling Service has crazy wait times for students [...] Students are waiting unsatisfactory amounts of time to be seen by a doctor, that's not okay and that's something that I really want to push for as the next students’ union president.”
An issue raised by Cullen in both her manifesto and in this interview was students’ lack of engagement with the SU, with many feeling unrepresented by the union. In her manifesto she states, “Most students don’t feel represented, listened to, or engaged by UCDSU.” However, in our interview she said she felt it had been “a good year” for student engagement with the SU, but said “I think we still have a lot to go in terms of engaging students.”
In order to improve this, Cullen wants to look into event planning. She notes, “There's a number of events that we've done because we've always done them, but if students aren't showing up to events I think we need to take a step back and say, are these events that students want to be attending?” and cited financial barriers, commuting issues, and accessibility as reasons why students are feeling disengaged.
Manifesto Goals
Cullen wants to “Put The U Back In UCD”, and believes that the University currently prioritises “profit over students”, placing blame mainly on the “lack of funding in higher education,” and argues that the University has “resorted to to upping costs for students to fill the funding gap.”
Extortionate rent prices, international and graduate course fees, and a lack of funding towards student support services have all been detrimental to the student experience. “A university should strive to support its students,” Cullen comments, “The university is here to have students within it and to promote education, but education isn't the only reason why students are in university.”
As part of improving the UCD student experience, Cullen wants to establish dedicated quiet spaces on campus. “University can be a very loud and overstimulating place at times,” she comments, “And for students who could have chronic illnesses, who might be having flare-ups of certain conditions, [they] don't have somewhere to go where they can just sit and chill and you know try and gather themselves.” She mentions that this idea was brought to her by a student via instagram when Cullen was accepting suggestions for her manifesto, and was able to comment from a personal perspective, “I understand that sometimes if you're having issues of pain or you just need that quiet moment and that quiet space to go to. I think it is a huge gap in the university at the moment and I do want to provide that space for students.”
As for the logistics of implementing this idea, “there is a space utilisation committee within the university currently and I'd want to put in a submission to them to provide a space for that purpose.”
A key focus of Cullen’s manifesto is transport links to UCD and their effect on commuting students. Cullen wants to “continue the fight for better transport links to UCD”, but what does continuing the fight look like?
“We had the 145 bus campaign that happened over the last number of months and we have had a positive outcome for that but the fight isn't over.” UCDSU succeeded in delaying the discontinuation of the 145 bus route in November 2024, and launched a petition in January which was ultimately unsuccessful in its ambition to “Save the 145 Bus Route”.
Cullen believes that “as the President it’s your job to step in and advocate for students to be supported and to have services available to students,” citing the S4 and S6 “ghost buses”. When asked what stepping-in would look like practically, Cullen responded, “Direct action, without a doubt.”
“There’s only so much that you can achieve in boards and committees. I think something that the union can improve on is facilitating direct action.” She clarified that the only way you can achieve direct action if through “an engaged student body within the Students’ Union,” admitting, “we don’t currently have that.”
Cullen wants to “get the union into a place where we have a student body who feels passionate enough about the issues that are affecting them to then get involved in direct action,” understanding that the President is just one person. She states, “There needs to be direct action if students aren’t being listened to.”
Currently serving as Education Officer in the SU, it was put to Cullen that there has been a distinct lack of direct action from the union this year, especially considering the actions of last year. It has been a quiet year for direct action in UCD this year, and as a member of the sabbatical team that has facilitated this lack of action, it opens Cullen up to criticism.
The aforementioned “Save the 145 Bus Route” petition was ultimately unsuccessful, and whilst the walkout in October was well attended, it was a USI initiative that UCD SU brought to Belfield.
When asked why students should put their faith in her to bring direct action to UCD, Cullen defended her position in the SU this year: “In terms of direct action, within my role as Education Officer, currently like 99% of my time is split between boards and committees and meeting with students and supporting them with casework.”
She continued, “I’ve always used my voice to advocate for students, and as President I want to implement the changes that I want to see [...] I want students to be empowered to push for their own direct actions, like if students have issues that they’re passionate about [...] it’s my responsibility as President to support the student body and if there’s students coming to me about an issue, I’m there to empower them.”
In her manifesto Cullen states she wants to “Push for a rent freeze”, telling the University Observer she would be looking to direct action on this issue as well. “It's one thing to be asking for positive outcomes for students at boards and committees and if it has a positive outcome happy days, but at the end of the day again if you're not being listened to things have to have to be escalated and the next step in that is direct action.”
Similarly, Cullen will “Demand that UCD prioritises building more on-campus accommodation” in her manifesto, and again points to direct action. “There's only so many times you can say the same thing. I feel like direct action could be a lot stronger in the Students’ Union.”
SUSI
Cullen wants to campaign for a ‘SUSI overhaul’ if elected President of UCD Students’ Union, in order to ‘widen eligibility, increase maintenance grants, and include graduate entry courses’. SUSI reform was an item on Cullen’s manifesto when running for Education Officer as well, and she says this year she has “brought it up in meetings with Ministers and TDs” and pointed to its inclusion on the Programme for Government. She continued, “At the end of the day I want to see that implemented and students want to see that implemented, but if that’s not happening we need to do something about it.”
Student Support Services
With regards to student support services, Cullen says on her manifesto that she is going to ‘Demand much-needed investment in crucial student support services, such as Access and Lifelong Learning, and Student Health and Counseling’.
She believes that these services “used to be a lot more functional [...] but as the size of the student body has grown exponentially over the last number of years, and it’s projected to continue in that way, there hasn’t been sufficient funding provided. The support services have essentially stayed the same, but the student body has blossomed into the size it is now.”
The services are struggling to provide the service they once were able to, or that they would like to provide. Indeed, the majority of student counseling appointments are outsourced to off-campus facilities. “They want to do better,” Cullen says, “but they just don’t have the funds to do that.”
In terms of how she would ‘Demand’ investment in student support services, Cullen says it’s about “asking for it in the first instance, and if it’s not happening, direct action.” She points to other methods of advocating, such as open letters, contacting a range of key stakeholders, sending emails, organising protests, try to get time in the media, writing newspaper articles, getting on the radio, to name a few, “None of these are off limits in terms of lobbying and pushing for the changes that students want to see.”
Students' Union Finances
The issue of the finances of the Students’ Union has dominated discourse in the early stages of campaigning thus far. We asked Cullen if she believes the Students’ Union overspends in certain areas. “I can’t speak on behalf of other candidates, but in terms of how the union uses its funding, it would be my role as President to ensure that we’re investing our finances into areas that are actually supporting students.”
She cites the running of events as an example, “It’s one thing to have an event that we’ve always done, but if it’s not having a direct benefit for students, or students aren’t engaged with it, well that’s an issue.”
“There needs to be a project management perspective of, what is the thing you want to achieve, what are the benefits for students coming out of that, and what is the impact. I feel like that’s my approach to financial spending.”
Cullen did not highlight any specific events she felt weren’t serving students when asked for an example, instead speaking of her allocation of spending whilst serving as Education Officer. “ I think I've been quite successful in terms of how I've spent union resources in terms of events that I've planned [...] I feel like I'm very responsible in how union funds are spent.”
“I feel like my financial spending from a union perspective has been very reasonable, and I think students should be confident that, you know, if/when I'm president, that I'll be, you know, conscious of our spending and making sure that, you know, our money is being spent in the right places.”
In the context of the Constitutional Referendum in November 2024, on which an estimated €3,500 was spent, Cullen says that the contract with the MiVoice system as already in place, “so we kind of had no control over how much it would actually cost to run.”
She admitted, “I wouldn’t run the referendum again myself,” and instead pointed to a wholescale constitutional review as a possibility if she is elected President. “I think that we do need to have another constitutional review and try and get it over the line [...]During my term as President, I do think that we would be able to reach quorum.”
Another Presidential Candidate, Michael Roche, has said he would take a pay cut if elected President. On this, Cullen commented, “I'm not going to speak to other candidates' wants or wishes or promises within their own campaigns, but in terms of the Sabbatical Officer budget, our job isn't only a nine-to-five, a lot of the time we do work overtime, [...] You have sabbats that are working 60, 70, sometimes 80 hour weeks, so, you know, if you kind of work it out from that perspective, sometimes sabbats are still only earning, you know, around minimum wage.”
Cullen did not commit to taking a pay cut. “I don’t think the sabbatical salary is huge in terms of graduate salaries that you have coming out of university, it would actually be below a lot of the graduate salaries coming out of universities.”
Cullen acknowledged that it is “quite clear” that students are concerned with “how the union finances are spent” and as President she wants to “have that level of transparency with students.”
A Vote For Cullen
Tia Cullen says students should vote for her because, “I’m, I believe, the best candidate. I have a strong manifesto, I think I have a really positive and strong leadership style, and I think that I would be a really good President for the students in UCD.”