Rónán Bartley
By University Observer | Feb 28 2017
Rónán Bartley, a third year English with Drama student, wants the union to reconnect with students and he wants to break down, what he calls, “the feeling of apathy toward the SU.[br]FINAL year English with Drama student Rónán Bartley is one of the several candidates running for president with no prior experience inside the union. Despite this, he maintains that “politics is the one profession where the longer you spend in it, the worse you get at it” therefore he will be “a fresh pair of hands and a fresh pair of eyes”.On the topic of why he wishes to run for president in the first place, Bartley feels the SU have become too “apolitical” in recent years. He feels this is due to the (now settled) debt that the SU accrued at the turn of the decade: “you can't really a stand on something [when] you're indebted to the college. You can't be too radical or pushing for change…”Bartley looks to reinstate an activist attitude to UCDSU. On a topic like the increasing accommodation fees, he stated “it would kind of be a nice opportunity to create this activist base within in UCD that could be used for other causes that would come up as obviously relevant to students.”Politics is the one profession where the longer you spend in it, the worse you get at it.
Regarding accommodation fees, Bartley also stated that the cost of building more accommodation should not be passed directly to the students: “[students] shouldn't be expected to be saddled with this massive price just to justify something they may not even see the end product of.”A key issue for Bartley would be for the president to have their voting rights reinstated on a committee like Finance Renumeration and Asset Management Committee. FRAMC dictates where most of the money goes in UCD, and the President had a vote on it until a couple of years ago – but now just has a seat. Bartley doesn’t want to “just kind of nip at their heels and say “oh maybe we should do this.” “[We speak] softly and carry a big stick, [but] we don't have a big stick at the moment.”On an issue like mental health, Bartley wants students and the SU to persist on better funding in order to cut queues, instead of using money “to spend on the Confucius Institute.”One of the smaller issues Bartley makes note of is the student bar. He wants to look to see cosmetic changes done to the UCD Clubhouse, as he states “I've always felt going in there that's it's kind of... it's a little bit anonymous... it doesn't feel like a student bar.” The Clubhouse is privately owned, so when Bartley was questioned on how this, as well as food or alcohol price reduction days, he simply stated “careful persuasion.”Bartley wants to work with the Campaigns and Communications officer to bring more events to the opening weeks of semester. He wants to introduce new alcohol and drug awareness workshops during freshers’ or orientation week. When questioned on whether people would actually attend such workshops, he said “people going to orientation week are under the impression that most of the stuff going on during it is mandatory.”Bartley was not specific on bring back solely consent-based workshops, instead he looks to put it together alongside sexual health. “With sex ed workshops […], you can package up stuff to do with consent and consent issues within a sexual health workshop rather than just doing a consent workshop.”People going to orientation week are under the impression that most of the stuff… is mandatory.
Bartley’s manifesto states he wishes to bring more microwaves to campus, and he stated that even if he can’t get them in various faculties, he would like a number available “on the SU corridor, or in one of the SU rooms.”Resit fees is something Bartley would like to address, having experienced the system himself personally in first year. It’s a topic that Bartley is “really baffled why it hasn't been routed out by now” though Bartley was not definitive on who he would contact to help get fees lowered.Bartley mentions an expansion of the peer mentor system in his manifesto. This is not under the purview of the SU, and he sees this as “more so a suggestion.” He also wishes to see a number of art murals added around campus, similar to the electricity boxes in the city centre. He admitted that campus services are rarely okay with permanent changes, but that he would like to see “pillars of the walkways in front of Newman, library, science basically painted with, for example, literary figures, figures from science.”On the issue of fees, Bartley feels free fees are “the fairest way to go.”