Emilia For Everyone
Hailing from Co.Down, Emilia O’Hagan is the sole candidate running for Welfare Officer for UCD Students’ Union. She is a final year English and Philosophy student, is the Literature and Drama Editor for the University Observer’s OTwo Magazine, and is a member of UCD BDS.
O’Hagan is not a member of or connected to any political party, and has never been on the campaign team of another sabbatical officer. O’Hagan would be a new face for UCDSU, not having been a member of council before. Despite this, she is able to effectively answer questions on the functioning of relevant boards and committees in UCDSU and UCD, and displays a good understanding of how the union works.
O’Hagan describes how her personal experiences throughout her time in UCD pushed her to run for Welfare Officer, she says “I’ve dealt with a lot of the issues that are recurring for welfare, I mean like housing and mental health. They're big issues that I have personally dealt with in UCD and I think there needs to be a serious change.” She believes the three main issues facing students this year are the housing crisis, the cost of living, and mental health.
O’Hagan says that due to the housing crisis, she lived and worked in a boarding school for the duration of last year, and would lean on this experience if elected to Welfare Officer. Her role in the boarding school centered around welfare issues, and she says it gave her a good understanding of how to handle casework. “It was students ranging from 11 to 19, and there was a lot of casework, a lot of one to one. You know, I had to do specific training regarding confidentiality, regarding welfare issues. It was to do with everything I needed to know, obviously, how to deal with these issues by myself, because I was essentially the guardian for these students.”
O’Hagan affirms her support for existing Students’ Union mandates on support for BDS and Palestine, to provide gender-affirming products for transgender students, and to work with University Management to address racism, anti-migrant and refugee views on campus.
Manifesto Point - Housing
O’Hagan has a balance of long term and short term goals for housing in her manifesto. In the short term, she would like to see the continuation of the annual Digs drive, to run a renting rights campaign to educate students on their housing rights, to relaunch the housing survey to understand students’ needs, and to install a board under the James Joyce Library and in the SU Office so that advertisements for rooms to rent are easily visible. O’Hagan also stated she would provide specific supports for international students facing unsafe renting conditions. She says “with that recent figure that came out, it's 1 in 20 international students have basically had sex offered to them for rent. I mean, I think it's mandatory that there's support given to them.” She intends to create information brochures and leaflets on renters rights and available resources, and ramp up the advertising and visibility of this information, citing a figure that under 25% of International Students in Ireland are aware of their renters’ rights.
Her long term goals involve lobbying for digs legislation, lobbying UCD to lower on-campus rents, and collaborating with the Students’ Union Action Group for Housing (SUAGH). She intends to begin by lobbying and increasing social media coverage of the major issues in on-campus housing, but states “I would not be opposed to a rent strike, if it needed to take place.”
Manifesto Point - Mental and Physical Health
The biggest section of O’Hagan’s manifesto is her goals for improving the mental and physical health of students. Her points are extensive, from mental health events, to continued provision of period products and gender-affirming products for transgender students, information on abortion services in Ireland, a Movember college-wide fundraiser, and lobbying UCD for access to blood tests for transgender students.
She also hopes to see an overhaul of UCD counselling services, firstly through better promotion of the services they provide, but also by lobbying UCD to reduce outsourcing of counsellors, push for more fully-trained counsellors, and to introduce support groups for specific groups of students, such as queer, ethnic minority, international student, or addiction support groups on campus. O’Hagan confirms this is something that she has seen student interest in, and is in fact something that was successfully implemented this year in Trinity College Dublin by the SU Welfare Officer Hamza Bana. O’Hagan says “we're the biggest university in Ireland. Surely we should have these sorts of support groups. And basically, I was told by [current] sabbatical officers that the Health Services are willing to do it, they're just scared that the numbers wouldn't come in.”
Manifesto Point - Harm Reduction
Another focus of O’Hagan’s manifesto rests with harm reduction; she intends to run campaigns on sexual assault and consent, and offer training for all pub staff and duty managers on campus regarding sexual assault, spiking, and handling uncomfortable situations. She turns to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) as an example of an organisation who offer such training courses for universities, and says the financing for this could come from the Welfare Officer’s budget, or through a potential collaboration with Healthy UCD.
For O’Hagan, a key part of many of her manifesto points is on improving the awareness of existing supports the SU provides. For harm reduction, this is no different. She wants to provide drug-testing kits, and promote awareness of anti-spiking test kits and drink covers available from the SU Offices. To O’Hagan, the key to a good advertising campaign is media coverage and physical visibility around campus. She says that considering she was unaware of certain supports the Union provides, “I don't know how an Erasmus student would know it, who just came to UCD”.
Manifesto Point - Cost of Living
The current cost of living is important to O’Hagan: “Paying rent and trying to afford groceries is extremely difficult. It's also you're going between affording groceries and having a night out. And that just shouldn't be the way for students, specifically in Dublin. I mean, it's the capital city and students, me included, just don't seem to have any social life anymore.”
To help students in the short-term, O’Hagan would like to see a food pantry come to fruition, something which this year’s C&E Officer has been working on. “If you didn't have enough money to fund yourself, at least you know your university is there to support you”. She says “I haven't spoken to anyone specific about it in UCD, but I have been looking at DCU and they use FoodCloud to get their deliveries in. So I've definitely been researching it.”
Finally, O’Hagan intends to improve accessibility by lobbying for lecture recordings and more quiet spaces on campus, to lobby for increased supports for Sanctuary Students in UCD, and to protect the UCD Encampment Agreement. As with every candidate, O’Hagan’s full manifesto is available on the UCDSU website.
A Vote for O’Hagan
On why students should vote for her, O’Hagan says,
“My campaign is driven off my passion. [...] The majority of the things that I'm speaking on, I have experienced them, or someone close to me has experienced them, and that's driven me to really want to fight for this position. So I just hope that anyone who is looking would know that my campaign is driven on my passion to make UCD better.”