Why I should be your Students’ Union President – Aidan Kelly
By University Observer Election Special | Feb 28 2013
As part of our coverage of the upcoming Students' Union Sabbatical elections, each candidate has been given an opportunity to outline why UCD students should vote for them on March 6th and 7th. This is Aidan Kelly's statement, with questions written by Aidan Kelly.Q. Why on earth is Aidan Kelly running for president?To clarify: Aidfest does not run; he lifts.Q. How does Aidan represent the student body?Moot: Aidan Kelly is the student body, and this body is toned.Q. What do our manifestos mean to the broader body politic?Students broad and narrow may extract utility from our publications. Aidan’s manifestos can find excellent application in back passage sanitation and footwear moisture extraction, they are neither coarse to rump nor sensibility, and it is not our intention to 'rub anyone the wrong way'. On shoving one inside the cavity of a damp sneaker one will find that like the fine parchment that is the University Observer, the policies are not at all water-tight, and will sponge up whatever their expeditions through the gutter have immersed them in.Q. Reformation?The Students’ Union has been, until now, an organisation whose head is so far up its own fundament it has protruded out from its orifice at least thrice, in the interests of moral hygiene Aidan prescribes as an urgent circulatory and orthopaedic aid to this hunchbacked bureaucratic ogre a limit of one year on the terms of sabbatical officers in any role and a reengineered nominations strategy that will pleasurably draw the posture of Grecian scholar from this hemi-cyclical half-nelson.Q.What of Aidan’s non-presence in campus life?Aidan is the relatable candidate, possessed of a soft, humane disposition. He thrives beneath the cloak of mystery and seclusion, forging away with his metallurgical erudition at the problems of the age. Loathsome to his sensibility are the idle parlance of journalists and the extroverted, bureaucratised but apolitical youths whose incontinent opining inclines toward the use of words longer than their combined phallic length to articulate ideas just as flaccid and uninteresting. These, like tribal figures brandishing spears, halting vainly the march of civilisation into their shadowy caves, inhabit a world where Ignorance means strength and hence Aidfest finds himself feeble and ill-equipped, who claw further and further back from his illuminating wisdom into crevices narrow and opaque, and then, forced into a world of light by the implacable march of progress, ask finally that the lights be dimmed so they may find their bearings. For not all can resolve the fineness of his luminous wit; to these he says, ‘I am who you say I am’ and nothing more.Q. Transparency?When Aidan lists transparency among his priorities, he means to accomplish the death of it. Aidfest is a movement enamoured with the patriarchal mystery of the great classical regimes .Too often do the pseudo-liberal demand absolute transparency and portray mystique as misshapen and arcane (mystique that is to say, when one’s presence is never experienced but always missed). Like glass, the poster boy of transparency, such policies are thin and easily shattered. A great military tactician, by way of example, would never reveal the schematic of his defences for perusal by the enemy; such is the folly of modern politicians, each vying to be more pale and blandly vitreous than the next. Aidan’s medium of choice is, for purpose of illustration, vulcanised rubber- his policies equally flexible and sure-footed under great heat and pressure. Resilient under fire. It is true, those who throw stones at glass houses achieve their nefarious end, but a chateau of rubber? The projectiles are repelled at velocity back into the frothing pallor of the gormless skirmisher, who is fittingly blinded by his own prejudice.Q. Next question.To read the personal statement of the other candidate in the Presidential race, Mícheál Gallagher, click here. 
As part of our coverage of the upcoming Students' Union Sabbatical elections, each candidate has been given an opportunity to outline why UCD students should vote for them on March 6th and 7th. This is Aidan Kelly's statement, with questions written by Aidan Kelly.Q. Why on earth is Aidan Kelly running for president?To clarify: Aidfest does not run; he lifts.Q. How does Aidan represent the student body?Moot: Aidan Kelly is the student body, and this body is toned.Q. What do our manifestos mean to the broader body politic?Students broad and narrow may extract utility from our publications. Aidan’s manifestos can find excellent application in back passage sanitation and footwear moisture extraction, they are neither coarse to rump nor sensibility, and it is not our intention to 'rub anyone the wrong way'. On shoving one inside the cavity of a damp sneaker one will find that like the fine parchment that is the University Observer, the policies are not at all water-tight, and will sponge up whatever their expeditions through the gutter have immersed them in.Q. Reformation?The Students’ Union has been, until now, an organisation whose head is so far up its own fundament it has protruded out from its orifice at least thrice, in the interests of moral hygiene Aidan prescribes as an urgent circulatory and orthopaedic aid to this hunchbacked bureaucratic ogre a limit of one year on the terms of sabbatical officers in any role and a reengineered nominations strategy that will pleasurably draw the posture of Grecian scholar from this hemi-cyclical half-nelson.Q.What of Aidan’s non-presence in campus life?Aidan is the relatable candidate, possessed of a soft, humane disposition. He thrives beneath the cloak of mystery and seclusion, forging away with his metallurgical erudition at the problems of the age. Loathsome to his sensibility are the idle parlance of journalists and the extroverted, bureaucratised but apolitical youths whose incontinent opining inclines toward the use of words longer than their combined phallic length to articulate ideas just as flaccid and uninteresting. These, like tribal figures brandishing spears, halting vainly the march of civilisation into their shadowy caves, inhabit a world where Ignorance means strength and hence Aidfest finds himself feeble and ill-equipped, who claw further and further back from his illuminating wisdom into crevices narrow and opaque, and then, forced into a world of light by the implacable march of progress, ask finally that the lights be dimmed so they may find their bearings. For not all can resolve the fineness of his luminous wit; to these he says, ‘I am who you say I am’ and nothing more.Q. Transparency?When Aidan lists transparency among his priorities, he means to accomplish the death of it. Aidfest is a movement enamoured with the patriarchal mystery of the great classical regimes .Too often do the pseudo-liberal demand absolute transparency and portray mystique as misshapen and arcane (mystique that is to say, when one’s presence is never experienced but always missed). Like glass, the poster boy of transparency, such policies are thin and easily shattered. A great military tactician, by way of example, would never reveal the schematic of his defences for perusal by the enemy; such is the folly of modern politicians, each vying to be more pale and blandly vitreous than the next. Aidan’s medium of choice is, for purpose of illustration, vulcanised rubber- his policies equally flexible and sure-footed under great heat and pressure. Resilient under fire. It is true, those who throw stones at glass houses achieve their nefarious end, but a chateau of rubber? The projectiles are repelled at velocity back into the frothing pallor of the gormless skirmisher, who is fittingly blinded by his own prejudice.Q. Next question.To read the personal statement of the other candidate in the Presidential race, Mícheál Gallagher, click here.