Sabatical Election Results

The_Minister

tintinr35 wrote:

you would be used to that, being a member of Fine Gael

BBBUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


EDIT: Steph, I suspect that Redmond was caught in enough time beforehand, to make the fine and removal of manifestos damaging to his campaign.

gliondar

Redmond was not fined or penalised for handing out free Redbull.

Stepherunie

He was caught the first day of voting. I remember because there was a lot of talk of how it was really a null and void punishment because it wasn't going ot make too much difference as it only effected the second day of voting.

AngelofFire

he was involved with KBC before so therefor has right ideals just like now he has some left but is no way either

He left Fianna Fail a long time ago, he even acknowledged in his interview for the welfare race last year that he made a mistake in joining them in the first place. I have faith in his ability to Change, ive seen people some of which are close to me turn 180 degrees on the political spectrum in a relatively short time. Barry may not be too left wing but by no stretch of the imagination would i consider his views to be right wing.

. He's definitely along the socialist lines. Which is about his only flaw as an encumbant SU president.

As a Socialist myself i beg to differ, i would consider that an attribute. But we'll have to agree to disagree on that one :P

Het-Field

AngelofFire wrote:

He left Fianna Fail a long time ago, he even acknowledged in his interview for the welfare race last year that he made a mistake in joining them in the first place. I have faith in his ability to Change, ive seen people some of which are close to me turn 180 degrees on the political spectrum in a relatively short time. Barry may not be too left wing but by no stretch of the imagination would i consider his views to be right wing.



As a Socialist myself i beg to differ, i would consider that an attribute. But we'll have to agree to disagree on that one :P

In fairness a lot of us make that same mistake, and like Mr Colfer, I am willing to admit I was very much mistaken in joining, and I doubt very much that I will ever go back. Dessie O Malley's argument is very persuasive !

Foxtrol

The_Minister wrote:

Having a gigantic campaign team, several times the size of that belonging to your opponents, helps....

As someone who was very heavily involved in the Shanahan campaign I'd just like to say that we where not fortunate enough to have a 'gigantic campaign team'! I know that there was a belief that Shanahan was running on a joint ticket with the other B&L boys but this wasn’t the case. We had our own totally separate team for the poster race, canvassing etc. Our small team just worked our asses off since Ronan decided to run and thankfully our hard work paid off!!!

The_Minister

At Eng alone I counted four campaigners - so either he had one of the stupidest campaign managers ever, or he had lots of people to spare. The reports that I heard of his campaign team put then over fifty.

EDIT: Four counting two people canvassing for more than one team.

dajaffa

Foxtrol wrote:

As someone who was very heavily involved in the Shanahan campaign I'd just like to say that we where not fortunate enough to have a 'gigantic campaign team'! I know that there was a belief that Shanahan was running on a joint ticket with the other B&L boys but this wasn’t the case. We had our own totally separate team for the poster race, canvassing etc. Our small team just worked our asses off since Ronan decided to run and thankfully our hard work paid off!!!

Well A decent proporion of the BnL ticket campiagners were holding Shanahan's manifestoes. In the hospitals for instance the canvassers were canvassing for a number of candidates including Ronan, a trend repeated in at many other polling stations.

panda100

dajaffa wrote:

Well A decent proporion of the BnL ticket campiagners were holding Shanahan's manifestoes. In the hospitals for instance the canvassers were canvassing for a number of candidates including Ronan, a trend repeated in at many other polling stations.

From what I heared in hospitals and med shanahan went to blackrock/clongowes. Since the college is majority D4 peeps he knew most of the people in the college. In my honest opinion he really didnt deserve to win. Being on the constitutinal review board isnt even proper union experience and he knows it! Paul Lynam really deserved to win this.

pigeonbutler

panda100 wrote:

From what I heared in hospitals and med shanahan went to blackrock/clongowes. Since the college is majority D4 peeps he knew most of the people in the college. In my honest opinion he really didnt deserve to win. Being on the constitutinal review board isnt even proper union experience and he knows it! Paul Lynam really deserved to win this.

You're wrong. College is not majority D4 peeps. In fact the stats show the majority of people in UCD are from outside of Dublin. Just like you and I!

Jonny Arson

Foxtrol wrote:

As someone who was very heavily involved in the Shanahan campaign I'd just like to say that we where not fortunate enough to have a 'gigantic campaign team'! I know that there was a belief that Shanahan was running on a joint ticket with the other B&L boys but this wasn’t the case. We had our own totally separate team for the poster race, canvassing etc. Our small team just worked our asses off since Ronan decided to run and thankfully our hard work paid off!!!

Unless every single one of Ronan's ''small'' campaign team were canvassing in the Arts block on Wednesday I find that quite hard to believe. I know for a fact (of course I don't have photographical evidence) one of Quinlivan's troops in the Arts block on Wednesday canvassing both Quinlivan and Shanahan manifestos.

I think we all know that something needs to be done about campaign teams at election time. I'm sick to death over the past few years of seeing superior candidates for a variety of positions losing out to inferior candidates comprised of careerists and complete clueless goons who have had society and political machines backing them up.

Why is it the case that poster and manifesto distribution is limited but yet candidates can have an unlimited sizes of campaign teams powered by massive societies? Why are joint campaign teams allowed? You're either going to have fair elections where candidates are campaigning and operating within equal parameters or you're going to have laissez-faire free for all elections..... you just can't have it either way like we have now.

Until the UCDSU does the right thing and caps the size of campaign teams and bans joint campaign teams/tickets then we might start to see fair elections and elections won and lost on policies and not popularity but will the UCDSU ever strive to open up the union? Unlikely.

random_banter

Im not going to spend long on this, but as far as I know, nobody on Quinlivans team or Shanahans team were forced to be there due to their membership or involvement in a society- they may have gotten to know them through their involvement in a society, and become friends with them as a result of that- but everyone on their respective teams was there because they were friends with the person and supported them going for the election and wanted them to get it. Would you campaign for someone if you didn’t actually like them but they were involved in a society/sports club that you were also a member of? Probably not, but that’s just my opinion.

How would you police a rule stopping members of societies from being on a campaign team? How would you get around people saying they are campaigning in their capacity as a friend and not as a member of a society?

Whether or not they are part of a society doesn’t matter- if a person has a lot of friends and wants to run and they are up for supporting him then so be it!

Also, limiting the size of a campaign team would be a hard thing to police, in my opinion. How do you pick out people from a campaign team if they’re not carrying a manifesto around? If a person contacts everyone they know encouraging them to vote for their mate in an election, would this not also qualify as a form of canvassing?

Ronan is a friend of mine, a hard worker and an all round great guy. He has a genuine interest in the job, and I believe he will do good things for this college with his new position. I believe he did deserve his win. I hope those who are criticising his win will try to give him a chance next year.

Anyway, that’s just my opinion/input into this discussion! Feel free to criticise

panda100

pigeonbutler wrote:

You're wrong. College is not majority D4 peeps. In fact the stats show the majority of people in UCD are from outside of Dublin. Just like you and I!

Sorry I phrased what I was saying completly wrong. In those schools on campus where the union has any sort of affect/presence/acknowledgment the majority are from affluent Dublin areas so of course there gonna vote for one of their own.

People actually go out and vote in the Quinn school and care about union elections. Shanahan got a massive 394votes in Quinn where a huge 645 came out to vote. Whereas in Ag he came bottom of the education pile (only 47 votes) but only 213 people voted in Ag cos union profile is so low. This vicious circle of the union having a high profile in only certain schools like Quinn will continue now with 3 sabbatical officers from buisness courses. Its just an observation thats all. To be honest Id rather j pay my union due's straight to medsoc then to the Band L society which is basically what the union is next year.

As johnny Arson said the rules of sabbatical elections HAVE to be changed. But this will never happen, the union is slow to change its stifiling fuddyduddy ways. The boys like to look out for their own so of course Redmond was completly let off the hook last year while an unknown culchie from Monaghan was harshly punished. The inconsistencies and favourtisms in union elections are getting far too obvious to ignore.

We have to start limiting camapign team numbers,increasing su involvment in ALL schools ,increasing lunchtime and evening time election debates before we get a fairly elected and quality union for ALL students.

Byrno

panda100 wrote:

The boys like to look out for their own so of course Redmond was completly let off the hook last year while an unknown culchie from Monaghan was harshly punished. The inconsistencies and favourtisms in union elections are getting far too obvious to ignore.

I'd just like to point out that Mallon is a former Clongowes student studying Arts. By your logic he actually should've been "helped out".

Also Redmond got reprimanded last year for using a texting list of either Ents or C+E (not quite sure which one), not for handing out free stuff on the day of the election. Redmond did it early enough in the election that he could be punished by a means other than kicking him out of the election, Mallon didn't. Anyway Mallon wouldn't have won even if he was allowed to remain in the race.

However I do agree that the SU should do something to make it easier for candidates from more intensive courses like Vet, Eng etc. to run. The current situation is biased towards those on the Arts side of the college (Arts, Commerce, Law etc.) where they don't have to worry about labs, placements and the like. How, I'm yet to be convinced.

Possibly Hustings should make up the bulk of the campaigning, not lecture addressing. This would mean that candidates wouldn't have to take 2 weeks off college to run.

The SU should reach out more to all schools. However it also does take the initiative of students in all schools to get involved. If they aren't happy with the SU presence in their school they should take it on themselves to improve it themselves.

beanyb

Shanahan didnt go to either Blackrock or Clongowes. He went to Templeogue College. It might be a school that plays a bit of rugby, but it's not one of the big rugby/d4 schools. So basically anything to do with that with regards to his election is crap... I'd assume he did well in the Quinn because he does B&L and therefore a lot of people in the Quinn would know him.

Dont forget that despite all the idealism of the union and as much as many wish that they werent (i'm including myself in that), the elections pretty much just are a popularity contest. The amount of people you know is going to have a huge impact on your campaign. I had a good few friends that all knew Ronan Shanahan for different reasons and I doubt I'm the only one with that experience. Anyone I knew that knew any of the other candidates only knew them through the union.

Foxtrol

Again people really have to get their facts right! Ronan is far from a 'D4 Head', he went to Templeouge (a non-fee paying school for anyone who doesnt know) with the large majority of his campaign team coming from the 'non-D4' persuasion with people coming from all backgrounds and all parts of the country, including even Erasmus students, though all his team do go to college in UCD unlike other teams in the race with one team inparticular having DIT and Trinity students helping them which in my opinion is far more questionable then any members of any UCD societies or political parties helping a candidate by choice.

Yes some members of steve's team where handing out ronan's manifesto's but this was down to their own choice as they where either friends of ronan or those on his campaign team. They where 100% never told by viv/steve/barry or any of their campaign managers to do this.

Ronan didnt do well in Ag not because the union profile is low in Ag but because the Ag Soc team who where out in force to help Viv and Steve where also canvassing for Regan. I got on really well with the Ag boys during and after the election but it shows how the Wexford boys weren’t pushing any education candidate but neither where they stopping any of their campaign team from supporting one if they wanted.

On one other note Ronan didn’t do well in Quinn due to the fact that the Union plays a big role in Quinn as has been said (as most students in there couldn’t care less about it) but more that not only is Ronan based in Quinn but alot of the prominent members of his team came from Quinn.

Steibhin

Byrno wrote:

Possibly Hustings should make up the bulk of the campaigning, not lecture addressing. This would mean that candidates wouldn't have to take 2 weeks off college to run.

Thats an excellent idea. Several debates should be held at different times at different locations on campus. Setting up a few microphones and speakers and giving students a chance to out questions to candidates would make the whole thing a lot more like an actual election for real positions. Remember these people are looking for a job. A full time paid job. We are their employers and we should expect them to be able to stand up with a microphone and take questions from a crowd.

Rushed 30 second unrebutted speeches at the start of a lecture that no one listens too is no way to run election.

TheVan

Ok so many people have said things like this (but especially Panda) that I'm not bothered quoting them.

You can't say that an SU candidate "should not have won" their election. Regardless, they did win and you have to deal with that.

The elections we are dealing with here are student elections. Unlike Democrat v. Republican in the USA there are no huge differences of ideals, just differences of ideas.

And anyway, if FG and Labour won the next election, would you say that they should not have won it just because you didn't vote for them?

Look all of the elections were won by a landslide. The only one that came even close was education which, as far as I know, Shanahan fairly dominated.

The student populace has spoken. Deal with it.

rainbow kirby

I just wasted 5 minutes of my life reading this thread, and I want them back. :-/

panda100

TheVan wrote:

Ok so many people have said things like this (but especially Panda) that I'm not bothered quoting them.

You can't say that an SU candidate "should not have won" their election. Regardless, they did win and you have to deal with that.

The elections we are dealing with here are student elections. Unlike Democrat v. Republican in the USA there are no huge differences of ideals, just differences of ideas.

And anyway, if FG and Labour won the next election, would you say that they should not have won it just because you didn't vote for them?

Look all of the elections were won by a landslide. The only one that came even close was education which, as far as I know, Shanahan fairly dominated.

The student populace has spoken. Deal with it.

I dont blame you for feeling positve about su elections I would feel exactly the same if the union was dominated year in and out by medicine/ health science or outlying faculty students. Yet the reality is that we have only ever had one sabbatical officer....ever. Once elections are fair and students from every school has a good chance of running then I will 'deal with it'.
My problem here isnt with the people who won its just with the way su elections are run in UCD. I genuinly dont think there fair and think we will have an uneven represenation on the union if elections continue to be held the way they are.

Stepherunie

I completely agree with Panda. I've had to work with the SU for the past three years about Radiography and every year i've dealt with someone who was in arts /commerce or social science (incidently when I was in first year the ed officer who was meant to deal with my issue ignored my email, it was the pres who helped out). Every year the previous ed officer has educated the incoming ed officer. It'd be great if for once there was someone who was a sabbat who actually had a clue about health sci etc.

Now without question the introduction of the PROs has helped greatly, they give health sci, eng, vet etc who traditionally had a low voice in the SU much greater presence in both the SU and in the faculties themselves, I mean my class didn't even know there was an SU rep for Radiography until I decided to run.

I've made this point many times before and I'll make it again. John Henry Newman founded UCD on the principal of giving equality of education in terms of Catholics receiving third level education. And if you ask me the SU should promote this equality and make it more fair and even for all to run in Sabbatical elections.

gubbie

Stepherunie wrote:

I completely agree with Panda. I've had to work with the SU for the past three years about Radiography and every year i've dealt with someone who was in arts /commerce or social science

And doesn't it feel like they've no idea what they're talking about? I think the most we can hope for is a science student in a position because, while they won't understand some of our course, they will at least be able to empathise with the basics of things like labs

I'd say myself, Panda, Steph and Dajaffa consider running for positions if it was easier to do so.

I don't think people should be able to canvass on the day in the stations cos it really is just people being walked in and told who to vote for, not people making a good decision based on what they think of people. It should be all about debate

Stepherunie

Gubbie you are a genius and spot on. No offence to anyone doing arts commerce law social science etc but they really don't get what you're trying to say to them about the things that really matter to us.

Also the amazement of some people when they find out about things that go on in these courses is kinda funny.

Lecture addressing and the like is just stupid. I remember in first year Shaun Smyth being utterly amazed when I stopped him at the end of his lecture address to ask him a question as to why he said the library was open on a sunday when it wasn't. And last year someone had on there manifestos that they were going to force UCD to pay for our TLDs (they measure radiation dose) when UCD already does, we just pay a deposit in case we lose them which is fair enough as they cost a fair bit but they pay for there reading etc.

If they're going to bother to lecture address they should at least give a pause to see if people want to ask them something rather than run out the door like a bat out of hell.

abelard

Byrno wrote:

However I do agree that the SU should do something to make it easier for candidates from more intensive courses like Vet, Eng etc. to run. The current situation is biased towards those on the Arts side of the college (Arts, Commerce, Law etc.) where they don't have to worry about labs, placements and the like. How, I'm yet to be convinced.

Possibly Hustings should make up the bulk of the campaigning, not lecture addressing. This would mean that candidates wouldn't have to take 2 weeks off college to run.

panda100 wrote:

Once elections are fair and students from every school has a good chance of running then I will 'deal with it'.
My problem here isnt with the people who won its just with the way su elections are run in UCD. I genuinly dont think there fair and think we will have an uneven represenation on the union if elections continue to be held the way they are.

gubbie wrote:

I don't think people should be able to canvass on the day in the stations cos it really is just people being walked in and told who to vote for, not people making a good decision based on what they think of people. It should be all about debate

People seem to say this every year, yet year in year out nothing changes. If ye feel so strongly, what do ye plan to do to change the situation? I wouldn't rely on a humanities based Union to come to the rescue of science related students. Ye are the ones who know exactly what needs to be done to ensure a level playing field for those in science based courses, so why not truly try and change the situation, rather than just complain.

Byrno

abelard wrote:

People seem to say this every year, yet year in year out nothing changes. If ye feel so strongly, what do ye plan to do to change the situation? I wouldn't rely on a humanities based Union to come to the rescue of science related students. Ye are the ones who know exactly what needs to be done to ensure a level playing field for those in science based courses, so why not truly try and change the situation, rather than just complain.

Well TBH I never really felt strongly about it before recently! Always thought that if you really wanted to do it you could. My eyes have been opened though. So yes, I am going to try and change it now.

panda100

abelard wrote:

People seem to say this every year, yet year in year out nothing changes. If ye feel so strongly, what do ye plan to do to change the situation? I wouldn't rely on a humanities based Union to come to the rescue of science related students. Ye are the ones who know exactly what needs to be done to ensure a level playing field for those in science based courses, so why not truly try and change the situation, rather than just complain.

Well first I was hoping that the representation on the constitutinal reveiw group would have been a bit fairer with more then two females and not dominated by art and quinn school male students. However,It isnt. Perhaps If someone from that review board (happycrackhead perhaps) read this thread he will bring it up at the next meeting and alter articles 20 and 21 of the su constitution. If they change nothing else then at least alter the fact that hustings are not mandatory in SU elections.Election debates should be mandatory.
As well as this along with my mental health motion at next council I will also have a motion on hustings and election rules cos at least this will get the ball rolling on this matter.

Steibhin

gubbie wrote:

I don't think people should be able to canvass on the day in the stations cos it really is just people being walked in and told who to vote for, not people making a good decision based on what they think of people. It should be all about debate

Another good idea. There is a rule for General elections which says that posters and canvassing have to be a certain distance away from the polling booth on the day of polling. Even a candidate turning up at a polling station (besides his/her own) is technically a breach of rules. Also election propaganda cannot be posted to arrive the day of the election.

As a canvasser, the actual election day is the most relaxed day of all. But really its not about giving hard worker election workers a day off, its about show a bit of respect and dignity for the democratic process and not intimadating people on the day of polling.