USI Congress

errlloyd

I know a lot of boards don't like the lack of transparency with USI and UCDSU. I was invited to be part of the delegation this year and went along. Before anyone says it, the truth is I am not an elected part of UCDSU. I do a bit of debating and I have spoke on fees before, they needed a few more people to fill the delegation and I was asked to go along.

I am sorry for not asking your opinions on motions in advance of going, it was short notice.

I am going to post a short report here. But if anyone has any questions on the performance of UCDSU delegates, the way we voted or what exactly your money was spent on I'll try my best to be informative, fair but probably also give an opinion.


Costs


I believe the cost per delegate was 310 euro. UCDSU sent 27 delegates to the conference, which is the maximum delegation size, it's also the largest size of any SU.

The Hotel was the Carlton Sheerwater in Balinasloe. It was advertising rooms for 49e per night, I imagine we were getting them a good deal cheaper. For instance we had the bridal suite with 4 extra beds in it.

We got 3 nights in the hotel
Dinner 2 nights
Breakfast 3 Mornings
Lunch 3 Afternoons
USI Congress Pack including t-shirts, pens, Clar.
2 fairly standard socials
1 gala dinner, cheapest of cheap meals (kind you'll get at a faculty ball)
No free booze at any point
Decent amount of staff help


Work Done

Pat De Brun was pretty strict on the delegation. We were in congress (which means either debating motions, hearing officer reports, hearing hustings or seeing presentations on emigration) from 1:30 - 10 or so on Day 1, 9:30 till 9 on day two, 9:30 till 7 on day three and 9:30 till 4 on day four.

The vast majority of UCDSU delegates took the floor and spoke on motions at some point. Motions aren't mandated (unless submitted by UCDSU), which means a delegate can really use their own opinions. I guess there were some major things UCDSU delegates took stances on, there were a few decisions that the UCDSU delegation probably made the difference on.

Majority backed either a Graduate Tax or Student Loan scheme
Submitted, backed, and voted for a motion called on USI to put pressure on the GOVT to renegotiate Croke Park Deal
Majority Opposed a motion calling on USI to build a relationship with South African Union in the hopes of the Equality officer traveling there. (Which seemed dodge, so Pat opposed it).
Almost all Opposed (but failed to sway the vote) a motion asking USI to put pressure on the GOVT to cut state funding to private schools.

I will try find the full list of motions and post it here, and you can ask me what our opinions on any of them were. I'll try my best to remember. What I will say is that several hundred were voted on, most were passed without opposition. (Like most were pretty self explanatory mandates to get the equality officer to work on an LGBT issue or something).

Any motions that did have opposition and came to a debate seemed to have UCDSU speakers involved. So we were active.


Socials


I'm not being holier then holy here. I actually had tonsilitis all week and so I slept instead of partying the first two nights.

I am not gonna lie, there was a lot of partying. Delegates had to pay for their own drink and stuff, but could take part.

Before I go any further with this, its something people (including me) are very critical of when it comes to USI. But put 300 students in a hotel no matter what the reason and drinking will happen. To me the important bit was whether that drinking effected their ability to do their job the next day. I think they were ok, but I guess it's something you'd have to see yourselves to really believe.

Anyway, there was an 80s night, hawaian disco and gala dinner. All took place within the hotel. Although people were a bit "groggy" in the mornings I think the timetable was strategically worked out so the first two hours each day we were just passing motions as a formality. (Once again there were tons of motions you wouldn't really bother opposing, they were just house keeping, or good ideas).

I'd say the majority drank two of the three nights. I know that the conference never fell below quorm.


Conclusion

The thing that surprised me most about congress was that if you had an opinion on anything it would usually be heard. The FEE guys (mainly from Galway) had loads of time to talk and everyone was given a pretty equal chance.

I did feel it could be run a lot cheaper if not in a hotel, although the whole thing was incredibly professionally run. I have no doubt USI got the cheapest deal out of the hotel. Everything we got was pretty basic.

I think there is value in the experience being enjoyable. At the end of the day they are trying to get students to give up a week of college, do a **** load of work (upwards of 30 hours of actual congress, meetings and working groups).

I did find being in the minority on issues frustrating. Some of the debates I felt were mere formalities that had no effect on the final vote. For instance the room had its mind made up on fees before the speakers took the podium.

Trinity left particularly deflated and will probably leave USI come the Autumn. We mainly vote with Trinity (overlapping demographic of students) and I think this will have the effect of making us a smaller minority. I do get the impression though that it's possible to lobby effectively within USI to get change, Students Unions just don't seem to do it. Once USI does make a decision its a genuinely powerful lobbying tool. I'd rather be the minority with a voice then the minority without. Although I am not sure if its worth 120 grand to be a minority.

Anyway if ye have questions or criticisms fire away.

OneOfTheseDays

I'm not in UCD, but I was a delegate for Maynooth SU at congress. I would like to commend you on the honest and frank nature of your report. This is something that USI and Student Unions across the country do not do enough.


Now on to something a tad more contentious;

errlloyd wrote: »

Majority backed either a Graduate Tax or Student Loan scheme

It was my understanding that UCD is currently mandated to vote for a fully exchequer funded third level system?

While I appreciate this has will more than likely change in the next week or so (whenever yer prefereduremdurem is) it had not changed before congress.

Would this make UCD SUs approach unrepresentative of its membership?

errlloyd

Well UCDSU really had no mandate down in Balinasloe. The current crop of students have never been asked. We just had our two week break, and right before that we had sabbatical elections so in the 60 days or so in the run up to USI there wasn't a lot of time to run an effective perferendum. If you remember the second set of USI hustings was cancelled so delegations could meet, during that meeting we discussed whether or not we had a mandate, we even looked at things like facebook pre-election polls and stuff to see if we had enough data to take a stance.

What ultimately swayed it was the realization that no stance, was a stance. We had no mandate to support fully exchequer funded, or student contribution. One might argue that with no mandate we should have voted "none of the above", but we agreed that none of the above was almost certainly worse then the other 5, and not something our electorate would appreciate.

With that we were allowed to free vote. If you remember the first speaker to take the floor for fully exchequer funded was UCD, as was the first speaker for a graduate tax, and the second speaker for a loan scheme. From what I see on boards and facebook polls I think we pretty much represented the wishes of our students.

Now as for other colleges I do have an issue. Pursuing a 9d effectively meant USI are forced to continue their current policy. Now, if you haven't got a mandate to vote for option B (Student Contribution) how can you possibly have a mandate to vote for a Section 9D which in effect is the exact same thing? If UCC and GMIT really had a problem with not having a mandate they should have spoken for none of the above, which would have forced an emergency congress anyway.

Blut2

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2012/04/03/usi-congress-day-2/

Chucky the tree

errlloyd wrote: »

Socials
Before I go any further with this, its something people (including me) are very critical of when it comes to USI. But put 300 students in a hotel no matter what the reason and drinking will happen. To me the important bit was whether that drinking effected their ability to do their job the next day. I think they were ok, but I guess it's something you'd have to see yourselves to really believe.

Anyway, there was an 80s night, hawaian disco and gala dinner. All took place within the hotel. Although people were a bit "groggy" in the mornings I think the timetable was strategically worked out so the first two hours each day we were just passing motions as a formality. (Once again there were tons of motions you wouldn't really bother opposing, they were just house keeping, or good ideas).

.......

Although I am not sure if its worth 120 grand to be a minority.

lol, well drinking will certainly happen when you through events/parties on the night. I understand drinking will happen with student, but at the very least you'd think the USI wouldn't host events specifically with the aim of getting people to drink if they didn't want it happening. Maybe in future they shouldn't hold these events and just let students decide/go drinking of their own accord without the need for huge encouragement for the USI. It seems UCD spent just over €8k on a glorified piss-up while not getting much done what it wanted. It certainly seems like a complete waste spending €120k to be part of an orgnaisation where you will have near zero influence on in the long term as well if that's the way things are headed if Trinity drop out.

WoollyRedHat

Why are Trinity leaving? Specifically?

kkumk

Great post Chris, really informative! Seems like finally UCDSU are doing something right.

errlloyd

Chucky the tree wrote: »

lol, well drinking will certainly happen when you through events/parties on the night. I understand drinking will happen with student, but at the very least you'd think the USI wouldn't host events specifically with the aim of getting people to drink if they didn't want it happening. Maybe in future they shouldn't hold these events and just let students decide/go drinking of their own accord without the need for huge encouragement for the USI. It seems UCD spent just over €8k on a glorified piss-up while not getting much done what it wanted. It certainly seems like a complete waste spending €120k to be part of an orgnaisation where you will have near zero influence on in the long term as well if that's the way things are headed if Trinity drop out.

Its a fair point, and something I did think about while over there. What I would say in response is there are a number of key advantages to having it hosted by USI.

The first is that hacks never stop being hacks. As much as people were drunk at these events the majority of the time was spent lobbying, debating, or at least shifting someone and in doing so create a stronger bond within the union. At the end of the day the union functioning as a single entity is important, and building up familiarity is important. There is no guarantee this would happen if people were drinking in hotel rooms, or different pubs or clubs in the town.

The second is it means USI can really control it to a larger extent. People were paying hotel prices for booze, so they didn't get that wasted. USI could kind of end the party when they wanted to. And I would guess USI put it in the contract with the hotel to get us a better deal.

The third reason it might be good is simply practical. People could go to bed at any time, their room was nearby. Rather then people leaving in groups and individuals feeling pressured to stay (to wait for a taxi or w/e) when they were tired, if people got tired they just went to bed. So no one was really forced to push their limits. There was also no time delay between party ending and people sleeping, like it meant on average 30 minutes a night more sleep, can't be underestimated.

I really think we would get roughly the same amount done if there was no drink involved. In fact it might be worse for UCDSU. In the early hours of Tuesday morning we had a couple of delegates who were pretty fresh (I couldn't drink so I was one, Pat de Brun was on fire, Enda Conway was strong), while other delegations were kinda just voting with the big hitters we did some serious damage.

The cost is harder to justify. I certainly feel 300 euro per person being fully taken on by UCDSU is a bit much. Like with Class rep training I would be in favour of USI congress being taken on a host campus. Its something I might bring to USI next year if we remain affiliated.

EDIT: Btw completely agree that we're going to have less influence when Trinity leave and that's a big big problem. Its a toss up, do you want some influence over a battleship, or complete control over a patrol boat?

Why are Trinity leaving? Specifically?

Its very difficult to nail down one reason why trinity are leaving. I think in UCD we pay for something that is sometimes a bit ineffective at campaigning for us. In TCD though they are very much of the opinion that they pay to support something that campaigns against them.

Its no secret that the majority of TCD students are pro grad tax or loan system and have been for some time. Yet USI continues to campaign against those measures, and with the vote on Monday night, will continue to do so at least until special congress. Added to that the fact the vast majority of TCD students support govt funding to private schools and USI campaign against that and a number of other issues, I guess TCD just feel they're getting completely misrepresented by USI and don't want to pay for the privilege any longer.

It's not that TCD don't get a voice, they do. But they seem in the minority all the time. In fact at one stage a motion to do with schools was going to come up, particular hard hitters within USI asked Trinity and UCD students not to speak on it, because there came a point over the week where it felt there was a real prejudice against Dublin colleges, UCD and TCD in particular.

Now that could be bull, but it did feel that way.

Chucky the tree

Why don't UCD and trinity form another Union?

errlloyd

Chucky the tree wrote: »

Why don't UCD and trinity form another Union?

Apparently (though I am by no means senior enough to confirm this) almost the first thing incoming TCDSU president Rory Dunne did (after the preferendum was held back) was contact UCD and DCU (currently not affiliated with USI) and talked about throwing money together to hire a lobbiest, with the aims of beginning a new union.

I was talking to some of the very powerful people within UCDSU, I won't name names. They were of the opinion that the main problem is there would be a significant lag between leaving, and building a new union. That lag coming at a crucial time.

Chucky the tree

errlloyd wrote: »

Apparently (though I am by no means senior enough to confirm this) almost the first thing incoming TCDSU president Rory Dunne did (after the preferendum was held back) was contact UCD and DCU (currently not affiliated with USI) and talked about throwing money together to hire a lobbiest, with the aims of beginning a new union.

I was talking to some of the very powerful people within UCDSU, I won't name names. They were of the opinion that the main problem is there would be a significant lag between leaving, and building a new union. That lag coming at a crucial time.

But it's at a crucial time where Trinity(and potentially UCD depending on how the vote goes) are being ignored anyway. If they feel staying in now will allow them to follow through on some of their aims but if they are just going to be the miniority vote who will just be ignored the majority of the time then there won't be much difference if they are not part of the process anyway. The whole USI structure seems a very odd one, one organisation representing 100k+ people who'll all have vast difference of political opinion and who'll form together from youth parties such as Fine Gael, FF, SF, Labour etc. It reminds me of the episode in the Simpson where Lianel Hutz imagines a world without lawyers and everyone is holding hands, I nearly get the impression this was/is the aim of the USI where everyone will forgo their over-riding political ideologies and bnd together for the common good. Nice in theory but when you have such widely different views it's nearly impossible in practice.

errlloyd

Chucky the tree wrote: »

But it's at a crucial time where Trinity(and potentially UCD depending on how the vote goes) are being ignored anyway. If they feel staying in now will allow them to follow through on some of their aims but if they are just going to be the miniority vote who will just be ignored the majority of the time then there won't be much difference if they are not part of the process anyway. The whole USI structure seems a very odd one, one organisation representing 100k+ people who'll all have vast difference of political opinion and who'll form together from youth parties such as Fine Gael, FF, SF, Labour etc. It reminds me of the episode in the Simpson where Lianel Hutz imagines a world without lawyers and everyone is holding hands, I nearly get the impression this was/is the aim of the USI where everyone will forgo their over-riding political ideologies and bnd together for the common good. Nice in theory but when you have such widely different views it's nearly impossible in practice.

I mulled over this for a good while before responding. I interpret what you have said as "If USI isn't working, why not leave and try something else". Its a very fair question. But I have a better question "If are tactics at USI aren't working, why not rethink and try something else".

In the last few hours I have been thinking about how UCDSU could have been more effective. And tbh the answers aren't rocket science.

I think we kinda rocked up, winged it and expected to be able to convince people in a 3 minute debate speech. I hineseight it was never gonna ****ing work. The majority of delegates don't listen to the speech, and lets face it you're not gonna explain a grad tax in 3 minutes.

The embarrassing thing is we know this, John Logue is a UCD student, he ran for president, he spent months travelling to other colleges, printed posters for the hotel and lobbied delegates on the day. I really think its time we started treating policy like a candidate. We need to lobby delegates in USI more effectively.

I'll be the first to put my hands up and say in the free hour I had before conference on Monday, I probably should have been lobbying, I was in the pool. Defo food for thought.

OneOfTheseDays

errlloyd wrote: »

Now as for other colleges I do have an issue. Pursuing a 9d effectively meant USI are forced to continue their current policy. Now, if you haven't got a mandate to vote for option B (Student Contribution) how can you possibly have a mandate to vote for a Section 9D which in effect is the exact same thing? If UCC and GMIT really had a problem with not having a mandate they should have spoken for none of the above, which would have forced an emergency congress anyway.

I think to be fair the 9 (d) was pushed for by MSU, and they did speak in favour of the "none of the above" option. I would imagine the individual delegates from other SUs that eventually supported the 9 (d) speaking on particular funding methods was a reflection of a Union without a clear mandate?

I think given the importance and potentially divisive nature of the topic it was the best that could have happened.

And now for my own opinion of how things should have worked...

The idea of a "preferendum" is a nonsense. What I believe should have happened is there should have been a referendum across all the Member Organisations of USI. Something along the lines of

"Do you agree with USI's current stance on fees, *state stance"

Yes
No

If that vote returned a no THEN you look for an alternative. Might seem like a lot of work but that's democracy.

Mark200

OneOfTheseDays wrote: »

I think to be fair the 9 (d) was pushed for by MSU, and they did speak in favour of the "none of the above" option. I would imagine the individual delegates from other SUs that eventually supported the 9 (d) speaking on particular funding methods was a reflection of a Union without a clear mandate?

I think given the importance and potentially divisive nature of the topic it was the best that could have happened.

And now for my own opinion of how things should have worked...

The idea of a "preferendum" is a nonsense. What I believe should have happened is there should have been a referendum across all the Member Organisations of USI. Something along the lines of

"Do you agree with USI's current stance on fees, *state stance"

Yes
No

If that vote returned a no THEN you look for an alternative. Might seem like a lot of work but that's democracy.

Surely a list of preferences would be a lot more representative..? Then look for alternative preferences if 'None of the above' comes out near the top.