Meet the new student activists

Students are an extremely powerful group. They are the missing link in effecting real social change. But for far too long they have become complacent.

Within universities like Trinity College Dublin we have creative people capable of doing great things to effect change in the world around them.

We need to harvest that creativity and create a student movement that has the tools and knowledge to engage in activism on a national and global level.

That's why TCD's Students' Union, in conjunction with the Phil, the Science Gallery and the Graduate Students' Union, is bringing together some of Ireland's most committed and creative activists later this week.

Over two days - between March 11th and March 12th - there will be a series of talks and events examining all forms of activism that go beyond physical demonstrations.

There will be workshops on arts and activism, looking at how artists are contributing to contemporary debates on everything from climate change to land use.

Theo Dorgan, a poet and broadcaster, will address language and power, while Kathleen Lynch of UCD will cover the commodification of education.

We also have activists such Ruairi McKiernan, Ronan Burtanshaw, Simon Mcgarr, Rory Hearne and Gillian Wiley covering everything from finding your own power to activisim in Palestine .

On the day we will also have a keynote speech from ex-Prime Minister of Iceland Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir. She was the first female Prime minister and also the first openly gay member of parliament.

Hozier will close the day’s events on the Saturday and will be asked questions from the audience about the role that music and the arts play in effecting social change.

Every year groups of students with a social conscience bring motions before the students’ union about something in Ireland, or indeed the world, that they want to change.

As president of Trinity College Dublin's Students Union, I  want to give all those shelved issues a platform for discussion, creativity and action.

Over the recent decades we have seen Ireland undergo huge social progression. However, we have also witnessed an attack of our most vulnerable in society.

Activists represent a vital element of resisting status quo and demanding that all groups in our society and beyond are treated fairly.

Many political transformations have had students playing a central role. Students are generally open-minded and their places of study are a hub of individuality and diversity.

Tapping into the activist that exists in everyone can strengthen the power of student movements’ and increase the impact of national movements.

TCDSU has had a very exciting year in terms of creating the platform for students to realise their potential as activists.

Here are just some of those young, energetic and passionate student activists:

Name: Sondos Siddiqi
Age: 18
College/Course : Trinity College, 1st year Law
Issue: Gender equality and feminism

My story: Ever since I was little, I have been an advocate for gender equality. A great deal of this had to do with being from an Afghan family, being the only girl among three boys probably contributed to it too.

For a long time, I didn’t act on these feelings, I didn’t try work towards the solution. The problem seemed so vast and difficult.

This changed when I was in fourth year of secondary school and my class learned about the abuses of women’s rights in developing countries and that this was often as a result of the low status they had relative to men.

I found it upsetting that because of a few different physical feature, men would treat their female counterparts as second class citizens. I felt incredibly uneasy passively learning about such an important issue without somehow contributing to a solution.

With the help of my friends, I launched a week long campaign at school with the aim of highlighting the abuses of women’s rights and raising funds for charities such as UN Women. We invited a guest speaker and had assemblies and at the end of it all, we organized an international food day to raise money. This continued each year for my last few school years around the time of International Women’s Day.

Even though I felt strongly about gender equality, a part of me was always reluctant to call myself a feminist. It seemed like such a taboo with negative connotations: man hating, abrasive etc.

When I looked into the actual definition of the word, I found that at its purest form, a feminist was someone who believes that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. I felt that there were men and women out there who shared these beliefs but weren’t “feminists” per se. By reclaiming and taking ownership of the word, I thought I could help myself and others feel more comfortable calling ourselves feminists and ultimately work towards gender equality in the political, economic, cultural and social sphere.

What I want to change : I would like to see a rebranding of the word feminism, so people no longer shy away from calling themselves a feminist. I feel that gender inequality is such an important issue and it deserves to have as many feminists working towards the solution as possible. I have learned a great deal during this programme and cannot wait to graduate and start acting.

Name Aine O'Gorman

Age: 22

Course: Trinity College Dublin, BESS

Issue: Climate change/fossil fuel divestment.

My story: I've lots of goals: travel, learn how to make a soufflé, graduate and live in a world which is not overrun with catastrophic climate change.

If fossil fuel companies extract and we burn more than 20 per cent of the oil, coal and gas that’s still in the ground, none of my, yours or any government’s current goals aren’t going to come too much.

Chaos is not conducive to delicate baked goods. Our campaign in TCD is part of a rapidly growing worldwide movement from Stanford to LSE to Canberra working with institutions to stigmatise fossil fuel companies. By taking investments out of these companies (€6.1 million in TCD) and ethically reinvesting them we can help accelerate the transition to sustainable energy sources.

It makes ethical (save us all) and financial sense (google the carbon bubble). Not only that, the fossil free movement is a way of seeing how our actions create concrete change.

In three years over $3 trillion has been committed to divestment. We’ve had exchange students seek us out and share experiences and resources their own campus campaigns. It’s a global community working with our individual institutions but consistently supporting each other.

Within TCD the students union and individual students have been campaigning all year, staff and alumni have signed our open letter and helped with the case which will be presented to the board.

Their and your support is invaluable. This is such an exciting movement to be involved in. Its serious, its fun. It’s full of passionate people working towards something that will affect every single person on this planet.

I’ll get to my soufflé.

What I want to change: We want Trinity College to live up to its commitments to sustainability, be an institutional leader, just as it was during the apartheid, and divest and ethically reinvest the €6.1 million it currently holds in Fossil Fuel Companies. We want to join the growing divested club which includes Oxford, Glasgow University, the City of Oslo, Alliance Insurance and the Rockefeller brothers

Name: Kieran McNulty
Age: 22
College / Course: Trinity College Dublin, Law
Issue: Repeal the Eighth Amendment

My story:

Trinity College Dublin Students' Union has a pro-choice mandate, and I got involved in our Repeal the Eighth campaign this year. I have two cousins in England and a sister who lives in Ireland, all roughly the same age.

It kills me that my sister does not have the same rights and control over her body that my cousins do, because the Eighth Amendment holds the rights of an unborn child as equal to her's.

Whether or not you agree with this view, it should not be our law and we should not force women in this way. It should not be law because we are hurting people in this country. We have, through this amendment, essentially sent women to go abroad and seek an abortion, and this in my mind undermines the intent behind the amendment.

If the Eighth Amendment stays, we are basically telling women that they are allowed to get an abortion- but not in our backyard. It hurts the less well-off to travel abroad, and this should no longer be acceptable. I hope that the efforts of TCDSU along with many other organisations will convince the government to hold this much-needed referendum.

What I want to change:

It's simple- a referendum should be called and respectful debate on the issue should be encouraged. The government should also prepare legislation or at least indicate what laws governing abortion may be if the amendment is repealed.

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Name: Rory O'Neill

Age: 19

College / Course: Trinity College Dublin - History and Philosophy

Issue: Student Fees

My story: I entered secondary school in September 2008, the very same month that the major financial crash and blanket bank guarantee occurred. During the Celtic Tiger boom the consensus had been that Ireland was as dynamic and prosperous as ever, and could offer a future for its entire young people.

By the time I began college in 2014, registration fees had risen to $3000 per student, public funding for all levels of education had been severely cut, and hundreds of thousands of people, including my brother, had emigrated for lack of work or opportunity at home.

Young people have been systematically targeted by successive Irish governments since the beginning of the economic crisis.

Worse still, for the past few years there has been no major student mobilisation in defence of our education and right to work and live. When rumours emerged last year that the government were looking at introducing a student loans system, I got involved with the Students Against Fees campaign in Trinity.

After eight years of austerity, the establishment parties now want to saddle students with a mountain of debt upon their graduation from higher education.

We need a mass grassroots campaign led by students all across the country against loans and fees. Students Against Fees is an attempt to begin building that.

We have held a rally through Dublin city centre in support of the Teachers’ Union of Ireland Strike earlier this year, and whatever government is formed out of the current or next Dáil, we will resist any attempt to push the cost of economic crisis on to students and young people.

What I want to change: Ireland is an exceptionally wealthy country. There are huge untapped resources hoarded by the wealthy and corporations in unpaid taxes that could be used to raise the standard of living of ordinary people. There is no reason why we can't have a publicly funded, free at the point of access education system. To cut education and raise fees is a political choice, and to fight it we need a political movement led by students themselves.

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Name: Louise Mulrennan

Age: 19

College/Course: Trinity College Dublin/ Law and Political Science 2nd year

Issue: Consent

My story: I actively became involved with the topic of consent last June. Having spoken to friends and family about this key issue over the summer, a group of students and I decided we wanted to do something about the lack of dialogue, knowledge, and information regarding sexual consent in both the education system and society in general.

As I am the gender equality officer with TCD’s Students’ Union, I felt I could incorporate consent effectively into my role as a part-time officer this year, although my interest in this issue began long before my term started.

It is a topic which interests me from many angles - gender, legal and social perspectives. The fact that consent is relevant for all genders is an important factor we want to stress in our campaign.

As a law student, of course the lack of a legal definition of consent is another element which stimulated my interest in the topic. Finally, from a social perspective, I am always surprised at the lack of or limited sexual education in the schools system particularly regarding consent.

Therefore, from a well-grounded interest in this issue, in conjunction with the Welfare Officer and other students in TCDSU, we began our work on the issue. Starting from the roots up, we have built a campaign consisting of posters, information stands, flyers, and most recently we have launched a video regarding consent - what it is and how to ask for it. To date, the video has been viewed around 13,500 times. The video, which is entirely student led, centres on the idea that consent is mandatory but sex is optional. We are in the process of liaising with college and Trinity Halls in order to run consent workshops for all incoming first years in September, which will hopefully provide a long term limb to the consent campaign.”

What I want to change: Firstly there needs to be an open dialogue about consent in both the education system and society at large. Consent ought to be incorporated into a more accessible, modern and positive sex education system.

Secondly, there needs to be a change in attitude towards the issue of consent. Consent is something positive. It is for everyone regardless of your age, gender or sexuality.

With this in mind, I hope to continue working on rolling out a campaign which is promotes active conversation, interaction, and positive education about the issue of consent.

Name: Jessica Dolliver

Age: 19

College Course: Trinity College Dublin

Issue: Food Waste

My story: In transition year in Cork, I began working in the soup kitchen Penny Dinners every Sunday morning with my friend Asha. We kept that routine for more than a year.

I remember the potatoes being hauled in early each day, having been collected from donors, as they were too old or hadn’t been sold. We were taught to be careful with the food- to cut off the rotten parts, but peel and keep the rest. No wastage.

The kitchen, which has been feeding people since the famine, is a permanent fixture in Cork city. Regardless of what food is received, it feeds those who are hungry. Some mornings, the potatoes fall through. So we make mashed carrots instead.

My other friend Saoirse is the daughter of Eoin MacCuirc. He sits as chairperson of the board of directors of FoodCloud, sits on the board of directors of Cork Simon Community, and is a director of the Bia Food Bank. I used to think he was a massive weirdo, because when we went on holidays with Saoirse he’d ask her to buy huge packets of duty-free cigarettes to give out in Simon.

Of course, now I have tremendous respect for him. Saoirse’s always helping him cook at massive events like Feeding the 5,000 - events where delicious meals are created and distributed to thousands. All made from food that would have otherwise gone uneaten, thrown out by supermarkets and grocery stores because it’s less than perfect.

What I want to change: In Ireland today, about a third of all our food is wasted, while people in the streets around the world starve. This is an incredibly pressing issue, both environmentally and regarding human rights. Only recently have I realised how important schemes like FoodCloud and food banks are. It is crucial that we develop such schemes of delivering food to those who need it, regardless of cosmetic imperfections and sell-by dates.

* Lynn Ruane is president of Trinity College Dublin's students' union. She has announced her intention to stand for the Seanad on the university panel.

The activist festival is due to run on Friday 11th March from 5pm - 9pm and Saturday 12th March from 10am to 6pm.