Hey guys!
This post is going to be a little different to what you would normally see on Sparkle of Pink. As a politics student in UCD, I felt like I had to post about the current SU situation in UCD before the election is held tomorrow.
As some of you may know, tomorrow and Thursday, the student body in UCD will be voting on whether or not to impeach our SU President, Katie Ascough. The movement began after some of Ascough's actions during the summer and at the start of the academic year became campus-wide knowledge and her actions did not sit well with some students.
I did not vote for Katie during the elections last year but I was ready to accept her as my SU President based on her mandate that was shared during the election. While we do not share some views, I never held this against her as she is entitled to her opinion, just like everyone else.
During the run-up to the referendum, I have read posts and listened to campaigners on both sides. While Katie has run with the bullying that she has experienced since the petition was brought about, as her main tactic, the Yes side of the campaign has exposed the undemocratic and sneaky actions Katie has taken since becoming our President. Firstly, I do not think Katie has experienced bullying at all, the Yes side of the campaign has taken the democratic, and only route available to them as UCD students, to impeach a President who they believe has wholly manipulated them and broken her election promises since the beginning. This was not set out to be an attack on Katie as a person, it was to remove a President they saw as unfit to carry out the role of the UCD SU President, without letting her personal views get in the way of the UCD SU mandate.
During her election campaign, Katie promised to delegate issues regarding abortion as her personal views clashed with the democratically voted pro-choice stance of the SU. However, since beginning her role as President, Katie has failed to do this.
Barry Murphy, our Campaigns and Communications officer shed some light on what went on behind closed doors last night, ahead of the election. During the summer, Katie tried to manipulate him into reducing the budget spent on the repeal campaign, while trying to increase other spending. While I understand a repeal campaign is something Katie does not personally believe in, she knew, while running for election, that if she won, she would be representing an SU that had adopted a pro-choice stance and she could not change this. Why then, did she attempt to reduce the budget for the campaign with the referendum looming on us?
The Winging It handbook is an SU book that is given to UCD freshers at the beginning of the year. I loved it last year and as a peer mentor this year, I was excited to see what my mentees thought of it. I was shocked to discover that the information on abortion was removed from the book while other, somewhat controversial but humorous information was left in. Within a few weeks, it became known that Katie was the one who removed this information. While she was uncomfortable with the information on the page, it was left in and sent to print before the deadline. However, weeks later, Katie told the other SU officers that the books had to be reprinted as, after consultation with the SU lawyer, she discovered that the information was illegal. This 'discovery' baffled me as the SU officers were all present for training where they were told the abortion information in the book was illegal but also something the student body needed to know and last year's SU was proud of distributing.
The book ended up being scrapped and the SU, led and decided by Katie, ended up reprinting the handbook, incurring costs of €7000. This leads me to question was Katie ever really concerned with a budget? Was she just censoring information? How likely was a legal case, especially with the referendum being next year? I understand Katie's concern but the fine WOULD HAVE been less than the €7000 spent on reprinting and she should have given the other officers access to the SU lawyer and ended up redrafting the page herself (breaking her delegation promise), not showing it to the lawyer before sending it to print and the page still contains illegal information.
Katie has taken further undemocratic actions towards the UCD for Choice group and pro-choice class representatives since the Winging It controversy. Katie has the right to be pro-life. That is not the issue here. The issue is that she has repeatedly taken actions to prevent the SU for representing the pro-choice stance my college and peers voted for. It is a stance the majority voted for and Katie knew when taking on the role that she was expected to adopt the pro-choice mandate while carrying out her role SU President, Katie was not naive when she knew this was expected of her.
The majority of her fellow SU officers have lost confidence in her, those who work with her each day, no longer believe she is fit to carry out her role. Katie has broken her own campaign promises again and again and I believe she will do so again. Her personal views are getting in the way of her public role and has broken student body confidence in the SU.
Tomorrow, I will be voting to impeach my SU President. Not because she is pro-life, not because of her views on marriage equality, but because of her broken promises and actions taken against the UCD SU mandate. A mandate she promised to uphold when she won the SU election last year.
Ciara,
xoxo.
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