TURNING Any enterprise around is difficult, but turning a troubled students' union around - given its representative nature and focus on unprofitable issues like health and weffare - is a very difficult business indeed.
Yet the union at Waterford RTC has undergone a considerable transformation in the last seven months, moving from near-bankruptcy to a professional operation with seven full-time staff, and providing in the process an indication of how the students' unions in the RTC sector can develop.
"We were probably facing closure," says John McGrath, Waterford RTC students' union president. "The overdraft at the time was pretty high. The way it was, there was just the president and deputy president and they were not able to do everything by themselves."
The RTC sector has grown significantly in recent years. In 1983, there were 9,162 students studying in RTCs. By 1992-93, this had increased to 22,364. Last year, applications to the DIT/RTC sector exceeded those to the universities for the first time ever.
While the colleges have grown in size and influence (Waterford RTC now has 4,200 students), the growth among some of the students' unions in the sector has not been so marked. Frequently dependent on the colleges for funding and with little or no source of autonomous income, some of them have been unable to achieve the kind of growth they might wish.
The situation has not been helped in some colleges by the perception that unions are something to be kept under control. Memorably, the college authorities in Letterkenny RTC once moved the union into a disused toilet.
"Part of the difficulty for a lot of the RTC students' unions is that they have to go cap in hand every year to the powers-that-be in each college to get their capitation," says Malcolm Byrne, USI education officer. "It's slowly changing, but a lot of the time college authorities don't see the benefit of having an active students' union though in lot of the colleges there is a positive attitude."
The fact that students now have two representatives on RTC governing bodies is helping to change the perception of students among college authorities, from one of being passive consumers to that of active contributors.
Some students' unions, among them those in Limerick RTC, Athlone RTC and now Waterford RTC, have concentrated on good management practices, professionalism and the development of self-supporting enterprises to provide income for student support services; other RTC unions are trying to follow suit.
"I wouldn't say it's changing an awful lot," McGrath says. "It's a sort of vicious cycle. When you're just getting by and making ends meet you can't provide effective representation and can't get students behind you. We've tried to break that cycle; we're far more visible now around college and people believe in what we are doing.
"We've set up offices in our other two campuses, whereas before the union didn't grow in either of them. Now we have the same level, as far as possible, in each campus." Deputy president Natasha Hughes is based on one of the "outside" campuses.
Letterkenny RTC students' union operates a similar system, with vice-presidents responsible for two of its three campuses.
With its financial problems, the Waterford RTC union needed to develop a professional approach to its business and develop its own enterprises to pay debts and support and expand its services. It increased its full-time staff from two to seven; this includes a business manager, Sean Butler, and a full-time entertainments manager, Keith Pigott, a veteran of UL's ents scene.
One of the principal aims was to develop autonomous sources of funding, through entertainments, sales of advertising in Grapevine - the weekly SU publication - and the shop; thus the union need no longer be entirely dependent on college support.
Both McGrath and Byrne believe autonomous income is crucial if RTC unions are to continue to develop, but it is not a view to which college authorities are always sympathetic. For example, a number of administrations have looked jealously on accommodation services and student shops in the past. "You have to have your independence," McGrath says. "If you don't have your independence, you're going nowhere." Byrne agrees: "The services end will get the unions on their feet."
Training far union officers is[ also important. USI, of which all the RTC students' unions are members, provides training for officers, but McGrath says local unions also have to examine their structures in this area. "Students unions needn't take a radical look at their constitutions, at when they elect people and what training they give them," he says. "When you come into the job it's too late for training, because you're already caught up with what you have to do."
In the end, the benefits for both students and unions from professional management structures and autonomous sources of income are considerable. While the union in Waterford RTC is still paying off its debts, it has managed to plough money back into welfare services and has developed and improved the existing health-care service for students: four doctors, either on-campus or at locations around the city, are now available for students, who pay £25 or two payments of £15 each at the start of the year, which covers all medical visits for that period.
"I think the whole area of welfare is the next big expansion for the union," McGrath says. "There are so many problems and I don't know of any RTC with a full-time counsellor. That's absolutely mind-boggling." RTC unions, he says, will have to look at the university sector and the way in which its unions are organised, with a view to electing more officers with specific responsibility for different areas.
"The whole idea is to get confidence back in the students union," McGrath says, "and that's worked well for us."
