IN SPITE OF the possible TCD referendum campaign on reaffiliation to USI, the national union managed to knock heads with the college's Central Societies Committee (CSC), college security, the TCD Politics Society and a number of the capitated bodies.
The TCD Politics Society had distributed a leaflet on USI as part of a series of political information leaflets. The leaflet's contents evoked some displeasure in USI, not least because TCD students' union education officer John Walsh was involved with the distribution.
Walsh later explained that he was a member and former secretary of the society and had been asked to help give out the leaflets. Doing so did not conflict with the union's position on USI, he said, because the union had no position on USI as yet.
USI duly began distributing leaflets in response outside the front gates of TCD after college security had requested that they leave the campus (outside bodies must have permission to enter the college). This led to the spectacle of the Politics Society distributing leaflets inside the gate while USI distributed contradictory leaflets outside.
USI then distributed letters to a number of college societies, prompting written complaints; CSC chairman Dave Johnson communicated his unhappiness with the letters to USI president Colm Keaveney.
On Thursday, three USI officers met with representatives of four of the college's five capitated bodies in what was later described as a "sometimes tense" atmosphere. According to one TCD representative, doubts were expressed about the legal implications of the wording to be used in the referendum, in which students would vote for reaffiliation "pending an appropriate increase in capitation".
According to USI, this wording is necessary because of a lack of cooperation from TCD students' union, but a number of student representatives and at least one college officer have expressed doubts about the formulation. How much is "appropriate", they ask, and who decides this?
The capitation committee is concerned that any attempt to force an increase in capitation through intervention by the Minister or the Higher Education Authority would undermine the committee's autonomy, disrupt the relationship between the various bodies and be resisted by the college itself as a further attack on its independence.
USI president Colm Keaveney says that, while he recognises the importance of the various capitated bodies, students would be voting democratically to decide on membership of USI and on a corresponding increase in funding, and it should not be up to any smaller group interfering with this process through "political cowardice".
"We are not after TCD for the money," he says. "The objective is representation.
"Nobody is interfering with the democratic right of the students to affiliate and seek funding accordingly," a source close to the capitation committee says. "But the vagueness of the motion and the means of bringing it into effect could destroy the basis for student funding in TCD."
