Endorsing Catherine Connolly is in the Student Interest
László Molnárfi
A spectre is haunting the student movement – the spectre of apoliticism. After years of potent activism, a reactionary backsliding is being orchestrated, obscured from students by idle talk of ‘representing all students’, ‘remaining apolitical’ and ‘avoiding controversy’, as an unholy alliance of student hacks, careerists and bureaucrats pining after government and civil service jobs strive to rollback the hard-earned victories of the student fightback which reached its peak in 2023-2024. This threat to undermine the collective will of students comes from the student unions themselves, and their officers who have solemnly pledged to fight for student rights, only to wield a knife to the back through the shameless boot-licking of Minister James Lawless and the rest of the Irish crony capitalist class. When push comes to shove, they, like circus monkeys, dance to the tune of the authorities rather than rebelling against those in power. There is no better example than the events of the 29th of September 2025, the first UCD Students’ Union Council of the year, where a motion to endorse Catherine Connolly failed to pass after chamber debate by approximately 40% to 60%.
The voices of opposition at Council to the endorsement of Catherine Connolly highlight the social forces at play which are hard at work to moderate the student movement. Make no mistake, this is the invisible occupation of the union by the authorities, who have tied so-called student representatives to the ruling class by a thousand threads. As a result of this process, an onlooker might query, whose interests are advanced, the student interest, or the interest of student officers? There is a revolving door of cushy state and civil service jobs which offer themselves to student officers, should they play by the rules of the game, making selling-out a very attractive proposition. Careerism and hack culture, once thought extinguished by a wave of radicals seizing the reins of power in student unions around 2023, is now rearing its ugly head once again, with the same empty rhetoric being wielded to gut the student movement, returning it to its toothless, performative past. This should be met with the utmost, confrontational and direct fightback, seizing on all possible levers of power to stand up to this hostile takeover of student unions by pro-government forces.
To be ‘apolitical’ is a smoke-screen, designed to evade the very real politics underpinning student life, resulting in a support for the status quo. A decade-and-a-half of neoliberal austerity politics, which has left students couch-surfing, skipping meals and refraining from accessing medication due to the cost burden of attending university and paying rent, deliberate policy decisions by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael-dominated coalitions, is the reality that the union voted to support. Student unions must not sit with their hands folded while “adult politics” write history; they are through-and-through political organizations which either support, or oppose, the status quo. Whose side is the union on? And more importantly, where is the national students’ union? While UCDSU could thread its own path, the Union of Students in Ireland has, for now, decided to remain apolitical in the Áras race, rendering a chilling effect on the discourse within its constituent members. It is no surprise, then, that TCD Students’ Union, after a decision by the bureaucratic Electoral Commission, moved to forbid endorsing a candidate in the same race. This sort of topsy-turvy thinking, asserting that the union endorsing Catherine Connolly is not in the best interest of those it claims to represent, is the underlying theme of the fated decision, and seemingly stretches from the local to the national level.
Catherine Connolly, a left-wing candidate for the position of Ireland’s presidency, has been a tireless advocate for higher-education, students and workers in this country, as well as for Palestine and against American-led imperialism affecting domestic politics. These are all matters which concern students and their futures. Instead of opting to send a message to the crony class in power, student representatives decided to spew right-leaning Irish Times propaganda to discredit her, distortions about her humanitarian mission in Syria, asserting her ‘controversial’ nature, and in the process, became complicit in the impoverishment of students. It was as if an evil wizard, unveiling from his pocket a magic wand, spelled forth the apparition of government spokespeople, to spew their anti-student rhetoric, and mislead those gathered as to where the student interest lies. With an air of professionalism, corporate-speak and respectability politics, the soft-power of the authorities is exercised as subtle terror, with the implication being that falling out of their grace carries risks for future job prospects. Let us all be adults in the room, do not upset the apple cart, is the meaning behind the message being conveyed.
Thus, the oppressed are encouraged to imitate their oppressors. The student officers desire to be like university management, and in turn, like politicians at the upper-echelons of society, in a process of integrating students into the labour market. Those who allow themselves to be hoodwinked by this sort of rhetoric ought to question themselves for abandoning the student body, and in the process, breaking their promise to always act in their best interests. Let it be a lesson, then, to the students of the university. The student body should be wary of the tricks of those who claim to represent their interests. Everything is political; nothing takes place without the interest of one class, or the other, being served. Behind each phrase, declaration and statement, they should seek out who ultimately benefits. It is now up to the student body to hold their representatives to account, and correct their shameful decision.