What we learnt from our College Councils

UCD Students’ Union Sabbatical Team 2023/24

Our College Councils have proven to be a powerful tool to understand what’s going on in our university at a school and programme level. Your local College Officer has been convening these meetings to listen to students and gathering feedback these past couple weeks to inform our actions and to identify local solutions to problems that arise at a local level.

What is a College Council anyway?

In simple terms, these meetings are gatherings where your College Officer and Class Representatives and students from a particular College (UCD has six) come together to talk about important issues. They have to have these meetings at least twice per semester. 

It’s a space to discuss the classes offered, how things are taught, the facilities available, food services, and anything related to the education and well-being of the students in that area. It's basically a place where everyone can talk about what's going well and what needs improvement in their part of the college. 

Students want social spaces

Something that came up frequently in different college councils (like Science, Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences) is that students want more seating spaces in their respective buildings. This is something we will be looking into in early 2024, so if you have any thoughts on where and how you should be able to relax in between class time then make sure to let us know!

Students don’t like broken facilities or litter

Surprisingly, students seem to want the spaces they spend time in to be clean and comfortable. Certain buildings (will be naming no names, but you definitely know which ones) faced harsh criticism because they’re falling apart (they’re Newman and Richview). College Councils have become a useful space for students to identify improvements that can be brought to management for consideration.

Recorded lectures are not an issue

They are not an issue because they don’t really exist, so we don’t have a way to assess whether they’re good for academic purposes or not. Some members of faculty are against publishing their recorded lectures for different reasons. Still, the Union believes that education should be accessible to all, and recorded lectures are a marvellous way to ensure that nobody will miss lectures. That is why a mandate was put forward during the last council for the Union officers to advocate for recorded lectures.

There are clearly plenty of thoughts about how individual colleges and buildings should be run so, even if you’re not a rep, you can go along and participate in an open-forum-like discussion. Make sure to keep an eye out for the next College Councils in your College. You can find the dates here.