DCU Students' Union
DCU Students' Union is the democratically elected body which represents DCU Students at a College level.
About
Its primary role is to provide a recognised representative channel between students and the University authorities. All full and part time undergraduate and postgraduate students of DCU are members of the Students' Union. The DCU Students Union has twelve elected officers who are elected on an annual basis. All students are entitled to vote for the President, Education and Welfare Officer/Deputy President, Campaigns and Information Officer/Vice-President, Accommodation Officer, Equality Officer and the Clubs and Societies Officer. Only Postgraduate students are entitled to vote for the Chair of the Postgraduate Committee and the Post Graduate Education Officer. Students are entitled to vote in the election for one of the following convenors (Faculty Representatives) depending on which faculty they belong to: Business Convenor, Science and Health Convenor, Engineering and Computing Convenor, Humanities Convenor. The President and Education and Welfare Officer are Sabbatical Officers while the other nine Students Union representatives are ordinary students. The President and the Education Officer (Vice President) are members of the DCU Governing Authority. Cllr. Clare Daly, a Socialist Party candidate in Dublin North, is a former two-term President.
Class Representatives are normally elected at the beginning of the Academic year in the annual Class Representative Elections. Each class elects at least two members of the class to represent their views to the Students' Union and the University. Each class representative attends Union Council every two weeks. Union Council is the mechanism by which the Union Executive is run. The Class Representatives liaise with their convenors. The class representative also has the opportunity to sit on the programme board of their degree.
National Representation
DCU Students Union is not a member of the Union of Students in Ireland as they disaffiliated in 2002.
The officers of the 2001/2002 Students Union executive petitioned Union Council for a referendum to disaffliate from USI. This decision was taken after the officers of the executive together with the executive officers of several other students' unions failed to get approval for their reform agenda at USI congress. The reforms proposed included the abolition of a large number of superfluous national officer positions (such as amalgamating women's rights officer, disability rights officer and gay/lesbian rights officer into one single position of "Equality Officer") and the presence of many Fianna Fail (Government party) members amongst the reform supporters led to widespread suspicions that the proposals were a politically motivated attempt to emasculate what had become a powerful lobby group.
The officers were then joined by the elected 2002/2003 executive in campaign for disaffiliation from the national union.
In doing so it has joined the ranks of colleges who are no longer members of the USI such as the University of Limerick, National University of Ireland, Maynooth and Cork Institute of Technology. The departure of DCU Students' Union and NUI, Maynooth Students' Union were followed an attempt by Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, two Unions who had supported the reform proposals, to disaffiliate, but both attempts were heavily defeated at referendum.
However, DCUSU is a member of the Forum for University Students' Unions (FUSU), which has been criticized for splitting the student movement into University students and Institute of Technology students.
Students' Union Funding
The Students' Union is funded through the Student Finance Committee. The SFC is a committee made up of students and a University Representative. The SFC employs an Administrative Officer who, along with providing support to Clubs, Societies and the Students' Union, acts as the SFC's Secretary. The SFC oversees the finances of its two subcommittees (the Societies and Publications Committee and the Sports Club Committee) as well as the Students' Union. The SFC receives audited accounts for the three bodies annually. On an annual basis (or in some cases every two years) the subcommittees and the Students' Union prepare Capitation Proposals, which are submitted to the SFC which awards funding to the three bodies based on their implementation of previous proposals and other factors.