The University Times, a publication funded by Trinity College Dublin's student's union, is getting into a flap about a prolife student being elected Student's Union President:
The election of Katie Ascough
as President of University College Dublin Students’ Union (UCDSU) is
not inexplicable. It is the direct result of a student population who
have lost interest in the world of student politics and have forgotten
its potential significance.
The symptoms are obvious, but how to fix it is not. For now, UCD
students will wait to see what direction their democratic decision will
take the union. The union will still be pro-choice, following last year’s referendum
in which 64 per cent of voters decided to maintain the pro-choice
mandate. But what does it mean that a well-educated electorate, at one
of Ireland’s top universities, suddenly switched their pro-choice
preferences to a pro-life candidate with strong ties to numerous
conservative, strongly Christian organisations that have a history of
actively opposing marriage equality and abortion rights?
Somewhere along the chain that connects students to their
representatives, made up of societies, student media and students’
unions, there is a scepticism and apathy that has resulted in a decision
that has left many confused and concerned.
As a well-known fast food franchise likes to say, I'm loving it...
Brexit, Trump, and now this!
(That last sentence is a joke, before anyone gets too upset...)
The idea that anybody might have voted for her in full possession of their faculties and with full awareness of her pro-life position, let alone precisely because of it, seems to have eluded the editorial board.
ReplyDeleteI say congratulations to Katie Ascough! She will need a lot of courage and mettle, but it sounds as if she has both.
Indeed! The truth is that, while young people certainly support many positions that Catholics and social conservatives would strongly oppose, I think most of them don't share the bitter rancour towards those positions that would be characteristic of the radical minority.
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