Jason Nesbitt would like to see a designated space in the new student hub to give students a chance to take time out from their stressful college day and look after their mental well-being.
“In this space I’d like to put on events quite often relative to mental health, mindfulness and destressing like a yoga class or a film screening, or a mediation class,” said the candidate running for Vice President of Welfare and Equality.
Nesbitt’s campaign focuses on improvements in discussing mental and sexual health as well as making sure that DCU is a diverse and inclusive campus for everyone.
“I feel like there’s a lot more we can do as a university in how we talk about mental health, specifically men’s mental health and this ingrained unwillingness to talk about feelings for fear of coming off as too feminine, which is, for some reason, seen as a bad thing,” he said.
The candidate also wants to see the return of SHIFT and SHAG week to keep students informed about their sexual health.
He plans to take a fresh approach to how the SU previously raised awareness about safe sex and focus less on the aggressive tactics of condoms being pushed on students while the walk around the campus.
He referenced the mechanical bull shaped as a penis which featured on St.Patrick’s campus earlier in the year which he thought was “great if it’s something people can engage with and it doesn’t bother you but a lot of people can feel uncomfortable around that”.
“I hope to get people to feel comfortable talking about these things but not force it on people,” he said.
Nesbitt plans to bring back the consent classes but hopes to have them at several points throughout the year and not just available to first years but to all years.
“I want to see the first SU run LGBTA+ week,” he said.
There have been weeks of this kind before but only run by the LGBTA society itself and Nesbitt said that he would like the SU to work in conjunction with the society to raise awareness of and support the LGBTA community.
“I’d like to work on celebrating diversity as a whole in DCU because there are a lot of different cultures in DCU,” he said.
“This could be done through different days throughout the year, working with DCU’s many cultural societies.”
He would want to show all the aspects of different cultures through clothes, food, music and language to embrace and include everyone who studies at DCU.
“I’d like to do different things throughout the year for just general healthy living because being an independent adult, for possibly the first time in your life by coming to college, can be a very stressful and hard thing to do,” Nesbitt said.
He plans to do this by having workshops and classes on healthy living at the start of the year with a special focus on first years.
Elsa McEvoy