Karl McGovern is a final year business studies student hoping to represent DCU as their Engagement and Development officer for 2018/2019. McGovern is running against Aaron Harper, and hopes his involvement in extra circular activities will set him apart from his competitor.
“I really think I can make a difference, I believe I know what students want and can get students involved. One of the best things I’ve done in college is actually throwing myself out there and getting involved.”
Karl’s manifesto emphasises on three main areas: revitalising SU events, facilitating campus life for commuters and improving the class rep systems namely for first years.
McGovern emphasised his hope for more diversity with upcoming SU events.
“I find there is a lack of engagement in events, people don’t really seem to want to go and they are mainly targeted at first years. So the number one on my manifesto is to revitalise events and have them more frequent and diverse so that they target all students,” he said.
As a once commuter who moved onto campus, McGovern understands the difficulties faced by commuters to get involved in college life.
Reiterating how important he felt getting involved was to his overall college experience, McGovern said, “I feel a lot of people miss out on that being commuters because they’ve had to go home or had nowhere to go.”
“I want to establish commuter hubs on all campuses so that commuters have a place to go to socialise maybe in society events or extra circular activities. I want these commuter hubs to be relaxing areas with access to basic amenities such as kettles and microwaves,” he continued.
McGovern plans to do this by converting the Java Café in St.Pats campus to a more student friendly zone with renovated facilities such as new couches. He also stated that the new DCU Glasnevin campus will have ample amounts of space for a ‘commuter hub’.
McGovern also wants to implement a weekly bus to and from the Omni to help students doing their weekly shop and give more accessibility to nearby areas.
If elected for the position of VP for Engagement and Development, he will learn “from the mistakes Siobhán McTague had to make for the new VP to learn” and continue on from her great initiatives such as’ society and club of the week’.
McGovern’s third area focuses on improving the class representative system. “Siobhan got an online platform running which is very good but it was done a bit too late, so I think there needs to be a backup class rep system. I would implement a paper system so that class reps would be elected on time,” he said.
He expressed how he understands the amount of work that goes into being a class rep and wants to “reward” them for their hard work. He also wants to make it less intimidating for first year reps to be heard at class representative council meetings.
Tess O’Connor
Image Credit: DCUSU