Last Semester, Christine O’Mahony organised a Black Lives Matter protest for students. Of Jamaican descent herself, and chair of the DCU Black students and Student of Colour Advisory Group, social justice is always an issue she has been passionate about.
What she didn’t quite expect from the protest, though, was just how motivated her peers were to fight the very issues she stands against.
After galvanising her classmates and community to activism, she, herself, was galvanised to take her passion to the next level and run for VP for Diversity and Inclusion.
“After seeing that so many people shared the support for things I cared about, I realised I wanted to run for the SU to try to solve these issues,” she said.
The 23-year-old Political Communications post-grad is no stranger to leadership, especial in the diversity space.
O’Mahony is a class rep and the public relations officer (PRO) for the DCU LGBTA Society and the DCU Erasmus Student Network. She is also the PRO for the Anti-Conversion Therapy Coalition and the Meath Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
If elected as VP of Diversity and Inclusion, although she is running unopposed, O’Mahony has a compressive list of actions she plans to take.
Headlining the list is her policy to institute mandatory diversity training for all lectures and security staff at DCU.
Presently, the school offers optional training to staff on topics such as racism and inclusion, but O’Mahony wants to develop them further and ensure every student-facing staff member gets standardised training.
“I have heard students talk about transphobia on campus, lectures dead naming students, lectures failing to deal with incidents of microaggressions in class, that sort of thing,” O’Mahony said. “I want to make sure that anyone dealing with students know how to be an ally.”
“I have heard students talk about transphobia on campus, lectures dead naming students…I want to make sure that anyone dealing with students know how to be an ally.”
Her vision would be to hold separate classes for separate issues, such as a class on racism, sexism, transphobia, etc., beginning in the summer to prepare staff for the school year.
O’Mahony is also pushing for the integration of more hybrid learning, saying it is more inclusive.
“Disabled people have a big fear for getting back to normal. Lots of students are excited about it, but to [disabled people], it is actually an additional challenge,” she said.
“In my course currently, there is some hybrid learning, but a lot of lectures are saying nobody’s showing up to class, so Im stopping. That’s not a good attitude for class. We definitely need to let lecturers know it’s not people just missing classes. People afraid to go into Dublin on a bus.”
An expansion of advisory groups is also a key aspect of O’Mahony’s campaign. She plans to introduce a disabled advisory group, an LGBT advisory group and a mature students advisory group.
With her conversations with students, O’Mahony said mature students might be one of the more forgotten minorities on campus.
“I have talked to a couple of mature students, and they feel very excluded,” she said. “They feel people are judging them, they cant ask questions in class, and there is no group for them to associate with.”
O’Mahony has several other complementary policies she plans to instil to make DCU a more inclusive place. These include ideas for lowering the cost of the university’s babysitting service, adding more events during black, Arab, and Asian culture week, and opening up the scope for the university’s anonymous reporting tool to include racial and transphobic complaints, not just sexual abuse.
Voting for DCUSU elections will commence on February 16, information on all candidates can be found at https://www.lead.dcusu.ie/
Devin Sean Martin
Image Credit: Christine O’Mahony
