Student criticises ‘shameful’ decision not to investigate TD over tweet

A college student has described as “deeply disappointing” and “shameful” an Oireachtas committee’s refusal to investigate his complaint against Socialist TD Paul Murphy over retweeting another student’s social media post which was later found to have infringed NUI Galway’s student code of conduct.

Simeon Burke, from Castlebar, Co Mayo, complained to the NUIG authorities after a student, who had clashed with Mr Burke over issues in student politics, tweeted an image on February 22nd, 2021. The image included Mr Burke’s name and photo and appearing to depict him holding a poster with sexually explicit words.

Mr Burke alleged this was a reproduced and edited image of him holding a piece of paper, with sexually explicit language digitally manipulated on to it which he had never written or held up. He alleged the post amounted to sexual harassment of him and cyberbullying.

The college’s dean of students requested that post, and other posts about which Mr Burke complained, should be deleted. Mr Burke claimed that request met with little or no success and the post was retweeted and liked by a number of other students. His complaint against Mr Murphy related to the TD’s retweeting of the post on February 25th, 2021 as part of an alleged campaign by the student poster and others, run under the hashtag #freecian, which contended the college’s response to Mr Burke’s complaint curbed freedom of expression.

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The #freecian campaign amounted to sustained online abuse and intimidation of him and was promoted by Mr Murphy’s retweeting of the post, Mr Burke claimed. His name and the university were trending nationally on Twitter on February 25th, he said.

On April 1st, 2021, the college’s discipline committee established an independent investigation panel into his complaint over the student’s post. In a 62-page report of August 2021, the panel described the image which formed part of the post as “sexual in nature” and consisting of sexual imagery allied to the image of Mr Burke. The discipline committee found the material involved sexual harassment and bullying of Mr Burke under the NUI Galway code of conduct. Ten students were formally sanctioned in relation to the matter and were required to pay fines, write reflective essays and/or send letters of apology to Mr Burke.

Mr Burke separately complained about Mr Murphy’s retweeting of the post to the Clerk of the Dáil, alleging it amounted to cyberbullying and online abuse by the TD. The Clerk last October referred the matter to the Dáil committee on members’ interests, having formed the view that Mr Burke had raised sufficient evidence to establish a case in relation to the complaint.

In a letter to Mr Burke in recent weeks, he was informed the committee had decided not to investigate the complaint on the basis of its view there was insufficient evidence to sustain it. The committee is chaired by Joe McHugh and its other members are Sinn Féin TD Louise O’Reilly, Fine Gael TD Michael Creed, Fianna Fáil TD Seán Haughey and Independent TD Noel Grealish.

Now a postgraduate student in Cambridge in the UK, Mr Burke told The Irish Times the committee’s decision not to investigate was “deeply disappointing and shameful”. He said he believed the TD’s retweeting of the #freecian post intensified social media abuse of himself. That abuse included death threats, had had a “devastating” effect on him and he had attended counselling as a result.

Cyberbullying is “very serious” and has resulted in some young people taking their own lives, he said. “The failure to even investigate speaks volumes about how seriously the committee regards it as a problem.” It is relevant that Mr Murphy spoke in support of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Bill during the December 2020 Dáil debate on the matter, he added.

Mr Murphy told The Irish Times he had retweeted a tweet “which outlined the fact that a student was facing disciplinary action for posting a satirical tweet on social media”. This occurred in the context of “protecting the right to debate” and students are entitled to make “humorous memes”, he said. “I believe NUIG was wrong to discipline the student concerned and I am glad that the committee on members’ interests unanimously found that there was no evidence to sustain the complaint against me.”