Politicians, policymakers and "opinion leaders" are to be asked their views of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) as part of a bid by the union's leaders to revamp the organisation.
USI's trustees have commissioned outside consultants to analyse the organisation. The consultants will present their results to the union's national congress at the end of this month and their analysis will form the basis for a review of the union's strategy. They will report formally to USI's trustees some weeks later. Each member union of USI will be sent a questionnaire. Former student politicians will also be interviewed by the consultants.
Pat Brady, the USI trustee who informed the union of the review at the beginning of last week, said it was almost a decade since USI last undertook "a fundamental review of its operations". Since then "much had changed", including the reaffiliation of the student unions at UCD, UCC and the American College, Dublin. "The whole educational landscape has undergone major change. The external environment is now also quite different - in particular, with the ever-increasing importance of information technology in all aspects of people's lives."
Brady predicted USI would have "a potentially significant role to play in Irish society" if "the issues thrown up by this stock-taking exercise are addressed, and the agreed strategy acted on".
Brady is himself a former USI president. His fellow trustees are another former president, Maxine Brady, and Eamonn Waters of the National Youth Council of Ireland.
The initiative has been welcomed by officers of the union on both sides of the present political controversy in USI.
USI president Dermot Lohan urged people "who hold different points of view on current issues" to give the project their full support. He said the next millennium "will present a whole new range of challenges for Irish students, their student unions and USI".
He called USI "a precious commodity in Irish life that would wither and die" if it was not in a position to "take up new challenges". USI welfare officer Siobhan Fearon, who has said she will support any bid for Lohan's dismissal, also welcomed the review. "I think it's an excellent idea and a long overdue measure. I was a bit worried that the consultants are reporting back so quickly. They have a very tight schedule, but they have said they will be taking time to consider different views fully."
Fearon says the consultants "will work with whatever congress decides" on the configuration of the officer board.
"The review will not be dealing with the political side of things and will not be trying to heal rifts that emerged between the people involved in the union this year. To be honest, I think some of those rifts are too far gone to heal anyway."
Instead, the consultants would be undertaking a "strategic review of our structures and the services we offer students", she said. The president of Waterford Institute of Technology's students' union, Mark Kelly, says he hopes USI congress will see both sides of the political divide in the union "sit down and seriously discuss" the consultants' report. "There's not enough of that going on, and hopefully this will provide people with the opportunity to air their differences and come out of congress with a more positive footing."
Waterford IT's union hired Northern Ireland-based management consultants to review its structures in January. That report will be submitted in just over a fortnight.
Waterford students will vote tomorrow on a new constitution for their union.
