The diary of a first-time voter: My biggest political concern is climate change

In Trinity, we’re holding our Student Union elections. I mention this for context — whenever I bring up “the elections” in uni, this is what people talk about. It’s an interesting microcosm.

Yesterday one of the presidential candidates announced that he would donate €5,000 of the €16,000 salary to TAP (Trinity Access Programme) if elected. Which, as my friend Conall pointed out, isn’t even enough to get a student through the Irish university system at the moment. I would consider this a genuine gesture, had he not announced the donation halfway through the campaign, because he thought “it would be most effective” at this stage of the elections.

I half expected the candidates to enter into a reverse bidding war. Note the “he” pronoun — it’s all white males in the pres race this year. If these are the kind of absurd tokenistic gestures that happen on a university level, I fear for the national political dynamics.