An interview with Robert Murtagh, the VP for Student Activities at QUBSU.

 Audio link:

https://www.mixcloud.com/TheScoopQUB/robert-murtagh-the-new-vp-for-student-activities-at-qubsu/

Transcription:

Rory - This is a special edition of The Scoop, we are here today, we sorry it’s me now actually, kind of grim and lonely normally there’s Connor and Chris so it’s we.

Robert – Aye

Rory – Erm, We, I am here today with Robert Murtagh who’s the VP student activities here at Queen’s University Belfast Student’s Union. And you’re four weeks in?

Robert – Yeah, although I did take a week’s annual leave last week, I was in Salou for a week which was very nice, and the week before that we were in Athlone for Students Union training with Union of Students Ireland. So yes, technically we are four weeks in, but it only feels like my second week, so still getting used to everything.

Rory – So how was the training and stuff?

Robert – Yeah, really, really interesting, really good actually, there was a lot of interesting stuff, so they broke us into core groups erm, and you know, every core group looked at the same stuff – so leadership skills and running effective campaigns and all the rest of it. And then they broke us into specialist groups, so for example, Presidents went one way, Education officers another. Then I was in with Union Development, and there was some really interesting stuff around like Events Management, managing volunteers, fundraising for RAG, and then of course part of it is just getting to know other officers across the island. I didn’t realise, I don’t think I realise how closely the officers work, we do share a lot of similar challenges. I know in the past, you know officers from Trinity and UCC stuff rang officers here asking for advice and likewise we have rang asking for advice. Really good to kind of get to know the other officers across the island.

Rory – oh wow, I didn’t know that was a thing, I used to think the unions were quite separate.

Robert – Yeah, no so, it obviously depends on the issue, I know on certain issues on abortion and stuff, not just the campaign but actually dealing with students who have come with crisis pregnancies, and whatever, there was some stuff around that, that worked across the island.

Rory – Oh so it’s stuff you really need sort of help with?

Robert – Exactly yep, yep, so it was really good, really, really good that way.

Rory – So, was it eye-opening then?

Robert – Yeah, it was eye opening. One of the best parts about it, I think, was almost at the very start. They did a history of the student movement, so Mike Day from the National Union of Students, so the UK Union, erm, he did a bit about kind of unions generally and going back to the 15th century and stuff, or 11th century actually, where the first union started in Naples, I think, possibly, somewhere in Italy anyway. And then Max, hang on I want to get her name, Max Brady I think her last name is, who was a USI president in 1989-90, I think. And she was in talking about the history, more recent history of the union movement, particularly around abortion and other issues as well, and it was really inspiring because when you look at the history of student unions, we really have been at the forefront of social change, we are often the drivers of change, when you look at LGBT rights, when you look at women’s rights, erm, Nelson Mandela when he got his honorary Doctorate from Queen’s he personally thanked Queens Students Union for the role they played in the anti-apatite movement and the solidarity from the union. So, you realise you’re part of something really big, you’re part of something much bigger than yourselves. And it’s really inspiring to think this is kind of the legacy of the union movement that you’re now involved in, and I think part of it now is how we can continue that mantle going forward, and how we are the drivers of change today.

Rory – So it wasn’t shock and awe then as soon as you got into the job? You weren’t  like Oh My God there’s all these things I have to do, it was a - I can do all these things because there’s a history of backing.

Robert – Yeah exactly, I think on a lot of it, it’s the more micro stuff you start to panic about – who do I email about this issue, how do I write a proper email.

Rory – Oh so the general admin stuff?

Robert – General Admin stuff! To be honest with you that’s what I freaked out about more. Because I’m totally technologically inapt, it’s a serious problem. I was freaking out, I didn’t know how to put the out-of-office on, on my emails, I had to get someone else to do that for me. They’ve started to call me Daddy in the office because I literally do not know how to work technology I am totally technologically inapt!

Rory – I don’t know, I feel it must be strange shouting Daddy across the office.

Robert – Yeah, it is, hopefully not too many people walk in when that happens.

Rory – I feel that might become a potential crisis, a couple months down the line shouting ‘shush, its daddy’ in the office!. So, talking about social change – it was a fundamental pillar of your mandate, it was built on social change, specifically in and around the issue of housing. Erm, have you begun any processes of addressing it?

Robert – Yeah, so the housing issue is a massive one, its one we did talk about SUT, although a lot of the stuff at SUT was specifically about the Republic.

Rory – SUT by the way is…

Robert – SUT is Student Union Training, which is run by Union of Student’s Ireland, which is the union for the whole island. I’ll not get into the tri-lateral, so we have USI, NUS-USI and NUS and we are members of all three.

Rory – I’ll have to do a whole show when we break all those down.

Robert – Yeah, explain that! It’s a trilateral agreement, basically, so we are members of the NI Union, the UK Union, and the Irish Union. That’s the best way to describe it! Anyway, so there was some stuff on that [housing] at SUT, we have started looking at it, but it was something that Connor, so the president [of QUBSU] had talked about in his manifesto as well, I know it was something Sinead the Welfare Officer had talked about, so it will be the case of the three of us sitting down, very soon hopefully, just to work through what our ideas and stuff are and how we want to bring this forward but it is massive, you know, it is a massive issue. And it is something we are actually committed to doing a lot of work on.

Rory – Does the same go for the Student Residence Committee?

Robert – Yeah, so it’s, so it’s, basically, when you’re writing a manifesto you come up, you look at the problem, this is how I did it anyway, you look at what the problem is, and you look at a potential solution to the problem. But of course, before you, when you’re writing a manifesto you don’t know everything about the challenges outside, and you’re doing it very individually. So, you run, the six of us ran as individuals but when you’re, when you’re in office you’re a team, an executive team. And we have to see what ideas will work between the three of us – and bring all of our ideas together. Now that’s something I would like to do but again it’s just something we’ll have to discuss between the three of us and we will see how it will work, if we have the resources and all the rest of it.

Rory – So you haven’t had that meeting yet?

Robert – No we haven’t. Literally, the first week was just settling in and a lot of the admin stuff, computers, phones and all the rest of it. Then the training and then again, I was off last week, and Connor is on annual leave this week. So…

Rory – Yeah, he’s away on holiday somewhere as well.

Robert – Yeah, so, Maggie who works in Volunteer SU, who also was in our class – so I was in the same class as Connor at Undergrad – she’s getting married in Bulgaria so he’s out there.

Rory – He said something about a wedding, yeah.

Robert – So he’s out there at the minute, so it will just be a case of in the next couple of weeks just sitting down and us kind of knocking round a few ideas.

Rory - Particularly since all of your stuff is housing centric, for example the Student Residents Committee, and the Landlord Ratings Scheme, are they intended to be set up before first years come in then?

Robert – Err, the, if, we get agreement on the Student Residence Committee then yes, preferably. The Landlord Rating Schemes is a bit more complicated there are certain legal issues as well, that I’ll be honest and say I wasn’t entirely aware of.

Rory – Assuming defamation and all that sort of stuff?

Robert – Yes, and we don’t obviously, we don’t want to put students in the position where they could potentially.

Rory – You don’t want to be advocating defamation.

Robert – Exactly! Yeah, so you know it’s something that we will have to, work out. In terms of Landlord Rating Scheme. But I think for that it probably will, if we do get agreement on that and we do work through those issues, it won’t be at the start of the year. I mean if again we do get agreement on it and if we are committed to doing something like that then I would hopefully be looking towards the end of the year so it’s for the following cohort coming in.

Rory – so implementation for next year?

Robert – The end of 18/19 academic year for 19/20 academic year.

Rory – Okay!

Robert – But again, a lot of this needs to be worked out – within ourselves as an executive team and we’ll see what happens.

Rory – Building on from that now, you were talking about, in your manifesto as well, the issue of I think you called ‘Double Punishment’ or did I call it Double Punishment – I can’t remember! But it was if a student is reported for loud noise and all that kind of stuff they’re then punished by city council as a fine, or whatever, then they’ll be punished again by Queen’s University Belfast. Is it not really difficult for the SU to then campaign against QUB punishing someone because they’re not fully autonomous yet?

Robert – Erm, the autonomy issue is an important one and it’s something that you know, year on year we are getting, we are making, we are going in the right direction in term of autonomy. But to be honest with you, on a day to day basis it doesn’t affect kind of what we do, in terms of campaigning. There is, generally the university respects that we are the representative body of students so when we do come with certain issues they do listen to us and they don’t – in my experience anyway – from what I have seen in the past, there doesn’t tend to be any punitive punishment for us bringing up the issues students are concerned about. There is a respect there. Again, we still believe, that autonomy is important – it is, more to do with, there are other issues with autonomy but for example the off-campus discipline stuff a lot of great work was done by the predecessor before Faisal which was Paul, around off-campus discipline and he set up the off-campus discipline working group. Where there were some great solutions coming out of that and actually we have seen the amount of students being fined has decreased significantly in the last year. We can still, do things, we can still campaign, we can still represent students but of course it would make our lives easier if we were autonomous.

Rory – Yeah, I totally agree with you there because particularly with the UCU strike which was less than six months ago now, where Queen’s [University Belfast] was saying almost one thing – Queen’s as an administrative executive building, was saying one thing - and then the SU was kind of saying something different and there was a lot of people sort of caught in between being, not that we might get hit with punitive measures but Queen’s University Belfast would be like ‘shh’ go to class, stop doing this, stop doing all that, and it’s just, interesting asking about it.

Robert – Yeah, no, no, no – it is an issue, it’s something that we’re, for anyone that’s listening to this they may be shocked to hear that as far as I’m aware now – I could stand corrected – we are the only union in the UK that isn’t autonomous and again, that might not be the case in terms of…

Rory – it is something I’ve heard as well.

Robert – Erm, there may be nuance to that, but the point is as an institution as big as Queen’s [University Belfast] where we should be autonomous and good practise and normal practise is for Student’s Unions to be autonomous. The important thing to mention is that, that’s actually legal in the rest of the UK so England, Wales, they have the education act (the year I can’t remember) which makes unions autonomous, Scotland have a similar thing – we don’t have that here, so there’s no legal requirement for student unions to be autonomous like the rest of the UK. UU is as far as I’m aware autonomous but that’s just because that’s something that the university had decided and so it’s something that we are obviously, we are wanting to look at.

Rory – Okay, so, in a lighter happier note. You’re now, is it treasury of RAG?

Robert – Honorary Treasurer.

Rory – Particularly for 1st Years and even 2nd Years and people who don’t really understand or know what RAG is, can you give us a quick breakdown.

Robert – Yeah! So RAG stands for Raise and Give and it’s kind of the fundraising wing of the Student’s Union so when we were running for election for these positions, for officer positions, there was also an election for the charities, and I have them here, so there are five charities that raise, that RAG will be raising money for this year, so Cavaliers In Need, Carers NI, Children’s Heartbeat Trust, Cash4Kids, and then they always do one international charity which this year is ‘Ten Foundations’ so those five charities that have been elected by students, that RAG will be raising money for and they just do it through a whole different range of events, one of the big events is obviously at freshers is the freshers pub crawl.

Rory – With the white t-shirts, yeah.

Robert – With the white t-shirts, which is one of the biggest pub crawls, we think, the biggest pub crawl in Ireland, we’re not sure about anything else, but it’s massive pub crawl. It’s pretty big, about 2,000 people on a pub crawl. So that’s one of the first major events in the RAG calendar, and then you have a whole load of events after that. In the past we’ve done Take Me Out, which was absolutely brilliant, so much craic!

Rory – Down in Mandela?

Robert – No, it was down in Bar Sub, and it was literally just we had, 4 fellas, think about 8 girls, and 4 fellas, and I think, if memory serves me. We’ve done it a couple of times, so I hosted it once about a year and a half ago, two years ago. So, I was the host.

Rory – So you were the likey lighty guy?

Robert – (in accent) No Lighty, No Likey. Some craic I have to say! It was great craic we had. People playing for their special talents playing tin-whistle, someone doing some form of martial art, and all it was some amount of craic. So, they do things like that and then obviously there’s RAG Week in February I think it is. Where there will be a series of events, and then of course Clubs and Societies throughout the year often raise money for RAG as well.

Rory – Do you get a say on these events or is it sort of…

Robert – Well, I mean it’s Honorary Treasurer so, not really, you know there’s a RAG committee and they decide, kind of what events are happening and all the rest of it. I will give support wherever I can, that’s my role. But ultimately, it’s up to the RAG President and committee to decide what events they want to do and how they want to raise money and all of that. And I’m happy enough to support them.

Rory – Since you are the VP for Activities, I know you have associations with tonnes of different societies and clubs like Players and stuff. Have you spoken to anyone about solving the storage issues?

Robert – So the storage issue is a big one. I’ve spoken to a few societies, I was speaking to them about other things and it just came up in conversation. It’s not something I’ve spoken to societies about in any great detail as of yet, as I said, it’s still very much early days for me, literally this is only my fourth or fifth day in that actual office being able to respond to emails and stuff. That’s probably a lie maybe 6th day. But you know what I mean, you’ve been out of the office for a while and I haven’t had a chance to properly sit down. I actually haven’t had a chance to get into the new, the decant yet, to have a look at the space. So my plan is very soon, whenever we can, to go into the decant to look at the storage facilities that are there and then I’ll start getting in contact with people and obviously, so under my predecessor Faisal, he set up the Presidential forum, which is an absolutely fantastic idea and something I am going to keep going this year where we invite all presidents to come, to basically a forum just to kind of let us know what their issues and concerns are and hopefully at the first presidential forum we will be able to get an idea as to what we can do, but I have to say there are going to be challenges. It’s not going to be easy – I know there are going to be challenges in the next couple of years. All I ask for Clubs and Societies is that they, they just be patient, we, I have said and you know Clubs and Societies play such a massive role in my time at university I’ve said before and I’ll say it again if it wasn’t for, the society I was involved in for a long time was, Players, and if it wasn’t for Players I would, I would probably have dropped out of university or probably would have transferred somewhere else because I didn’t really, wasn’t enjoying university until I started that. So I recognise the real important role Clubs and Societies play, I think, personally, university would be the most boring place in the world if it wasn’t for the Clubs and Societies, so all I ask is that they recognise that I am committed and I do want to help them but it isn’t going to be easy and just to have patience. And the other thing I’ve been saying to Clubs and Societies is, if we don’t know what the issues are we can’t help, all the clubs and societies will have my email address, they’ll have Alice’s any issues let us know, please let us know, work with us and we will work with you.

Rory – On this as well, I’ll tag you in emails and twitters and all that kind of stuff. But know I was just interested cause, was it two or three weeks ago there was talk about our transition like Queen’s Radio’s transition from here to there. And we were potentially, we were going to be shut down off air for two or three days, think it’s down to a day now, where we have to box everything up and basically have it all ready in a day to go…

Robert – Oh no, no

Rory - … we’re only going across the road and this is comparatively quite small, compared to a lot of stuff that bigger societies have, so I just couldn’t imagine doing it with a massive society trying to move all their things over there, with no real idea where it can go and how it can fit.

Robert – and this is the other thing, and that’s the perfect example of you know, we don’t always know exactly how much storage certain clubs and societies have, we don’t know exactly kind of what the technical issues are, as so the important thing is that when these issues come up that we are aware of them, because we can’t do anything if we don’t know.

Rory – Then, just the last thing, because we are trying to increase awareness of sabbatical officers and Queen’s SU in general, do you have any advice for, even first year students, second year students, third year students, particularly in regards to their now transitioning SU…

Robert – Yeah, so I think, for second and third year students and expert students and stuff who have used this building, my not my piece of advice but my, what I would say is please, again it’s just being patient with us. We are doing everything we can to make sure the transition is as seamless as possible but it’s inevitable that issues are going to arise, we just ask that you have patience with us when these issues arise and know that we are on your side that is, we are here to represent you and we are on your side, and we will be on your side, honest with you and open with you, but just work with us. We, also, I should say, to those students, we don’t actually think there will be any kind of decline in the services  that we provide, no staff are losing their jobs, everyone’s still going to be in Advice, Volunteer and Enterprise and all the rest of that, their facilities will be a bit smaller, in terms of their office but we are not losing any staff so our capacity to still do things should be the same, and again as I say, logistical issues will inevitably happen. Again, all I ask is to have patience. For first year students coming in, use the facilities, really big thing, we want students, because we have SU Elmwood now. We are going to have SU Elmwood, SU Lisburn Road, SU Lisburn Road will be the bar…

Rory – The Speakeasy and everything?

Robert – Yeah! The SU Elmwood will be the shop and where we [Sabbatical Officers] are.

Rory – Which is?

Robert – Just across, behind here.

Rory – Oh that one! I always think it’s that one (N.B Rory was clearly pointing in different directions – got confused between the ELTC and Elmwood exam hall/new event venue)

Robert – The Elmwood Hall, no, that will be used as a kind of venue space, ELTC will be used for the offices and the rest of it. So, come in use the union facilities, there’s actually a positive in this, for us as well, in that our offices will be on the ground floor in the new building in the ELTC [now SU Elmwood] and they’ll be much more accessible, we will operate an open door policy, we want students to come in, we want students to engage with us, we want students to let us know if they’re having any troubles or issues, and we will do what we can! So actually, I think there are some positives coming out of it. To first year students my advice as always, enjoy first year, for many of you first year will not stand, will not be a huge part of your degree. Do the work, don’t enjoy yourself so much that your missing out on work. Remember knowing what the conditions are, but do enjoy yourself, university is such a brilliant time to meet new people, to try new things, so just enjoy yourself and get involved with Clubs and Societies! Massive, Massive thing – getting involved with clubs and societies will absolutely change your university career. You will find passions you didn’t know you had, you will meet people that you never thought you would ever meet before in your life and so do get involved and get involved in the union as well – really, really important. You want as many students as possible to engage with the union to run for council, to run for class reps to run for all the various different positions, ultimately the more diverse the student’s that engage with the union are the better our outcomes are, we fundamentally believe that diversity equals better outcomes. And so, the more diverse kind of students we have engaging with the union, the better we will be, and that involves massively for a mixture of students getting involved as well. Get involved, get involved with clubs and societies and for returning students be patient with us and we will work with you, that’s my views on that!

Rory – I love the positivity!

Robert – I know I think it’s the shirt I’m wearing, a nice floral shirt, so I think that’s what it is.

Rory – Let’s hope you’re this positive in a couple of months down the line.

Robert – Yeah let’s see in six months down the line!

Rory – Yeah, thank you very much Robert!

By Rory Hughes