By Editor-in-Chief, Jack Brady.

An interview with former Student Union President Karl Ormsby on his term in office.

When Karl Ormsby decided to run for Student Union President in 2024, he did so with the least amount of experience amongst all other candidates, and with it gathered the most votes.

Karl was an outsider’s choice. He was a media undergraduate while his predecessors and successor all shared political backgrounds of study, he “studied shapes and colours”. His presidency was a social presidency, reflective of the “extremely apolitical” strive for real change that was indicative of the 2024/25 Student Union.

Coming into student politics as a student who had never been on a committee, he attributes his success to “being loud and always around” and knowing a lot of people on campus. Reflecting upon that time Karl remarks that he did “break the cycle” in regards to being a media student, being a queer man, and being from Ballymun.

The beginning of Karl’s term as President “needed to start with a bang”. For fresher’s week, Jedward were booked to play after countless rejection emails from various artists, including Skrillex, Kneecap, and CMAT who declined within nine minutes of receiving the invitation.

The inclusion of Jedward was a method of madness, striking a chord with both the ironic and unironic listeners. But, it worked. The concert was a success, kicking off Karl’s term with a blueprint for maintaining relationships with a kaleidoscopic student demographic. 

“The balance is really important”, he noted, of the balance between groups of people, and between people and politics.

The role of the President, however, is not inherently a political role in DCU, written to be open-ended in the constitution. Community and Citizenship is the political role according to the Union. What the position did entail for Karl was that of a mediator, not just between students and staff, but between Student Unions, and DCU’s relationship with Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn (AMLÉ), the national union for students.

Bridging this gap between the bureaucracy of Student Union politics and the students of DCU is a continued effort of every administration that takes the reins. The way this is primarily achieved is through Jedward bookings and Smirnoff sponsorships, appealing to the masses. It’s also accomplished through the not so simple organisation of a night out. But times are changing as Karl sees it.

“The way people interact has changed a lot”.

Karl attributes the lack of student engagement to contemporary issues, such as the cost of having a drink, the cost of travel, and the ways a night out has changed from before COVID-19. From the Student Union’s side, organising nights out from 6pm – 10pm is almost impossible when students have to get on a bus home by 8pm.

That lack of social engagement from students only places a further strain on the hopes of increased political engagement which is still not taken seriously by many.

“A lot of people don’t view Student Union politics as though it matters, or it’s a real thing”. 

While Karl identifies the lack of involvement in Student Union politics in DCU, he admits that his own act of “running around in Garfield slippers” could place that same perception on student politics, while simultaneously being his way of appealing to the disinterested and politically apathetic students. 

Whether or not students are politically inclined, it seems as though there is a lack of awareness surrounding the basic day-to-day duties of each Student Union.

“Even one of the things I included in my speech was basically saying ‘you know the microwaves and the condoms on campus are us?’… a lot of people don’t process how much the Student Union affects everything.” Karl remarked. 

The Student Union’s actions are ostensibly pervasive, though disillusionment is still an undeniable concern for every President. Statistics published by the Quality and Institutional Insights Office in DCU highlighted that 14,723 undergraduates were studying at the college in the 2024/25 academic year. Post-Graduate students add a further few thousand to that number. The voter count for the election of the incumbent President Shane Murphy in March 2025 failed to reach 3,000 votes. 

But what is causing that disconnect? Karl acknowledges that the system of governance in the Student Union has too few representatives to address the needs of a significantly large student population. 

“Realistically, one or two people per class to represent 20,000 people – when you go to class rep councils sometimes there’s only forty people there to represent 20,000 people.”

Something is seemingly in the works however, as Shane Murphy’s Student Union attempts to rewrite a pre-COVID constitution based on the blueprints of Karl’s administration the year previous.

Despite the current Student Union taking the advice of their predecessors, there isn’t a culture of conversation between the two presidents. As one passes on the baton, the ties are severed from that moment on relatively, though Karl notes that he provided Shane with an 80-page handover regarding the presidency upon the election of his successor. The paper consisted primarily of advice with the caveat that “at the end of the day this is your union”. 

Karl himself noted that he might have texted his predecessor, Thomas O’Dowd, only a handful of times over the course of his presidency.

When asked about the Student Union’s professional relationships during his presidency, Karl reflected that “it’s weird when it’s your job to basically cause conflict but still have a working relationship” with staff members, including the President of DCU, Dáire Keogh. 

Though the arrangement is unorthodox, students are commended for their activism and involvement as Karl notes of his time in meetings with the Board of Executives after the march for Palestine protest March 20th 2025.

The Student Union never had “ too many major conflicts because a lot of stuff was handled quite professionally” as Keogh and DCU “never blamed us” for the protests and conflicts that occurred during Karl’s administration.

The first semester after his presidency, Karl has spent his time at the beginning of this academic year setting up the Post-Graduate Society with other Post-Graduate students while working on a Masters in Emerging Media.

Image Credit; Aengus McMahon Photography/ The Ireland Funds / DCU