Team bonding activities are awkward at the best of times; a group of semi-familiar faces perched precariously in seats with one slightly shaky leg, each announcing a “fun fact” about themselves to break the ice with their new co-workers. It’s debatable as to whether the additional novelty of a Zoom window, four or five pixelated videos on a laptop screen in lieu of those shaky chair legs, makes the experience of bonding with new people even more difficult, or if it’s such a profoundly bizarre method of communication that a shared frustration over the technical twitches and glitches experienced will lead to collective rage and - thus - comradery. Nothing sparks a conversation like the annoyances of modern technology. Even for this DCUSU sabbatical team, who began our term in earnest on June 15, working remotely from home due to the COVID-19 crisis but rapidly developing a positive and productive dynamic as a quintet.

Fearghal, Dean, Chloe, Dylan and I had met one another intermittently during our respective campaigns in February and March, and had celebrated our elections at various corners of The U auditorium one thrilling Thursday night a week before Ireland went into lockdown. Yet the five of us had never stood in a circle chatting face-to-face until the start of September, literally months into our shared term as the SU team. You wouldn’t have guessed for a second given the strong rapport we’ve developed, and the ease with which - thanks to a shared passion for helping students, and a slightly chaotic but incredibly functional mix of characteristics - we’ve come to work as a team since June. Our summer has been unconventional and unpredictable, as has everyone’s given the circumstances of 2020, but we’ve filled it with exciting training for our roles, initial plans for the year, and early steps to lobby the university and government, and initiate activism to improve conditions for students heading into the most abnormal college year in memory.

June saw us receive superb handover training from our predecessors, who took us through every essential element of our jobs and prepared us for the onslaught of student queries that was to come a week later with the arrival of semester 2 exam results. In my own case, I received around 100 emails from students within the first few hours of results being released. I developed a remarkable ability for fast typing that day. It was an excellent way of experiencing the job at its most hectic, straight out the gate, and I thoroughly enjoyed clarifying things for students and figuring out how to answer every question I was sent.

Over the next few weeks, we got the opportunity to meet with a significant number of DCU staff from every relevant department. In my own case, this included the Quality Promotions Office, the Library, the Teaching Enhancement Unit, the various faculties, the Dean of Teaching and Learning, staff from Registry and many more. It was lovely to get the chance, even virtually and with that aforementioned obstacle of Zoom awkwardness, to meet so many helpful staff as eager as ourselves to maximise the student experience under COVID conditions.

We attended an array of USI officer training sessions in mid-July, interacting with officers from higher education institutions all over Ireland and getting up to speed with best practice for casework, campaigning and more. Meanwhile, each of us has begun working on individual goals from our manifestos. In my case, I’ve created a Facebook group for students to trade and resell textbooks, I’ve been building a new grinds database on Loop, and been in the early stages of planning a Trade Union campaign for Semester 1, as well as dealing with casework (individual student concerns) five days a week. With initial introductions largely over with, the last few weeks have allowed us time to tackle specific areas of concern for students, while pushing the University to release timetables as early as possible and planning for Freshers’ arrival at the end of September.

If the arrival of the pandemic in early spring caused us all concern as to how our jobs would now work under such limited conditions, the strength of the team and of the student body in collaborating with us has made it far less worrying or stressful than I had anticipated, and we hope to find the best in DCU through the coming months as we emphasise the positivity our students are capable of demonstrating in the face of difficult circumstances. Stay tuned, exciting things aren’t far off.

- Lucien, VP for Academic Affairs