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UCD confirms security and RAs may film inside Student Residences Students report the filming of residences without permission
by Katie Hughes · News Editor
UCD confirm security personnel and RAs may film inside student residences SU investigates allegations of filming Students’ Union President describes filming as “a human rights issue” by Jon Hozier-Byrne · Editor
UCD have confirmed that security staff are now equipped with security cameras and may film inside Student Residences, as may Residential Assistants who request the use of a recording device. This confirmation was made after reports gathered by the University Observer from students living on campus asserted that their apartments have been filmed by UCD personnel in the past week. Students’ Union President Pat de Brún further corroborated this assertion, saying, “Once we heard some anecdotal evidence of this, we began actively investigating it via the Res reps and other sources, trying to get some accounts, and that process is ongoing ... I’ve heard five or six reports ... This is something that I would regard as extremely serious. I think it’s a human rights issue and I think if it is happening the fact that no consultation and no notification has taken place isn’t acceptable.” A spokesperson for UCD stated, “Security staff have recording devices as part of their equipment, and they may be used to record incidents on campus. If attending to a reported incident in a student apartment, security staff must be accompanied by an RA at all times.
Belgrove Student Residences Photographer: Conor O’Toole An RA may separately request the use of a recording device themselves when they are attending incidents in student residences, but they must alert those in the vicinity when such devices are in use when attending an apartment.” The spokesperson for UCD also affirmed “Recorded incidents are only viewed and used as support materials when incidents are investigated under the License to Reside or the Student Code.” This conflicts with the account of one student living in Residences, who claimed, “There was one incident at about four o’clock in the morning a week ago ... a security guard came in, said ‘What’s going on here, you’ve been making noise’, and proceeded to come into the house. He walked around with
a camera ... he walked around and filmed all our stuff.” The student, who wished to remain anonymous, went on to say, “There was nothing really to warrant what happened at the time ... there was no noise going on, there was no reason for them to come up here in the first place.” When asked whether the member of the security staff was accompanied by an RA, the student stated, “It was just the security guard.” De Brún also stated that this was not the first time the filming of student residences by UCD personnel has been reported. “This is something which came to our attention first back in the summer, we heard some kind of rumours or reports that this was happening, and
we were extremely concerned ... We were told that it was not going to be implemented, that they were looking into it and that they trialled it, but that it wasn’t going to happen, and it wouldn’t happen without notifying students first via the SU ... There has been no contact with the Students’ Union about that since, and it’s something we felt very, very strongly about. I think it’s a huge invasion of privacy and it’s something I’m really concerned about.” When asked what course of action the SU would take regarding the matter, De Brún stated, “The first port of call is to find out exactly what the situation is, and how this was allowed to happen. The next step is to stop it, as soon as possible.”
Students’ Union shops making loss by Katie Hughes · News Editor
The Students’ Union shops across campus have been found to be making a “significant but not insurmountable” loss. Following the engagement of an external accountancy firm to prepare the Students’ Union’s accounts for the past number of years, an exact log of the various shops’ performance this year has been kept. UCD Students’ Union President, Pat de Brún stated that “We’ve got that information in the last week and based on that, we’ve immediately engaged with the staff. The fact is that the shops are currently in a loss-making situation, the extent of which is to be finalised; certainly, as soon as we got this infor-
Students’ Union release 2007/2008 accounts
mation, we’re factoring it into the overall business plan.” The extent of the loss is remaining confidential for the time being, “for no other reason other than we’re trying to work with our staff to improve things. It’s a very serious challenge that we’re faced with but at the end of the day there’s a lot to be positive about.” Due to construction works taking place in the Science hub, a thirty to forty per cent reduction in sales has occurred in that particular outlet. With further building work to take place, the unit will no longer be available to the Union in the near future. According to de Brún, no definite decisions have yet been made with regards the Science Centre unit, “we don’t want to
act unilaterally on this, we want staff to be involved, we want everyone to work together on this plan.” De Brún expressed hope for the shops, saying that “we’ve a 25,000 person captive audience, we’re in a unique position where our rent is low. We have a huge amount to offer our students and our customers, and we’re in a position where our turnover is already very high. We just need to look at our margins, we need to look at our range of products, we need to do more marketing, market research, customer care – areas like this will really boost our margins. It’s the little things that can make the difference, and we’ve seen that already with little changes we’ve been trying to make.”
He continued to say that while providing a value for money service to staff and students alike was a priority, the shops would have to begin to contribute to the Union budget as opposed to deducting from it, as is currently the case. De Brún concluded by acknowledging the challenges ahead, but expressed his faith in the future of the Union’s retail operations, “there’s a huge challenge in front of us and everyone is aware of that, but I have huge faith in the potential of our retail operations, I see a bright future for them. Things haven’t been done perfectly in the past and it will take a certain amount of work to get to a point where we can be happy.”
The Students’ Union has recently received its accounts for 2007/2008 from the accountancy firm hired last year to prepare a full financial representation of the past number of years. The accounts revealed that the Union had begun to lose money at around the 2007/2008 point, which was followed by a four to five year decline, leaving them up to €1 million in debt in 2012. UCD Students’ Union President, Pat de Brún explained that the losses were divided fairly equally between the shops and services, and the remaining Union activities, “There was nothing huge that jumped out apart from that this was the point in time where it should have been nipped in the bud. This is where the red flag should have been raised and actions should have been taken.” In 2006, the Union, not including Union services, incurred a loss of €18,000, which increased to €38,000 in 2007. De Brún justified the losses, saying that losses along the scale of those sustained in 2005/2006 and 2006/2007 would have been budgeted for on an understanding that a surplus from the shops would have contributed to covering the Union’s losses. However, on closer examination of the shop accounts for 2007, a €2,500 loss was found to have been made, which increased to €47,000 in 2008; this discrepancy showed that the shops’ final balance and the Union activity deficit for the year did not reconcile. As the accounts for each year are not yet available, the years do not correspond, they merely give a level of trend. De Brún attributed the €47,000 loss in 2008 to the inclusion of the Earlsfort Terrace shop in the accounts. At about this time, many students, including those from the School of Medicine, would have moved from Earlsfort Terrace to the Belfield campus, which would have contributed to the loss, “it’s natural that these things would happen in business, that contributory factors would reduce income or increase costs, but it’s the fact that not enough seems to have been done to tackle it at the time and it was left to increase.” According to de Brún, “In an ideal situation, and what could have been expected at that point, would be that the loss in the Union would match the profit in the shops but we’re seeing a situation where a loss in the Union is actually less than the loss in the shops. So … you can quite quickly see how over a period of five years a deficit to the scale that we’re faced with has accumulated.” As full accounts have yet to be published, it is not yet possible to pinpoint the exact year the losses became more significant, “I’m working under the assumption, and it’s quite an educated assumption, that the trends were downward in both the shops and the Union in each successive year. So, if you were to take the losses from the shops in 2008, this is just the information we have, and the losses from the rest of the Union in 2007, that together would be in the region of €85,000 to €90,000. If that goes up by a few percentage points the following year, it looks like it has been exponential.” The final 2011 accounts are expected in early April, with previous years’ accounts being released up to that date.