Callum O’Kelly, a presidential candidate for Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU), was penalized for using a Grindr profile to campaign. O’Kelly was found in breach of a warning by the electoral commission (EC) that candidates could only “use social media that TCDSU also has accounts on,” according to Them.
O’Kelly used his campaign poster as his profile picture on Grindr, as first reported by student newspaper Trinity News.
O’Kelly calls his use of Grindr an “inappropriate release of sensitive information” by the electoral commission and Trinity News’ publishing. “While I am out and proud, sadly, this is not the case for so many queer people,” O’Kelly tells Them. “Reporting someone’s Grindr profile picture to the EC, the EC’s investigation, and Trinity News’ publication of this shows that Trinity still has a long way to go in navigating the sensitivities regarding queer students, and their safety.”
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There was a previous violation by a different candidate who also used a dating app to campaign. However, the name of the platform they used was never publicly released.
“While the electoral commission were technically correct, in that the rules do limit candidates to ‘social media on which the Union has accounts,’” O’Kelly and Yusuf Murray, his campaign manager, says in a statement to Them. “This does not take into the fact that Grindr is so much more than a ‘dating app’ for the queer community: Many of us also use it to network, to make friends or ask about the best local spots when on holiday, to try and find our friends in the nightclub, and so it would make sense to any queer person that Callum would put his campaign poster as his profile pic.”
Despite the EC disqualifying O’Kelly in the last hour of the election, there has been an outpour of support from fellow students.
“Whatever the merits of the EC’s decision, the response from Trinity students has been warm, supportive, and absolutely, wonderfully queer,” O’Kelly says.
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