Who would have thought that Dublin's bastion of Protestantism would have had so much in common with the seat of the papacy? what Vatican City is to Rome. It has all the characteristics of a small, backward, bureaucratic state: an over-sized and ineffective administration is harangued by an equally ineffective union, while the real advances are made by private enterprise. The residents of both urban islands also assume superiority over the mere mortals that inhabit the wider world. What does it take to be a citizen of this nation within a nation? What are the defining characteristics of the jewel in Ireland's educational crown? Most people do not take the time to consider these questions. Indeed within the college most students rarely think about them. Most students are destined for middle management. A minority of students will take up the majority of column ET TRINITY IS TO DUBLIN
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inches and TV segments once leaving their alma mater. Recently, Paulo Tullio regaled UCD graduate Ryan Tubridy with tales of the rich and famous. Tubridy: "But how did you meet all these powerful people Paulo?" With a well-educated smugness the fop replied "Why I met them all while I was in Trinity of course:' They will be lauded and successful. They will employ the middle managers. They will be true Trinners. They will be yow路 bosses. For that portion of students inclined to the future celebrity life, Trinity is all about that cliched threesome of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. All of these are to be found inside the granite walls if one goes looking, but unfortunately not all are represented in equal measure. Rock 'n' roll credentials are all too scarce with the closure this past year of the grimy Buttery Bar, the college's one and
~nity
students enjoying themselves at lectures. It's allfun and games until someone loses an Indian statue
"...naggin-drinking twenty-somethings puking on rented clothing to the strains of yesterday's musical also-rans."
only music venue. Its vault-like surroundings have hosted miniature legends like the Revs and Kila - but losing â‚Ź500,OOO in five years was more than College Catering could handle. For its brief flowering it was the perfect venue for a favourite pastime of the Trinner - slumming. The annual Trinity Ball is the only other source of Trinity's rock on'roll. At nearly â‚Ź80 a ticket, Europe's biggest private party is not your regular student gig; at least that is what the organisers would have you believe, and what Trinners try to convince themselves. Held on a flood-lit campus, the promise of a black-tie soiree featuring the cream of musical talent akin to the May Balls of Oxford and Cambridge annually gives way to the reality of naggin-drinking twenty-somethings puking on rented clothing to the strains of yesterday's musical alsorans. Yet there is - let's be fair - something decadent about expelling the outside world, locking the gates and indulging in some good, old fashioned debauchery. Drugs are easier to find than rock On'roll. Whether this is a positive is really up to your point of view and the size THE
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THE TRINITY POWER LIST liVho wears the plus-fours? THE PROVOST Dr John Hegarty lands the top spot on any college-power list. Not only does he control Trinity, his home address is No.1, Grafton Street. Beat that.
8
JOE O'GORMAN Honorary Treasurer of
the Central Societies Committee ... and much else besides. Those in the know tremble at the name of Joe O'Gorman, a man who has mysteriously amassed an inconceivable amount of power in Trinity.
MIKE JONES Being Senior Dean is not easy: you are the disciplinarian of the college staff. Professor Jones' predecessor dealt with everything from allegations of assault to internal spammers. In true school yard fashion the entrance of the Senior Dean is said to bring a hush to the staff canteen.
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DR EMMA STOKES The Junior Dean is a key figure around campus, since she
is in charge of accommodation and student discipline. A terrifying combination.
ED O'RIORDAN A serial entrepreneur and successful nightclub promoter by the age of 21, O'Riordan now holds the position of Entertainments Officer in the Students' Union. Thus he controls the guest list for every Trinity student night out. Make friends with this guy. ANDREW BYRNE The official elected representative ofthe college's 15,322 students: Andrew Byrne is technically the most popular student in Trinity. A reasonably large budget and a seat on many committees make Byrne a face to know.
THE EDITOR OF TRINITY NEWS Since virtually all campus news is filtered through the paper, it is generally wise to stay on the good side of the editor. (His name is Gearoid O'Rourke. He wrote this.)
of your trust fund. If you are" concerned Jenny" who calls in to Joe Duffy worried about students today then you should probably stop reading here. The ambivalence towards drugs is initially shocking, as is their adoption by the collegiate upper crust. The pinnacle oflast year's end-of-term celebrations was a cocaine and champagne partyinvite only and definitely not BYOB. Yet the Pete Doherty look is discouraged. Drug use is largely social, as those in the know will be quick to testily point out. Only students oflesser institutions [Former eras? - Ed] waste their lives with drugs. Sex, the final party to the threesome, is easily found, just as it is outside these walls. But the attitude to sex is distinctly Victorian; all propriety in public, debauchery in private. Woe betide the student who is known to have sown wild oats in the wrong field.
CHAIR OF DUCAC The Chair of the Central Athletics Committee is second only to the Central Societies Committee in terms of pure unadulterated power, since he's head of 49 sports clubs. TIM SMYTH In recent times the Hist have been over shadowed by their deadly rivals the Phil. Handsome toff Tim Smyth has plans to change all this. A ruthless rise to power left little doubts over his determination while a previous spell on the CSC gives him insider knowledge of society funding.
RUTH FALLER The first female Phil president in recent years should, if all goes to plan, be running the most high-profile events in Trinity this year. Probably the only student in Ireland who could arrange a dinner date with an Oscar winning actor.
Only in Trinity would I suggest that a very public drug habit is more socially acceptable than an ill-thought dalliance. Where there is sex in Trinity, self-deluding hypocrisy is never far behind. For example, despite one of our most prominent union-elected students being known to unashamedly solicit for sex online, there were cries of shock and outrage when our trusty college paper kept its standards high by revealing that Trinity was Dublin's prime cruising location. Students were "horrified" and "amazed" that the toilets around campus were getting more action than some dorm rooms. They were "disgusted" that "it" could be happening in the stall next door. All this public outrage seems slightly overblown, but then again, outrage is in fashion - and Trinity students are nothing if not fashionable.
j
WHAT ARE THE LITTLE BRATS READING TODAY? All the news that'sfit
TRINITY NEWS A po-faced student rag bent on saving the world article by article, Trinity News has been snapping at the heels of the College since 1953. Never quite banned, it was successfully sued in the late-1990s by a member of staff. PIRANHA A student-run satirical mag sounds like a recipe for disaster. Piranha has done nothing in so-odd years to contradict this cliche. Always irritating someone, it has scraped the bottom ofthe Trinity barrel to comic effect. Famously banned for taking pot shots at the Prophet Mohammed. Former editors include Quentin Letts, Vincent Piat Kelly and Nick Webb.
to print ... in a college newspaper
ICARUS Pretentious rag for artistic souls. Full of poetry, ~RUS short stories, literary criticism and, depending on your view of such student endeavours, can be either extremely enjoyable or excruciatingly painful to read. Remarkably it was banned during the 1950s for being too racy. No fear of history repeating itself. ANALOGUE The newest of the student magazines has yet to publish an issue. The first is due this October, and it will doubtless feature a host of wannabe music journalists
pontificating on why Radiohead have lost the plot. Started by the man behind the recent turnaround of Trinity FM, Brendan McGuirk, it fills a gap in the market, as there was no music magazine in Trinity prior to this.
MISCELLANY The oldest continuously printed magazine in Ireland brands itself as 'social commentary' but is generally filled with students using words they found in the dictionary to make themselves sound intelligent. Bruce Arnold and Paul McGuinness are former editors.
ARASAN PHIARSAIG GRADUATE MEMORIAL BUILDING (GMB)
LIBRARY SQUARE
PARLIAMENT SQUARE
CAMPANILE
THE GRADUATE MEMORIAL BUILDING
N .RE
This building houses the two oldest and best-known college societies, the Hist and the Phil. Hear the next generation of politicians and barristers honing their argumentative abilities. Try not to laugh at the way they talk.
PARLIAMENT SQUARE
The first thing you see as you walk through Front Arch. Ignore the spotty students and fat tourists. Try to spot a wandering post-grad, Matt the Jap, who spent the entire 20th Century traipsing round the college. Apparently.
OLD LIBRARY
1937
MUSEUM
(ADING
BUILDING
WOM FELLOWS SQUARE BERKELEY LIBRARY
ARTS BLOCK
(OLLEGE PARKRather
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ironically, the College Park has been taken over by families with young children, who usually have nothing to do with the college at all. Students sit on the nearby benches, their hangovers exacerbated by the dulcet tones of wailing toddlers.
ARTS BUILDING
The Arts Block ramp is one of the main meeting places/pick-up joints in college, and is packed with arts students avoiding lectures and drinking coffee. Choose wisely.
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THE BERKELEY LIBRARY Inside: whatever. Outside: action. During the week it is the preserve of smoking students, while at the weekend it is used as an out-ofbounds skateboarding ramp. The design of the buildings also creates a wind-tunnel, providing an added interest for loitering smokers. Hold onto your skirts, ladies.
ARAS AN PHIARSAIGH
If you're having trouble with your SPARC or PA-RISC this is the place to get it reconfigured. Or to put it another way: this is computer programmer central.
L
LUCE HALL
Where all the sporty types hang out. An atmosphere of physical exertion hangs over the place, quite unlike the aura of casual lassitude that pervades the rest of the college.
THE SAM BECKETT CENTRE Home to the drama department. Piercing screams and loud drumming can be heard emanating from the building - a terrifying experience if one is not au-fait with the theatrical quirks ofthespians. Never, ever sleep with an actor. They all come out eventually - how silly will you look then?
LUCEHALL
RUGBY PITCH
HAMILTON BUILDING
This is the polar opposite to the Arts Block. Students who attend the Hamilton have 30hour weeks, regular assignments and nine o'clock lectures. The mind boggles.
O'REILLY INSTITUTE
THE PAV LLEGEPARK
During the winter months, the Pavilion Bar is mostly the haunt of scientists and engineers, but as the end-of-year exams draw near, the number of students at the Pav increases. Denial does strange things to people. Good spot for cadging a toke of posh-boy spliff.
HAMILTON BUILDING PAVILION BAR
MOYNE INSTITUTE
DENTAL SCHOOL
The students wear white coats and an expression of supreme intelligence. Normal students are also lured here by the prospect of free treatment. Catch their distress when they realise that root canal will be performed by one of the aforementioned dental students.
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11.
T1y to avoid stampeding the celeb debaters
Howto Get Ahead in Trinity In a nutshell: theArts Block ramp, debating,faux-Britness
8 HANG AROUND THE ARTS BLOCK
Despite perspiring Americans, increased student numbers and the ever-looming threat of modularisation, Trinity remains, in essentials, exactly as it always was - a cut throat, old-boy network of college hacks, gossips and philanderers. It may look innocuous, but behind the Front Square facade lies the real college, which is every bit as biased and traditional as UCD students imagine it to be. Apart from Front Square, comprised largely of the Dining Hall, Examination
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C;j avoiding
Hall and accommodation for very well-connected students, the student population is polarised between the Arts Block - an ugly concrete 1960s creation supposedly representing the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - and the Hamilton, another dull concrete building located at the opposite end of campus. The Hamilton, which is where the science lot go, is utterly disregarded by all those who study arts. In fact, the only reason that an arts student might venture into the Hamilton is to use the toilet, and even then, only when the toilet queue
do-goodery
at the Pav is unacceptably long. And in any case, anyone remotely chic from the "other end" of college usually gravitates towards the Front Square/Arts Block side of things anyway, since that is where the majority of societies are based. The Arts Block has, it must be said, some charm. An amalgam of cultures has produced something eccentric and not easily definable. Yes, it's all painfully self-conscious and neurotic, but with good reason. Everyone appears to be better educated, better dressed and better looking than the average mortal.
o JOIN THE PHil
Networking is everything in Trinity. The whole game is about who you know. At a recent college function a member of staff proposed to present company that the University Philosophical Society would do well to see who the college was "bringing in for a honorary degree and tag on to them" in an effort to get guests. "No;' said another staff member, "we're the ones doing the tagging on here John." In recent times that society, the Phil, has become something of a celebrity magnet. Thanks to these plugged-in kids/parasites, Trinity has played host to a wide variety of actors, directors, media whores and the odd bishop. Two figures credited with recent success are Paddy Cosgrave and Daire Hickey, the man who brought us Desmond Tutu and John McCain. Hickey bagged AI Pacino, Oliver Stone, Bill O'Reilly and ... Michael Portillo. Success has given the student society a two-fingers attitude to the college and one which is tolerated precisely because of the exposure it gets for the college. The Phil is like a Fianna Fail Cumman meeting in a small rural area. Everyone is ambitious and out to the stab the next gobshite; popping your head up as "one to watch" is a kamikaze gesture; and in the end the cute whoor wins. For some, this route to being a Trinner is even more risky than copious amounts of no-ties sex and cocaine, with the possibilities for burn-out even higher. These folks often go down the road of "getting involved in college life." This is one of those clapped-out phrases trotted out by career advisors in secondary schools to ease the mind of Little Ruth off to the Big Smoke: "Get involved and you'll meet plenty of nice people:'
o AVOID THE STUDENT'S UNION
If you want to get ahead, avoid any involvement with one body - the Students' Union. If your friends get involved, cut them loose. If your Siamese twin decides it is where he wants to find friends, suggest surgery. An SU class rep or officer hoodie sends an 'I seek validation by association but none of the good clubs would have me' message to anyone outside the suo Indeed the only time Union politics should be approached is if you are big enough, well known enough and vain enough to think you can change all of the above. As a warning, I suggest tuning into Joe Duffy and listening for as long as you are physically able. Then ask
o WORK FOR THIS GUY more pensionable Yanks in Trinity than you can shake a very dull book at. They roam in packs, trapping the unwary with requests of directions to the "Lib-rairy" They bring with them items that would never make it with the fashion-conscious students - bum-bags, tracksuits and rainmacs. They also bring opportunity. Meet Mr. Joseph O'Gorman, Honorary Treasurer of the Central Societies Committee; also known as Smoking Joe, a sly old Trinity Fox. A former chair of the Dublin University Publications Comtnittee, officer of the Chapel Choir and incumbent on almost every significant college committee, he is for some the epitome of the Trinner. It is O'Gorman who runs the lucrative Trinity Tours - a guided tour of the grounds
T
HERE ARE
by students with distinctly plummy accents for a mere â‚Ź10 plus any tips one feels obliged to part with. Those who have the misfortune of passing through Trinity on a
Fitch catalogue. However, for the ambitious student, Tours is one way to possible success and definite notoriety. Smoking Joe is a friend in a very high place - and what better way to win friends and
'Smoking Joe is a friend in a very high place - and what better way to win friends and influence than to make him money? summer's day will hear the staff of 'Tours; as it's known, proclaiming loudly in their best West-Brit: "Guiiiiiided Touuuuuurs of the Colllllege Liiiiiiiiibrary commencing in one hour:' The 'Tours Boys' are a tough act to break. You have to resemble someone from a Hugo Boss/Abercrombie and
yourself, "Do I want to be this man?" Do this and you will never even be tempted by the free hoodies.
8 PRETEND TO BE ENGLISH The English are everywhere in Trinity. Some of them succeed in mingling with the natives, but the Arts Block is host to a hardcore group of Anglophiles who are known as Team England. To be a
influence than to make him money? Some prospective Trinners may look down their nose at such 'menial' labour but before you do, I suggest a little task. Seek out a tour guide and try to find something he doesn't know about the place. These guys have Trinity wired.
member of Team England you must have attended a public school (which will have cost Mummy and Daddy on average ÂŁ20,000 a year). You are also expected to have done a gap year - a year spent doing vague and largely unhelpful "charity work" in Africa, South America, India or South East Asia. This is the Team Englander's attempt to show the world that although he is disgustingly rich, he can also be altruistic. The third THE
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WHERE'S CHARLES? All the cliches are wrong. There's no one called Charles in Trinity. Is there?
"Yeah 1 know Charles. The former vice president of the graduate union. He's somewhat eccentric:' RORY TREANOR
Students line up for their daily dose of Kaliber
"I know a Charles. He's well turned out, slightly pretentious." EIMHIN WALSH
"I know somebody called Charles. He wears skinny jeans and studies English and Philosophy." LAURA MONAGAN
"I think he's English. He wears a blazer and drinks gin and tonic. He likes to think he's a real man:' EMMA BYRNE
"The Charles 1 know wears three piece suits. He enjoys the writing of Lord Byron and has a fine collection of tea party paraphernalia." HUBIE DAVISON
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prerequisite to be a member of Team England is that your social circle consists entirely of other upper-class Brits, with the occasional well-heeled Irish person or American thrown in to provide interest and variety. While on this subject, it is also worth mentioning Oxbridge Rejection Complex, which explains the academic neurosis that grips many students. It is an unpleasant truth that the majority of students in the Arts Block, and virtually all those from the UK, have tried and failed to get into either Oxford or Cambridge. In their minds, Trinity, though a prestigious university, can never fully compensate for not being Oxbridge. Trinity is not Oxford, no matter what Queen Elizabeth I might have envisaged when she founded the University of Dublin. It simply cannot be compared to Matthew Arnold's fond description of Oxford as a "city with her dreaming spires:' The only spi1-eDublin possesses is 120 metres high, made out of stainless steel with a flashing red light affixed to its apex. This, incidentally, can be seen from Front Square at night and slightly detracts from the college's 18th-century charm.
DRINK TOO MUCH But enough of these architectural distractions. Let us assume that despite everything I have just told you, you're vaguely curious about college life. How can you pass yourself off as a current undergraduate ofTCD? First of all, dress the part. A hoodie and a pair of jeans is pretty standard student uniform. If you want to look slightly more suave, perhaps you should hunt out a society hoodie to give you extra kudos, and team it with a pair of drainpipes. Show your individuality by donning a brightly-patterned scarf
bought in Pakistan. This done, you are free to infiltrate the college social scene. Your timing is good. Freshers' Week - it starts on October 3rd - is the best time to do this. Freshers' Week is when all the students who do nothing all year join societies and clubs in a short-lived resolve to get involved. Wander about Front Square looking a bit lost, and receive invitations to countless parties and club nights, nearly all organised by those lovely people from the Students' Union. The next step is to show up at the GMB, listen to a bit of waffle about how great it is getting involved and bingo! Free drink everywhere. Yes, the white wine tastes like vinegar, but who cares? And don't be nervous. Most of the fresh-faced teenagers will be utterly unaccustomed to downing so much vino in such a short space of time and will become swiftly and paralytically inebriated. There will, however, be a number of hardened drinkers (sophisters, not freshmen) who are immune to the dangers of cheap wine. Careful! Memorise the names of everyone on the Students' Union Council and the auditors of the Hist and the Phil. When a suspicious student tries to expose you for the fraud you are, namedrop and intimidate him into silence. If you can actually befriend the society hacks who roam the campus, you'll enjoy copious quantities of free booze, free tickets to the Trinity Ball and illicit parties in the mythical tunnels rumoured to lie beneath the cobblestones of Front Square. Alas, I cannot reveal where the entrance is. Indeed I have divulged all that I conscientiously can without being forcibly expelled from university. The temptation to shaft my peers is strong, but the desire to graduate is even stronger.