Design and Layout Huda Awan Hon. Librarian
Registrar’s Introduction - Cian Henry
Edited by
The purpose of this magazine is two-fold. Firstly it is to keep our Alumni up to speed with all things Phil. In the past few years the Society has grown hugely, boasting over 10,000 members and an increasingly diversified range of events, initiatives and activities. From our classic Thursday night debates to our Philspeaks schools debating programme, Bram Stoker Club paper-readings and our international competitive debating success, The Phil has solidified its reputation as the premier society on campus. Being involved with The Phil has been a special and defining experience for me, as I hope it was for you.
Cian Henry Hon. Registar
Contributors Ludivine Rebet Hon. President
Matthew Nuding Hon. Secretary Stepan Lavrouk Hon. Treasurer Conan Quinn Debates Convenor Rachael O’Byrne, Sch. Hon. Schools Convenor Conor Scully Chair, Bram Stoker Club
Hello and welcome to the inaugural Phil Alumni Review! My name is Cian and I am the Registrar for the 331st session of the University Philosophical Society.
The second is to inform you of and invite you to this session’s Honorary Members dinner and debate. This will be taking place on the evening of Thursday 10th March. All Alumni are invited and we would love to see as many as possible there - firstly for dinner and then for our Thursday night debate in which we hope to have some Alumni speaking. Please contact me if you are interested - I will be in touch with further details. My hope is that the event will bring together Alumni from all eras in a fitting celebration of the Society and our memories and experiences of it. I hope you will find this update on the progress of the Society interesting and indeed that you can join us in March for the Dinner and Debate. I have endeavoured to distribute this magazine to as many alumni as possible - if, we have missed someone, as is inevitable, please let me know of their details and I will ensure they receive a copy. As ever, my contact is registrar@tcdphil.com - please don’t hesitate to contact me about anything you may wish. Maintaining a high standard of contact and relations with our Alumni is a priority for me, and for the 331st. Best wishes, Cian Henry Hon. Registrar, 331st Session.
President’s Welcome - Ludivine Rebet
Taking up the role of President in March was intimidating, to say the least. Over the past five centuries the world’s pre-eminent thinkers, innovators and influencers have spoken, debated and challenged minds at the University Philosophical Society. The Phil has recorded the presence of remarkable members including Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett. We have welcomed an even greater number of exceptional individuals to speak in our chamber, from Winston Churchill to Alexis de Tocqueville and in more recent decades Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Nobel Peace Prize Laureates David Trimble and John Hume.
It felt like an gargantuan task to take responsibility for a society boasting 10,000 members, managing a building dating back to 1902, overseeing the visits of world renowned guests, controlling a generous and healthy budget as well as maintaining the Phil’s reputation as an integral part of Trinity’s social life and also facilitating discourse through our debates and paper-readings. Then I was reminded that this precise thing is the beauty of the society. Year in and year out a bunch of twenty something year old friends are trusted to run an organisation which is much bigger than they are, and so meaningful to so many people. And every year we pull it off! Insofar as the guest-work goes, this side of term has been fruitful. We have already hosted British actor Steve Coogan, award winning director Baz Luhrmann, Apple CEO Tim Cook, the first female director of CERN Fabiola Gianotti, hat designer Philip Treacy, the band Snow Patrol and six further Honorary Patrons. Next term we are expecting just as many with guests including CEO of Pepsi Indra Nooyi, Greece’s ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, performance artist Marina Abramovic, author Margaret Atwood and many more confirmed. I am making the most of my sabbatical year to expand the Phil’s reach, and capitalise on some of the wonderful relationships we have built with other societies over the years. We hosted a hugely successful ‘University Challenge: An Inter-societies edition’ quiz in November which brought over 40 different societies into the GMB for a fun evening exercising healthy rivalries. In February we are running a three day festival with Players to celebrate the 1916 rising in a fresh, accessible and creative way. We are also working with the Students Union in March on Trinity’s first Activism Festival, encouraging students to ‘turn theory into action’ - a motto which has the potential to motivate many debaters! Last year’s President, Sarah Mortell, created the ‘Eliz Women’s Speaker Series’ to promote the involvement of women in public life and to honour the Elizabethan Society, the all-female debating society which existed in Trinity until 1981 before it merged with The Phil. This year, we have launched an ‘Equality and Diversity Series’ to raise awareness around issues racial discrimination, social inequality and LGBT rights. Additionally, The Phil is expanding its outreach initiatives, continuing to build on its relationship with Trinity Access Programme and running specific public speaking workshops for students who came to Trinity through the TAP programmes.
I am very hopeful that this 331st session of the Phil is working towards achieving a fair balance of respect for tradition and those who came before us, as well as continuing to look forward, innovating, and never forgetting to have fun and embrace the present moment. I look forward to your reading more about all of that in this magazine!
Guests of the 331st Session Steve Coogan is an english actor, stand-up comedian, impressionist, writer, and producer. Best known for roles as Alan Partridge as well as in Philomena, Hamlet 2 or the Night at the Museum movies with Ben Stiller. Dame Evelyn Glennie DBE is a Scottish virtuoso percussionist who has also been deaf since the age of 12! She is one of the two laureates for the Polar Music Prize of 2015 which is widely regarded as the foremost musical honour. Baz Luhrmann is an Australian film director, screenwriter and producer. His best known films are Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo + Juliet (1996), Moulin Rouge (2001), Australia (2008) and more recently The Great Gatsby (2013). Ex-Phil President and founder of Websummit Paddy Cosgrave with founder of Hailo and Verify, Jay Bregman. Pete Wentz, is an American musician best known for being the bassist, primary lyricist and backing vocalist for the American rock band Fall Out Boy. Weird Al is an American singer, songwriter, parodist, record producer, satirist, actor, music video director, film producer, and author. His works have earned him four Grammy Awards and a further 11 nominations, four gold records and six platinum records in the United States. In addition to recording his albums, Weird Al wrote and starred in the film UHF (1989) and The Weird Al Show (1997). Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor is widely regarded as the best darts player of all time. He has won over 200 professional tournaments which include 83 major titles and a record 16 World Championships. No darts player in the world has a winning record in matches against him. Fabiola Gianotti is an Italian particle physicist. She has been selected by CERN Council as the Organization’s next Director-General and she will be the first woman to hold this position. Great to see such a successful woman in the field of science! Ed Catmull is a computer scientist, President of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Tim Cook served as executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations, and was chief operating officer until he was named CEO of Apple in 2011.
Marina Abramović is a Serbian performance artist based in New York. She is hugely influential in the art world and has been described as the ‘grandmother of performance art’. Marina shot to mass levels of fame in 2010 due to her collaborations with Jay Z and Lady Gaga and the hugely successful piece ‘The Artist Is Present’ which was the longest running performance art piece ever in the MoMA. John Eales is an Australian former rugby union player and the most successful captain in the history of Australian rugby. Indra Nooyi is an Indian-born business executive and the current Chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo, the second largest food and beverage business in the world. She has consistently ranked among the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women, ranking 15th in Forbes’ 2015 list. Philip Treacy has become the world’s most in demand milliner and is Irish too! His hats are as popular with European aristocrats as with Hollywood royalty. He is widely credited for changing the perception of the hat. Zadie Smith is a novelist whose first book, White Teeth, was a sensation, instantly putting her on the literary map. Her third novel, On Beauty, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and won the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction. Madeline Albright was the first female US Secretary of State.
Bram Stoker Paper-Reading Club
The Bram Stoker Club was set up by six years ago in order to allow involvement from more members of The Phil, to diversify the range of events put on by the society, and to embrace The Phil’s origins as a paper reading society. Bram has grown a lot in the last six years, and continues to be a source of discussion and enjoyment.
- Conor Scully
The bread and butter of Bram is our weekly paper reading, where a student delivers a paper on any topic they like to an audience in the conversation room of the GMB. This is followed by a question and answer session. In the first month of this year alone, we have had papers on topics as diverse as the Kardashian family and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The appeal of these papers stems from the fact that students can present them on any topic in which they have an interest, which ensures that they are well researched and delivered with passion and enthusiasm.
The last few Bram committees in particular have made a big effort to expand the events of Bram beyond just paper readings. Last year, under the chairmanship of Liam Hunt, there were a number of interesting events organised. Early on in the year, Bram welcomed Neil Harbisson, best known to the public as the “world’s first cyborg”. Harbisson described to the audience how the antenna he has implanted in his skull allows him to see colours that are not visible to most humans, as well as receive messages directly into his brain. Bram was also responsible for organising a panel discussion on homelessness, an especially pertinent issue in Dublin at the moment. The panel consisted of notable activists for the homeless, including representatives from the charities Crosscare and Stepping Stone. Two years ago, we were fortunate to receive members of the Bram Stoker family for an event, with papers delivered by ex-President of The Phil, Eoin O’Liathain, and then-Registrar Cormac Shine. The family presented us with a portrait of Bram Stoker, which now hangs in the eponymous Bram Stoker Room, while we awarded them with a medal in recognition of their efforts to preserve the legacy of the famous author and his work. We have kept up relations with the family ever since, and hope to be involved in the Transylvanian Society of Dublin’s conference next year. Furthermore, we have added two new social events to our annual calendar. Last year saw the first Bram Christmas party, where guests were treated to mulled wine and mince pies, while pro-Treasurer Shannon Buckley Barnes delivered a paper about the history of toy production. We also have our annual Garden Party, where we enjoy Pimm’s while (hopefully) soaking up the spring sunshine in the Rose Garden. At the Phil AGM every April, we give an award to the best paper delivered over the course of the academic year, with past winners including papers on the subjects of language preservation and the stigmatisation of those living with intellectual disabilities. Last year, this desire to showcase the best of Bram was expanded with the publishing of our journal, which contained a selection of the best papers delivered. We hope to continue with this by releasing our second journal at the end of this year. The Bram committee is comprised of three ordinary members of The Phil - one chairperson and two other members. The chair this year is myself, Conor Scully, a Senior Sophister student of Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Sociology. I am joined by Matthew Collins and Sophie Donnelly, Senior Freshman students of PPES. All three of us are active members of The Phil and indeed, college life as a whole. Matthew is the CA of the Trinity IV 2016, while Sophie is a contributing writer at Trinity News. This year we hope to organise more panel discussions, on the topics of post-conflict relations in the Balkan states, the 1916 Rising, and the Dublin nightlife scene. We expect the Bram Stoker Club to go from strength to strength in years to come - this year alone we received 15 applications to fill the committee. There’s no doubt it will continue to be a vital part of The Phil!
Schools Debating - Rachael O’Byrne
PhilSpeaks is The Phil’s nationwide debating and public speaking initiative for secondary school students all over Ireland. With an emphasis on enjoyment and confidence-building rather than competition, we will be continuing with our nationwide workshops in the first college term, in Cork, Galway and Belfast, and will run two workshops in Dublin to accommodate the consistently high demand we experience. Each workshop can accommodate up to 90 students, and will work with students on their public-speaking abilities, allowing them to speak up and develop their opinions on topical issues in an encouraging environment, while also having a lot of fun along the way. Our first workshop of the year took place in October, and had a great reception amongst the students - helped perhaps, by the free pancakes we had provided at lunchtime!
These workshops culminate in the Competitive Weekend, which is the opportunity for the students who have taken part in the workshop (but also is open to those who could not attend) to apply the knowledge and skills that they learned about how to write a speech, develop their arguments, and present these to an audience, in the context of an actual debate. While it is a competition, its focus is on the encouragement and development of the speakers, with judges providing constructive rather than critical feedback, so students can improve on their performances in the following rounds. This weekend can host over 100 students, and is the biggest event of Team Schools’ year. The final once-off event of Team Schools will be the Pro-Am weekend, a competition held in March 2016, wherein a secondary school student speaker is teamed with a college student who is skilled in debating, and they compete together against other similarly constructed teams. This allows students an opportunity to improve their debating skills more intensively, receiving advice and guidance from their knowledgeable partners. A smaller competition, we hope to open this to 28 students this year. These events are open to senior cycle students in 4th-6th year, and this year Team Schools hopes to broaden the scope of PhilSpeaks by running a workshop for junior cycle students in 2nd and 3rd year, in the second college term. This will mean that we can reach out to students at an earlier age, making their attendance at events in later years more likely, and helping them at an earlier age in building their self-confidence and public-speaking abilities. This is particularly relevant in the coming years as Debating will be included on the revamped Junior Cert syllabus, and running this workshop will operate as a stepping stone towards allowing future teams an opportunity to expand on this and cater further to junior cycle students. Team Schools hope to further our partnership with the Trinity Voluntary Tuition Programme, who were awarded an Honourable Mention this year for the MacJannet Prize, an international award recognising university student community civic engagement initiatives. This student society recruits college students to provide grinds to students from schools in the inner-city, who may not be able to afford them otherwise. We would like to continue our weekly debating workshops that we provide to students, which offer a relaxed environment for creative discourse and spirited debate. We hope to culminate the workshops in a debate held
held in the Chamber of the GMB at the end of the term, for the students, their friends and teachers to watch. We also hope to work in greater conjunction with the Trinity Access Programme, which aims to increase the access of under-represented groups to third-level education. We would like to continue to help TAP by providing students from certain Deis schools in the city centre with debating workshops, such as the two we hosted in June as part of their Pathways to Law and Summer School programmes, which offer students an insight into college life. There are also positions reserved for teams from under-privileged schools at all of our competitions. These fees are waived in order to increase participation of schools which would not be willing or able to attend our competitions otherwise, in the hopes of promoting equal access regardless of socio-economic background.
COMPETITIVE DEBATING
Trinity IV
The Trinity IV is Ireland’s largest and most eminent intervarsity, featuring around 100 teams from Europe’s finest universities. Last year was one of the most successful iterations to date. With the full support of college and the Provost’s office we were able to secure a banquet on the Friday night in the Dining hall as well as excellent catering and receptions throughout the weekend. The final in the GMB Chamber is always an exciting, if raucous, occasion and this year was no exception. The hotly contested final, with much audience interaction, was eventually won by Cambridge on the motion ‘THBT Western States Should Ban Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad’.
- Conan Quinn
Over the last few years the Phil has gone from strength to strength and emerged as Ireland’s most successful debating society. Last spring we became the first society in many years to win both the Irish Mace and the Irish Times in the same year, two of Ireland’s largest and most prestigious debating competitions. In the same year we had teams reach the final of every major Irish Intervarsity, in many cases bringing back new silverware for the council room.
The Phil on Holiday
Every year our sign-ups for competitions in Cork and Galway are massively oversubscribed and are regarded as two of the best weekends on the Trinity Calendar. We normally send sixty or so competitors and Judges down to UCC in November and the same again to NUIG in February, if we don’t return with trophies we often make away with some other memento from the University in question, be it the Plaque commemorating the opening of NUIGs millennium arts block or a priceless portrait of Gladstone from the Oxford Union. On the international stage debating revolves around two big competitions. The European Championships in August and the World Championships over the Christmas Break. For a number of years Ireland had failed to reach the final stages of either and a general pessimism pervaded the circuit as to our chances going forward. However in 2015 two Phil speakers broke this dry spell and stormed to the semi-finals of Worlds in Kuala Lumpur, out-debating several hundred teams from all over the globe. This is the furthest an Irish team has ever progressed in the competition. With the bar set high we sent a large delegation to Euros in Vienna last August. Ireland put on an impressive comeback this year securing 25% of spots in the final stages, half of which were claimed by the Phil.
Recent Successes:
Champions Irish Times 2015: Hugh Guidera (Hon. Reg 330) and Ronan O’Connor (Hon. DC 329) Champions Irish Mace 2015: Liam Hunt (Pro-Sec 329) and Gavin Tucker (Bram 328) Champions Irish Mace 2014: Rosalind Ni Shuilleabhain (Hon. Pres. 329) and Adam Noonan (Ord. Mem.) Quarter Finalists European Championships 2015: Hannah Beresford (VP 330) and Matthew Collins (Bram 331) Naoise Dolan (Ord. Mem.) and Liam Hunt (Pro-Sec 329) Semi Finalists World Championships 2015: Hugh Guidera (Hon. Reg 330) and Michael Barton (Ord. Mem.) Champion Galway Open 2015: Clare Kelly (Hon. Sec. 330) National Maidens 2015: Matthew Collins (Bram 331)
Trinity Women’s Open
In 2015 we replaced the Kingsmill Moore Invitational with Ireland’s first female-only debating competition. The day long event featured a forum on women’s inclusion in debating and a panel discussion entitled ‘Strong Female Voices’ with Ivana Bacik, Margaretta D’Arcy and Angie Mezzetti as well as a performance by the Acapella group, the Trinity Belles. It was an incredible success and with the second already in the planning stages for next year is sure to be become an established date on the debating calender.
Trinity Open
While not as big as the IV the Open is a competition started a few years ago that takes place in June or July as a preparatory competition for the European Championships. Having taken place in the scenic Museum Building for the last two years the Open is a more intimate affair with ice-Cream stands from Murphy’s and a expedition to the Turk’s Head after the Final.
Training and Development
Our training programme has expanded greatly in recent years and is likely one of the main reasons for our great success. Every week we have up to two ‘Drop-in Debates’ run by the pro-debates convenors. These are casual events where any member can come along to get some experience speaking, judging or practicing with a new partner. We also run a workshop programme throughout the year with a diverse range of topics. Experienced speakers and judges both from within the Phil and from the wider debating world give weekly sessions on anything from African Politics, to pop culture to how to lie convincingly about economics.
Thursday Night Debates
Thursday night debates continue to be the bread and butter of what we do here at the Phil. Over the summer months Team Secretary put together the term card for Michaelmas Term, taking input from Phil membership at large, and start inviting guests. This year we have consistently been achieving packed chambers, with demand in the first few weeks exceeding chamber capacity, forcing us to turn many members away who had not arrived in early enough to queue.
- Matthew Nuding
Our first ‘serious’ debate of the year, on the motion This House Believes in the Right to Offend, saw national discourse after one of the speakers for the proposition, Brendan O’Neill, wrote an article based on the debate that featured in the Sunday Times. It also sparked a lot of discussion over the issue on campus as evidenced by the numerous opinion pieces in Trinity publications. Indeed it is often the guest speakers, and the frank discussion between visitors with specific experiences and expertise, and the student speakers, which is unique to college debating. We’ve gotten insights from academics, lawyers, and the likes of Miranda Kane, sex worker turned stand-up comedian for a debate about the merits of selling one’s virginity, and Graine Healy, the chairperson behind the Yes Equality movement who chaired ‘This House Wishes Dumbledore had Come Out’ and focused her chair speech on thanking the students of Trinity and of Ireland for their help in the movement towards marriage equality. Another highlight the term was our maidens final, which saw eight junior freshmen students battle it out in the chamber to win ‘Phil Maidens 2015’. With seven weeks of debating workshops and rounds behind them, and having beat hundreds of participants, the Final Motion was ‘This House Believes That Security Is No Replacement For Freedom’. We are used to our weekly receptions and nights out after debates, but always look forward to this one in the calendar for its unique brightness, loudness, and memorability for finalists and the wider phresher community.
Term Card of the 331st Session (Michaelmas Term) Fresher’s Week: This House Would Do It For the Likes Week 1: This House Believes in the Right to Offend Week 2: This House Would Sell its Virginity Week 3: This House Wishes Dumbledore Had Come Out, in association with Q Soc
Week 4: This House Regrets Big Government Tax Intervention Week 5: The Annual Liferaft Debate Week 6: This House Believes You Cannot Own an Idea Reading Week Week 8: This House Would Build-a-Baby, in association with Biological Society Week 9: This House Believes Hamas is a Greater Obstacle to Peace than Israel, in association with Society for International Affairs Week 10: Maiden’s Final: This House Believes that Security is No Replacement for Liberty Week 11: This House Would Keep Up with the Kardashians Week 12: Phil Christmas Party
Treasurer’s Conclusion - Stepan Lavrouk To conclude on a personal (and slightly self-serving) note, I would like to say that my time in the Phil has meant more to me than any other discrete experience in my life, so I would certainly like to be able to follow the progress of the Society as it ascends to new heights past my time in college. With this magazine, we intend to re-establish the links between the Phil and its alumni that make that possible for all past members. We would like to establish a new standard for engagement with our graduates and hope that you will feel welcome coming back and continuing to contribute to the Phil, both at the annual Honorary Members debate and also as a source of that institutional memory which is so valuable for future Councils.
Donations As a non-profit student society, the Phil relies in part on donations from its past members to continue to run its events. We would ask and encourage you to donate generously to the cause. We accept donations by cheque and bank transfer. Please make out cheques to ‘DU Philosophical Society’ and send by post to ‘Graduates’ Memorial Building, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland’. For Bank Transfer: Dublin University Philosophical Society A/C: 62956097 NSC: 93-33-84 AIB Westmoreland St
Wishing you all the best, Stepan Lavrouk Hon. Treasurer, 331st Session
IBAN: IE52AIBK93338462956097 BIC: AIBKIE2D
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