ARCHITECTURE: Andrew Farran's Trinity experience

Andrew Farran (TC 1957) was a skilled cricketer at Trinity and was welcomed into the cricket team, which went on to win the intercollegiate cricket championship for three of the four years he was in residence.

As well as getting involved in sport, Andrew became well acquainted with the university sector throughout his college years. In his first year, he was approached to support an appeal on behalf of the World University Service to provide better services for tertiary students in developing countries.

Over the following two years, he acted as university correspondent for The Age and considered journalism as a career. However, the associate editor pointed out that The Age at that time had only one university graduate and that Andrew should pursue his other interest, law.

Upon graduation and admission to the Bar, Andrew served as an Australian diplomat and Commonwealth public servant in Canberra and abroad over the next decade. Other career options (academic and business) were taken thereafter.

Andrew has long been a supporter of Trinity College and has made a generous gift to facilitate the renovation and expansion of our Dining Hall.

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“As I discovered in 1957, the transition from boarding school to College residency is immense. And possibly the most transforming experience of your life – unless you have to go to war (heaven forbid).

During my four years in residence, it became clear that Trinity’s integral centre was the Dining Hall. It was where high days and feast days were celebrated, where one met and got to know new friends, and where experiences were consolidated in ways that lasted a lifetime. Some may have thought the requirement to wear academic gowns to dinner was a bit of an imposition, but its purpose was to make a statement about being a student in a special universe of study and intellectualism, as seen in the other world-renowned universities from which our deep academic traditions have been derived.

The Dining Hall hypostasised the notion of being part of a corporate entity, a community of scholars like no other previously experienced. In this regard, it was important that College residents could meet as one body and not be divided into groups. In my time this was not a problem. We could all fit in comfortably. But resident numbers are now twice what they were then, and the Dining Hall has not expanded commensurately. But not to worry, plans are afoot to rectify this and before long, residents will be able to celebrate important events in a setting appropriate for all occasions."