Trinity News Vol. 62, Issue 4

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Volume 62, Issue 4

trinitynews.ie

NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR 2015

Plans to include rifle range in Oisín House development causes concern amongst some Board members • Business school plans call for demolition of DU Rifle Club’s existing premises • Squash and handball are other sports to be given facilities in Oisín House development the new business school outline the demolition stage of the plan.

The plans say that “the existing Sports Hall (Luce Hall), the maintenance workshops and first floor WCs to the rear of Nos. 183- 188 Pearse Street and the Simon Perry engineering building” are all to be removed. The DU Rifle Club premises is currently located behind the Simon Perry building.

Matthew Mulligan Editor

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EVERAL MEMBERS OF the College Board expressed their unease at proposals to place new premises for the College’s Rifle Club inside the new Oisín House complex during the last meeting of the board. Trinity News understands that the idea was described as “a liability”.

DU Rifle Club confirmed to Trinity News that their current premises are marked for demolition and publicly available planning documents for

The current plan for Oisín House notes that the development will have 280 student bedrooms, facilities for the disability service and the health centre, as well as space for sports and recreational facilities.

According to a member of the board speaking on the condition of anonymity, the construction of the new business school on the grounds of Luce Hall and the Perry Building will see sports facilities currently situated there rehoused into the Oisín House development, including the current shooting range. Members of the board have expressed reservation over this idea, however the

Breaking down the academic gender divide in Trinity

InDepth p.6

decision was made to proceed with planning which places the rifle range there, as it may not be commissioned as a rifle range if another suitable location can be found for it.

The anonymous board member said that the decision was difficult, because “no one wants to shut down the rifle club [...] it has worldclass athletes.” The source went on to say that individuals involved with the development have met with Trinity’s Sport Department, and DU Rifle Club say that they were also met by project members.

The planning application for Oisin House states that the development’s sports and recreational facilities will be spread across “1,074 sq.m gross floor area located at the 2 no. basement levels”. When viewing sections of the basement levels, a rectangular area 270 metres in length is labelled as “recreational facilities.” Squash and handball are amongst the sports which will be given space in the development, The disability service will be given space on the ground floor o On 10 December, the dead-

The College staff member looking for a Venus on campus

Features p.10

line for lodging planning observations and objections against the project passed.

be making a presentation to the Fellows on the progress of the development.

Two objections from Trinity alumni were received by Dublin City Council, one stating that “the height and mass of the building are totally unacceptable in such close proximity to the Trinity College main campus”, with the other declaring the building “a monstrosity”, and threatening to “withdraw from Trinity alumni and fundraising activities if the project proceeds.”

College plans to build full scale mock-ups of Oisin House accommodation units, which would comprise of a bedroom, a hallway, and living room and kitchen area.

O’Kelly plans to have these models completed by early February in order to allow everyone interested to walk through and make observations.

Speaking about objections to the project the dean of students professor Kevin O’Kelly stated that “while two outside parties made comments we are confident we can address their concerns. It is particularly gratifying that no concerns were raised from the surrounding community.” He also commented on the town hall style meeting held by College earlier this year, but notes that “there was relatively short notice given so we will be having another one in January.”

On 15 December O’Kelly and the project architect will

O’Kelly said that the coming months before that will see the design team meeting with the offices all of the groups who will be using Oisín House to ensure their specific technical needs are captured in the detailed design. These include the College offices responsible for accommodation, health, disability, sports and buildings.

Inside

Transgender publishing house Topside Press, maverick milliner Philip Treacy, the horror of virtual reality with Dr Mads Haahr, environmental disaster on the big screen

Additional reporting by Conall Monaghan and Lia Flattery

What’ Latin prayers at Commons really mean

Exploring the science of anxiety

Comment p.13

SciTech p.17

Talking Pinks with recent awardee Conal Campion, Hammer gold medalist for Ireland

Sport p. 24

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Trinity News | Tuesday 24 November

News

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What They Said

To All our loyal customers over the years, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you so much for your business.

You have kept [us] busy through one of the worst recessions the country has ever seen!

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Maguires Grafton Street Facebook post

The global impact of your discovery and the resulting benefit for mankind are immeasurable.

The Nobel Foundation on the work of William Campbell, Trinity graduate and winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine

Trinity receives prestigious Athena SWAN Awards Trinity is one of only two universities in Ireland to achieve the award, the second one being the University of Limerick at a special ceremony in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland by the CEO and co-founder of Silicon Republic, Ann O’Dea.

Katarzyna Siewierska Scitech editor ON DECEMBER 10, Trinity College Dublin received the bronze institutional Athena SWAN award for advancing gender equality. Three of its schools, Physics, Chemistry and Natural Sciences, also received bronze awards.

The awards were presented

Athena Swan Charter was founded in 2005 “to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology and engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education.” It was launched in Ireland in April 2015 and the applications for the award were opened. In July 2015, the results of the call were announced. Trinity is one of only two universities in Ireland to achieve the award, the second one being the University of Limerick.

The provost of Trinity College, Dr Patrick Prendergast, welcomed the award and said: “Inclusivity, equality and diversity are core values for Trinity College Dublin, and

are enshrined in our recent Strategic Plan.” He continued: “We strive to create an inclusive College community in which women and men participate at all levels and where all are recognised fully for their contribution to the university. These are fundamental principles that underpin Trinity’s excellence.”

Professor Eileen Drew, director of the Women in Science and Engineering Research (WiSER) Centre, also commented on the award received by Trinity: “Securing these prestigious Athena SWAN awards really is a major milestone for Trinity College… They copper-fasten the achievements we have already made towards gender equality and will pave the way for further gender actions that follow the practices of the best UK Athena SWAN award holder universities: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, York, Edinburgh, UCL and

Queen’s University Belfast.”

Women face many problems in advancing their careers in STEMM. They are underrepresented at various levels in science and its management. In academia, the number of female students studying physics, mathematics and engineering at undergraduate level is quite low and drops at postgraduate level.

Queen’s University’s Fossil Free campaign group stage occupation of college building The occupation is to continue indefinitely until the campaign group receives a pledge to divest from fossil fuels from university authorities Niamh Moriarty Staff writer

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WELVE STUDENTS FROM Queen’s University Belfast’s (QUB) Fossil Free campaign group are now five days into their occupation of the college’s administration building. The sit-in, led

by QUB’s Students’ Union (QUBSU) Campaigns and Communications Officer, Sean Fearon, is to continue indefinitely until the campaign group receives a pledge to divest from fossil fuels from university authorities.

Access to supplies had been denied to the group, however, they are now allowed one box of supplies per day via QUBSU. According to the Twitter account of one of the protesters, Aidan Jones, the head of security attempted to liaise with university management on Saturday morning regarding the group’s request for supplies and access. Security later blocked attempts

by QUBSU officers to deliver supplies to the group. Further attempts by Claire Bailey, Deputy Leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland, to deliver supplies through a window via rope were successful, but similar actions were later blocked by security on the grounds that it violated health and safety.

QUB’s Amnesty International group issued a statement expressing concern over the initial obstruction of supplies to the students: “Removing access to food is a clear attempt to force students out of the building.

Given that the university has made no contact with the

students, it is apparent that removing their legal right to protest is a higher priority than engaging with the protestors’ concerns and reaching a reasonable conclusion.”

Speaking to Trinity News, Ben Christman, one of the occupiers, stated: “We’ll be here until Queen’s agrees to freeze new investments, publicly pledges to divest from fossil fuels and agrees a schedule to withdraw all fossil fuel investments by 2020.”

The occupation comes following the recent release of a full breakdown of the university’s investments, ordered by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which found that they currently invest £5.5m in fossil fuel extraction and production. The investments relate to companies such as Shell, BP and ExxonMobil, among others.

Christman made a freedom of information request seeking this information in December 2014, which was refused on the grounds that the investment details were exempt information under section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which states: “Information is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it).” Christman appealed this judgement, claiming the refusal was a “misinterpretation” of the article, however, his appeal was refused on similar grounds. It was only when the appeal was brought to the ICO, which ruled in Christman’s favour, that QUB were forced to disclose the information. According to Christman: “The ICO essentially ruled that Queen’s had

acted unlawfully by refusing to release what should be publically accessible information.”

The Fossil Free QUB group was inspired to take action following the lack of movement from the university on the issue and the global mobilisation across campuses to take action against university investment policies.

According to the BBC, QUB’s investment committee has agreed to review its investment policy, and has invited the Fossil Free campaign group to take part in a workshop in January 2016 “to help inform the investment policy review.” While Christman felt the workshop could be productive, the group is concerned that the length of the review process is “an attempt to kick our campaign in the long grass.” The final decision on investments will not come until June 2016, when the majority of the current students will have left the campus, lessening the likelihood of protests should the university decide against divestment.

Solidarity with the group’s campaign has been shown by alumni, other divestment campaign groups, USI, and attendees at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, among many others.

QUBSU officer, Sean Fearon, made a trip to Dublin recently to commence talks with Trinity College Dublin’s divestment campaign group, Fossil Free TCD. According to the University Times, Trinity currently has €6.1 million indirectly invested in oil-related companies.

Photos via twitter.com/FossilFreeQUB

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Ben Christman, one of the occupiers, stated: “We’ll be here until Queen’s agrees to freeze new investments, publicly pledges to divest from fossil fuels and agrees a schedule to withdraw all fossil fuel investments by 2020.”

This book has a great title - ‘The Provosts’ – it sounds like the title of an up-market, period TV Drama, and there is certainly enough colour and anecdote and largerthan-life characters here to justify a six-part series.

Provost’s address at “The Provosts” book launch

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This system did not work in the UK, Australia or America. It would desecrate Ireland, tearing it apart and converting it from the Land of Saints and Scholars into the Land of Corporate Greed and Economically Paralysed.

USI president Kevin Donoghue criticising the new draft report of the student loan system

Trinity News | Tuesday 24 November

News

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NUS-USI women’s officer: we must push for change to abortion legislation At the end of November, Belfast High Court reached the decision that Northern Ireland’s abortion laws are in breach of human rights Julie Farrell Staff writer JO GOWERS, WOMEN’S officer of NUS-USI, Northern Ireland’s Union of Students, has said that the union, and other organisations involved in women’s rights, must put pressure on politicians to make sure that Belfast High Court’s recent ruling on abortion is acted upon as soon as possible.

At the end of November, the High Court in Belfast reached the decision that Northern Ireland’s abortion laws are in breach of human rights. It was determined that Northern Irish legislation breaches Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by not providing exception to the abortion prohibition in cases of fatal foetal abnormality at any time during pregnancy,

or where the pregnancy is the result of a sexual crime up to the date of a foetus’ independent viability.

Speaking to Trinity News, Gowers said that she welcomed the ruling, but that NUS-USI must now work to ensure that the legislation is changed sooner rather than later.

NUS-USI has a pro-choice mandate based on a student vote, which Gowers is “extremely happy to be supporting” and sees as one of her priorities for the next year.

Another measure that she hopes to see implemented is that a clearer set of guidelines be set out for doctors and healthcare workers to follow so that they can deliver medical treatment to women without fear of criminalisation.

“Abortions happen whether people like it or not, and it’s about whether we’re going

to make them safe for women in cases where it’s a basic human right, and whether women’s bodies are still to be seen as property of the state,” she said.

nesty International Northern Ireland and Alliance for Choice, to bring about changes in abortion legislation in

the North. She attributed the High Court ruling in part to Amnesty International’s My Body, My Rights campaign.

According to Gowers, although a minority voted against their current mandate, NUS-USI have not experienced the same outcry by ‘pro-life’ students against the union as the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) did.

“For people who are against it, I would say that absolutely they should be able to raise their voices within our student movement,” Gowers said, “but obviously we are going to follow the majority that we have been mandated to follow.”

Staff writer

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RLA MCCALLION AND Sean Judge, Trinity graduates and recent alumni of Trinity’s startup accelerator programme, Launchbox, recently achieved recognition from Enterprise Ireland and Silicon Valley investors, placing first in Enterprise Ireland’s Silicon Access Programme’s pitch night in San Francisco.

Gowers explained that NUS-USI have taken part in a “cohesive movement” with Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS), USI, and other organisations like Am-

UniTuition, developed by Judge and McCallion though the Launchbox programme, allows university students to locate local tutors in their subject areas online.

As the winners of the Trinity Launchbox pitch night in September, the pair won an all expenses paid trip to Silicon Valley. They used this to fund their participation in Enterprise Ireland’s Silicon Access Programme, a business centred trip lasting two weeks. While there, they met with local university staff, students and investors.

Judge and McCallion won the programme pitch night during their trip, beating intense competition which included companies returning revenue of over €1 million.

Their prize was a return trip to San Francisco at a time of

It is hoped that the bill will provide for the modernisation of the technological sector, containing content on new governing authority structures, guidelines for the merging of institutes of technology

Staff writer

A

NEW BILL for the establishment of technological universities has been published by Dáil Éireann.

Action to create this new category of university follows the government’s National Strategy for Higher Education published four years ago.

According to its title, the new bill is intended to provide for the dissolution of certain institutes of technology and the transfer of their functions, assets, liabilities

and staff to new institutes of technology as well as to the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). It is also intended to provide for the reform of the governing authorities of the institutes of technology and of DIT, and to provide for the establishment of technological universities. It is planned that DIT will be merged with IT Blanchardstown and IT Tallaght.

It is hoped that the bill will provide for the modernisation of the technological sector, containing content on new governing authority structures, guidelines for the merging of institutes of technology, and a description of the statutory process by which merged institutes must apply for designation as

a technological university.

Figures published by The Irish Times have shown that the new plans are likely to cost “well more than €45 million.” The Irish Times also reported that, to date, more than €3 million has been spent on the development of technological universities in Ireland, with the majority of these funds (drawn from the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the various institutes of technology’s own resources) going towards pay and professional fees.

Through this merging of smaller institutions, the bill aims to create larger centres of excellence, however, Fianna Fáil have spoken out in criticism of the bill. Fianna

Their company, UniTuition, allows university students to locate local tutors in their subject areas online

Niamh Lynch

Bill published with hopes to establish technological universities

Jessie Dolliver

Trinity graduates and Launchbox alumni win big in Silicon Valley

Fáil Education Spokesperson, Charlie McConalogue, has accused the Government of another “election gimmick,” claiming that: “It is now obvious that the government is trying to rush out legislation just weeks before the election, despite the fact that it has no chance of being enacted before the country goes to the polls.” He also commented that the bill is “remarkably short on detail” and a “damning indictment of this government’s commitment to education issues.”

Upon the announcement of the government’s approval of the bill, Minister for Education and Skills, Jan O’Sullivan, stated that: “The establishment of multi-campus technological universi-

Photo by Huda Awan

USI stands in solidarity with campaign to free Ibrahim Halawa The Union ran two days of campaigning last week to coincide with International Human Rights Day and Halawa’s 20th birthday

Megan Thompson Staff writer

Senior reporter

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T A COLLEGE board meeting held on 9 December plans concerning the demolition of the Perry building were discussed. It had been agreed beforehand that the Perry building would be demolished to make way for the construction of a business school on its premises.

According to two sources at the meeting, several options were presented to the board about the appropriate time for the demolition.

The first, proposal A, was to go ahead with the demolition in 2017. Under this proposal the building of business school would go ahead when originally planned and there would be no need for additional costs.

Proposal B advocated for the demolition of the building in May 2018, which would increase costs by around 6

B but when the conversations were happening we still ended up at proposal C. They weren’t confident they’d get it done under option B but were quite confident that it wouldn’t go far as proposal C”

The third option, proposal C, detailed plans to demolish the Perry building in September 2018. The additional costs of undertaking proposal C were expected to rise to somewhere between 10 to 12 million.

Talk concerning proposal A was largely ignored they further said: “there definitely were some board members who were pushing towards proposal A. Yet every time we would try to speak about proposal A, it somehow turned into proposal C.”

According to our first source, one of the reasons for the extra cost is due to the negative impact the delay would have on donors: “donors who want to give will likely feel, if the college can’t manage this project, how can we be sure that they can manage another one?”

Both sources claimed that the plans which were most warmly received by the provost were proposal B and proposal C. Our second source told us: “the provost sounded like he was going towards proposal

Neither was fully able to explain why the college board would be willing to increase spending when proposal A, an option that would incur no additional cost, existed.

Since the Perry Building is currently being used by mechanical engineering students, both considered this to have been an influential factor. Our first source said, “it seems as if the provost was quite keen not to disrupt engineering. Perfectly reasonable, but engineering is going to be disrupted anyway.”

UniTuition launched in Ireland in March of this year and has already expanded into seven UK universities.

The company will be opening a seed-funding round in early 2016. McCallion said: “In the short term we’ll be focusing on the UK; after that we’ll be looking towards Europe and the US.”

The bill, which is now available on the Oireachtas website, is the first major piece of legislation relating to higher education since 2006.

A proposal which would see no need for additional costs was largely ignored, source says “I feel like we were missing a piece of information that would allow us to understand.” million and delay the building of the school. It was presented as the “neutral option” since the cost was already accounted for in the planning of another new building project, the E3 project.

The San Francisco trip has been hugely beneficial to them, she explained: “[The trip] enabled us to determine the tweaks we would need to make to our operating model in order to be successful in the US market. From engaging with so many stakeholders on the ground over there we discovered opportunities we didn’t see before because they don’t exist in the UK market.” She continued that: “In terms of the startup scene over there, it was very motivating to be immersed in such a fast paced culture where everyone is interested in and open to adopting new technologies. Everyone we met was delighted to give any advice they could or to help us make contacts we needed.

The community there really works to help each other succeed.”

ties… is one of the key planks of the government’s National Strategy for Higher Education.” She continued that: “The publication of the Technological University Bill is an important step in progressing this vital reform.”

College proposal to delay the demolition of the Perry building likely to cost an additional 6 - 12 million

Conall Monaghan

their choosing.

Speaking to Trinity News, McCallion said of the win: “The standard of competition was extremely high, so we were delighted to be judged as the winners.”

Buildings to be demolished marked by dashes The other thought that “possibly C will give them more time to find somewhere for those studying mechanical engineering.” However, they also said that this would only make sense if “they have not done the work that they were supposed to do in already finding mechanical engineers a place.”

The second source further commented: “nothing made sense to me about why proposal B & C are acceptable but that’s where they seem to be moving towards. I would still rather see them move towards proposal A. Even if they accounted for the extra cost for proposal B in the E3 plan, with proposal A there would be extra funding available to invest in other areas of the college...I feel like we were missing a piece of information that would allow us to understand.”

Our first source said that it could have something to do with the provost “being from the engineering department,” although they admitted that this is just speculation and that they could only postulate on why any option but proposal A would have been considered.

The demolition of the Perry building and the construction of the business school are part of Trinity’s 2014 5 year strategic plan, which states that “600m will be required over five years in both capital and increased revenue” to fund a range of capital investments. The building was officially named after Simon Perry in 2012. Professor Simon Perry was chair of civil engineering from 1986 to 2002.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) last week joined with Amnesty International Ireland in the campaign to free Ibrahim Halawa, the Irish man who has been detained in an Egyptian prison for more than two years without trial.

As part of International Human Rights Day on December 10, USI called for its members to take part in a gathering on O’Connell, organised by Amnesty, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Halawa.

On December 11, two days before Halawa’s 20th birthday, USI also ran a ‪#FreeIbrahim campaign on campuses across Ireland.

Students were asked to take photographs of themselves with a ‘Happy Birthday Ibrahim’ postcard, share the image on social media, sign the postcard and send it to the Irish Embassy to call for Halawa’s release.

In a press release from USI,

Daniel Waugh, Vice President for Campaigns, commented: “Ibrahim should have started university this year, furthering his dreams of becoming a pilot or an engineer. His plans have all been put on hold, and instead of college life, he finds himself sitting in a jail cell in Egypt for over two years. USI stands in solidarity with Ibrahim and are calling on the Irish embassy to help bring him home.”

Trinity’s DU Amnesty International also showed its support for the campaign, arranging for students to meet outside House 6 to attend the Amnesty protest on December 10. A delegation of students from DU Amnesty also took part in a protest outside Leinster House organised by Halawa’s family in October.

Waugh stated that Halawa is an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience, imprisoned since 2013, “solely for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression and assembly” in Egypt.

Halawa, who was 17 when first detained, never received a fair trial. His family have continuously campaigned for his release.

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

News in brief

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Significant disparity between revnue of SU shops

Michael Foley Deputy sport editor

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HE ACCOUNTS RELEASED in the Students' Union's Annual Report reveal that there is a significant disparity in the overall net income of the two shops which they currently operate. According to the accounts, turnover in the Hamilton shop is down from last year while it has increased in House 6. The turnover in the Hamilton shop is down by 10,999, not a majorly significant amount, however the report states that this is a “cause for concern” as margins “remained under severe pressure during the year”.

This information was released at a Capitation Committee meeting on Thursday, the 26th of November at which the accounts were presented by the Student's Union. The Capitation Committee are responsible for reviewing the allocation of funding for a number of College bodies. Sitting on the committee are representatives from Dublin University Central Athletic Club, the Central Societies Committee, the Students' Union, the Graduate Students' Union and Publications along with the Senior Dean, Secretary and the Senior Tutor.

The increased turnover in House 6 is linked in the report to a rise in student Leap Card sales. The House 6 shop's location near Front Arch results in consider-

ably more footfall, combined with its sale of tourist related items.

This report raises again the issue of the viability of two shops on campus, given the current economic climate for small outlets - the report states that there is an “increasingly difficult environment for small shop outlets.”

As the shop in the Hamilton is being out-performed by the shop in House 6 there may be pressure to evaluate it's continued operation. In light of the figures in the report and continued difficult economic climate the status of the Hamilton shop may need to be reviewed.

Scottish university revokes honorary degree to Trump Una Harty Staff writer DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN front-running candidate for the US presidential nomination was stripped of his honorary degree from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland, last week.

The university decided to revoke Trump’s honorary doctor of business administration (DBA) degree following controversial remarks delivered by Trump in response to a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States, until our country’s representatives can figure out what’s going on.”

The decision to revoke the doctorate was agreed upon last Thursday. Explaining their verdict, a spokesperson for the university said: “Mr Trump has made a number of statements that are wholly incompatible with the ethos and values of the university.

The university has therefore decided to revoke his honorary degree.”

The degree was awarded in 2010 to acknowledge Trump’s success in the business world. At the time, the university’s acting principal and vice-chancellor stated: “Given that business and entrepreneurship lie at the heart of much of the university’s academic offering, it is only fitting to award Mr Trump with an honorary degree.”

It is a relatively recent development for universities to remove degrees that were given in honour of a person.

Trump is not the first person to have an honorary degree

revoked by a Scottish university. In 2007, Robert Mugabe had his degree, which was rewarded in 1984 by the University of Edinburgh, withdrawn after student protests.

While in the US, several colleges have recently taken back honorary degrees given to Bill Cosby, after multiple allegations of sexual assault.

News In the GMB, druids explain their beliefs

Matthew Mulligan Editor

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OR EIMEAR BURKE and Luke Eastwood, the speakers at Monday’s Theo talk though, we’re weeks away from an important ceremony in their calendar, the Winter Solstice.

Eimear and Luke are druids, and members of the Irish Druid Network, an organisation set up to help those who follow druidism make contact with each other. They’re a small community, with Eimear being the only druid in Ireland who can perform legal pagan weddings. “Druids don’t proselytise”, they say. “We’re not interested in numbers.”

After an introduction by Theo auditor Aisling Crabbe, Emer and Luke both described how they came to be involved in druidism, and how those journeys differed. When one chooses to call themselves a druid is up to oneself, though both had common elements in their experiences.

In the 1980s, Emer came to Trinity and studied psychology, becoming a counsellor. Travelling to Africa she joined with healers and was very taken with what they did. She describes herself as straddling a whacky line between spiritual things and the world of academia, but also says that she was looking for her own way to become involved in a tradition that fit her background as an Irish woman. Working with a native American woman healer and another from Tanzania, she felt “neither were my tradition”.

One day in a bookshop Emer saw a title, “Modern Day Druidess” by Cassandra Eason, and purchased the

book. She saw that she could do a course by distance on druidism, and 13 years ago she followed this path instead of returning to academia to pursue a psychotherapy supervisory course. “That was great for me, I don’t like groups”, she jokes.

Luke also came from a Catholic background, and was brought up in Scotland.

It wasn’t until he moved to Ireland that he got a lot of answers he was looking for. He joined up with a group of druids in Wexford, and began to practice ritual and look into the history of the druids.

Explaining more about the process actually involved in becoming a druid, Luke said that it is debatable at what point you might decide to call yourself a druid. Because of the longevity of the tradition and that the patronage that druids relied on eventually disappeared, the curriculum that one studies to become a druid also disappeared.

Nowadays you have to make up your own curriculum, because there is no druid Pope or druid catechism.

With the floor opened up for questions, the first was regarding the proceedings that make up druid ceremonies. There’s no strict schedule for druid ceremonies, with what Luke describes as a “skeletal structure” taking its place, though they mostly take place outdoors in groves.

Eimear ran through some of the basics that are part of all ceremonies, with the invoking of whatever spirits one believes in coming first, followed by the setting of the four directions of the earth.

This sets the space as sacred, and after this the different rites can take place. Samhain for example is about connecting with ancestors and letting them in. Another rite is based around the sweeping away of what one does not need anymore, and solstice is a

massive part of the calendar.

There are also local traditions, with a Celtic druid temple existing in Roscommon.

Eimear says that druids have no dogma and come from all belief backgrounds.

“We don’t get caught up in which is right or which is true”. She is quick to say that she can’t prove what happens during the ceremony, and that it’s not about faith but about what one feels.

Responding to a question from Crabbe, Eimear says that there is no gender imbalance in druidry, and that there actually tend to be more women involved. In her own grove they are starting to increase male numbers.

She describes it as horizontally hierarchical.

Both Luke and Eimear say that their druidism has resulted in them having a greater connection with nature. Druid ceremonies follow the seasons, and they can be a metaphor for what’s happening in our own life.

It’s about living according to the landscape. Eimear says that her druidism is a massive source of spiritual nourishment for her that she feeds off of. It has taught her to be still and about the virtue of respecting nature. Luke personally says that after living in London once, it would kill him to live again in a big city.

His attitude to nature has been transformed by becoming a druid. In his own work as a gardener, the way he does that has even changed, he’s become more thoughtful about biodiversity and using no chemicals.

Finally, both Eimear and Luke took on the question of reincarnation from a member of the audience. “We believe in the law of the harvest; you reap what you sow. What you put out in the world comes back to you.”

UCD academic criticises “neoliberal assault on education” at SWSS discussion He said that when students come to university they “expect to enter a space where ideas are debated freely” and advised that this is exactly what they should do Ríain Fitzsimons Staff writer

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R KIERAN ALLEN, a senior lecturer from the UCD school of sociology, last week spoke to the Socialist Worker Student Society (SWSS) on the topic of neoliberalism and education.

Allen began the discussion by briefly outlining the historical origins of universities in the East and, subsequently, their beak away from religious institutions as they developed in the West. He then went on to describe how universities began to include more natural sciences and how he believed this contributed to the change in organisation of universities.

Allen’s main criticism was of the organisational structures within universities and how they favour private interests. He said that “modern intellectual society has an absolute obsession with measurement” and this is ultimately resulting in universities competing for investment from private companies.

He claimed that more funding was being provided for those disciplines benefitting private interests such as science, law and business, and expressed concern that students in certain disciplines in the Arts and Humanities are losing out, stating that these students “get less seminars

and less material available for learning.” Allen disapproved of the philanthropy funding model exemplified by the Smurfit and Sutherland schools in UCD and said that funding through tax is preferential.

He was highly critical of the concept of intellectual property describing how it “came from judgments of the American Supreme court.”

He pointed to biotechnology corporation Genentech as an example of how academics are now more encouraged to turn their research into private property rather than share it.

One particular structural aspect of universities that Allen was critical of is the way in which academics are selected for positions in universities. He claimed that there is too much emphasis on the articles academics publish in journals. Making an example of sociology, Allen said that “no matter how brilliant your research is, you won’t get a job” if you publish in a Bangladeshi journal as opposed to the American Journal of Sociology. He noted that there was “a big shift in the human sciences” as a result of this structural change.

Allen said “I don’t think it’s a deliberate conspiracy,” but encouraged students to think and speak out critically and recognised that this is what they are asked to do as part of an arts degree. He said that when students come to university they “expect to enter a space where ideas are

debated freely” and advised that this is exactly what they should do.

This discussion took place as the debate on student loans continues and it was explained at the event that it was scheduled to highlight the affair. When asked what he thought of Trinity College Dublin’s Students’ Union’s recent decision not to oppose student loans, he put the decision down to “sheer ignorance.”

“

Allen’s main criticism was of the organisational structures within universities and how they favour private interests.

Science gallery receives Google field trip grant The grant will cover transport and others costs for every secondary school student in Ireland to visit the gallery Jake Trant Staff writer THE SCIENCE GALLERY at Trinity College Dublin has become the first institution in Ireland to receive the Google Field Trip Grant.

The grant, announced last week, will allow the gallery to cover transport and other costs associated with arranging visits from every secondary school in Ireland, even those in very rural areas.

The gallery hopes to more than double the number of annual student visitors to 5,000 by 2016 from the cur-

rent level of 2,000.

Lynn Scarff, the director of Science Gallery Dublin, said: “Science Gallery Dublin’s art and science programmes provide young people with simultaneous experiences – as an artist and a scientist, a designer and an entrepreneur – allowing them to try on identities and develop the creative, flexible thinking needed for 21st-century workplaces. These interdisciplinary approaches can make science and art more accessible to a wider array of people who may not have traditionally identified with these subjects.”

The announcement of the grant coincided with

the launch of the Science Gallery’s 2016 programme, which will include exhibitions on how the human brain interprets the world, the future of farming, and how the worlds of design and violence meld. The latter is a co-production with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

The news of the grant is one of a series of recent successes for the gallery, which announced in October that it would be expanding its model overseas for the first time.

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

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Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

InDepth Exploring the question of gender disparity in academic positions Breakdowns of various departments and faculties are revealing

Oisin Vince Coulter Deputy news editor

T

RINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN continues to have a clear pattern of unequal promotion of academics between men and women in 2015, with considerable differences across schools and departments.

This pattern is clear from statistics supplied by College to Trinity News, and the 2014 Higher Education Authority (HEA) report on gender and academics across third level institutions in Ireland. The University College Cork paper “Through the Glass Ceiling” gives additional confirmation of this pattern across Irish universities as a whole.

The overall breakdown of academic staff in the faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) was 57% male to 43% female, in line with comparative national and international statistics. However, individual schools within the faculty had considerable divergence from this average - although this was also exacerbated by major differences in staffing numbers.

The academic staff of Near and Middle Eastern Studies and Gender and Women Studies are entirely female, at three and one staff members respectively. Other schools with a high proportion of female to male academics are French, with eight out of ten, and Hispanic Studies at six out of eight.

On the other end of the spectrum are Irish, at two out of nine, and History at six out of twenty-four. English is exactly 50/50, with fourteen male and fourteen female academics.

Small sample sizes make it difficult to draw out any particularly insightful analysis on some schools, as random fluctuations do occur. However, it should be noted that the imbalance in larger departments is likely due to more entrenched gender issues around progression, something seen across third level.

There are some other interesting facts to note from the statistics: for example, less than a third of the potential lecturers for a student doing

Politics, Philosophy, Economics and Sociology are women.

Bar Irish and German, the language schools all have over half female academic staff.

The large difference in gender balance between Classics and History is also interesting, considering the many similarities between the two disciplines.

Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine (STEM) is an area often said to be particularly gender imbalanced when it comes to academic staff. This is somewhat supported again by the figures, with only 23% female academics in the faculty of Engineering, Maths and Science (EMS). Much like AHSS, this figure deviates somewhat across schools, however the variance is not nearly as sustainable for EMS.

from UCC, College itself produces annual equality monitoring reports which track statistics and suggest possible reasons.

Among the suggested problems is are a lack of role models or mentors for young female academics, leading to

attrition and a widespread perception of a ‘boys club’ within certain schools that implicitly discourages women from applying for or receiving positions. Wider societal issues are also often cited in reports, for example issues around the potential for one to have a family or mater-

There is clearly an issue when the staff statistics are placed into the context of the broader student population, 58% of which are female. Although this majority is not consistent across faculties or schools, with outliers like Nursing and Midwifery pulling it up, there has been noted a strong tendency over the past decade towards a female majority student population – something which has clearly not, or not yet, affected the gender balance of academic staff.

Questions around gender disparity in academic positions, particularly for permanent and higher level staff are difficult to answer exactly, due to how many factors are at play. Alongside national reports on potential remedies like those of the HEA or “Through the Glass Ceiling”

College’s equality office and individual schools have implemented a variety of measures to deal with the gender imbalance, ranging from continuous reports on the issue to specific

scholarships. This year college was awarded an institutional Athena SWAN award for the participation of women in STEM. The schools of Physics, Chemistry and Natural Sciences also won individual Athena SWAN awards.

Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Faculty of Engineering, Maths and Science

23% 43%

76%

Physics had the lowest proportion of female academics at only two of 24, less than 10%. Maths was similar at 16%, four out of 25. Natural Sciences had the most balanced staff with 13 female staff out of 38, followed by Biochemistry and Immunology with six female staff out of 19.

Health Sciences has a substantial majority of female academics, with 173 out of 272. Medicine has 97 female staff out of 100, and 160 overall. Nursing and Midwifery have a large female majority staff, at 64 out of 81, dragging the overall Health Sciences average up. Pharmacy and Pharma-Science are only one staff member off exact gender parity.

nity leave. These issues affect high-level positions across all industries and sectors.

57%

Female

Female

Male

Male

Female Male

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

French

German

Irish

Italian

Russian

Hispanic Studies

Graphics by Oisin Vince Coulter

Union accounts show increase in expenditure and income William Foley looks at the latest accounts available for TCDSU

William Foley Deputy editor

T

HE STUDENT’S UNION recorded a surplus as well as a substantial increase in their capital account for their last financial year. The financial years of capitated bodies are defined as the 12 month period ending in the 30 June.

The SU recorded a surplus of 7,923 euro in their current account for 2014/2014, an improvement over the deficit of 1,803 euro incurred the year before. This was augmented by surpluses of 12,366 and 834 for the House 6 and Hamilton shops respectively, bringing the total surplus to 21,123. Though revenue increased for the House 6 shop over the course of this year, it decreased for the Hamilton shop, a manifestation of the secular decline in commercial activity for the shops in the last few years. The Hamilton’s surplus was thus a product of decreased expenditure (see page 4 for more details on the shop accounts).

Overall expenditure, excluding the shops, totaled 1,431,664 euro last year. This was a substantial increase over the 1,180,001 spent the year before. However, income from operations (again ex-

cluding the shops) also rose sharply from 1,178,198 euro to 1,429,587.

There was no capital investment over last year, compared to a capital expenditure of 144 thousand euro for the year ending 30 June 2014. This allowed for the overall surplus of 21,123 euro last year, compared to a deficit of over 97 thousand euro for the previous year. Last year’s surplus was added to the capital account. The overall surplus therefore increased from circa 407 thousand euro to over 428 thousand euro. Heavy capital spending had resulted in a fall in the capital account from the 505 thousand euro closing balance in the year ending 30 June 2013.

In terms of its constituent parts, the capital account is the net balance of assets and liabilities for a given year. This can be thought of in simplified terms as the amount of money that the union has in its savings account every year minus the debt repayments it needs to make for that year.

In the year ending 30 June 2015, the current assets of SU were valued at 735,176. Most of this was cash holdings (over 570 thousand) with the bulk of the remainder being stocks ( over 150 thousand) and a small amount accruing from the loan repayments. There was a significant increase in

the current asset level from 669,964 the previous year.

The improvement was mainly due to a rise in cash holdings.

The value of liabilities also rose with the SU paying 306,627 to creditors and on accruals and the bank overdraft. This represented an increase of around 44 thousand euro over the value of the previous year’s liabilities.

Departmental income and expenditure

There are 20 separate items of expenditure listed in the SU accounts. Significant increases occurred in four items. Ents expenses increased by nearly thirty thousand to 135,855, student services increased by nearly two hundred thousand to 673,802, and expenses on the Click computer clinic rose by nearly sixteen thousand to 37,400. Expenditure on the salaries of officers also increased by over ten thousand to 198,742. This is potentially due to the splitting of the communications officer role into two posts: communications and marketing officer, and University Times editor.

The other items increased more marginally, for example, publications increased from 32,787 to 33,038 and executive expenses increased from 43,051 to 44,235. This small differences are likely due to varying requirements from

year to year. The SU’s treasurer report labels 2014/15 as a 150000 year “of sustained growth and activity”, referencing a strategy developed in 2006 - though no recent SU documents mention this ‘strategy’. In explaining the financial successes and stability of the SU, the treas- 120000 urer’s report points to the substantial surplus the SU runs and that “75% of this surplus is available to be spent in the following year.” This seems to have allowed for continued increased spending in a variety of areas - a trend that will 90000 likely continue given the continued increasing demand for student services.

Sample of Student Union Income and Expenditure

60000

30000

0

Ents Expenditure

Ents Income

Publications Guidebook SU Cafe (UT) & & Expenditure Publicity Advertising Expenditure Income

SU Cafe Income

Click Clinic Click Clinic Expenditure Income

Graphics by Oisin Vince Coulter

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Features

What next for college's nursury in the face of a 52% budget cut? page 11

Trinity News invited four of the individuals taking part in College’s official programme of commemoration to answer the question

How should we commemorate 1916?

Image of the GPO via the National Library of Ireland

M

Professor Patrick Geoghegan

INISTER FOR ARTS, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys TD recently launched Trinity’s 2016 programme of events, 'Trinity and the Rising.' The programme includes lectures, tours, a relaunch of the free and online MOOC run by the Department of History, the Changed Utterly blog hosted by Trinity Library, a debate hosted by the Historical Society, and a public reading of the 1916 Proclamation on the steps of the Dining Hall on March 15.

C

OMMEMORATION CAN BE a tricky thing. What do you choose to remember and how? Is it the same as celebrating an event, or is it an opportunity for a critical re-examination of a particular event or period? Done right, commemoration can be a powerful way of exploring our past, but it requires a respect for different traditions, and an intellectual honesty about how it is approached. For a university with such a rich history, and so many different traditions, the 1916 Rising poses both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is in commemorating an event where Trinity itself was a site of battle, and where the popular image is of Trinity turning its back on Irish nationalism.

Trinity News invited a selection of the individuals taking part in these events to respond to the question of how they think 1916 might best be commemorated, and what responsibility Trinity has to Ireland's histories.

Professor Eve Patten

O

VER THE PAST year it has been inspiring to see Trinity taking a lead not only in commemorating the Rising, but also in assessing how it was perceived and continues to be perceived. People talk of ‘commemoration fatigue’ when really the opposite is true: colleagues across several disciplines – historians, literary critics, librarians, sociologists – have been energized by the challenge. It’s an opportunity to integrate our work with a common focus, and perhaps to remember that academics in many countries lack what we take for granted, which is the liberty to evaluate and reinterpret our political evolution.

My own research explores how various writers, from Arthur Conan Doyle to Roddy Doyle, have addressed the Rising over the past century.

W.B.Yeats’ poem ‘Easter 1916’ is often regarded as the definitive literary response to the subject but numerous very

Professor Gerald Dawe

A

S IT HAPPENS I have on my desk four brochures received this week each announcing a programme of events to mark and/or market the centenary of 1916 that will be with us all shortly. Commemoration is fast becoming a way of life. History is much less studied and analysed for what we can learn from it and more often ‘celebrated’ as a political form of recognition of cultural distinction. So when one thinks about how 1916 might best be commemorated I think two things come to mind.

There is the acknowledgement of Irish nationalism’s role in establishing the Irish republic and the intellectual, strategic and political energies which went into that seminal moment in Easter 1916. But running alongside that justifiable moment of civic pride there has to be an impartial assessment of what became of the ideology in all

different works have followed since. Sean O’Casey’s 1926 play The Plough and the Stars, for example, satirises Pearse’s rhetoric as a backdrop to the plight of a working-class Dublin family; Liam O’Flaherty’s Insurrection (1950), depicts a young man casually caught up in what looks like a ‘boy’s own’ adventure, with no sense of its political motivation. The 2005 novel A Long Long Way,

by Trinity English graduate Sebastian Barry, portrays a bewildered Irish soldier returning from the trenches to find he must turn his weapons on his fellow countrymen. These imaginative versions of the era provide a sense of the contemporary social hinterland that often gets lost in official retrospectives.

walls. Her entry for Wednesday of Easter week, when the heavy guns started pounding the city, is one such moment: “even the solid Provost’s House tremble,” she wrote, “and in the garden all the birds who had sung and warbled sweetly through all the previous noises, became mute, huddling together in terrified clusters.” This is a very literary image, a metaphor for the fear she couldn’t express, even to herself. And it exemplifies how the textual traces of the Rising – not only novels and poems but letters, diaries, military records and witness statements – require careful critical reading, not just retrieval, before we can draw them into the narrative of commemoration.

Anyone curious about life inside Trinity in 1916 should look at the diary of Elsie Mahaffy, daughter of the Provost at the time. Written in extraordinarily unflappable prose, her account hints only occasionally at the anxiety she must have experienced, besieged within the College

Eve Patten is an Associate Professor in the School of English.

She will discuss ‘The Novel and 1916’ on 19 January 2016, at the first in the School of English Evening Lecture Series: Literature and Revolution.

its various roots and expressions which underpinned the declaration of an independent Irish republic. The fall-out of the Treaty negotiations, the war of independence and the civil war are not self-insulating ‘events’ sealed in their own archive. Commemorating an event can’t be allowed to blind us to what was claimed to be justified in its name much later on such as the disaster of the Northern ‘Troubles’.

Would Thomas MacDonagh or James Connolly or Padraic Pearse – to take three of the signatories at random – allowed for, or supported, a campaign of bombing cafes, pubs, shops, school buses? For these were the civilian targets of IRA volunteers, fifty-five years later, who saw themselves exclusively as the inheritors of the 1916 Rising.

bring the future into critical alignment when commemorating violence of any kind receives societal justification.

Where’s the politics in all this too? What really could Easter 1916 succeed in doing – changing the ultimate path of a substantial part of the country’s population from being British subjects to Irish citizens? It’s an emotional sound bite but doesn’t it leave much reality out of the equation? Maybe the coming commemoration will honestly address such basic questions?

It makes for disquieting perspectives when the past is seen through the prism of future events and the misleading justifications of those set in their fundamentalist killing ways. So maybe we need to

And as for your question about the responsibility of Irish universities to Ireland’s histories, it seems clear that we need to see this country’s connections and ties, its own intensely local and yet complex past as part of wider transnational political shifts and struggles. It’s all too easy to comfort ourselves as being alone on an island on the far shores of Europe which an understandable sentimental modern narrative underpins with emigration and disloca-

“

The challenge is in commemorating an event where Trinity itself was a site of battle, and where the popular image is of Trinity turning its back on Irish nationalism

The opportunity is the possibility of telling a much more complex story, one which acknowledges the different elements in Trinity’s 1916 story, and places it in its wider historical context.

Few Trinity students, for example, probably know that Patrick Pearse was a student here for a short time. It was in 1900 when he was studying to be a barrister and, although he never really fitted in, he drew inspiration from three great figures from Trinity’s past – Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, and Thomas Davis. People at the time were aware of the links, and during the Easter Rising a rumour raced around Dublin that Pearse’s real ambition was not to become President of an independent Irish Republic, but Provost of Trinity. Pearse may not have been welcome in Trinity in

Tim Scott

A

S THE REPUBLIC’S premier institution of higher education, Trinity has a responsibility not only to engage with the nation’s history and culture, but to curate and preserve it as well. 1916 is such an important moment in recent Irish history. The events of Easter Rising sharply segment the centuries of British dominion from the beginnings of the Irish republic. As an actively visible body in the Irish narrative, Trinity needs to commemorate the importance of the rebellion to the country as well as its own role in the tale.

The College was founded in 1592 to further the waves of Protestantism in British-governed Ireland, and throughout the centuries was seen to be at odds with the Irish masses.

1916 saw no shortage of this theme as the College’s alums took up arms to defend her

1916 (and he was banned from speaking here in 1914), but he remains an important part of our story.

On 15 March 2016 educational institutions across the country will mark what the government is calling ‘Proclamation Day’, and there will be readings of the 1916 Proclamation, the founding document of the modern Irish state. Universities are sites of debate and critical engagement, and so on the evening of March 15 we will be hosting a symposium on the 1916 Proclamation in its global context – looking at international comparators (for example the American Declaration of Independence) – and also exploring and critiquing what the Proclamation means. The 1916 Proclamation famously refers to how ‘six times during the past three hundred years’ Ireland asserted her right to

independence in arms, and we will explore why these rebellions were included and how they influenced 1916. Trinity is probably unique in being the only university with the expertise to discuss all six (or seven if we include 1916 itself ), from the 1641 rebellion, through to 1798 and 1803, and on to 1916. We are looking forward to bringing together our students, staff, and alumni – those who have strong views on 1916 and those who have none – to debate and discuss one of the most important documents in modern Irish history. We hope you join us.

against potentially menacing rebels, and only in 1970 did the Catholic church lift its ban on Catholics attending Trinity without special dispensation.

Still, slowly but surely Trinity has crept onto the canvas of the independent, Irish identity.

the Easter Rising called At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill. The show was the catalyst behind the festival.

We’re delighted to make our contribution to the centenary commemorations, but we’re eager to see where else Trinity plans to respond within the university community. Interdepartmental ideas often get lost in the ether at Trinity due to poorly executed communication, no matter how strong or well intentioned those ideas may be. This moment, however, is an undoubted milestone in the Irish narrative; Trinity’s response should be one of resounding participation and reflection.

Now in the throes of this decade of commemorations, Trinity is making efforts to celebrate the fledgling Irish identity and the university’s role therein, but special attention must be paid to 1916. If Trinity were to embrace the Easter Rising with an initiative sponsoring all its 1916 projects, nothing would affirm its role more strongly as a symbol of Ireland, and not just a fortress containing Britain within Ireland. The Beckett Centre, plans to present a theatre festival this summer intended to mark the centenary.

Headlining this festival will be our adaptation of an historical fiction novel set against

tion. The history of various Irelands of the mind, political landscapes and possibilities need an equivalent amount of attention as the past. I think universities are the primary cultural engine for such critical drive and re-imagining.

Gerald Dawe is a Professor in the School of English, and the Director of the M.Phil in Creative Writing. He will discuss his latest book, Of War and War’s Alarms, on 16 February 2016. The lecture is part of the School of English Evening Lecture Series: Literature and Revolution.

Image credit: The Board of Trinity College Dublin

Patrick Geoghegan is a Professor in Modern History at Trinity College Dublin. He will take part in the Proclamation Day Symposium on March 15.

About At Swim by Jamie O’Neill was first published in 2001. Tim Scott has adapted the play to be performed at the Samuel Beckett Theatre from the 6-11 June, 2016. He is a Senior Sophister student in TSM Classical Civilisations and Drama.

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Features

9

Peter McVerry: To be homeless today is to face into a nightmare After receiveing an honourary degree from Trinity for his more than forty years working in the homeless sector, Father McVerry tells us why things aren't getting any easier for the most vulnerable in our society

Jack Kearney Contributing writer

F

ATHER PETER MCVERRY was born in Belfast and grew up in Newry, County Down. After being educated at Clongowes Wood College and UCD he studied to become a priest and was ordained in 1975. During these years he came face to face with the problem of homelessness in Dublin. He set up a trust to help struggling young people and first worked in Ballymun and the north inner city. In 1983, he founded a charity to tackle homelessness called The Arrupe Society, but it was subsequently renamed the Peter McVerry Trust. It began in a three-bedroom flat in Ballymun.

The trust grew from one flat to include eleven homeless hostels, over 100 apartments, a residential drug detox centre and two drug stabilisation services. In 1979, he opened a hostel for young homeless boys aged between 12 and 16.

He focused on those deemed too difficult to deal with by other agencies. In November of this year he was awarded an honorary degree by Trinity.

I got the opportunity to converse with him recently in one of the McVerry Trust cafés, and I first asked him about his life and how it felt to be honoured by College.

"Whatever we have achieved with homeless people has been the work of a whole team of people, all our staff, our volunteers, our management, and they are the ones

who really should be getting the award rather than me. So in that sense I feel a little bit embarrassed that I’m singled out. They’re doing all the work and I’m singled out to get an award. However, I appreciate it very much. For me, it means that homeless people are worthy of being acknowledged, and that in our efforts to try and give homeless people what is a fundamental human right, namely a home, Trinity are considering that an important contribution to Irish society. I am very grateful for the award, it means a lot to me and all those working with homeless people.”

I then asked McVerry what inspired him to start working with the homeless in Ireland, and what has the experience been like.

“It started back in the 1970s when I was working in the inner city of Dublin. The issue we were dealing with then was young people leaving school by the age of 12 at the very latest. They were hanging around the streets all day long.

Their parents were generally unemployed and couldn't give them any money, so they started to commit crime. Then by the age of 16 they were doing an awful lot of robbing and going to prison. Due to this we began opening services for young people. We opened a youth club, a craft centre where they were able to make crafts and sell them to make money, and we also had some employment schemes running.”

McVerry then told me that the biggest catalyst for him to further his work was com-

ing across a child who was nine years old sleeping rough on the street. This prompted him to provide an additional service for children and open up a small hostel. He told me his decision to devote his life to homelessness was not a premeditated one: “I never had any big plan or intention to spend my life working with homeless people. One thing just led to another and we ended up running 14 hostels, three drug centres, one 150 apartments, a drop in centre and the youth café which we are talking in now. I never planned anything in my life. I only look one year ahead at a time.”

He moved on to elaborate the dangers of emergency accommodation. “You will often be sharing a room with people who are active drug users, people who are very intimidating, and you could wake up to find all your possessions are gone. You might be assaulted, threatened, or wake up in the middle of the night to see someone in the next bed injecting heroin. They are pretty awful places. If someone becomes homeless today they are really facing into a nightmare.

The reality is that unlike in the past people see very little opportunity to escape homelessness. In the past you could be homeless for maybe six months or a year and then you got a little private rental flat and if you were able to hold onto that you could escape from homelessness. Today there is no escape. The two normal escapes, one into private rental accommodation, is closed off and you can’t get

History is harsh

D

OMINATING THE NORTHERNMOST corner of Tokyo’s Kitanomaru Park is the Nippon Budokan. This octagonal structure functions as Japan’s foremost martial arts venue. On August 15, however, the stadium served more solemn purposes. Directed by Emperor Akihito, a service in commemoration of Japanese Second World War casualties was held.

Acknowledging the violent deaths of over 2.5 million individuals is, in itself, hugely significant. Nevertheless, the correlation between this remembrance ceremony and the seventieth anniversary of the ending of the Second World War in the Pacific Theatre gave this event added importance. These sombre circumstances served to elucidate Japan’s relationship with its recent past.

In Japan the narrative surrounding the Second World War is arguably unfinished.

Without doubt, the legacy of the conflict affects present circumstances. This is felt most powerfully in the domain of international politics.

In this respect, Japan’s tense exchanges with its immediate neighbours are partly attributable to the issue of apologising for wartime wrongdoings.

This notion has been conveyed to Japan’s political hierarchy by its continental counterparts. The comments of Hua Chunying, foreign ministry spokesperson for the People’s Republic of China, provide an example. She criticised a speech made by the Japanese premier, Shinzo Abe, on August 14. Rebuking Mr Abe for his conclusions on the Second World War, Ms Chunying argued that Japan’s contribution to date was not adequate. Further expressions of remorse for actions during the conflict are, she maintained, “an important basis for Japan to improve relations with its neighbours in Asia”.

Feelings of remorse

Having established the international importance of this historical matter, it becomes necessary to clarify the Japanese position on the subject.

A brief statement by Emperor Akihito, delivered at the above ceremony in the Nippon Budokan, provides a point of departure. Striking a reconciliatory tone, the 81-year-old stated that a survey of Japan’s recent past elicited “feelings of deep remorse”. The issues which provoked this emotional response were, nonetheless, left unreferenced. No aspect of the Second World War was highlighted specifically. Instead, Emperor Akihito expressed his “earnest hope that the ravages of war will not be repeated”.

There was a degree of caution in Emperor Akihito’s language. Aside from the sensitive nature of the topic, his reservation is illustrative of a unique constitutional position. Acceding to the Chrysanthemum Throne in 1989, Emperor Akihito inherited the legacy of his father, Emperor Shōwa (sometimes referred to by his personal name, Hirohito). Japan’s defeat in 1945 ushered in changes in Emperor Shōwa’s legal status. In particular, this transition brought about limitations in personal agency.

Under chapter I of the 1947 constitution, which certain quarters believe to disproportionately reflect American aspirations for a post-war Japan, the emperor became “a symbol of the State”. Crucially, he no longer possessed “powers relating to government” and “the advice and approval of the Cabinet [would] be required for all acts of the Emperor in matters of state”.

In the sphere of public relations, therefore, those acceding to this position, including its present incumbent, are restricted. Emperor Akihito’s official stance on national issues, including the legacy of the Second World War, cannot be divorced from that of the country’s elected representatives.

The prime minister

It is to Shinzo Abe, his ruling Liberal Democratic Party and their junior coalition partners, the New Kōmeitō Party, which the observer must turn for Japan’s “official” approach

to historical subjects. To this end, governmental sources echo Emperor Akihito’s viewpoint somewhat. “I express my feelings of profound grief and my eternal, sincere condolences”, Mr Abe said in his August 14 address.

The prime minister’s speech was, nevertheless, far more substantial than the comments of Emperor Akihito. It provided an interpretation of 19th and 20th century Japanese history. Far from dwelling on the unappealing aspects of the imperial period, Mr Abe lauded what he considers to be its achievements.

In this respect, he highlighted that “Japan built a constitutional government earlier than any other nation in Asia” and added that “[t]he country preserved its independence.’

The Russo-Japanese War of 1905, which resulted in the defeat of Tsar Nicholas II’s fleet in the Tsushima Straits, was also cited as giving “encouragement to many people under colonial rule from Asia to Africa”.

The Great Depression, according to Mr Abe, compelled Japan to pursue war as a course of action. “In such circumstances”, he argued, “Japan's sense of isolation deepened and it attempted to overcome its diplomatic and economic deadlock through the use of force”. When reflecting on the later years of the Second World War, rather than pointing to Japanese actions, he spoke, not without ample justification, on the suffering brought about by allied offensives. “The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the air raids on Tokyo and other cities, and the ground battles in Okinawa”, Mr Abe stated, “took a heavy toll among ordinary citizens without mercy”.

Mr Abe’s analysis dealt with more than the internal affairs of his country. To this end, he highlighted the negative experience of neighbouring regions subject to the Imperial Japanese Army. In doing so, Mr Abe uttered perhaps the weightiest sentences of the speech. He stated that “[i] n China, Southeast Asia, the

“

I would love to see the student body in Trinity being political and demanding that the problem of homelessness be addressed much more rapidly than it has been.”

in because there is so little of it and it’s expensive. The other exit is into social housing, again which you can’t get into because there is so little of it. Homelessness today is accompanied by hopelessness which is a total change from the past. People today see no way out and some of the people coming to me are seriously depressed, some are even suicidal, and to me that is a perfectly rational response to the situation which they find themselves in.”

Although McVerry's line of work is extremely demanding and involves him coming across many cases of despair, he told me the thing that motivates him the most is seeing how people react when they overcome their homelessness and the other problems it entails.

“It’s fantastic. We have about 150 apartments at the moment and we hope to have about 200 just after Christmas. To see the smile on someone's face when you bring them in and show them an apartment, give them the key, and tell them this is yours for however long you want it gives you great job satisfaction. You see people

overcoming their drug problems, moving on to college and doing a variety of courses, and that is fantastic. You feel you have made a small contribution to someone's life and while it may have only been a little contribution, in some cases it transforms their lives.”

Finally I ask McVerry what students in Trinity and students generally can do to help aid against homelessness.

“Homelessness is a political issue. It can only be solved politically and therefore I think we need a strong public voice demanding to end homelessness. Certainly students in Trinity would have more voice and more opportunities to express that than many other people. I would love to see the student body in Trinity being political and demanding that the problem of homelessness be addressed much more rapidly than it has been. Secondly, one of the reasons why there isn't much concern over homelessness is because people's perception of homeless people is that they are drug users or they are alcoholics or they are people with mental health problems. While that may have been true a few

years ago it certainly is not true now. We need to change our attitudes and I think the only way we can change our attitudes is by encountering and meeting homeless people. If you see someone who is homeless go up and talk to them, even if it’s only for two minutes. Go up and have a chat. That does two things.

One, it shows the homeless person that you respect them and treat them like a human being - if you are begging on the street most people just walk past you. Over time you become aware that homeless people are just the same as the rest of us only their path in life has gone in a very direction, usually because of no fault of their own.”

Aaron Matheson Reen explores the contentious legacy of the Second World War in Japan and its visible impact on East Asian politics.

Pacific islands and elsewhere that became the battlefields, numerous innocent citizens suffered and fell victim to battles as well as hardships such as severe deprivation of food”.

The rhetoric employed above is matter of fact. It represents a reserved observation on the circumstances which precipitated the outbreak of hostilities.

Such circumspection coloured only part of Mr Abe’s speech. In its closing sections, which comment on Japanese obligations to the memory of the Second World War, he was assured in his remarks.

While lamenting that the less palatable aspects of the past cannot be “undone”, Mr Abe considered further acts of compunction as unnecessary.

“We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come,’ he contended, ‘who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologise”. Mr Abe’s beliefs reflect the “established” Japanese approach to the Second World War. The undesirable elements of the conflict, though regrettable, have already been recognised and repented for.

T

HE CHINESE TOOK considerable exception to this contention. Referring directly to Mr Abe’s statement, Ms Chunying instructed that “Japan should have made an explicit statement on the nature of the war of militarism” and offer a “sincere apology to the people of victim countries”.

Mr Abe’s oration was, from a Chinese perspective, marked by a dearth of clarity and sufficiently apologetic gestures.

China’s characterisation of the conflict as one of Japanese “militarism” may be reflective of contemporary developments. In 2013, Shinzo Abe visited Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine.

The University of Californiaeducated politician has also made ritual donations to this Shinto site. Erected by Emperor Meiji in 1869, the shrine recognises those who died in service to the state. Convicted war criminals are numbered

among the acknowledged individuals. Hence, for certain observers, Yasukuni, occupying a central position in the cartography of the Japanese capital, has become a visceral monument to jingoism.

Troubled relations

In addition, Mr Abe has sought revisions to Japan’s defensive capabilities. Under chapter II of the 1947 constitution war was renounced “as a sovereign right of the nation”.

Sections of the Japanese public support this repudiation.

The Buddhist lay organisation, Soka Gakkai, symbolised by its tricolour flag, strongly advocates that Japan’s relations with other countries remain passive.

Nevertheless, Mr Abe successfully revised the constitution to allow for “collective self-defence”. This was achieved by passing legislation on September 19. “Collective self-defence” enables Japan to militarily assist friendly nations against aggressors. In such circumstances, Japan itself would not have to be attacked.

Widening the scope for offensive action is indicative of security-related fears in Japan. Engaged in territorial disputes with the Russian Federation, China and the Republic of Korea, coming to terms with Chinese expansion in the South China Sea and lying to the immediate east of an unpredictable Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the potential for unrest is present.

Despite this, the realignment of Japan’s defensive focus, along with Mr Abe’s ties to Yasukuni Shrine, has received condemnation from China. Japan’s perceived recalcitrance on historical matters serves to compliment such censures. It would be unreasonable, however, to suggest that China was utilising the past solely to discredit Japan’s security reforms. The manner in which China was treated during Japanese occupation resonates with its public today. There is, as such, domestic interest in pressing Japan to acknowledge controversial incidents subsequent to its annexation

of Manchuria in 1931.

Colonial scars

In responding to Japanese commemorations, South Korea has, more so than China, focused on specific aspects of its subjection to colonial rule.

Synonymous with the Korean peninsula are so-called “comfort women”. Debate on their experience during the war continues to the present. On November 19, for instance, Park Yu-ha, a South Korean academic, was indicted by the South Korean judiciary for the contents of her 2013 publication, Teikoku no Ianfu. Ms Yuha’s book presented “comfort women” as prostitutes.

This depiction is said to have “encroached on the victim’s” personal dignity and hono[u]r with false facts and deviated from freedom of academicism”. The first hearing of this case was convened on Tuesday, December 8. Ms Yu-ha’s indictment highlights the ongoing confrontation between those who maintain “comfort women” engaged in sexual relations for payment and those who assert that they were forced into sexual slavery by Imperial Japanese troops.

Albeit indirectly, Mr Abe mentioned “comfort women” in his August 14 statement.

“We must never forget that there were women behind the battlefields whose honour and dignity were severely injured” he conceded. Mr Abe’s conciliatory comment was not sufficient to satisfy South Korean wishes. They regard as a “pending historical issue … the sexual slavery victims of Japan’s Imperial Army”.

Japanese awareness of the exploitation of these women is not, as far as South Korea is concerned, an adequate act of remorse.

Should this outstanding matter be solved, a South Korean diplomat revealed on August 15, “a new future” will be explored Japan. This would manifest itself in greater cooperation on “the North Korean nuclear issue, economy, social affairs and culture, as well as cooperation for peace and stability in northeast Asia”.

A dichotomy emerges when

the arguments and counterarguments surrounding penitence for Japanese conduct during the Second World War are contrasted. The Japanese position is outlined by Mr Abe’s plea for no further signals of apology. However, the Chinese and South Korean stance is one which argues the contrary. This is the crux of the issue. One party desires something of a clean break from historical matters while another presses for greater engagement on the subject.

Irrespective of viewpoint, accommodating these blocs is a prerequisite to fully normalising relations in the region.

How are these contradicting aims and objectives to be reconciled? Perhaps progress was made at a conference convened at the University of Tokyo during the summer. A regular commentator on Japan’s foreign policy, Professor Kiichi Fujiwara, has detailed its suggestions in the Asahi Shimbun (which translates as Morning Sun Newspaper). It proposes that statesmen visit sites pertinent to other country’s experience of the Second World War. For example, Japanese leaders would journey to locations of historical importance in China and South Korea and representatives from those nations would travel to corresponding sites in Japan.

Dr Mira Rapp Hooper, a fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington D.C., holds this plan in high esteem. The Columbia University graduate argues such measures could “be a useful first step in a broader reconciliation”.

Even with scholarly attention on the subject, it remains uncertain how this problem will be resolved. The Second World War may continue to be a sticking point in east Asian politics. Through a new approach or some form of accommodation, matters relating to the past could be put to bed. There is, nonetheless, one constant in this situation: that, as Mr Abe ruefully admitted, “[h]istory is harsh” and there is no obvious method in coming to terms with its legacy.

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Features

10

The story behind the Greek art posters springing up all over campus

Holidays are coming - especially on TV Which cheery festive adverts capture our hearts year after year? Caoimhe Gordon delves into the archives to find out.

Sarah Taaffe-Maguire speaks to the Trinity staff member currently looking for models to volunteer for his “art nude” photography

Caoimhe Gordon Online features editor

Sarah TaaffeMaguire Deputy features editor

T

RINITY'S FAVOURITE LOCATION to parody itself is the noticeboard. Among the notices for a lost fountain pen and "fidget ball," one poster in particular stands out. It says “”Venus” Wanted.” Students who have seen it may have been greeted with a bemused curiosity or perhaps mild revulsion as they filled their water bottle from a fountain.

It goes on to inform us: “Tall Female Students Needed for Black & White Greek Art Photo Shoot.” Maybe you have seen another variant of this poster, with the simple headline “Models Wanted” in bold and underlined, but otherwise with the same content as its “”Venus” Wanted” counterpart. Both go on to try to convince the women of campus: “Be a part of Classic Greek ART!” To those interested, you also need to meet the physical requirements, specifically: “Height > 5ft 6inch + Medium/Long Hair.”

So, “Venus” is wanted, but beyond that, the poster raises a number of issues: Why is this on campus? Who is the person behind it? Most of all, the poster seems out of the ordinary even for Trinity, so I journeyed into the unknown and emailed the address provided. I heard back from its creator, Donal Martin, or Dee to his friends. Martin is a recognisable face in the 1937 Reading Room where he sits at an upstairs computer and is one of the few older patrons.

When he arrived to meet me for the interview, he was donning a familiar black leather jacket and holding his trademark white plastic bag. Despite his familiarity to the postgraduate students in the Reading Room, Martin is not a student; he is a member of staff in the Statistics Department. Even though he posts notices for models around campus, he does not discuss his hobby with his colleagues.

It is “a personal thing” that he chooses not to “announce.”

Contacting him raised more questions than it answered.

I had first assumed that the poster might refer to a Classics, or Art History student project. However, the potential photoshoot is not attached to any department, or endorsed by any student society.

It is entirely extra-curricular.

Most importantly, however, a detail not mentioned on his poster became very apparent after getting in touch: Martin is looking for women willing to be photographed naked.

Art nude

When we met, Martin explained that he has “always been interested in Greek statues.” For a number of years he had been trying to replicate “the incredible grace of the image” in black and white.

“Art nude” soon became his particular area of interest after learning his trade from a French photographer. “It’s interesting: it’s actually quite difficult to make something art nude,” though it may “sound easy.” Martin reveals that the difficulty associated with art nude is drawing the distinction between it and pornography: “You have to extract an erotic element out” of the image. “Eye contact changes the image of a picture between an art nude and a page 3.” For him, it’s all about the “person’s expression and eye contact.”

However, from the outset it’s important to know that Martin does not believe in paying models for their work, even if his photographs are successful. Put succinctly, to pay the model “changes something.” If the work is “fee-based” then it becomes “less of an exchange of ideas.” Martin is far more enthusiastic about a collaborative working style which, he believes, can only be reached with the help of volunteers: “If you volunteer, it’s because you are interested, and you want to be involved, and you want to give something to the image.” Even though Martin refuses to pay his models, he will always offer them copies of their photographs so they can build up their own portfolios.

He believes that payment adds a “commercial element […] then you think maybe

you’re shooting a style that you manoeuvre towards more of a fetish.” He does acknowledge that there is a large market for a more fetishisied image, but he is quick to distance himself from that industry. He believes his work belongs exclusively to the world of high art, and, as such, thinks it a shame people are reluctant to purchase or hang his work in public buildings in Ireland.

However, some success came in 2009 when two of Martin’s photographs were exhibited at the Trinity Exhibition, a showcase of the work of students and staff of College organised by Trinity Visual Arts Society. More than 110 works initially submitted were for consideration for display.

Yet, if the work is not reimbursed, the question remains: why should women volunteer?

With an idealistic tone, Martin answers simply: “Curiosity. Isn’t it part of living? To engage?”

Throughout our interview, Martin is keen to stress the importance of “consent in everything” and only asking women to do what they are comfortable with. This is another reason why he is averse to paying models: on a volunteer basis the process can be extended beyond one photoshoot. “Baby-steps” are taken with participants. “Say you’re a little bit nervous, let’s try this: come to the studio, meet me and if you don’t like it after half an hour, stop it.”

Martin states that it makes him proud as an artist when he is able to take women “on a journey, from what they didn’t think they could do, to what they now can do, and they’ve changed.”

Lack of interest

Unfortunately for him, Martin has yet to receive any interest in the project from Trinity students. So, I pose the question to him: why does he think women have been so

reluctant to come forward?

Might it have something to do with there being no payment, and the fact the project involves standing naked (perhaps with the cover of a thin silk cloth) for an amateur male photographer in an unfamiliar quay-side studio?

But Martin believes the answer lies in a peculiarly Irish embarrassment surrounding the naked body. “There’s a huge lack of confidence about people’s physical bodies that doesn’t exist on the continent.

Our image of our bodies is so negative.”

N

EXT, HE PULLS out an example of his work, a booklet of high-quality photographs made in 2007, which he notes mostly show Russian, Slovak, and Czech models. He claims to have found these women using posters similar to the ones around campus, and also through the internet.

Each photograph is of a woman posing completely nude.

In some, there is a tactful use of shadow, silks and wooden chairs. By his own admittance, and having spent a lot of time in Prague, Martin bemoans the decline of an “explorative” culture in Irish universities.

“Within the walls of Trinity,” he says, he had hoped people would be “much more openminded.”

Yet, if his aim is to encourage more open-minded attitudes, and move away from the eroticised images of pornography, I offer that Martin might do well to photograph subjects other than young women. Has he ever considered photographing the male nude, for example? “I guess I’ve never thought about it.

But I haven’t ruled it out.” He goes on to outline that while he believes public advertising campaigns designed to feature a variety of body shapes, colours, and ages, rather than an idealised body, do have their

place, “it’s not what I’m interested in now.” Martin considers himself an artist above all else. Despite the scarcity of participants, he remains dedi-

“

He believes his work belongs exclusively to the world of high art, and, as such, thinks it a shame people are reluctant to purchase or hang his work in public buildings in Ireland.

However, some success came in 2009 when two of Martin’s photographs were exhibited at the Trinity Exhibition, a showcase of the work of students and staff of College organised by Trinity Visual Arts Society. More than 110 works initially submitted were for consideration.

cated to his cause: “I think you choose what you choose. And you shouldn’t choose something just because you’re making it more equal.”

He says he is not looking for the ideal body - indeed, “there is no such thing” - so much as the “statuesque image.” More important than any of Martin’s physical requirements of models is that they are willing to be “engaged and suggestive” in trying to achieve this statuesque form, calling to mind the ancient Greek appreciation of the nude. He goes so far as to say that this collaborative process with the model is even more important than the end product of the shoot. Martin says that he has amassed such a collection of photographs that adding to it is no longer of great importance. For this reason, he is very happy to destroy the photographs if women are not happy with them.

Martin says his ultimate project is to embody the aesthetic of Film Noir through his photography. He thinks his work is best described as “imagery of women and their strong powerful persona” influenced by “strong and in control” female characters from the 1940s, including “Betty Davis, Joan Crawford and many others.” Looking towards the future, he is planning a “very ambitious project, involving a fallen angel theme inside a graveyard with operatic style feathered wings.” And if his art could be considered part of a wider movement in Ireland, Martin suggests it might be part of an effort to remove the fear associated with the nude female body. “This is not about me,” he says. True to form, Martin declined to be photographed for this article.

Additional reporting by Tadgh Healy

A

S DREARY NOVEMBER reaches its bitter end, the Christmas advertisement juggernaut strikes the general populace without warning. Can one really consider the festive season to be in full swing without spotting that plucky child run out onto the road after the red Coca-Cola truck as the manic chorus of “Holidays Are Coming” crescendos? For one month, John Lewis is not just an individual unlucky enough to possess two first names. Forget the familial customs, the inevitable weight gain, the overwhelmingly spirit of good will; don’t even mention the irritating Spotify advertisements of their Christmas playlists, or wishing random acquaintances you bump into at the beginning of Advent a happy Christmas.

The true magic of Christmas lies within our television screens as minute long adverts, which we bemoan for the other eleven months of the year. Yet, in December, they capture our hearts and often our tear ducts. It is truly ironic that the most popular advertisements for the cheeriest period of the year are often those that cause our eyes to well up. Here in Trinity News, we grew curious: which adverts are impossible to forget?

Which special creations rest comfortably on the greatest hits list?

Nostalgia

Things that only 90s kids can remember, due to the amount of lists and articles online, are apparently vast and epic. However, forget Saturday morning cartoons, Beanie Babies and Game Boys.

The Kelloggs Christmas advert, which was first broadcast in 1990, played a vital role in advertising at this time. How can one forget that beaming blonde child sharing some cornflakes with the man himself, Santa Claus? This advert never truly lost its magic as we all pitied the clueless siblings who fell asleep. Lame. However, what few people know is that the angelic star was actually played by twins, Alexandra and Holly Stapley.

In 2013, the internet erupted in shock as articles, exclaiming “See what the blonde Cornflakes child looks like now!” were published. Photographs were also released, portraying Holly getting married. Oh, how old we all felt!

This classic advert remains a firm favourite as it captures the child-like excitement and glee we all shared in imaging an encounter with Santa Claus as he paid a visit to our homes.

Another classic is the Budweiser Christmas advertisement, which dates back to 1987. There’s even a Facebook page entitled “It’s Not Christmas Until the Budweiser Ad Is On TV.” At present, the page only has 364 likes (365 after I stumbled upon it) but such appreciation for the Christmas advertising spectacle cannot go ignored. The advert truly is a voyage into a white Christmas as the huge Clydesdale horses appear onscreen, trotting along in unison through the snow.

The carriage they pull with ease is stacked high with Christmas trees. That catchy tune that worms itself into your brain also cements its status as an honest to goodness staple in the Christmas advertisement charts. They don’t make them like they used to, some might say. The Budweiser Clydesdales are quite the exclusive group that continues on to this day. The ever-changing group of horses that make appearances all over the US every year must fit certain criteria in order to be chosen for such a honour and according to the Budweiser website, it does not hurt the world famous horses when new shoes are being put on their hooves as “it is much like a person getting a manicure.”

Irish adverts

Forget American capitalism filling our screens. One of the most adored Christmas adverts which broadcasts to the population year after year is the Guinness “Dreaming of a White One.” This year it reaches a ten year milestone.

The concept is eerily simple – a one minute montage of easily recognisable Irish sights, from the Custom House to the Claddagh to an unidenti-

fied typically Irish suburban street and finally the walls of the Guinness factory, all adjourned with a sprinkling of snow as the clock strikes midnight on December 25. Perhaps the reason for its popularity is its simplicity and slow emotional music that makes you yearn for the warm glow of an open fire and a selection box (or three). The creators of the advertisement were apparently inspired by the final pages of James Joyce's The Dead.

We cannot proceed much further without mentioning the success of John Lewis’ many and varied Christmas adverts that all share the ability to garner millions of views online and cause people to admit to weeping. These adverts are sprinkled with such a festive magic that they are warmly received by the public annually. The products and music featured gain instant popularity, and John Lewis know how to capitalise on the exposure their adverts bring.

Independent publisher Nosy Crow has published three picture books, each based on characters from different Christmas adverts of the department store. Some proceeds from the book’s sales went to children’s charities. This charitable theme continued in 2013 when one could not enter a single store without hearing the strains of Lily Allen’s cover of “Somewhere Only We Know.” The song reached number 1 in the UK Charts, and portion of its earnings were donated to Save the Children’s Philippine Typhoon Appeal. This year, a man residing alone on the moon is a result of a collaboration with Age UK. It cost over £7 million to produce, and the telescope used by the little girl to spy the man on the moon sold out in minutes on the John Lewis website.

New contenders

We all know John Lewis know how to pull on the heartstrings, but this year the title for the most heart wrenching Christmas advert must be bestowed on a German advert. Promoting the supermarket chain Edeka, the story focuses on an old man facing Christmas alone.

It’s a recurring theme in this year’s crop, and it’s not hard to see why – the theme can affect viewers as they reflect on the lives of their own parents or grandparents. This elderly German man has no option but to take drastic measures to reunite his family for a festive celebration and so – spoiler alert – he fakes his own death.

But not to worry.

The family lands into what they believe is a dead man’s home, but instead appears a large spread from Edeka (naturally) with the elderly jester alive and well. A celebration begins for the elderly man’s unbelievable continued state of living and also, no doubt for the delicious food from Edeka. It is almost impossible to watch this advertisement without feeling the tears well up in your eyes.

Every year, the struggle to achieve the elusive title of the undisputed champion of the Christmas advert crop becomes more and more difficult. Many are doomed for a short burst of national acclaim before disappearing into the archives, never to be wept at again. The classics, that we still YouTube fondly to this day, will never lose the beloved status among their audience.

This is mainly due to the fact that in their prime, the target audience of such simple masterpieces could be reached through traditional forms of media: the radio, the television and a still image plastered across a billboard.

Today, social media presents a challenge to marketing masterminds as they strive to find a message that will cross many varying platforms, stop people from refreshing their newsfeeds, cause them to pay attention and eventually pass it on to others. This mammoth task would appear to be more challenging than trying to fall asleep on Christmas Eve.

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Features

11

What next for the College nursery in the face of a 52% budget cut?

Caoimhe Gordon speaks to TCDSU president, and former student parent officerLynn Ruane about the reverberations the budget cut will have for student and staff who are parents.

Caoimhe Gordon Online features editor

T

HERE HAVE BEEN few departments and services which have emerged unscathed from budget cuts in recent years. Funding for capitated bodies within the college was slashed by 10% last year. The Sports Centre budget has been cut by 136,000. The removal of modules and cuts in staff numbers remains a challenge to the quality of education within Trinity. Following the announcement that Trinity had been ranked at 78 in this year’s QS University Rankings, the Dean of Research John Boland commented: “Trinity’s top 100 position globally and top 30 in Europe is remarkable in the context of its reduced income. Trinity’s annual budget per academic year is 45% lower than that of the average university in the world top 200.”

No country for lone women Deidre Foley Contributing writer

O

UR CONSTITUTION WAS rewritten in 1937. After years of violence and resulting trauma both at home and abroad, Ireland had reached a curious point of juxtaposition where women were utterly central to romantic, prescribed imagery of Ireland, but had been completely pushed out of full and qualified Irish citizenship by means of careful legal construct.

The 1916 proclamation, once described by noted Irish suffragist (and James Joyce’s adolescent muse) Mary Kettle as “the charter of women’s liberties,” had given equal rights to the sexes; this was followed by the 1922 Free State Constitution, which also guaranteed equal rights and opportunities to all. But things were soon to change. A certain, deliberate reduction on this progress was made in the ‘30s; legislation was built with Catholic social teaching in mind, placing the Irish woman firmly in the domestic sphere. By the ‘40s, the Constitution would eventually be dismissed as mere “empty formulae” by Hanna SheehySkeffington.

A newly self-conscious type of nationalism was manifest by this time. Increasingly, men and women were separate in their roles, despite the fact that they had worked closely together to achieve independence. In the era following the Gaelic revival, the bulk of Irish visual identity continued to be built out of femininity. Éire, or Hibernia, was strongly associated with feminine ethnicity; an example of this prescribed nationalism being the Tailteann Games, which were presented as a revival of an ancient Irish custom. The opening ceremony of the first Games in 1924 took place in Croke Park before an estimated crowd of 20,000, and the ceremony began with the entrance of Queen Táilte, flanked by young men dressed in the costumes of 11th century Gaelic warriors, carrying spears and accompanied

by Irish wolfhounds. It was an event of pageant and sentimentality, reflective of the symbolic role assigned to Irish women by the State during these years.

A photograph from one ceremony shows two women in Celtic dress, embodying the kind of popular national symbolism that had come to be commonplace. In the background stands a lone nun, symbolic perhaps of another option that many Irish women felt compelled to take as a result of increasingly narrowly defined gender roles. The historian Margaret Mac Curtain, herself a nun, has spoken

about why women may have made that choice as the years progressed:“The simple truth is that the options here in Ireland for women in the 1940s were very very narrow indeed.

And entering religious life, going abroad… this was high adventure…. Marriage was not attractive to them. They were going to go for a life of adventure…Irish women couldn’t work after marriage. There was a state marriage bar. And of course the whole expectation of Catholic moral teaching, there was no such thing as contraception for Catholic mothers. So I suspect that a lot of young women, probably unconsciously, went for consecrated religious life as a life of adventure.”

An increasing emphasis on women’s role in the domestic sphere was apparent well before the 1937 constitution. The 1927 Juries Bill was originally designed to bar all women from sitting on juries.

Eventually, pressure from women’s groups led to an ‘optin’ amendment; women could still sit on juries, but only if they specifically applied. In the Irish Senate, the Seanad, Jennie Wyse Power was a vocal opponent to the bill, and described it as “an injustice to what is really a necessary asset to every state, the co-operation of its men and women.”

Despite these protests, the bill passed, and women were still automatically left off the register for jury service until 1976. This was an explicit case of the State’s prescription of gender roles; certain aspects of Irish citizenship, particularly in public life, were now presented as optional or unnecessary for Irishwomen.

The Catholic social concept of a ‘living wage’, to be earned by the male breadwinner, was central to the thought process behind the introduction of a marriage bar. The 1935 Conditions of Employment Act enabled the government to bar women from certain areas of employment and to impose gender quotas where it saw fit in certain industries. This only affected a small amount of working women (as female employment was already low) but it was also a major roadblock for the future of generations of Irish women. This was wrapped up two years later in Article 41: 41.2.1° In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

41.2.2° The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.

The Constitution demonstrated Ireland’s dedication to

Approaching 2016, we’re nearly at the high point of the decade of centenaries. Setting war and rebellion aside, it is what happened post-independence that had the most lasting influence on Irish female identity. Women’s citizenship – still debatable in terms of equality – was entirely redefined after independence.

Leaflet from the National University Women Graduates' Association urging women to vote against the constitution, citing infringements on women contained within Image courtesy of Alan Kinsella of the Irish Election Literature blog.

Catholic social teaching, and the domestic role of the woman came hand in hand with it; this was narrowly defined, and did not apply to all female citizens as many remained single for life. These women, already denied ordinary citizenship as envisaged in 1916, were effectively pushed further out of place. Marriage rates were low during the 1940s in particular – 24% of women remained unmarried into middle age. In this sense, the constitution did not provide for all Irish women – if they did not marry and take up a caring role within the home, were they ‘lesser’ citizens?

Outside of marriage, women’s options were limited.

Entry into domestic service or religious vocations (which only declined in the 1970s) was popular, as was emigration. Female emigration was persistently high up until the 1960s, particularly among the 15-24 age group. Those who stayed at home with older relatives faced a volatile future without the relative security of marriage and children.

The solitude, loneliness and internalised anger felt by unmarried older women in these decades was dissected perfectly by Sebastian Barry in Annie Dunne. Both Annie and Sarah are at times bitter, and always all too aware of their vulnerable position as lone females, just managing to eke out a simple living in 1950s county Wicklow.

W

OMEN LIKE SINÉAD de Valera were model citizens – though she was a public figure, she never courted the public sphere. Sinéad met Eamon de Valera while tutoring Irish with the Gaelic League on Parnell

Square. After they married, she brought up a large family of children and endured some hardship during long periods away from her husband, as well as the tragic death of their son, Brian, who was killed the year after the above picture was taken, in a riding accident in the Phoenix Park. Sinéad never publicly expressed views on political matters, especially during her husband’s presidency, though

“

In the era following the Gaelic revival, the bulk of Irish visual identity continued to be built out of femininity. Éire, or Hibernia, was strongly associated with feminine ethnicity many historians would contest that she was highly political. Sinéad later went on to write children’s stories, and appeared rarely in public, but did regularly attend children’s drama competitions and some Gaelic League functions.

Occupying the polar opposite side of society were those who got ‘into trouble’. The Magdalenes occupy a curious space between the past and present. Google ‘magdalene

laundries’ in Ireland and the first answer will be paid-for contextual placement from a solicitor – ‘Magdalene Laundries – Start Your Claim Today’. The laundry building on Seán MacDermott Street in North Dublin stands empty and intimidating. It’s a reminder to me, each time I pass, that the Magdalene chapter of our history remains unfinished – official apologies may have been made, but survivors continue to fight for due compensation and recognition. With the (very questionable) ongoing sale and redevelopment of land and buildings previously owned by religious orders, it’s possible that in a few years there will be no visual reminder of these prisons, just as there is no great memorial to them anywhere in the capital.

The legacy of those women who were left out of place in today’s Ireland is a very quiet one. At a time when the meaning of marriage continues to evolve, it’s worth reflecting on what such a strict emphasis on this rite of passage meant for previous generations. Those older women, who aren’t our married grannies and grandaunts, had no voice and a smaller legacy than their married counterparts. Some are retired missionaries, some nuns, some are institutionalised. So many have passed away without a trace.

Nursery cuts

However, the impact of the budget cuts extends wider still. Nestled in a cosy corner of campus near the health clinic lies the Trinity College Day Nursery. Located in House 49/50, the nursery has consistently felt the damaging and ineluctable effects of budget reductions. Many students remain unaware of such this institution that they perhaps stroll past on a daily basis. The day care centre has been operating within the walls of Trinity since 1969, rendering it the first on-site workplace nursery in Ireland.

Only children of students and staff members within the university are permitted to attend. Journalist Carol Hunt is among one of such parents and has spoken highly of the service it provides: “One of the main reasons why I decided to continue my education was because it enabled me to avail of this wonderful facility, with its meticulous standards, free health care and, last but certainly not least, staff who are both professional and wonderfully caring.”

At present, a maximum of 52 full time places are available and the age of children in attendance ranges from three months to four and a half. The service is well organised, providing rooms suited for use of children of each specific age group, as well as organising a variety of outings for the older children. The nursery, which declined to provide comment for this article, remains an essential service within College. According to its website, their aim is to “provide a homely, caring and stimulating environment for every child.” However, it is clear that achieving this is becoming increasingly difficult.

Reaction from the SU

The funding cuts to the nursery were first brought to student attention by TCDSU President, Lynn Ruane during the second Student Council of the year. Ruane quotes that the cut to the nursery’s funding is 52% of their annual budget and imagines the impact such a substantial cut will have the on the day to day running of the nursery: “The service was already under-funded before the cut so I would imagine it

Deirdre Foley is a history graduate, currently studying for the M.Phil in Modern Irish History at Trinity. She tweets at @DeirdroFoley.

A version of this article first appeared on The Coven.

Illustration by Nadia Bertaud

will affect every aspect from wages to the quality of service.

It definitely won’t help the already long waiting list. There is always a possibility when a service is cut so much that fees for parents will rise which will have a negative impact on students using service which will hinder them continuing in their course due to affordability.”

So far, there have been no sustained calls from the student body to reverse the downward trend in the nursery’s yearly budget. But Ruane remains optimistic that students can unite to tackle such budget cuts which affect not just the nursery but all student services that currently find themselves in the same precarious position. For Ruane, it has become increasingly evident that student participation is necessary to display any opposition to such reductions in funding for essential student services. She explains: “I would hope that we can bring together all student services that have been cut in the same manner to develop a coordinated response and funding strategy.”

“

The day care centre has been operating within the walls of Trinity since 1969, rendering it the first on-site workplace nursery in Ireland

Moreover, Ruane remains adamant that College must make immediate changes to Trinity’s public image they continue to present to prospective students. She fears that such devastating cuts to a vital service for many parents will deter them from making the choice to attend third level education: “We need to rethink what we as a college are offering to prospective students. If we are aiming to be in a college and a society that believes education is for all then we need to be providing the services that allow participation of women, parents and those unable to afford extortionate childcare fees.”

As the children of the nursery enter their last week before the Christmas festivities begin, many of them will no doubt be looking forward to the new term, so that they can be return to their friends and teachers. Just as the children will bring new toys and tales with them into the New Year, the staff working at the nursery will hope that 2016 will bring much needed changes to the funding system currently in place.

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Comment

“Coming to Trinity didn’t cause any of my problems. It just made me realise that they weren’t going away by themselves.”

Diary of a Trinity drop out page 14

The war against ISIL and the illusion of choice

Illustration by Sarah Morel

A military and ideological battle against ISIL is inevitable. The question is over what role, if any, the west should play in the coming carnage, and what strategy it should pursue in doing so.

Deepi Virk Contributing writer

S

INCE THE 1990S, and perhaps even earlier, jihadist ideology has been predicated on the belief that making life as difficult as possible for the west will give us no choice but to abandon the Middle East, at which point the region would be ripe for taking by the forces of reaction.

We cannot let this happen.

ISIL wants a war because they believe they can win. It’s our duty to remind them that they can’t, and won’t.

A wave of pacifism swept across Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, a legacy of the suffering endured by all sides during the intense militarism of the first world war. Ultimately, this policy of non-intervention collapsed with the Nazi invasion of Poland, but up until this point, the dominant force in Britain’s policy towards other countries was an unwillingness to act in the face of aggression.

Given the disaster of Iraq and the subsequent weariness of the British population in matters of intervention, coupled with the hammering of public services and the rise of dramatic inequality, a parallel can be drawn between the non-interventionist movement of 2015, and that of the Munich Agreement of 1938.

Although the public couldn’t have known it then, a year after Chamberlain’s securing of “peace for our time” the most catastrophic war in the history of humanity spread across the continent, and later, the world.

In 2015, faced with a Syrian conflict that threatens to engulf a region in bloody sectarian strife, it is folly to believe that peace can be secured without challenging ISIL directly first.

The lessons from Chamberlain and his contemporaries hold to this day. There can be no peace between civilisation and barbarism, only postponement, and even deferring the inevitable comes at a high price. In 1938, it meant abandoning the Sudetenland.

In 2015, it means abandoning Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa.

Intervention needed

The situation in Syria is more complicated than most

casual observers can even begin to imagine: shifting alliances, underhanded business deals, unspoken truces, Russian bombs falling over Aleppo more often than they fall over Raqqa and foreverexisting sectarianism perpetuating from the regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

It is often cited that ISIL are the product of the Iraq war. Although the group were formed in 1999, it was the invasion the subsequent destruction of Iraqi civilisation that allowed the group to make a home in the midst of the flames. This is an oversimplification.

The overtly sectarian policies of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki between 2011 and 2014, coupled with the Iraqi government’s use of force against Sunni protest movements, contributed to ISIL’s ability to take control of large swathes of territory in the north. But if ISIS is a monster born from our misdeeds, then it is only right that we be the ones to drive the stake through its heart.

An argument made by noninterventionists is that western intervention never works.

There have in fact been at least two successful interventionism since 1991. In Bosnia, western forces, in coordination with the UN, carried out a programme that forced the Bosnian Serb Army to return to negotiations. It is also worth remembering that the west’s perceived inability to act sooner in defence of Bosnian Muslims was used as a key tool in jihadist radicalisation programmes during the 1990s, demonstrating that our inaction can become a means of generating extremism just as much as our actions.

In Sierra Leone, perhaps the least discussed western intervention, the failure of the UN to ensure peace compelled the British to intervene, leading to the forced disarmament of the RUF and the establishment of peace.

The lessons from these interventions should be clear.

Western intervention can work if properly managed, and if the political will exists to do it properly.

The nature of ISIL requires that the west act, drawing on past experiences to halt the advance of Daesh. In fact, this has already happened to some extent, as what many

people seemed to have forgotten about the vote on airstrikes in Syria is that it is an extension. The UK has been bombing ISIL in Iraq, with permission from the Iraqi government, for the past year, and this has allowed Kurdish Peshmerga forces to retake Sinjar. Less than a year ago, ISIL stood poised at the gates of Baghdad. That is no longer the case.

A self-evident truth about war is that it is accompanied by death, but perhaps more importantly, these deaths are often people who had no direct role in the war but happened to be caught in the middle. This was the case in Yugoslavia, in Sierra Leone and it will undoubtedly be the case in Syria too.

But what is the counterfactual? If we intervene children will die, but if we don’t intervene, children will die in perhaps greater numbers as the conflict continues. The only difference between bombings conducted by western forces and those conducted by Assad is that western forces don’t actively target civilians.

When western soldiers commit crimes, these scandals shake the core of our societies. The same cannot be said for the other perpetrators of violence in Syria; for them, violence against civilians is an end in and of itself.

What’s more, our technological capacities allow us to target militants while ensuring minimal civilian casualties. Of the 8,000 coalition airstrikes conducted against ISIL in Iraq so far, there have been perhaps between 600900 civilian deaths. These deaths are tragic, but considering the extent of the sustained attack, the number is relatively small, certainly much smaller than any other power operating a similar strategy over the same period of time.

Alternatives

Being distrustful of governments is good, especially with regard to foreign policy, but as much as I struggle to believe Cameron’s motivations are genuine, I trust Putin, Khamenei and Nasrallah even less. Russia’s interests revolve around Syria’s strategic location, with the port city of Tartus being Russia’s only direct access to the Mediterranean. Putin, thus, is willing to bomb the Free Syrian Army into oblivion if

“

The fight won’t be over before Christmas.

Their brand of government is selfdestructive, but their belief in their cause is absolute. If unchallenged, the beheadings will only become more frequent.

necessary.

Whatever western leadership interests are in Syria, their plan is preferable to that of Assad and Russia, and they’re the alternative. Either the west intervenes to combat ISIL, while at the same time pressuring Russia, Assad and the rebels into a diplomatic solution, or we allow a scramble for Syria where the various regional powers grab what they can through whoever they can find, with no thought for the future of the country.

Ground war isn’t an option. Having soldiers on the ground risks alienating our supposed allies in Iraq, and undermines the cause of moderate rebels. It provides concrete targets for ISIL to attack and risks turning secondary intervention into another burgeoning war at a time when the populations of the west have become sceptical about direct intervention in the Middle East.

The role for the west, then, is confined to the skies. To provide assistance to fighters on the offensive, and back-up for areas threatened by ISIL. The west can do more to defeat Daesh if it allows others to take the lead. When a city is liberated, it is preferable that the population come face to face with fellow Muslims.

It is important that ISIL aren’t allowed to make this a war of “crusader” against jihadist; it must be a war of everyone against the jihadists. The west cannot do this alone, and it is vital that we rely on regional forces as well as our own power.

Any policy on Syria must be long-term and cannot rely solely on airstrikes. Establishing a secular Kurdistan, while supporting the 70,000 or so moderate Syrian rebels, as well as local tribes, in their fight against ISIL is necessary. It’s usually forgotten, but the Free Syrian Army has consistently shown itself to be capable of fighting ISIL, having removed Daesh militants from Idlib, Latakia and Aleppo.

T

he problem is that the FSA is haemorrhaging fighters and territory to other, less enlightened rebel groups like Al Nusra and Ansar al Sharia.

The longer the west takes to formulate an effective policy

towards the rebels, the more attractive anti-ISIS jihadist groups begin to look to disillusioned Syrian rebels.

Against Assad the rebels must be supported too, although preferably at the negotiating table, and furthermore, this must be coupled with assurances that the Sunni population can determine its own future, either in a federalised Syria or even as an independent state.

At home, anti-radicalisation programmes, the tackling of socio-economic problems affecting isolated and deprived Muslim communities, as well as the monitoring of suspected extremists is also necessary. It should be clear that as long as the “Islamic State” exists in any meaningful sense, this isn’t possible.

ISIL’s motives

Another argument often forwarded by those opposed to intervention is the belief that combatting ISIL in Syria will give the regime an upper hand. However, Assad has – or rather, Assad’s political advisors have – realised that the regime has the same short term interests as the jihadists, namely to destroy nationalist revolutionary forces within the country. It benefits Assad if the rebels become increasingly jihadist, as this would leave the west and its allies no choice but to cooperate with Syrian state forces.

To this day, Assad and Russian forces spend more time, resources and energy bombing other rebels groups, the vast majority of whom are opposed to ISIL in Syria. So far, the west has fallen into this trap; an important argument against supporting the Free Syrian Army in 2011 was that weapons would ultimately find their way into jihadist hands. The opposite has happened, as without significant military support, moderate groups found it difficult to maintain the loyalty of their fighters, a substantial number of whom left for the ranks of better-funded jihadists.

If our goal is to limit the reasons ISIL have for attacking us, we’re going to have a tough time. A quick glance at a general list of jihadist demands demonstrates the futility of talking to them. The independence of East Timor, the separation of church and state, the abolition of Israel, and the return of Spain to the caliphate aren’t issues that re-

quire negotiation. We already know our answer, and so do ISIL. Their demands are designed to be unrealistic because they want a war, but they don’t truly consider the west to be a threat. Bin Laden himself never believed that the United States would strike back. He believed that the west was weak, lazy and incompetent, unable to care for long enough to secure its own future. If we don’t participate in this war, ISIL propaganda will portray us as unable to fight them.

If we do take part, it will portray us as lustful crusaders full of vice, but this will be a harder sell if our role is secondary. ISIL cannot be allowed to control the narrative of this conflict, and the fact that the ground war is being conducted by other Muslims undermines their claims. It is precisely other Muslims that can construct and provide the best alternative to ISIL in Iraq and Syria, but their chances of succeeding are almost non-existent without our support.

The fight against ISIL won’t be over before Christmas. Their brand of government is self-destructive, but their belief in their cause is absolute. If unchallenged, the beheadings will only become more frequent. They will not be satisfied with their borders; they will expand.

There is a tendency to view intervention against ISIL as just another intervention against another state, but it’s not. ISIL won’t stop until every man, woman and child from the Sahel to Samarkand is under their control.

So while we sit here in our comfortable chairs debating the merits of intervention and non-intervention, keep in mind the 2-5 million people that have been enslaved.

Take a moment to contemplate what life must be like when women are murdered en masse because they are considered too old to be sold as sex slaves. And be thankful that you’ll never have to experience that, at least not until they come for us too.

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Comment

13

Living on a prayer: what the Latin grace at Commons really means Why do we continue with a tradition so deeply connected with millennia of war, perturbing court cases and fractured trust? Students may predominantly be left-wing and forward-thinking, yet we are more than happy to stand up for grace.

Una Harty Staff writer

M

ISERERE NOSTRI TE quaesumus Domine, tuisque donis, quae de tua benignitate sumus percepturi, benedicito per Christum Dominum nostrum.

These are the words which ring in the ears of the students as they take to their seats prior to the Commons meal. Rewind back two minutes; the grand doors of the Dining Hall are slammed shut to mark the beginning of grace. A hundred wooden chairs scrape the marble floor in unison. The Hall freezes with eerie silence only to be

broken by the faint footsteps of the “waiter” as they ascend the pulpit.

The tradition of the Latin grace before the Commons meal is sometimes contentious. Oftentimes students remain seated for the entirety of the grace. I am tempted to endure the prayer firmly on my chair, but I always rise like the vast majority of my table. With religion an ambiguous issue among our generation, and with large numbers of students tend towards an atheistic or agnostic outlook, it seems unconventional to recite grace before a meal. Tradition, however, prevails in Trinity.

Why do we continue with a tradition so deeply connected with millennia of war, perturbing court cases and fractured trust? Students may predominantly be left-wing and forward-thinking, yet we are more than happy to stand up for grace.

Trinity College Dublin’s Latin grace is steeped in history. The tradition began in 1627, when William Bedell held the position of provost of the College. Bedell was an Anglican churchman who became a martyr of the Reformation of Ireland during the Irish Rebellion of 1641. He advanced the Reformation by

allowing the Collect, a prayer used in Christian liturgy, to be read in Gaelic instead of Latin so that the people would understand it. Bedell was the original composer of Trinity College Dublin’s version of the grace. Many versions of the same prayer exist for the different colleges of Cambridge.

At the beginning of every College year ten students are appointed to waiterships; they recite the prayer, ideally from memory. The position is generally filled by scholars, but is not exclusive to them.

Each evening at 6.15pm, the waiter stands atop the “eggcup”, the common-name given to the pulpit. The Psalm expresses gratitude for the meal which the students are about to receive. The “after meat” prayer thanks Elizabeth I, Charles I, James VI “and our other benefactors”.

We cannot be sure who those other benefactors may be, but one could hazard a guess at white, male and Protestant.

A hundred eighteen- to thirty-year-olds are thanking extinct monarchs of the British empire for putting a roast dinner on their plate. Possible future leaders of our country are praising Elizabethan British colonialism. Trinity’s students are indifferent to the

contents of an archaic verse that rolls from their tongues on a nightly basis.

Silent protest

There are a few students, roughly ten, who protest quietly. They do not stand for the “before meat” or the “after meat” prayer, as they are named. I spoke to Louis, a senior sophister philosophy and maths scholar, who remains seated without fail during the recitals.

He said: “Personally, I have a bigger problem with the idea of mass support for something which realistically very few people actively agree with. There’s certainly a fair chunk of people who don’t even know what it means; we were never told, the only reason I know is by asking a classics student. I think it’s fair to assume that the reason most people stand is that most people stand and in a community which, if it has any function at all, should be generating new ideas and challenging the way we do things, this kind of intellectual complacency is particularly disappointing.”

Emails from the Schols Secretary have never contained a translation of the grace; nor has it been made accessible on their website

for informative purposes. No one is forced to recite the prayer – students put themselves forward for the post.

In preparation, they are offered the contact details of a classics professor to help them with the pronunciation.

No assistance is given for the explanation of substance of the grace. They are going into a job blind to deliver two prayers composed of words they don’t understand.

The mere fact that the prayer is in Latin highlights the antiquated aspect of the tradition. Once the powerlanguage of the Roman empire, it is now strictly for research and academics and is rarely spoken. The grace at Commons is a rare opportunity to hear Latin being read aloud. While a classics or a theology student might rejoice at such a spectacle, it may mean less to the remainder of the guests.

Indifference

The students’ laissez-faire attitude towards the tradition is the main problem. But it is fuelled by another factor: fear. This boils down to the fact that also in attendance to Commons on a regular basis are the fellows. According to the Trinity College website, “Scholarship or research

achievement of a high order is the primary qualification for Fellowship, coupled with evidence of the candidate’s contribution to the academic life of the College, as shown in particular by participation in the work of his or her Discipline or School, and an effective record in teaching.” On rare occasions, the provost attends Commons.

Students who frequent the meal wish to please their lecturers and I’m sure certainly the provost. It takes courage to go against the grain during Commons.

However, some students enjoy the role that grace has to play in the meal. Tamsin Greene Barker, a senior freshman PPES student, thinks that “There is a lot of value in taking time out of our hectic college schedules to appreciate the food we are given.”

She goes onto revel in the traditions of Trinity; “They make our college experience unique.” Some may question what harm there is in keeping a tradition that takes merely takes a couple of moments out of meal time.

Certainly it does seem peculiar that at most 10% of students at Commons would reject standing for grace. It is generally believed that students are outspoken, forth-

right and politically aware, and yet so few of them even question the contents of the prayer.

As a younger attendee of Commons since my first year in college due to a Sizarship, I admit I have always stood for grace. I am not religious, nor do I believe in any of what the prayer says, and yet I rise every time.

The act of standing for the prayer is a dramatic one; when experienced for the first time, it is bound to surprise. The thud of the double doors shutting suddenly followed by the loud screech of the chairs against the floor almost scare you into standing up.

Before I started researching this topic for the article I did not realise the meaning of the prayer, and now that I do, I will be even more reluctant to rise when everyone else does. However, I fear that I lack the confidence to remain seated, and I admit that this frustrates me. Deep down I am adamant that I do not support the message of the prayer, and yet I will probably disappoint myself.

How to reconcile male privilege as a female to male feminist There are a lot of intersectional feminists who will give trans men free passes when it comes to acceptable feminist behaviour, passes that they would never give to cis men.

I don’t accept these free passes.

Felix O’Connor Contributing writer

I

GLANCE AT my phone and see a red number – fifteen – in the corner of my Twitter app. I don’t even have to open it to know what I’m getting notifications about.

About a month ago I made the arguably grave error of feeding the trolls. I decided to rebuke some guy who was arguing that the term “mansplaining” was sexist. (Before you rush to the comments, this article is not about whether using “mansplaining” as a term is sexist – though it would likely behoove you to stop reading now if you think it is, as you don’t understand what sexism is).

With regard to this Twitter feud, for about a month I was solidly getting notifications both from people who agreed with the dude in question, and (overwhelmingly) from people who agreed with me.

Primarily women, retweeting what I’d said, quoting me, seconding my points with their own. “Look at this guy!

Being a good male feminist.

This guy gets it.”

And I’m torn. Firstly, I don’t deserve praise for telling this dude that male privilege exists. I shouldn’t be taken more seriously because I’m being perceived as unbiased. And secondly, because I’m passing off my points as second hand experience when they’re not.

They’re first hand. But I don’t want to derail the discussion

with, “Hey, I’m Felix, I’m a trans man. Male privilege definitely exists. I experience it in my everyday life now that I’m not being seen as a woman all the time”.

(For the record, I have done that in past arguments. It goes one of two ways: either the cis male parties stop taking me seriously because my objectivity has been compromised, or the conversation starts to look like this: “Are trans men real men? How can you have experienced female oppression if you say you were never a woman? Isn’t gender a social construct? How can gendered oppression be real if gender isn’t real?”, and every shade of missing the point in between.)

This weird inner conflict, second guessing myself, thinking myself into knots until I feel inexplicably guilty – it happens a lot. I think it has a lot to do with my “feminist origin story” (which involves much less spandex than the average origin story).

straight, I looked at it through a feminist lens. “What does it mean to be a queer woman?

How does queerness shape how I see the world and how the world sees me? How does this affect my feminism?”

And that was fine. Long gone are the days of the lavender menace, meaning that being a queer lady feminist is aokay. Some circles view it as preferable, even.

Then, two years after my “feminist awakening”, I realised that I was trans. That I was a man. Am a man. Frankly, it threw a massive spanner in the works. Right when I’d been trying really hard to accept myself as a woman, to purge my mind of femmephobia and internalised misogyny, something clicked and there it was.

And, to be completely honest, it was terrifying. Because the feminist movement, even on an intersectional level, is far from unified when it comes to the place of men in feminism.

Feminist origins

I’m going to be speaking in terms of men in general because I think that’s important. There are a lot of intersectional feminists who will give trans men free passes when it comes to acceptable feminist behaviour, passes that they would never give to cis men. While I understand some obvious differences apply, especially when it comes to experiences of oppression and “what it’s like to be a woman”, I don’t accept these free passes.

They feel like I’m being sneaked in a back door, and on the way in I’m having “We

Context time: feminism was the first ideology that stuck for me. Yeah, I was an aggressive atheist for a while, but I outgrew that brand of bile when I was 14 or so. Aged 17, feminism, specifically in relation to pop culture criticism because that’s what I like, was a big part of my identity. This is important because at that point I had not yet uncovered the two other things that now greatly inform who I am and how I see the world: my queerness and my transness.

When I realised that I wasn’t one hundred percent

Safe spaces

know you’re really one of us” whispered in my ear. It feels degrading and it inflames my imposter complex. I’ve never felt like a woman. I tried really hard, but I couldn’t do it. When I was passing as a woman, I could invade spaces not meant for me because I looked like a woman. Because I thought I was a woman.

But now that I know I’m not, that’s not an acceptable excuse, and I shouldn’t let others make that excuse for me.

On top of that, there’s an insane level of hypocrisy within facets of the movement when it comes to deciding which trans people are allowed in certain spaces. It is frequently the case that trans men and non-binary people who were female assigned at birth will be allowed into feminist safe spaces, but trans women and non-binary people who were male assigned at birth will not. It’s often explained by thinly veiled transmisogyny or something about the inherent aggressiveness of the penis – despite the fact that some trans women and transfeminine people don’t have penises, or that so much of feminism is about rebuking biotruths.

Men’s place

So I find myself asking, “Where do men fit into feminism?”. Not “How can this cause that is primarily for women (and for good reason) benefit the privileged group more?”, but “Is there a place in feminist movements for discussing masculinity and the male gender without distracting from the more pressing issues at hand, which do tend to be women’s issues?”

Would such discussion require separatist movements along the same vein of black feminism or queer feminism or disabled feminism? Because, let’s face it, if someone was organising a male feminist group which was closed to men only, it would likely get pegged as closer to an MRA group than a third wave intersectional feminist faction.

I’m playing devil’s advocate somewhat here, because frankly, I don’t know where I stand. I just know I probably care. I generally disagree with people who say outright that men should not call themselves feminists but feminist allies (because feminism is ostensibly about gender and “male” is a gender, albeit the one treated as a default). I am, however, in the camp that dictates that in large

feminist organisations and discussions, men shouldn’t speak over the experiences or concerns of women, and should work to elevate women’s voices.

On the other other hand, I shouldn’t feel like an asshole when I, say, point out how the reproductive rights of men who can get pregnant, such as myself, are near totally ignored in discussions of abortion. I shouldn’t feel like I’m stepping into a conversation where it isn’t my place.

Running the risk of sounding like one of those guys who thinks feminists should sit down and listen to the men for once, I do think there should be some discussion of where men fit in. Not as a distraction from greater issues, not as a side door for men to take over. One of the things that makes intersectional

feminism so fantastic is that it does try to encompass the many issues that have been utterly screwed by an unjust patriarchal system. Men are, yes, on the top of the heap of screwed people, but we are screwed all the while.

I’m going to stop before I dig myself into a hole I can’t get out of. In short: where do men fit into feminism?

Should we be considered allies to the cause as opposed to white knights slaying the oppressive beast that is patriarchy (*heavy sarcasm implied*)? And would it be useful to have spaces for discussing male issues? Should all white cisgender straight men burn in hell (*more implied sarcasm*)?

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Comment

14

You can’t price addicts out of their addiction Varadkar’s policy doesn’t help alcoholics, increases the cultural cachet associated with drinking, and gives companies greater incentives to pour their

Naoise Dolan

Comment editor

S

OMEONE NEEDS TO sit Leo Varadkar down and explain that when a given legislative trend has already proven to be A Bad Thing, increasing its scope and severity will make it A Worse Thing.

This week, the health minister announced a Public Health Bill establishing a minimum alcohol price of ¤1 per unit. His aim is to reduce alcoholism by making drink more expensive.

A Eurostat poll in 2014 showed that Ireland has the highest alcohol prices in Europe; we simultaneously ranked among the heaviest drinkers in a WHO report from the same year. Nor is sin-taking a novel approach to fixing this problem: we’ve been doing it since the 1980s.

Our ever-mounting swathe of alcohol levies have had dec-

ades to achieve the desired outcome. It hasn’t happened; hasn’t, and won’t.

Restrictions and bans don’t work when people want something more than they want to avoid the associated state-imposed drawbacks of getting it. We saw this with contraception, we still see this with abortion, and we’re going to see it if Varadkar’s bill gets passed.

His policy doesn’t help alcoholics, increases the cultural cachet associated with drinking, and gives companies greater incentives to pour their capital into promoting alcoholism.

Alcoholics

To dispense with the obvious: genuine addicts can’t be priced out of their addiction.

Varadkar’s policy peddles the pernicious lie that alcoholics can just “use a little willpower” to overcome their problem. This ignores the science of addiction.

“The alcoholic is frequently in the grip of a powerful craving for alcohol, a need that can feel as strong as the need for food or water. While some people are able to recover without help, the majority of alcoholics need outside assistance to recover from their disease.” That’s from the US National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

Does this sound like a craving that a few euro will alter one way or another?

In cases where the tax makes any difference, that difference will often consist of people foregoing necessities in order to continue affording alcohol. On top of that, this tax is regressive: people in lower income brackets pay a greater portion of their income for the same “vice” that richer people indulge in.

It’s inhumane to make human beings suffer in the hope that you might tip their marginal utility calculus 1% of the time. More than that: it’s frightening that Irish government policy is informed by the notion that people can cure their own alcoholism if you tweak the opportunity cost of drinking.

That attitude makes it easier for us to keep rehab services under-funded, to abandon people made homeless by their addictions, to cut welfare from people who can’t prove they’ve been going out to look for work. What incentive does the state have to help someone when their problems are their own fault, and when they’re supplying that state with a lucrative revenue stream for as long as their problems continue?

When you roll out minimum pricing, addictionshaming gets stamped into

the public consciousness and shapes government policy going forward.

Cultural significance

One slightly out-there theory on the cultural significance of alcohol has emerged from a UCD Geary Institute Discussion Paper: the research found that students from regions inside the historical boundaries of “The Pale” were more likely to binge drink, and extrapolated from this that “drinking was partly imported through the influence of British culture”.

Even if you think it’s a leap to blame colonialism, there is a more tangible correlation between alcoholism and recent economic deprivation.

The Central Statistics Office found that spending on alcohol increased each year from 2009. If consumption can rise as the recession rages, that suggests that putting people out of pocket won’t lessen the connection between alcohol and escapism. If anything, it might give them more to escape from.

Moreover, a lot of people hate the government and its priggish interference in their personal decisions. Just think of the Good Friday ritual where we pour into shops the day beforehand to stock up.

Is it really because there’s not a drop in the house and we

can’t go a day without – or is it because we enjoy getting around legislation?

Even putting anti-state sentiment aside, more expensive alcohol means more need to glamourise its surroundings. Pubs can’t get people to pay exorbitant rates without some serious gentrification; when they have to charge prices that only the bourgeoisie can afford, they aggressively target those people.

That doesn’t just mean that people who’ve been in Stoneybatter for decades suddenly can’t keep up with the cost of living; it also means that alcohol acquires the cachet of a luxury good. If you want to lessen its cultural influence, that seems like a poor strategy.

Marketing

This legislation won’t incentivise alcohol producers or vendors to stop selling alcohol – probably by design, given that these companies pour money into the exchequer and the Irish government is capital-b Broke. There are start-up costs that businesses have already paid, from ethanol production infrastructure to long-term investment in building up a brand image.

It makes sense for them to stay operating for as long as they’re making any profit (and they are – the Alcohol

Beverage Federation of Ireland claims they add €2bn a year to the economy).

So if companies are still selling and the government makes purchasing less attractive, then companies will counteract this through sales tactics. This means gentrification, as I’ve already discussed. It also means sponsoring sports events, special offers to get you to buy in bulk, strategically placing bottles in supermarkets in places where consumers are bound to walk by. There’ll be a ‘Drink Responsibly’ watermark every now and then, but they’re so ubiquitous that they’ve become a quirky stamp offset by a celebrity endorsement.

Advertising will obviously happen whether or not you impose minimum pricing – but insofar as you need to spend money to develop and implement marketing strategies, companies will only do it to the extent that the lost revenue from not doing it exceeds the cost. Varadkar is giving them greater incentives to come up with the most innovative ways of making alcohol more attractive. I have difficulty envisaging the state addressing this, because again, the ensuing loss of tax revenue, would be a punch in the stomach to an already winded exchequer.

I’m happy to allow that this policy would be a great idea if it solved the laundry list of issues that Varadkar namedropped – “greater illness and higher health costs, public order and violent offences, road traffic collisions, injuries and absence from work, […] suicides and instances of sexual violence, domestic violence and child harm”.

But all those benefits are contingent on people drinking less. They won’t. We’ve done our utmost to pricegouge this problem away; it hasn’t worked.

There are other things we could try: creating better and more accessible addiction services, subsidising non-alcoholic nightlife, or maybe even addressing the socio-economic conditions that make people more likely to turn to alcohol in the first place.

But even doing nothing would be preferable to enacting a policy that makes the most vulnerable worse off, increases the cultural cachet of alcoholism, and spurs on companies to do their worst in getting people hooked.

Diary of a Trinity drop out Coming to Trinity didn’t cause any of my problems. It just made me realise that they weren’t going away by themselves.

Dearbhail Clarke

Contributing writer

T

HIS YEAR WAS one of public self-exposition for me. It started in June with a cheerful series of Leaving Cert diaries for the Independent, which segued into the nervous diary of a fresher over my first week here. Now it’s ending on a glorious nosedive with this article, which I’ve affectionately termed the diary of a drop out.

In early November, around the time when I decided to jump ship, I read a comment article by Miriam Guiney about her experience dropping out a year ago. What struck me the most about her reflection was its scarcity of emotion. She confessed fear, boredom and loneliness over the year but what turned her off the course itself was just apathy. She felt uninspired and uninvolved in the material, so she peeled away cleanly.

Maybe my emotions will mellow as they age, but “apathy” is the exact opposite of what I’ve been feeling over the past few months. I’m crying right now, because I’m

listening to Smalltown Boy

by Bronski Beat. It’s an 80s hit about a young gay man having to leave his oppressive hometown. I’m crying because I can’t leave mine. I hate being judged by the same beady eyes every day. I hate hearing Buckfast-swigging youths hollering “ARE YOU A GIRL OR A BOY? YOU’RE AS UGLY” at me every time I leave the house.

But I feel happy, too, because the crying is definitely an improvement. In Trinity, I was spending my nights lying sleeplessly and my days hiding in bathroom stalls, just wishing I could cry. Crying always lets me feel some modicum of release from my crushing loneliness, my uncertainty – from the hopeless, familiar feeling of depression.

Crying is a public acknowledgement that something is wrong, and that you need help. Not being able to do that feels like sitting stranded in the wilderness without a single flare.

Opening up

You’ve probably realised by now that I’m not a paragon of emotional stability. I’ve struggled with anxiety and major depressive disorders for most of my teenage life. It feels refreshing to admit that.

Whenever I tried to slip in a reference to my disorders in my work with the Irish Independent, my editor would call me up like a shot and tell me to take it out. “We’re just trying to protect your privacy – you wouldn’t know who’d be reading it,” she’d say kindly, but uncomfortably, and bustle on.

Perhaps it’s because I’m

blissfully naïve and socially oblivious, but I never understood that. My depression isn’t my kryptonite. It’s a flaw that I work around in the same way someone copes with losing a limb or having poor eyesight. I’m not going to burst into tears if someone approaches me on the street and says, “Oh, you’re the crazy one from the paper” – I’ll just be flattered that they recognised me. Mental disorders need to be talked about publicly. Our experiences and coping mechanisms shouldn’t be confined to the stuffy offices of psychiatrists and counsellors.

Of course I feel anxious about revealing so much of myself. I don’t want to risk writing self-pitiful longueurs that people will scoff derisively at. I don’t want to make anyone sad. Stronger than that, though, is the desire to be honest. Humans learn through experiences: their own, and those of the people around them. Maybe if I trace the course of my realisation that something had to change, someone else out there will come to the same conclusion about themselves.

Self-awareness

Coming to Trinity didn’t cause any of my problems. It just made me realise that they weren’t going away by themselves. When you’re trapped in the pressure-cooker that is the Leaving Cert, getting to college is talked about in the same terms as getting to heaven. You’ll fit in, you’ll find your people, you’ll never have to study subjects you don’t enjoy, you’ll be able to reinvent yourself. All sins will

be absolved. All hurts will be washed away. You will belong.

So I put my head down and I powered through. But when I stepped through the front arch, my depression didn’t dissolve. Studying interesting subjects didn’t lessen my overwhelming anxiety around my academic performance. Living in a flat with five lovely girls didn’t stop me feeling lonely. Painfully slowly, I realised that my problems had nothing to do with my environment. They were internal and wedged so deeply into my way of thinking that I couldn’t deal with them and this new way of life at the same time.

I should have taken a gap year. I needed to take a gap year. That thought could only occur in retrospect, however.

I started this term studying English literature and philosophy. This choice wasn’t one I had taken lightly, it certainly wasn’t a ‘night before change of mind closes’ job. For three years I obsessively attended open days and summer schools. I drowned myself in prospectuses and shelled out hundreds on qualified guidance counsellors. I was petrified of making a choice that would “decide the rest of my life” – a fearmongering phrase that I can no longer stand. That’s not how the future works.

Right now, I’m approaching my future in the same way that I approach my favourite pastime: painting. I sketch out a rough outline, roughly pick the colour palette I want to use, and start with bold strokes. Usually some aspect of my idea doesn’t work as well on canvas as it did in

“

Coming to Trinity didn’t cause any of my problems. It just made me realise that they weren’t going away by themselves.

When you’re trapped in the pressure-cooker that is the Leaving Cert, getting to college is talked about in the same terms as getting to heaven. All sins will be absolved.

All hurts will be washed away.

You will belong.

my head, so I use intuition to turn it into something that looks better. You can always paint over dried paint. The mistakes are a necessary part of the process; they allow development. You can’t be too rigid when you’re painting.

I’m happy that I made the mistake of pursuing my love for English and the arts, because I couldn’t have realised otherwise that I don’t find it rewarding to study. I imagined myself curling up with dusty books in quiet corners, tapping happily on my keyboard in poky coffee shops. I somehow failed to remember that writing essays was the bane of my existence in school. I only pursued English because it was “The Thing That I Was Good At,” the subject that I had a competitive edge in. It was the thing I felt “destined” to do. This mentally outweighed the fact that studying it didn’t make me happy.

This realisation led to a lot of rolling about and crying and wondering if anything made me happy, and what happiness was, and whether a fleeting emotion really mattered. I frustrated my longsuffering boyfriend with existential questions that he had no answers to, because they just were.

Happiness

Then I went home, hugged my mother, and ate the intensely comforting dinners she always manages to make.

I read books for fun. I learned new things. I spent more time at the local animal shelter, and cared for dogs and cats who loved me completely for no reason other than that I

was warm and carried treats.

I grumbled at myself for ever thinking that happiness didn’t matter, because it most certainly does.

Happiness isn’t about grand gestures. It comes from the day-to-day victories. It comes from someone recognising that you’re useful. It comes from taking care of yourself.

It comes from learning things that click together so that your world makes more sense to you. It comes from playing with animals – it mostly comes from that, I’m not going to lie.

I am dropping out of college, and my future’s rather hazy. But that doesn’t frighten me like it used to, because I’ve made this decision for myself. I trust myself to handle any problems that surface on the way, as difficult as they may be. I don’t feel like a failure, as I had convinced myself I would. I feel like a regular young adult, struggling to figure things out for themselves.

I’m capable, and enthusiastic, and giddy like a child setting off on an adventure. Sure, I’m trapped in a poky house in the middle of Ireland, but my life seems a lot broader than it did a few months ago.

I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Op-ed

15

Mind, body, spirit: beating autoimmune disease I might have a little less energy or with some joint pain in the mornings, but I want to be an overall better, healthy individual with the wisdom that this illness is not who I am.

Kelly Konya

Contributing writer

I

N MY EARLY twenties, I woke up one summer day feeling as though the tops of my hands were badly bruised. I figured I could have slept weirdly on my wrists, or perhaps I had typed or written too much the day before.

I wasn’t concerned; pain was always temporary.

But wintertime brought with it a new change: beginning with my left ring finger and gradually affecting all of my fingers on both hands, the cold air began turning my fingertips yellowish-white, numbing each digit until I retreated indoors to warmth.

It didn’t take me long to discover I had Raynaud’s disease, which is actually quite common and especially in women. This was no big deal; with the right winter-weather preparation, I could easily contain the numbness and tingling.

I made a few minor lifestyle changes. I gave up lacrosse and building snowmen. I bought fur-lined gloves and woolly socks when the disease spread to my toes. What I didn’t know then was that this was just the beginning, the “starting point” for my tiring testimonial that I would tell to 10 different doctors over the next two years.

“Start from the very beginning,” each doctor would command. “When did you first notice these changes?”

Soon, it wasn’t just Reynaud’s disease, but an onslaught of joint pain, unquenchable fatigue coupled with trouble sleeping, and grossly swollen feet, ankles, and wrists. The diagnosis, though varying by doctor, was that I had some odd combination of systemic lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and connective tissue disorder.

“But not to worry,” one doctor said. “90% of patients with lupus are women, even young women like yourself, and I have treated many over the years with the right medications.”

I wasn’t convinced, especially when the medication that most of the doctors offered had side effects like hair loss, organ damage, liver dysfunction, dizziness, mental depression, weight gain, fainting, bleeding of the intestines, sun-sensitive skin, stomach ulcers, etcetera. The list went on and on, providing one unpromising and simply terrifying consequence in addition to my already-grating disease symptoms.

Breaking point

I decided against the heavy-duty medicines and stuck with something less damaging but also less effective. Though my symptoms were bearable for a year, I reached a point when frustration took over. I was tired of buying a water bottle at a cafe and having to ask the barista to open it because my fingers couldn’t grip the lid.

I was tired of neither fitting into my favourite pairs of heels nor being able to stand for more than an hour without needing a break. Frankly, I was just tired – all the time.

Perhaps worst of all, I scored a part-time job at one of my favourite bookstores and worked for a mere four weeks before I had to quit.

Just when I thought my swollen ankles and wrists could manage a few hours of restocking shelves and working a register, the pain reminded me otherwise. Barely able to walk out of work after my shifts, I knew I had pushed my body too far.

How did this get so bad?

This isn’t meant to be a story of a diagnosis or of a cure, nor do I mean to craft any sort of pity-party or forum for emotional support. In an unexpected interplay, understanding my body has led to a coming together of mind and spirit. Everyone knows the mantra of “mind, body, spirit,” but I can promise that it can truly prove to be a union far greater than anything physical or earthly that I’ve encountered while trying to combat this illness.

I remember a long time ago, my mom’s friend Janet was diagnosed with breast cancer. During every one of my brother’s baseball games thereafter, as I sat with all of the moms while they gossiped and left the gamewatching to the dads, Janet would announce her latest

diet plan or exercise routine to beat her cancer.

“Shame on you if you don’t research the hell out of your illness, because the doctors won’t do any of that for you,” Janet said one day with wide, insistent eyes. She was sure of it: she could beat her own sickness with the right combination of a healthy mind, body, and spirit. And she did.

Acceptance

It’s funny as a young girl I remember sympathising with Janet’s daughter Peyton, who was even younger than I, knowing that she had to watch her mother cheat an untimely illness so their lives could go back to normal.

I didn’t even begin to comprehend what it was like for Janet to put that much faith in herself, in her own human ability, to find her own cure.

Through my darkest times of facing my disease, I hardly thought about how to “win” against my diagnosis. I wallowed in self-pity and aggravation, often bringing myself to tears that I might not be able to do the thing I love most in this world – write – because of my lousy, painful joints.

But lately, Janet’s story is all I think about. I’ve even found a few books where other scores of women, ranging from age 20-60, simply refused to accept their diseases as the end-all-be-all.

The disease would not define them. Instead, they would define how their disease fit

into their lives and the sickness wouldn’t limit them in the slightest way. That’s who I want to be: a woman with a little less energy or with some joint pain in the mornings, but an overall better, healthy individual with the wisdom that this illness is not who I am.

The body is extremely underappreciated until something goes wrong. I’ll admit I never once thought about doing things in moderation or deciphering the phrase, “You are what you eat.” And though I’m still learning and listening to the needs that my body articulates, I’ve been able to eliminate toxins that are destroying who I want to become – the toxins that trigger the pain, tiredness, and sadness.

The Beat Zens were onto something in those mountains when they understood the “mind is the maker.” My feet ache, but I take walks most nights around this beautiful campus. My hands swell like paws, but I read and write (with a pen!) most nights before bed just like I always have. There’s a way to tell yourself, “I’ll beat this,” but to actually mean it takes a unity beyond reason, beyond physicality. That’s the unity worth seeking.

Mine wasn’t an uncommon story, I would soon learn.

During a woman’s childbearing years (usually ages 2035), it’s typical for countless autoimmune diseases to surface and arrange their ongoing ambush. Multiple sclerosis, Sjogren’s syndrome and cirrhosis are just a few that activate during this period.

According to the American Autoimmune & Related Diseases Association, of the 50 million Americans suffering with an autoimmune disorder, over 75 percent are women. I am one of them.

I was shocked by how “normal” this seemed, based on all of the statistics and books I read. As told by my 10 doctors, I am the inevitable stockpile of my family’s genes – grandparents with diabetes and psoriasis, parents with arthritis and Grave’s disease.

It only made sense for me to develop these issues, they assured.

But I wasn’t reassured.

The prospect of SUSI ceasing payments to those around the country who are in need of assistance to attend college will surely have a determental effect on the make up of our third level system, and further entrench the post-code based differences we have seen when looking at who gets access to university education. In the coming weeks we must ask ourselves why some people get access and why others don’t, and prepare to protest against the impending greater injustices.

Illustration by Emer Ó Cearbhaill

While some error-laden comments are confusing to read, the majority are still comprehensible. So why aggressively attack commenters on their language errors?

I

N THE AGE of internet and social media, a lot of people spend their time online. Newspapers often publish articles online before or instead of printing them.

Much of the social lives of the younger generations will have been formed online, a medium for socialisation very different to that of our older generations. This is true in a broad sense but is crucial when considering language.

Prior to the age of internet and social media, much of a child’s socialisation took place using spoken forms of language, with a shift towards texting in the years preceding the emergence of social media. Personally, my childhood was in the spoken language era but my teenage years marked the move to written language.

One issue I had not considered until recently was how this shift to written language and spaces such as social media would affect relationships between language and power, namely how variation is much more acceptable in spoken language than written language. The shift to social lives occurring through writing raises questions about how those using the “standard” form of the language are treated compared to those whose language was quite far from recognisable as standard. Sadly, I only considered this issue when I was confronted with the answer.

When reading an article online recently, I looked at the comment section and found a comment thread where the original comment was written in non-standard English with many “mistakes” (the kind a teacher would correct with red pen). In responses to

The decision by SU Council not to campaign against the introduction of a loan system has left us with egg on our faces. The charges of too much trust in media speculation levelled against Lynn Ruane rings hollow when the media are the only ones who can inform us and warn us of impending changes, in the face of a student body who think a magical seat at the discussion table will give us leverage.

Responding to the leaked Cassells report proposals, TD Clare Daly said that ‘the idea of a loan scheme to fund fees, in tandem with a ¤1,000 increase in fees, is completely ludicrous and outrageous. In essence, what’s been announced is a scheme of mandatory debt for lower-income students”, and she is correct. Will these latest reports be awake up call for the ordinary members of the students’ union when they assemble for council on Tuesday?

Dear standard language police: get back in your box Contributing writer

Proposals on increased fees and student loans must be met with resistance from student leadership

It won’t, just as it didn’t when Ruairi Quinn broke the pledge on tuition fees. The only time in recent memory that students stood up to government proposals, batons were drawn by police on Merrion Row.

Common disorder

Catríona O’Brien

NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR 2015

this many people were either only correcting the mistakes, or worse again, deciding based on these mistakes that the opinion in the comment was not worth engaging with.

The comments about the language in this comment were decidedly more hostile, personal and aggressive than the bulk of comments responding to divisive opinions.

This got me thinking about how common it was to come across parallel situations, and I was easily able to find other articles where the same thing had occurred. What I found particularly interesting was that while some of these kinds of error-laden comments are confusing to read, the majority are still comprehensible. So why aggressively attack the commenter on their language errors?

Language standardisation The answer to that question ties into language history, specifically the history of language standardisation – fascinating stuff that I cannot do justice in a short article.

I’m instead going to flag up a few of the main points that answer my question: 1. We suspect/theories support the idea that language originally developed as a means of communication between individuals and only a small portion of modern grammar systems are necessary to ensure intelligible communication; the vast majority has no bearing on our ability to understand one another.

This raises more general questions about why we enforce rules that are irrelevant to understanding one another. In the example above, if the errors being made by one language user did not drastically impair their ability to be understood, then why make that the focus of the criticism?

2. Languages are often seen

as spoken/written forms that are not understandable to someone who speaks a different language. However, if I speak a dialect to someone who speaks a similar dialect, both of us should be able to understand one another. Language/dialect distinctions are not purely theoretical, but often incorporate factors such as political impact of being able to tie a group of individuals to a language (and the power one can claim with that link compared to the lesser power associated with a dialect).

3. The language used by the mass media, in education, in the legal system and in procedures relating to being a citizen, started out as (and sometimes still is) the language of the elite and became the standard form through dictionaries, grammar books, formalised legal/political systems and relevant documents and education systems.

Variation

This language belonged to a tiny minority of the population. The rest spoke different languages/dialects and in many ways still do. It’s highly unlikely that the language you use in your home is the same as what you read in the newspaper and that the language you heard outside of the classroom would make it past a teacher’s pen without being edited in red squiggles.

If that sounds like a world you live in, you have (re)discovered language variation.

Your variation does not quite fit with the standard.

If this sounds a bit unfamiliar then you probably are a member of the tiny minority whose language is the one recognised and reinforced by the State. Practically no-one naturally sounds like a grammar lesson or writes like an official document. So again, why react so virulently to the non-standard use of language

in the comment, especially given the vast majority of the other commenters also don’t naturally write/speak in the way the article was phrased?

For most people reading this article, the slightly formal style is not posing a problem to understanding the content. But this article is probably being read by educated individuals. The interesting thing about education is that it’s easier to access when the language taught in the classroom is closer to the language you encounter elsewhere. When you have to learn not only the subject matter but also the language variety of the educational context, that makes success in education that bit harder (and that’s before getting into how language standardisation interacts with socioeconomic status and maintenance of power by elites).

When I first read a comment along the lines of the example used throughout I was disappointed (but not surprised) to see language being used as a marker to shame an individual and discredit their opinion. However, once I had noticed that one comment, I started to notice them everywhere. The most disappointing was to see that it was not just anonymous internet users but friends commenting about how other social media users should “learn to use punctuation” and (amusingly, often incorrectly) commenting “its*” or “their*” on statuses, events and so on.

Check yourself

I spend a lot of my spare time with a group of people who like to consider themselves well-informed. There is an expectation that homophobia, racism and so on are not tolerated – and often not only that you would behave in a certain way, but also that you’d encourage others to behave better too, by spreading petitions, volunteering

with campaigns or sharing thought-provoking material online.

I found it disappointing that these people didn’t see how language is a tool used in discrimination (not just online – language policy has very real impacts for “real” people), and that by making those (so so unnecessary) comments, the internet goes from being an equaliser to making literacy and use of standard language necessary to be able to use social media. How many times can we expect someone to have their content ignored and their typo made the only focal point of what they wrote before they get disillusioned?

If you can see why liking more comments made by men than women is wrong, or why being less likely to click on articles written by someone of colour is wrong, and that these trends indicate tendencies that don’t go away once you close down the screen of a laptop, I find it hard to swallow that you can’t also work out why jumping on non-standard language forms or language errors isn’t also a behaviour worth “checking yourself for”.

One final thought: Dear standard language police As someone, who, probably also used to correct what i saw as incorrect language (a sideeffect of a good education) I can assure you that linguistic theory can teach you the error of your ways and you two can move on and find more fulfilling ways to spend your time with the additional benefit of not using language to (even if unintentionally) discriminate against others Yours in good faith.

PS Yes the punctuation and spelling are wrong in this letter thats the whole point and you still understood it didnt you?

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Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

SciTech Getting physical Talking science, education and communicating with Dr Shane Bergin, cofounder of City of Physics I heard that the DART of Physics was a roaring success.

Can you talk a bit about that?

Thanks! I think it was too. City of Physics aimed to spark a citywide conversation about physics in Dublin. We did this by placing the beauty of physics right across the city – from murals above the Arts Building entrance, to projections of the Sun on Dame Street, to adverts on the DART, Dublin Bus and on the streets themselves. We worked with artists and designers to bring physics to people in a way that was visually appealing.

Katarzyna Siewierska interviews Dr Shane Bergin and discusses the impact of City of Physics, the TCD-UCD initiative that brought physics to the streets of Dublin and to the general public Photos by Mark Farrelly, DART photo by Mark McGuinness

Katarzyna Siewierska SciTech editor

I

N THE NEW government science strategy 2.5% of the GNP by 2020 will be invested into research.

Also the government will consider Ireland becoming a member of CERN and ESO. This plan is a big step forward for Irish science. But with the European average of investment into science research is 3% and many European countries have been members of CERN and ESO for many years, Ireland still has a long way to go. Government’s input into scientific research needs to increase. The exclusive focus on funding research into projects with applications needs to end, with money also spent on pure scientific research without a specific application in mind. One of the key components in achieving this is increasing the public awareness about science.

In an attempt to bring science to the public, in 2013 Dr Shane Bergin from Trinity’s School of Physics ran an initiative called Dart of Physics.

This involved physics students from Trinity sparking conversations about physics on the DART and at Pearse Station. Posters with interesting questions and facts such as “I am attracted to you… gravitationally” were also put up in the trains, buses and across the city. This year Dr Bergin joined forces with Dr Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain from UCD school of mathematics and statistics and founded City of Physics.

Opinions on the project

City of Physics was a unique campaign and I have asked students and academics and the provost of Trinity College about their opinion about it.

Dr Bergin’s main collaborator was Dr Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain and this is what she said about City of Physics: “City of Physics is the first science outreach project of its kind to put science in unexpected public spaces. We wanted to prompt Dubliners

to think about physics in the world around them and especially to pique the curiosity of those who do not ordinarily see themselves as interested in science. It was wonderful to work on this collaborative project between Trinity College Dublin and UCD and to bring together physicists, artists, students, and members of the public in this initiative sponsored by SFI Discover.”

The provost of Trinity College, Dr Patrick Prendergast, remarked that: “Initiatives such as the City of Physics which bring together science, art, and the city are important in raising public awareness about science and sparking conversations in the community. It is clear to see that the offerings of such an event are widespread. The varied selection of events ranging from installation pieces, lectures, campaigns and workshops have a mass appeal and offer many outlets of engagement for individuals of all ages. I hope to see more events of this nature in the future which bring Physics and all sciences to life in our everyday thoughts and conversations.”

As Dr Bergin mentions in our interview to the right, students were the secret ingredient of the whole initiative and without them this project would not have been possible.

I asked some of the students involved about their experience with City of Physics.

Pearse Murphy, a Trinity student who was involved in the solar projection on George Street, said: “I found it to be very interesting seeing how reluctant people actually are to stopping on the street to chat, but once you eventually got talking to someone they were very impressed with the projection itself and the campaign in general. As for what I learned, mostly it’d have to be that there’s a whole lot of physics I don’t know”.

Megan Weston, a second year Trinity student studying maths, chemistry and physics, explained that she volunteered for City of Physics because she loves talking about scientific ideas to people who would usually not come across them. As science is so involved in our everyday lives, she had long felt that everyone should be given the chance to learn about it.

Writing a blog for City of Physics, Weston relished the opportunity to do something that she never thought she would get the chance to do. In her blog she talked about why physics is important to her.

She also helped out at the Solar Projection on Dame Street talking to passersby about physics. Although nervous at

Tell us a bit about the background of City of Physics

I joined forces with Dr Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain to imagine ways that might connect physics with places around the city of Dublin. We had a great team of web designers, illustrators, graphic designers, event managers, a blog editor and a podcast editor. Working like maniacs for 6 months, we crafted a campaign that would reach the entire city.

One of our secret ingredients was to involve students. They were such a catalyst for many of the conversations that Dubliners had about physics. Decked head-to-toe in physics t-shirts, jackets and badges students from science, physics, engineering and a few of the arts took to the streets and spoke to Dubliners about City of Physics, their College, and their discipline. Dubliners responded well. We surveyed a few hundred random people and asked them if they had seen our campaign. 35% of those asked said they had. Incredible!

What was your vision for City of Physics? Why is scientific outreach so important?

As I wrote in the City of Physics Blog online, science and scientists that do not connect with the culture they are part of miss the point of what science is about.

Is there anyone in Ireland who doesn’t have an opinion on their GAA county team, the government, or Bono’s continuing contributions to save the world? Probably not. Whether they make you defensive or search for your passport, issues like this are part of our cultural make-up.

We own them. And they matter to us. Culture mediates how a society evolves. To be outside it is to act in opposition to it. first, she soon found “every bit of information about the sun, light, astronomy that I find interesting just started flowing out of me and I couldn’t be stopped talking!”

City of Physics was about bringing the science outside of the laboratory and into the city

Is Science outside it? I think it is. It has not always been this way however. The world’s first one-way street was Abermarle Street in London, home to the Royal Institution – such were the crowds of people who came to witness Faraday’s electricity. People talked about science. Things today are different.

Whether it’s due to the seemingly impenetrable array of facts and disciplines associated with science or public suspicion of its motives following wars enabled by it, science has been pushed to the edge of our cultural identity. This bothers me.

Meeting the people

Weston observed,“ I was surprised about how many people stopped to talk and were genuinely curious about physics. One couple in particular walked by me but then came back when they realised I was not just some crazed lunatic pointing at the sky! I ended up talking to them for about 15 minutes and they were so enthralled by the concepts that we take for granted while studying science.

After I went into the vastness of our universe and we chatted about the possibility of aliens they had to leave but assured me that they couldn’t wait to tell everyone around the dinner table what they had learned when they went home and they had enjoyed talking so much they said they would love to take me on their journey home and let me continue to jabber on about space.

When they left I felt like I had actually taught someone something and it was a great feeling. The whole experience reenergized my love of physics and has made me consider pursuing a job in science outreach or teaching in the future”.

Alison Hennessy, a third

“

year of nanoscience, physics & chemistry of advanced materials at Trinity, explained: “I got involved with the City of Physics after seeing the amazing success of Dart of physics.

I volunteered at the solar projection on Dame Street. Here a short time lapse video of images of the sun was projected onto the wall of a building. As a student volunteer, I spoke to members of the public about what was going on in the video.

It was great to try and get people thinking about the physics around them. Hopefully igniting a bit of curiosity inside them. I spoke about the projection and the whole project in general. It was also

just really enjoyable, engaging with people and showing them that physics is in every aspect of life, and it can be both beautiful and really cool”.

City of Physics has been a wonderful project that will hopefully continue in the future. It is not only an opportunity for the public to learn more about physics, but it is also a great chance for students to strengthen their knowledge and develop their communication skills. Perhaps in the next few years this initiative will spread to other universities around the country and may expand into other scientific disciplines beyond physics.

Science must broaden its access to generate the conversations and debate that are needed for us to ‘own it’ again. We must do more to give citizens access to the scientific process. This would be quite a change from promoting science as just a body of completed facts. Seeing and talking about how it works may allow scientific habits of mind to seep into our cultural makeup. The vast majority of scientists will tell you global warming is real and we are causing it. A small minority disagree. Thinking about the process they use to come to such conclusions is, perhaps, far more empowering for citizens who don’t know who to believe.

If Seamus Heaney gave us the language that reflects many aspects of who we are, or Christy Moore songs’ a sense of shared euphoria for sporting triumphs, then science – as part our cultural identity – can instil and enable our collective wonder as to where we might be tomorrow. This thinking lies at the heart of what City of Physics is about – weaving physics into the city such that people talk about it and it becomes part of who we are. City of Physics was about taking the science outside of the laboratory and into the city.

City of Physics would not have been possible if it wasn’t for the student volunteers. What feedback did you get from students? Why do you think students get involved in such initiatives? What do they get out of getting involved?

Involving undergraduates is one of my core principles for science communication (note, I didn’t use the term ‘outreach’ which implies an ‘I know, you don’t approach’). I had about 50 students take part in City of Physics. That involvement ranged from writing blogs, making podcasts, or speaking to Dubliners about the campaign. They seem to have really enjoyed it. Every second student I see around my school is wearing a City of Physics badge!

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

SciTech

17

Exploring the science of anxiety In January many senior freshman students will sit the annual Foundation Scholarship examinations. Una Harty talks about the science of anxiety and ways of reducing it to help all those sitting exams

Una Harty Staff writer

T

RINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN offers its senior freshman students a once in a lifetime opportunity; the chance to have all of your tuition paid for five years regardless of your economic background.

Other perks of the scholarship include residential rooms free of charge and four three-course evening meals and one lunch served to you throughout the week. Parents of Trinity students revel in the idea that one day their son or daughter will become a Trinity scholar. For every incoming fresher it’s a no-brainer that you will sit schols and you will study hard for it. For every incoming fresher however, it also goes without question that you’ll never miss a lecture and all your assignments will be done to the best of your ability.

To sit or not to sit schols

The decision as to whether to sit schols is like the decision whether to buy an iPhone or not. It is clear that an iPhone is a popular choice. Its users are seem satisfied with the product. Therefore, why shouldn’t you buy an iPhone? But do I need a new phone? Can I afford an iPhone? Do I just want to own an iPhone because

Illustration by Sarah Morel

everyone else does? Like an iPhone, schols is a temptation for all Trinity students. However, not all Trinity students have €600 to spend, nor do all Trinity students have the mental and physical capacity to undergo what is expected of them when they sits schols.

The preparation is a long and strenuous one, as is saving up for an iPhone. Indeed, the Foundation Scholarship examination is a damaging prospect. I send my congratulations to those who succeed in it, but for the vast majority of the student population it will be the cause of at least one bout of anxiety in your College career. And so this leads me to ask the question; is the scholarship a necessary wagon of worries, trundle of terror, and world of woes? Are the potential fruits of your labour worth the pain and stress that students go through to be within a small percentage of a chance of achieving such a prestigious acclamation?

Should we not put tradition on hold to ensure a better wellbeing for our students?

“

Give yourself free time and me time. Is the scholarship a necessary wagon of worries, trundle of terror, and world of woes?

Types of anxiety

Anxiety exists on a spectrum from mild to debilitating. It manifests itself in various forms depending on the

person which suffers from it.

It’s fair to say that some people will experience anxiety intermittently but unfortunately for others it can affect their lives as a whole when they are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety disorders also exist on a large spectrum of severity and type. Some may be commonly heard while others are not so mentioned in public eye. GAD or Generalized Anxiety Disorder is characterized by persistent, excessive and unrealistic worry of everyday things. It is oftentimes those who are shook by the thought of having to get through a day.

Panic Disorder and panic attacks occur seemingly spontaneously. Six million Americans experience panic attacks in a year. It can be associated with agoraphobia, which is defined as a fear of public places. People who suffer from panic attacks tend to suffer also from agoraphobia whereby they fear the places where they had experienced a panic attack before.

Social Anxiety Disorder is the most common of anxiety disorders and is highly prevalent among teenagers.

It is an extreme fear of being judged by others in social or performance situations. The

rates are higher for girls than boys. A recent study done in conjunction with the Femfest conference held this month in Dublin showed that 65% of young females in Ireland avoid social situations or performances as they feel uncomfortable with their personal appearance.

Anxiety and the brain

Anxiety manifests itself in the brain in the form of neurotransmitters. Those associated with anxiety include serotonin, GABA (gammaaminobutyric acid) and norepinephrine. Dopamine can also have an effect, usually as a calming chemical but generally too much or too little of any neurotransmitter can enhance anxiety. Studies have shown that those diagnosed with GAD have a weaker connection between the white matter area of the brain and pre-frontal and anterior cortex.

Hormones imbalances have a significant effect on anxiety also; a definite correlation between why teenagers become so worried and stressed. The most common hormone to affect anxiety is adrenaline.

Adrenaline leads to muscle tension and the speeding up of heart rate, which are also asso-

ciated with anxiety symptoms.

Consequently the body can lead from a rush of adrenaline into a bout of anxiety. Those who experience panic attacks on a regular basis are found to possess an overactive amygdala, the part of the brain which serves as the ‘fearful memory bank’.

When one experiences anxiety for long periods of time it can severely damage the health of the brain. Researchers have discovered that when you leave your anxiety disorder untreated, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, hippocampus, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex all appear to decrease in size. The longer the anxiety goes untreated, the smaller and weaker they become. This is what contributes to negative thinking which furthers you into a nervous and worried state.

Combating anxiety

and follow the routine as close as you possibly can. Give yourself free time and me time. It’s important to differentiate between the two of these. As social beings, humans shouldn’t just cut ourselves off from friends and family for the sake of a scholarship. Include social activities as well as personal time in your structured timetable.

It is important to note that the Student Counselling Service and the Student Learning Development Service are provided by the College to assist with all of the aforementioned. They are based on Nassau Street and can help you deal with anxiety you may be suffering in relation to studying or personal issues, as well as designing personal solutions to these problems. To return to my iPhone analogy; just because all the cool kids are doing it, you don’t have to too!

If you are studying for schols and are experiencing a lot of anxiety there are many steps you can take to reduce this.

Start by clearing your desk, as a messy desk is a messy mind.

Keep active even if you’re not actively inclined; a brisk walk as study break will clear your mind. Structure your week

Have good vibe times with bone conduction earphones What new technology might people be getting this holiday season?, Conor O’Mara describes one of the coolest gadgets all SciTech nerds dream about finding under the Christmas tree Conor O’Mara Deputy scitech editor

W

ITH CHRISTMAS NEARLY upon us, I decided to take a look into the science behind one of the coolest tech products available for the upcoming festive season, bone conduction headphones. These are not your traditional headphones.

They aren’t buds that sit into your ears or headphones that cover them; in fact they take a position just in front of your ear and transmit music sound through your cheekbones.

What is bone conduction and how does it work?

Bone conduction is the conduction of sound to the inner ear through the bones of the skull. Many technologies are now using this phenomenon to transmit vibrations through the cheekbones. This clever method of audio transmission enables us to bypass the outer and middle ear, leaving the ear free to hear ambient noise.

Sound is usually thought of in terms of the propagation of sound waves through air. Our ears pick up the vibration of the air molecules and we hear frequencies within the range of twenty to twenty thousand hertz. Air is a good transmitter of sound. Think of a time when you’ve stuck your head underwater and all the background noise has completely faded away; air is a better transmitter than water. But how does it compare to solids? If you are a fan of old Hollywood films then you might remember how American Indian’s would crouch down and stick their ear close to the ground, later to pronounce what direction riders come from. Or equivalently if you ever lean your head against a train window, you hear far more sounds that

you don’t pick up through air.

Similarly, the bones in your skull which are solid transmit more frequencies than air to the cochlea, the hearing organ.

Why should you want one?

One of the coolest things about bone conduction is that even though it is now being used in lots of the latest audio technologies, it actually appears in our everyday lives.

Have you ever been recorded on video and watched it again and thought, “I didn’t think I sounded like that?” In fact the reason why a person’s voice sounds different to themselves when on a recording is down to bone conduction. The human skull actually conducts lower frequencies better than air so people actually perceive their own voice through the vibrations in their skull, which leads them to infer that their own voice is lower and fuller than it actually appears to others. So when they hear a recording of their own voice, people often feel their voice is higher than expected.

Safety for cyclists

Bone conduction earphones have many practical applications. Firstly, there is the potential safety benefit they offer to cyclists and joggers, who often wear earphones on the road. Cyclists in particular, are in serious danger when they decide to isolate themselves from the noise of their surroundings by wearing earphones.

Wearing headphones while cycling is not currently illegal in Ireland, but there is a strong movement to ban it, especially in the United Kingdom. Last year, 90% of respondents to a BBC poll were in favour of banning cyclists wearing headphones, with Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, calling the habit “Absolutely nuts”.

Bone conduction headphones provide a safer solution for cyclists because they

leave the outer ear free to hear traffic. One variant of bone conduction headphones aimed at cyclists is a product called “Safe & Sound” designed

by Gemma Roper, a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London. The bone conduction modules clip onto the straps of a cycling helmet and press against the cheek bone, allowing you to hear your music playing but also hear traffic.

Many cyclists, such as myself, currently employ the cheap alternative solution of putting one earphone in and leaving the other out. However, this is certainly not ideal because often I have to ramp up the volume extremely high to hear my music or just revert to putting both earphones in.

Uses in the military

Bone Conduction Technology is also being applied to the military. The British defense and security firm BAE Systems is currently developing an Army helmet also utilizing the technology for communication. This helmet will give soldiers the ability to more easily receive direct audio transmissions despite the cacophony of the battlefield. Mohammed Akhmad, BAE system’s principal scientist says “with this system the soldiers can safeguard their hearing with ear protectors whilst also receiving military voice communications, to enable them to perform their roles efficiently and safely”.

The transducer for the helmet has been minimized to the size and weight of a fifty cent coin.

Talking windows on trains

In business there is also a new advertising concept that harnesses the bone conduction phenomenon to public transport. The “Talking Window” is a new advertising platform being tested by the German ad agency BBDO Germany and television broadcaster Sky Deutschland.

They have developed a con-

cept where passengers who lean their heads against glass train windows will feel like a voice inside their head is talking to them.

The prospect of this does not sit well with many people, however, questioning where advertising ends and harassment begins, picking on tired and bored commuters does not seem appropriate. The developers claim that the technology will not just be used for advertising; it can be used for music, entertainment, public service announcements and weather reports too. But maybe passengers just want some peace and quiet, or at least to choose what they are listening to.

Earplugs won’t actually block out the sound coming from this type of advertising; in fact, they would have the effect of enhancing it. This is because when an object such as an earplug fills the outer portion of the ear canal then the person experiences what is known as the “occlusion effect”. This is the booming echo your voice makes when you block your ears and speak at the same time. Your voice sounds different because you hear a combination of the air and bone-conducted signal of your voice. One simple way to avoid hearing the advertisements would be to place a dampening pillow in between your head and the window.

The sound waves would not transmit through the pillow and thus not reach your head.

Alternatively, you could just avoid putting your ear to the window in the first place!

Even if after reading this article, you are not craving one of those bone conducting earphones, you have to admit that they are absolutely awesome. It is amazing how science contributes to the creation of modern technology and how these new technologies transform our lives.

Illustration via YouTube

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

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Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Sport

19

COLUMN

Confessions

of an amateur athlete

The Trinity graduates bringing their cricket team to the world stage

Bláithín Sheil Staff writer The Hunger

Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Forget it. There are many more than three meals in a day. The hunger is real, and it can be aggressive. Your library time is measured by your regular “pick-me-up” breaks. Sometimes you try to be a good athlete, holding out another hour until you can get to your bag of almonds. And there’d better blooming well be a dinner waiting for you at home. I once cried when there was no fish pie left for dinner.

I have never let myself get that hungry again.

Former Trinity student Cecelia Joyce is heading to India in March, along with her twin sister team captain Isobel Joyce and fellow Trinity alumni Jennifer Gray, Shauna Kavanagh and Amy Kenealy.

The Pain and Exhaustion

Michael Foley Deputy sport editor

T

HIS MARCH, THE Irish Ladies cricket team will head to India for the World T20 Tournament, the most important global Twenty20 cricket competition, with a number of Trinity alumni on board. In the final of the T20 qualifying tournament, Ireland overcame Bangladesh in a thrilling clash to give themselves a great deal of confidence before they travel to India to take on the best teams in world cricket.

The Irish team had already booked their plane tickets when they beat a strong Scottish side by 9 wickets in the semi-final as the toptwo teams in the qualifying tournament progress to the World T20. But this match was still one of great importance as it demonstrated that Ireland can compete with, and win against, some of the best teams in the world. They travel to India to compete with nine other teams, including Bangladesh, knowing that the very least they should expect is to be competitive.

The match itself was a thrilling one with 16 year old Lucy O’Reilly’s single on the final ball of the game winning it

for the Irish. To add to the drama, thunder and lightning along with sporadic rainfall threatened to derail the final, but the match continued and at the end, the Irish players came streaming onto the pitch, a sign of how much the victory meant to them.

Bangladesh decided to bat first with Sultana hitting a match high 41 as they raced out to an impressive score but Ireland responded well with Metcalfe taking 3 wickets. Ireland also batted well with former Trinity student Cecelia Joyce hitting 32. Joyce, who received a pink in 2006, is the twin sister of captain Isobel and will head to the World T20 with other alumni Jennifer Gray, Shauna Kavanagh and Amy Kenealy.

Playing cricket in College

Joyce spoke to Trinity News about her time memories playing cricket in Trinity. Her first international test was actually played in College Park when she was a 17 year old secondary school student. In her first year of college, her skills were at such a level that she was made team captain: “I suppose even though I was a fresher, I was still the person with the most experience which is why I took on the captaincy.” Her contributions to the team were immediate as they “secured promotion from the second division to the first division.”

She describes how playing

“

Joyce, now a solicitor, is one of

only three Irish players with over one hundred caps, including her sister Isobel. They both play a crucial part in the Irish side which has been nominated for RTE sports team of the year, yet they haven’t received an enormous amount of media attention.

in college helped her overall game:“I am very proud to have played for Trinity as the extra responsibility adds to the experience of sport and helps you grow as a player.“ The extra playing time certainly helped Joyce who played for Trinity at the start of the season and her “regular club Merrion for the rest of the season”. While the season in college was very short, Joyce wryly proclaimed the benefits of cricket in Trinity as “a good distraction from study in exam time”.

These memories of days spent at the cricket pitch, which arrived with Summer, are recalled fondly by Joyce.

“It has always been a special place for me to play.” She remembers the crowds who would congregate on the pitch if the sun made an appearance, joking that “On a sunny day in front of the pav our most difficult task was often in trying to get all the students off the field.” One “awkward but hilarious” moment for Joyce was when a streaker stole a stump (which is part of a wicket). She describes how this “happened quite a bit”, however this time the team had to chase the streaker even though they “really didn’t want to” as they needed the sump to continue the match.

Popularity of Cricket in Ireland Joyce, now a solicitor, is one of only three Irish play-

ers with over one hundred caps, including her sister Isobel. They both play a crucial part in the Irish side which has been nominated for RTE sports team of the year, yet they haven’t received an enormous amount of media attention. While the Men’s team have enjoyed brief surges in popularity, in particular after the 2007 and 2011 world cups where they beat Pakistan and England respectively, the women’s team has never received the same spotlight.

This could be attributed to lack of success as the women’s team have not qualified for the World cup since 2005, although they have qualified for the world T20 two times in a row now, not an achievement to be sneezed at. Hopefully this World T20 championship will give the women’s team some more coverage.

It isn’t exactly a secret that Cricket doesn’t enjoy the same widespread appeal as GAA, soccer or rugby and even the most optimistic advocates of the sport would not predict that it will ever approach these sports in popularity, but there is room for cricket to grow.

With the success of the men’s team in recent world cups and the rise of the women’s team over the last few years, cricket events such as the Cricket World Cup are beginning to break into mainstream sporting culture. The head of Cricket Ireland has declared that the ambition of the Irish

men’s team is to achieve Test status, the highest international cricket standard, by 2020. This is to prevent players leaving Ireland for England in order to get the chance to play Test-cricket. Achieving Test status would be crucial for the growth of cricket.

Despite lacking Test-status, Cricket in Ireland has come a long way since the days when it was viewed as a “garrison game”. Public perception is certainly trending upwards with only positive news such as the success of the women’s national team. But many people remain unfamiliar with the sport. In College, where many students walk past the pitch everyday and most of us have seen a cricket match or two from the steps of The Pav, the sport is rarely if ever discussed. Maybe cricket will forever be, at least in Ireland, a minor sport which occasionally attracts the public’s interest. However, with recent, consistent success, it’s difficult to imagine Irish cricket being anything other than more popular in 10 years time than it is currently.

games against UCD and UUJ respectively.

TCD senior sports development officer

Gaelic Football

Rugby

Having started the College year off in style by making it to the final of the World Universities Rugby Cup, our Men’s 1st Rugby Team, playing in Div 1B of the Ulster Bank League have gone on a run of seven wins in a row. Having lost their opening two games the team have turned their fortunes around and currently place third in the league just one point off second place and only three points behind the leaders.

Basketball

Our Ladies Basketball team have gotten off to a brilliant start in the defence of their Div 1 Colleges League title. With some key players having graduated the club were boosted by the addition of Emily Leer and Meghan McGuinness and have won both of their league

November in style winning mens, women’s and mixed Sabre. Not to let the female side of the club down, Camile Boelt Hindasgaul is now ranked the Number 1 Women’s Epeeist in the country.

Fencing

The Fencing Club never stops competing and never stops winning! Pride of place in the club is Philip Cripwell who competed in the Men’s Foil Junior World Cup in Bratislava in late November. He’s joined in representing Team Ireland by fellow DU Fencing Club members Rebecca Ryan and Evie Clarke. The club won the Trinity Cup in early November followed by the Sykes Mooney Cup in mid

There are some interesting fixtures in the coming months with our Men’s Gaelic Football Sigerson Team drawing NUIG in the preliminary round with UCD awaiting is they make it through the Preliminary round. The Collingwood Cup draw for the Soccer team has just been done and after an appearance in the final last year our boys go straight through to the quarter finals facing DCU.

Tennis

Our Men’s Tennis 1st Team have won the Dublin Lawn Tennis Club Class 1 Floodlight League for the first time in the clubs history.

Boxing

The Boxing Club had their first outing of the season taking travelling to UCD for seven fights across various weight

categories and winning five of the seven fights.

Hockey

The success story of the Hockey season to date has been the Ladies second team who have made it through to the quarter

finals of the Irish Junior Cup.

Trampoline

Our Trampoline Club hosted incredibly successful Intervarsities two weekends ago and while they didn’t win the Intervarsity Shield they took

The Procrastination

They say the most successful academics practice a sport in their spare time. The first man to run a sub 4-minute mile was a doctor. Sport is meant to help you focus, so in theory, you should be well able to spend a whole afternoon studying hard after your bout of endorphins from that morning. Therefore, if I want to succeed in life off the track, naturally, I must never ever miss a training session. Not even if I have a paper due in 12 hours, or have a whole module in a foreign language to learn in the space of two days. Sport is the perfect excuse for a study break.

The Lies you tell Others

No coach, I swear I don’t drink.

Not at all. I would never go out after training, that would be silly. No, not even whiskey, even though I am Irish.

Of course I don’t eat biscuits, what would that achieve? And what do you mean red meat, I’m afraid I don’t know what that is?

Michaelmas Term sports club round-up Caroline Duggan

The morning after that session, race or game, you lie in bed, afraid to move. Will my knees support me when I try to stand up? Will my abdominal muscles scream and shout as I try to roll over? Can I make it those 5 steps to the window without wincing? And the exhaustion. Rewind to the night before, just hours since your extreme effort. You are surrounded by lovely people, the craic is ninety, but you can’t hold a conversation - let alone engage in banter. You try to ask how their day was but really all you can think about is your head hitting the pillow, putting the feet up, and possibly a nice hot bath to relax those aches. Brain = malfunction.

home medals in six categories with Intermediates Conor Delaney and Rachel Henry taking home gold.

Judo

The Judo Club had a successful All Ireland competition with three members medalling - with two gold and two bronze medals in total.

GAA

Our GAA clubs have been performing well so far with both the Fresher and Senior hurlers making their respective league finals, the Camogie team recording their first win over a very strong NUIG team and our Sigerson Footballers winning their relegation play off by a single point to maintain top flight status for next season. The Handball club have already had 60 x 30 Intervarsities taking home one gold (Lisa McKenna) and three silver medals (Ciara Mahon x 2, Lisa McKenna).

The Lies you tell Yourself

Dancing at a club all night counts as a session right? If I get a stitch dancing to “Timber” then it definitely counts.

So technically, if I go out clubbing on a Saturday, then I can skip the tempo run on a Sunday. Sure, if I did both I would be over-training, and that would be pointless.

The Rituals

The strange ritual of wobbling your bum on a tennis ball for a solid 30 minutes is an integral part of your life. The tennis ball knows you better than anyone else.

In The End

And what do you get in the end? After all this, you have to come top 3 to make the podium, and in a race with over 100 people in it, why bother even trying? For the team!

Thanks to team events, you can happily go home with a National Gold. It doesn’t matter that you were the 4th person on the team, or that you were miles behind the rest because if you hadn’t shown up on the day, nobody on the team would have won anything at all. Moreover, when your coach tells you that you just did the best session of your life, you start to dream again.

Trinity News | Tuesday 15 December

Sport

20 The Trinity graduates bringing their cricket team to the world stage page .19

Squash inequality

The Irish Squash and Education Association, thinks that squash can be a vehicle for improving the social mobility of young people

William Foley Deputy editor

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In the pink

Clare McCarthy Sport editor

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HE ANNOUNCEMENT OF six ‘University Pinks’ by the Captains’ Committee was made last week following their meeting on December 8th. ‘University Pinks’, the highest sporting award Trinity can bestow, is awarded to deserving college athletes who have fulfilled strict criteria while competing for a University Club at both intercollegiate competitions and at international level. ‘Pinks’ is a highly prestigious award, corresponding to the Oxford and Cambridge ‘Blues’, and is given to a very select number of Trinity athletes each year who have displayed outstanding athletic performance while studying at Trinity.

Selection Process

The Captains’ Committee, comprised of a Chairman and the Captains of the affiliated Sports Clubs, meets twice a year, in the Michaelmas and Hilary terms, and they alone hold the authority to award Pinks. “Each club has a set of Pinks criteria that must be achieved by the individual athlete in order for them to be nominated” said Laura Brennan, Honorary Secretary of the Captains’ Committee.

“The athletes don’t just have to meet the criteria, they need to exceed it for them to be successfully award Pinks.

For example, one criterion of the Harriers and Athletics Club is that the athlete must have won 2 intervarsity individual medals. One of our nominees, Conal Campion has won a total of 12. Across the

board, all the candidates that were awarded Pinks vastly exceeded their respective clubs’ criteria.” The voting of who is awarded Pinks is a collective affair from across the DUCAC community. “There is a Captains’ Committee meeting every year where the captain of the club whose athletes are going for Pinks presents the nomination form, outlining their sporting achievements while in TCD”, explained Brennan. “If necessary, the Captains will ask questions.

Then we all vote confidentially as to whether we deem the nominee worthy of Pinks,” she said.

Brennan feels that being awarded the honour reflects the amount of dedication and commitment an individual has shown to sport. The fact that the final decisions are made by the athletes peers adds to the prestige of the award.

“The whole process is very rigorous, since the athletes must exceed the criteria and it is then up to the Captains, themselves a tough panel, being leaders in their sports and having vast knowledge and experience, in order to be selected”, she said. “Most of the athletes are in their final years of college, and I can only imagine how great it must be to receive such an award in recognition of their sporting excellence over the past number of years.” The Captains’ Committee will meet again in April for further Pinks nominations ahead of the Annual Trinity Sports Awards, where the ‘Pinks’ recipients collect their awards. Honorary Chairman of DUCAC, Cyril Smyth, has congratulated the ‘Pinks’ recipients, thanking them for their important contributions to Trinity sport over the years.

Pinks Recipients

The six athletes who were awarded ‘Pinks’ at last week’s meeting were Conal Campion (DU Harriers & Athletics Club), Michael Corcoran (DU Boat), Eamon Fahey (DU Harriers & Athletics Club), Ian Hurley (DU Boat), Mark Kelly (DU Boat) and John Magan (DU Boat).

Campion and Fahey, both from DU Harriers & Athletics Club, are accomplished athletes medalling nationally and internationally in their events.

Campion competing in the throwing events and Fahey in the sprints and long jump.

Trinity News talks to Conal Campion on the announcement of Pinks – the highest sporting honour College can give.

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“I won the Hammer on my last throw of the event,” said Campion. “You get 6 throws and then the winner is picked from their best throw. I always have another level I can speed up to when it comes to the Hammer, it’s the one where you do spins with a ball and chain. I kicked it up a gear just to really go for it, you might fall but if your technique is sweet then you should be alright.” That day, Campion threw the Hammer a distance of 49.47m, securing gold for Ireland.

Corcoran, Hurley, Kelly and Magan, from DU Boat Club were all part of DUBC’s unbeaten Senior VIIIs team last year and are reigning National Champions since winning the final of the Senior VIIIs at the Irish Rowing Championships in July.

Conal Campion, 1st year Masters Student in Mechanical Engineering, athlete and recent ‘Pinks’ recipient was delighted when he heard the news, albeit via Facebook.

“I just saw it on the Facebook group”, said Campion, “my brother [also an athlete for DU Harriers & Athletics Club] had seen it the night before because he’s on a mailing list, but he didn’t tell me!”

“It’s a big honour. I don’t know if I expected it but I met the criteria well enough.”

Campions’ humble admission is supported by a wealth of accolades, having competed 33 times for DUHAC since 2011, he has well exceeded the criteria required by his club for ‘Pinks’.

In total, Campion has won 5 Silver and 7 Bronze medals while representing DUHAC at the Irish University Athletics Championships, in the throwing events of the Hammer, Javelin and Discus. He has represented his country at the Celtic University Track and Field International for the past three years, recently captaining the Men’s Irish Team at this year’s International.

Campion looks back on the day he captained the Irish Team last June, as possibly his best day competing.

“I won the Hammer on my last throw of the event,” said Campion. “You get 6 throws and then the winner is picked from their best throw. I always have another level I can speed up to when it comes to the Hammer, it’s the one where you do spins with a ball and chain. I kicked it up a gear just to really go for it, you might fall but if your technique is sweet then you should be alright.” That day, Campion threw the Hammer a distance of 49.47m, securing gold for Ireland.

Training and Dedication

A calm and natural leader, Campion has captained the DUHAC Men’s Track & Field team at his athletics home in Trinity, showing huge dedication to his club over the years.

Although, as a lone thrower

surrounded by sprinters and long distance athletes, it’s usually a case of training solo and maintaining self-motivation in his disciplines throughout the year.

“If you ever see me training,” says Campion, “you’ll probably just see a lone guy in a pitch with a spear or a discus, doing his thing. I do the majority of it alone, I just do turns over and over again, working on my technique.”

It all began at grassroots level for Campion. His club at home in Meath, St Andrews, sparked an interest in athletics and he was running cross country from an early age. It wasn’t until he took part in the ‘kids shot putt’, essentially a sliotar throwing competition, that he discovered his knack for throwing things.

“I came 2nd in Ireland in the under 10 ball throw and since then I’ve been a thrower,” said Campion.

His coach, Phil Conway, a former Irish Olympian who threw the shot putt at the Munich 1972 Olympic Games, has aptly coached Campion since his school days in Belvedere College, introducing him to the Hammer and the Discus.

Campion still works with Conway, and has recently started coaching at the weekends at his alma mater, himself.

All this and a thesis on the side, Campion still intends to continue competing for Trinity. His next competition for Trinity is the National University Indoor Championships in February where he will compete in the Shot Putt and the Weight for Distance events. However his major competition for Trinity only comes round once a year, in May where he competes in the Hammer, Javelin and Discus at the National University Outdoor Championships.

Campion is anything but forthcoming with details of his achievements, however.

When I speak to his DUHAC club mates and learn of all his mighty accomplishments and also his nickname “Campion the Champion”, it is his modesty that leaves a lasting impression. His accolades speak for themselves.

And still, all the while, he will quietly continue to train on. A solitary figure in a pitch with a spear or a discus, dedicating his time to the mastery of his sport.

HAT IS THE link between squash and socioeconomic inequality? To many the sport has elitist connotations, depicted in films such as Manhattan and The Ploughman’s Lunch as being a preserve of bourgeois intellectuals and middle class professionals. Some, such as the Harvard squash coach Steve Piltch, worry that the sport’s small size is linked to its perception as an exclusive activity.

Mark Kelly, founder of the Irish Squash and Education Association (ISEA), thinks that squash can not only be a sport enjoyed by all, but also a vehicle for improving the social mobility of young people from disadvantaged communities. ISEA’s flagship programme, Squash Link, aims to enhance “the future of underserved students by building life skills through squash, education and extracurricular activities.” Kelly’s motivation is derived from his personal experience and from his human rights-oriented philosophy which he developed as a law student and researcher.

The “seeds of disaffection” were sown from an early age.

For him, the primary school system was “more oppressive than inspirational.” He describes himself as unconventional student: “to get to university I dropped out of school. I became an autodidact and managed to perform an adequate manipulation of further education college lecturers to admit me to exams.

At an early stage of my educational trajectory I was very much in that at risk student, just the kind of student that we at SquashLink are seeking to develop.”

Later on, at an undergraduate level, and as a researcher at the University of London and the Centre for Rural Childhood in Perth, Kelly got the chance to develop his philosophy of human rights and child development on both a theoretical and practical level.

This philosophy includes a social analysis. Human rights, for Kelly, are not just concepts established “with a formal tribunal or court of law.” Nor is SquashLink just about the individual development of participants. Instead, the programme is“first and foremost addressing the absence of socioeconomic advantage, fairness, for the most in need of a level playing field.”

The potential of squash

Kelly feels that sport is a unique medium through which to intervene in the lives of young people: “From my perspective, sport is very important for defining cultural values, and vice versa. And if you look at how a sport can contribute to a level playing field in society, the values that that sport inspires and ensures can be sustained. And in my mind one of the most important values is how participation by those most in need can be encouraged and used as a positive pathway for those very same participants, who would otherwise miss out.”

But why squash, of all sports? “For me, sport in a room, which is what squash is, with all its geometric demands lends itself to the kind of unique mentoring relationships for those that will benefit from it. That is very difficult to replace with any other sport because you’re in a confined space you have to understand the body language of the person that you are engaged with and you have to related as strongly to them with what is happening in the game of squash as what’s happening to them as people.”

The potential for squash as an outreach initiative was first highlighted for Kelly by his participation in a programme run by the Trinity squash club in 2012. He describes himself as being incredibly impressed by the efforts of Trinity head coach, Elvy Da Costa, to train inner city school children. This led him to investigate similar urban squash

programmes in the United States, the results of which were “mesmerising.” In areas with historically low school completion rates, one hundred percent of students who attended such programmes graduated from high school and over ninety percent went on to third level.

The figures he cites are impressive. But what the actual mechanisms through which squash will actually help to reduce socioeconomic inequality? Kelly thinks that any initiative must be designed to serve the particularities of the local community. Nevertheless, there are some general features he identifies. “Leadership in society must be inspired by meritocratic values,” he says. Rising inequality muffles the voices of the affected communities. Developing a leadership that is capable of speaking out is integral to a debate on how inequality correlates with happiness.

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At an early stage of my educational trajectory I was very much in that at risk student, just the kind of student that we at SquashLink are seeking to develop Progress and promise So far, a board and several attendant committees have been established. A pilot programme has been running since the beginning of November, with pupils from primary schools in Ringsend attending weekly squash lessons. But SquashLink has big plans for what is to be accomplished in the future. On their website, the programme describes its aim as being to “transform the lives of underserved students through academic enrichment, health and lifestyle commitments, social and emotional responsibility, character development, lifelong learning and leadership.”

Kelly’s strategy for accomplishing these goals seems, as of yet, somewhat abstract.

This is perhaps inevitable with a project that is still in a prototype stage and which will be shaped by the particular needs and learning experiences of the participants. Still, there is a relatively detailed plan in place for the coming year.

Twenty four students will be recruited from local schools.

The selection of these students will be carried out in coordination with Tusla, the child and family agency, and the school completions programme. To ensure that the chosen participants will be those who benefit the most, students who are at risk of leaving school early, who have self-esteem issues, and/or low degrees of socialisation will be identified and targeted for support. The students will attend two after school sessions every week which will combine squash and educational assistance and qualified teachers will be involved in forming a strictly defined programme of development and a small number of teaching staff will be employed.

The gains to be realised from such a programme are potentially very impressive.

But in the face of the entrenched social structures of capitalism, what can a project like SquashLink really accomplish? Kelly is sanguine about its prospects: “I think every little can help. We’re opening doors, initially in Trinity, and taking advantage of local facilities. We’re addressing the needs of the students who will really appreciate it, and in that sense it’s a win-win scenario.”