Trinity News Volume 59 Issue 2

October 2nd 2012

Arthur’s Day: Is it good for you?

Illustration (left): Alice Wilson InDepth -p.7

Household charge: Take nothing for granted Illustration (right): Éna Brennan.

Comment -p.15

InDepth -p.6 - Unshaken, Unbowed: Dissident academic and leading voice on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Dr Norman Finkelstein talks to TN, thirty years after he entered the political arena. Photo: George Voronov

Keeping it local: USI ditches annual march Union aims to build up “pressure-cooker” atmosphere from grassroots

T Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

he Union of Students in Ireland (USI) intends to make a radical change in its tactics in advance of the 2013 budget, Trinity News has learned. The single, large march of previous years will be replaced by a series of smaller mobilisations aimed at local representatives.

A protest march will take place every week from 2nd November to 5th December to the constituency office of a TD or senator targeted for their perceived vulnerability.

A list of those to be targeted has been compiled based on the following criteria: electoral vulnerability; representation of a constituency which includes a USI member organisation; record of public statements that run counter to current government policy on higher education; position as education spokespersons; and being a constituency colleague of a strategically important TD. The list includes 15 representatives, 13 TDs and two senators, all but one of which (independent TD John Halligan from Waterford) are members of government parties. In total nine of those to be targeted are from Labour, while five are from Fine Gael. All five of the Dublin marches will be

Gavin Kenny examines the plight of the celebrated ‘clowns of the sea’ in Iceland

Science -p.20

on constituency offices of Labour party TDs and ministers.

The USI has also identified six representatives it sees as potential “allies” in its pre-budget campaign, four of which are TDs and two senators.

The USI president, John Logue, has already met with Charlie McConologue TD, senator Averil Power (both Fianna Fáil), Jonathan O’Brien TD and senator Kathryn Reilly (both Sinn Féin). Seán Crowe TD (Sinn Féin) and the United Left Alliance’s Joan Collins TD have also been singled out for assistance by the campaign.

The month of protest will culminate with an event in Dublin designed to “focus media attention”. It is likely to include “thousands” of student representatives from constituent unions, but will not be a conventional march or occupation. More likely is a symbolic protest in co-operation with non-governmental organisations who work in the youth sector.

According to a USI source, each protest will be organised by the “member organisation in that constituency” in order to ensure that the movement is “localised and

targeted”. This “bottom-up” approach is seen as a departure from the strategies followed in previous years, which had seen the organisation plan a centrally-managed, set-piece protest of tens of thousands since 2008.

Prior to the month of protests the USI will hold town hall meetings in the constituency of each representative.

It intends to invite “parents, businesspeople, media and the local community” to discuss “challenges facing families due to cuts in higher education”.

These town hall meetings have been scheduled to coincide with the Department of Finance’s discussions with other departments on proposed expenditure allocations, which are expected to take place from 20th October to 1st November. The discussions will culminate with budgetary estimates, likely to be finalised on 2nd November.

Speaking to Trinity News, Mr Logue said it was “vitally important” that students turned out in large numbers in the lead-up to the Budget.

“Rather than focusing all our attention on a national march, USI will focus on strategic members of the Oireachtas, local protests, engagement with

British? Irish? Callum Jenkins explores Rory McIlroy’s identity

Comment -p.13

the wider community and an information campaign that will permeate every sector of Irish society.”

He said that the strategy amounted to a “fresh look at campaigning” from the organisation, aimed at “empowering” students.

Responding to the new strategy, Mark O’Meara, the campaign manager of the pro-disaffiliation Yes side in Trinity’s referendum, said that the plans “fly in the face” of previous commitments and that USI were “simply returning to what they have been doing before [but] on a different scale.”

He continued: “Giving individual unions more power may work, but considering the relatively low numbers at the march last year I’d question whether the USI believe if these marches will be able to achieve a significant, or noticeable, turnout.”

Other elements of the USI’s pre-budget strategy include lobbying in partnership with organisations like the Irish Farmers’ Association to protect the maintenance grant, and setting up a website to highlight waste in higher education.

Dublin NW John Lyons (LAB) Cavan Monaghan Heather Humphries (FG) Galway West Séan Kyne (FG) Dublin SE Kevin Humphreys (LAB) Louth Peter Fitzpatrick (FG) Waterford Ciara Conway (LAB) Waterford John Halligan (IND) Cork East Sean Sherlock (LAB) Dublin SW Pat Rabitte (LAB) Mayo Enda Kenny (FG) Galway East Colm Keaveney (LAB) Louth Sen. Mary Moran (LAB) Galway West Sen. Fidelma H. Eames (FG) Dublin South East Ruairí Quinn (LAB) Dublin North Central Aoghan Ó Riordain (LAB)

Inside

Tony-award winning stage actor Mark Rylance discusses his legendary performance in Jerusalem and his return to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

>>

Not the Church, not the State! Aoife O’Brien reports on the March for Choice

News -p.3

Winning Start: four-try DUFC best Blackrock in season opener

Sport -p.24

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

2

News

What They Said

“ “ “ “ “ Just walked by the Provost on a call saying “I don’t see it as a disadvantage not knowing how the college administration works.”

Does anyone have instructions for this oven? I’m sick of grilling pizzas.” (Accompanied by photo of oven, on TCD campus page.)

Hannah McCarthy Law Soc. PRO

May have to reconsider the commute.

Two full buses pass my stop, mockingly.

F**king school children.”

Ronan Costello USI Communications Man (@Ronan_Costello)

Half a million people take ecstasy every week in Britain. That’s you that is. That’s your mum.”

“And finally, in predictive text news, Raisin Shortfall has resigned from the Department of Health.”

Fiona Hyde Siren Magazine co-editor (@andgoseek):

Maurice Guéret Former TCD Seanad candidate (@mauricegueret)

Rory Dunne TCDSU President

indicates strong support for No College mulls Poll vote: But students still dissatisfied cutting scholars with USI Working group suggests restricting exams to Senior Freshmen

A Catherine Healy Student Affairs Correspondent

working group chaired by the senior lecturer, Dr Patrick Geoghegan, has proposed that the college’s scholarship examinations be restricted to senior freshmen, and that students from other years should no longer be able to sit the exams. In a document viewed by Trinity News, the scholarship review working group advocated that the examination be limited from next year to firsttime candidates in their senior freshman year. This is in keeping with the existing definition of the examinations as being at a level appropriate to SF students.

Foundation scholarships have been a staple of Trinity life since 1592. Candidates who achieve an overall first-class result are elected as scholars of the college by Trinity’s Board, and are entitled to a waiving of fees as well as other benefits such as free accommodation and Commons for up to five years thereafter. Last year, a total of 103 students were successful in the highly competitive exams.

Since their timing was changed from April to January in 2010, the scholarship exams have interfered less with JS exams, making it easier for thirdyear students to cover material from the previous two years. In an email to the college’s current scholars, the secretary to the Scholars’ Committee, Tony O’Connor, said that this has resulted in a significant increase of junior sophister students sitting and getting schol in recent times, which could explain the increase in the overall numbers achieving scholarships.

The main concern raised with this trend is the perceived advantage enjoyed

by JS schol candidates, who have had a longer period of time to study material and in many cases have already sat the scholarship exams in the previous year.

A potential compromise included in the group’s revised recommendations would mean that in exceptional circumstances such as illness or bereavement where a SF student could not sit the exams, they would be able to apply, through their tutor, to complete the examination in the following year.

The Students’ Union education officer, Dan Ferrick, stated that there were “a lot of people against the recommendation at the meeting

Dr Patrick Prendergast announcing this year’s scholars.

before the appeals system was proposed.” Speaking to Trinity News, Geoghegan said this revision addressed the concerns of a number of scholars who had been opposed to the proposed restriction of the exam to senior freshmen.

Last June, at the first of three meetings of the scholarship review working group, Geoghegan said that he had spoken with the provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast, about the increase in the number of scholarships awarded in recent times and the additional costs entailed. The subsequent list of proposals which have emerged from this review group would, if implemented, see even stricter criteria being imposed on examination candidates.

Among the other proposals listed in the group’s final discussion document is the requirement that successful candidates achieve a majority of first-class honours across their papers in the examination.

The group also suggests that distinguished retired members of staff be invited to review examination scripts in order to confirm that they demonstrate sufficient levels of expertise.

One particularly significant suggestion is that schol should be completely anonymous from next year, thus “reinforcing the idea that the award is based solely on the performance in the scholarship examination and not on any other factors”. Candidates for schol have traditionally been required to provide their names on exam scripts, a feature of the examination which is often considered flawed.

An email from O’Connor to the scholars’ mailing list yesterday confirmed that the recommendations of the working group have the support of the Scholars’ Committee. Geoghegan is expected to address the scholars regarding the proposed changes at a reception this evening in the Graduates’ Memorial Building.

The review group’s findings are to be presented to the University Council on 24th October and will then be discussed by the Board, which is the deciding body for issues related to scholars, on 7th November. If implemented, these changes would come into force for the 2013-2014 academic year, meaning that current JS students expecting to sit the scholarship examination would not be affected.

Ian Curran & Gabriel Beecham News & Copy Editors Trinity students are set to reaffirm their affiliation with the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) this week, as 58.3% of respondents to a Trinity News poll said that they will vote no in the referendum. 32.3% of students stated that they will vote yes, showing that there is still a considerable amount of support for disaffiliation among the student body, while 9.4% said that they were unsure as to which way they would be voting.

The poll was adjusted for several demographic factors.

Regardless of the overall result, there still appears to be a significant amount of dissatisfaction with the USI, even among those students who plan on voting for Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) to remain affiliated with the organisation. Examining the raw, unadjusted data, Trinity News has been able to make several further observa-

tions about voting trends in the upcoming referendum; a mere 10% of respondents who said that they would be voting no in the referendum felt that the USI did not need significant changes to do an effective job as the national students’ union, while 47% said that such changes are necessary.

33% of students polled stated that they were not sure whether the issue of TCDSU’s affiliation is important or not, with 47% of students saying that they thought the issue was important.

The most important determining factor in students’ decision to vote seems to be the issue of broad representation of student concerns. 40% of respondents stated that they would be voting in the election because they were concerned with national representation for students. 32% of students said they were voting because of concerns over the future of the fees policy, and 5% of respondents were concerned with the level of democracy in USI. Of the students who said they were voting for disaffiliation, 50% said that they would be in favour of the creation of an alternative national union of

students, with 26% saying that they would not favour such a move.

The poll was conducted among a random sample of 127 students via an online survey and in person at the Arts Building, the Hamilton Building, Front Gate and the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences in Tallaght Hospital between 28th-30th September. It was adjusted to account for variations in gender, grant status, country of origin, age and likelihood of voting.

This is the first referendum about TCDSU’s affiliation with USI in 10 years. The poll results come after a week of campaigning across Trinity’s main campuses. Polls opened yesterday in the Arts Building and Hamilton Building, and voting extends today to the School of Nursing & Midwifery on D’Olier Street. A polling station will open on Thursday at the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences at St James’s Hospital. The USI’s national officers are expected to take significant time out from their normal duties this week to campaign for a no vote in the referendum.

Report suggests TCD-UCD merger Ian Curran News Editor A report sponsored by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) last week recommended a merger between Trinity College, Dublin and University College Dublin (UCD) as one of several large-scale higher education reforms. As of Wednesday, 25th September, the circulation of the report had been delayed after discussions between the HEA and the Department of Education.

The report was commissioned by the HEA and conducted by several international experts, chaired by Professor Frans Van Vught, a Dutch academic who specializes in education policy. The merger between the two colleges is part of a wider series of recommendations in the report to consolidate the state’s 20 colleges into six. The Irish Times reported that there was also “… speculation that other changes in the unpublished report include the merger of Dublin City University [DCU], NUI [National University of Ireland] Maynooth, Athlone IT and Dundalk IT; the merger of NUI

Galway with colleges in the region; the merger of all colleges based in Cork and Kerry; and the merger of colleges based in Limerick.” However, the publication of the report has been postponed “for clarification on policy issues and for wider consultation”, according to the HEA’s chief executive, Tom Boland.

Since news broke about the report’s recommendation, there has been a significant move by top education officials to distance their institutions from the possibility of a series of mergers. The minister for education, Ruairi Quinn, was quick to dismiss the report, saying that the merger was “neither feasible nor desirable”. The NUI Maynooth president, Dr Phillip Nolan, and the DCU president, Brian McCraith, told staff in a joint email last week that “no merger of DCU with NUI Maynooth is envisaged, nor would it be supported by either of the presidents of the two institutions.”

Trinity’s provost, Patrick Prendergast, has also denied that any merger talks between UCD and Trinity have taken place.

The delay in circulation and the negative comments from the minister for education have been regarded as evidence that

the report has been “shelved”.

The report states that the merger between Trinity and UCD would allow the consolidated university to achieve economies of scale and reach “the critical mass and expertise needed to secure a place among the world’s best-ranked universities”, but other university sources are critical of that suggestion. Brian Lucey, an associate professor in finance at Trinity, told the Irish Times that the competition between the two colleges is worth preserving and that educational competition is actually beneficial. Professor Stephen Hedley, head of the department of law at University College Cork, told the Irish Times: “If you take the two colleges and merge them, you wouldn’t get a higher rank; you’d get something in between.”

Trinity College’s communications office told Trinity News that as of 30th September, College had “not yet seen a copy of the report”.

The communications officer stated that when the recommendations are seen by the college they will be considered in full and she also confirmed the provost’s statement that “no merger discussions have taken place”.

EDITORIAL STAFF Editor

Rónán Burtenshaw

Deputy Editor

Dargan Crowley-Long

Art Director

Éna Brennan

Web Editor

Aoife O’Brien

Copy Editor

John Colthurst

Deputy Copy

Gabriel Beecham

News Editor

Ian Curran

Deputy News

Ruairí Casey

Student Affairs

Catherine Healy

InDepth Editor

Max Sullivan

Deputy InDepth

Saphora Smith

Comment Editor

Manus Lenihan

Deputy Comment

David Barker

Science Editor

Anthea Lacchia

Deputy Science

Stephen Keane

Sports Editor

Sarah Burns

Deputy Sports

James Hussey

Photography Editor

George Voronov

Deputy Photography

Henrietta Montague-Munson

Editor-at-Large

Elaine McCahill

Public Editor

Hannah Cogan Niamh Teeling

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Trinity News

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

3

News

English department ranks 15th in the world

Trinity’s Gender Equality Society among thousands at “March for Choice”

T Aoife O’Brien Web Editor

he Gardaí have estimated that the attendance at last Saturday’s “March for Choice” in Dublin city centre was between 2,500-3,000 people, making it the largest gathering of people protesting for the availability of abortion in Ireland since the X case in 1992.

Organisers emphasized that the day was to be a celebration of being pro-choice, and being proud of that viewpoint.

However, some protesters have said that their emotions leaned more towards anger than joy, due to the perceived stigma and shame surrounding abortion in Ireland and frustration that the problem of abortion is being exported.

Speaking at the march, the People Before Profit TD Clare Daly denounced the state for its attitude to abortion. She equated the state’s “hiding” of women in the Magdalene laundries to the hiding of women on “Ryanair planes and ferries”. Osaro Azamosa of the Irish Feminist

Network (IFN) spoke of the situation faced by many migrant women in Ireland who cannot travel to access abortions in the UK as they do not hold Irish citizenship, and must resort to other means such as collecting abortifacient medications in Northern Ireland or seeking backstreet abortions.

Representatives from the Union of Students in Ireland, the Labour party, IFN, Choice Ireland and the Dublin University Gender Equality Society (DUGES) attended the march, as well as Dublin University senator Ivana Bacik. Polly Dennison, the chair of DUGES, feels the abortion issue is very much on the table for Trinity students at the moment, due to trends in activism, events, debates and discussion in College about the subject. She feels the march will be successful in raising awareness of the issue, but that in order for a change to be made in legislation, more activism, education and mature, ra-

tional discussion is needed.

The march for choice comes after several months of high profile discussion of abortion in the Irish media and in the Dáil. In July of this year 15 Fine Gael TDs threatened a backbench revolt if the findings of the government’s expert group on abortion liberalisation were not properly discussed with the party before it entered the Dáil. One Fine Gael TD said that abortion liberalization was a “redline” issue for the majority of Fine Gael’s parliamentary party. The findings of the expert group’s report on the potential for a realizing of abortion laws in Ireland are set to be released some time in October.

In August, the Fine Gael junior minister at the department of finance, Brian Hayes, proposed the idea that the government parties should have a “free vote” on the issue. He stated that: “A lot of our lads would like a free vote on it because it’s a personal issue and not a

Ian Curran News Editor

ior staff who were paid a total of €266,000 in unauthorised performance related bonuses between 2005 and 2008. UCD represents the lion’s share of the payments on the list, with a total of 77 academics receiving €3.3m of the total €7.5m.

The payments have now stopped, but the Higher Education Authority (HEA) has ensured that the colleges involved will have to pay a penalty. The respective colleges will have to now divert more resources to student services.

In response to the HEA’s review, the minister for education, Ruairi Quinn, has proposed new legislation that will give him the ability to enforce compliance with rules surrounding pay and pensions. The legislation will also give the minister the power to enforce compliance with labour court recommendations.

In theory, this would give the minister the ability to force Trinity to re-instate (as had been recommended by the labour court) three staff members who were made redundant last year.

The bonus payments were discussed last week at the Oireachtas public accounts committee in the presence of the UCD president, Hugh Brady, who defended the payments to senior academics.

budgetary issue.” His comment came just days after the minister for communications, Pat Rabbitte, stated that he wanted the church to stay out of the debate on the issue.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the X case, in which a 14-year-old girl who became pregnant as a result of rape was denied permission to travel to the UK to procure an abortion, despite threatening suicide if she was forced to continue her pregnancy. The supreme court ruled that the threat of suicide constituted a legitimate risk to the teenager’s life and granted permission for her to travel for a termination, but by the time of the ruling she had miscarried. Successive governments have neglected to legislate for the supreme court’s interpretation of article 40.3.3 of the Irish constitution; namely that, where a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother exists due to her pregnancy, she is entitled to an abortion.

Online timetabling delay

Quinn cracks down on rogue bonuses A breakdown of 223 academics who were paid unauthorised bonuses between 2005 and 2011 has been published in the Irish Independent. The bonuses, paid between 2005 and 2011 and amounting to roughly €7.5m, include a €430,000 bonus that was paid to an unnamed medical consultant affiliated to Trinity who already had a salary of €200,000 per year.

The bonus payments were meant to reward senior academics for additional work; however, ministerial approval was required before the payments were given. This approval was never given by the Department of Education.

Academics named in the breakdown include the former National University of Ireland, Galway president Dr Iognáid Ó Muircheartaigh, who received unauthorized payments of €202,978, and the former University of Limerick acting president John O’Connor, who received unauthorised payments of €247,905 while continuing to receive an allowance after stepping down from their posts. The head of the school of medicine and medical science in University College Dublin (UCD), Prof Bill Powderly, received an unauthorised annual allowance of €18,000 on top of a salary of €241,000, along with 12 sen-

Ruairí Casey

Ian Curran News Editor

Trinity’s new online timetabling system has been called into question after it emerged that a large amount of students had not received their class timetables before term began last week. A new student information system was unveiled in late August in an attempt to computerise the process of student registration and Collegefee related finance.

It became clear on the weekend of 22nd September that a large number of students had received no word in relation to their lecture timetables, either through new information system or through their departments. The confusion led the senior lecturer, Dr Patrick Geoghegan, to send undergraduate students an email last week explaining the situation.

He stated that, while many of the components of the new information system had worked (including registration and fee payment), College was “in the middle of testing the online timetabling system.”

The situation has meant that many departments have had to post the new timetables on their respective noticeboards and circulate them through email. On 23rd

September, the Sunday before lectures began, the Students Union referred to the unavailability of timetables as “an unacceptable state of affairs.”

The Students’ Union education officer, Dan Ferrick, told Trinity News that the “majority” of students were affected by the system failure. He stated that the problem was rectified fairly quickly by the individual departments. “Nearly 100% of the schools have issued some sort of timetable by now,” he said. According to Ferrick, only “a very small number of students” weren’t sent a timetable at the point that the system error was detected.

Ferrick told Trinity News that part of the problem was that the timetables were “ready to go”, but that “there was no way to determine whether or not they were accurate” and that “errors kept cropping up” on the new system. He said that departments were “really great” in circulating the timetables once they knew that there was going to be a problem. In particular, he pointed to the science course office’s swift response to the problem.

Deputy News Editor The School of English has been College’s outstanding success in this year’s Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. In a ranking of English departments worldwide, it placed 3rd in Europe and 14th in the world. Finishing behind Oxford University and Cambridge University in Europe, and behind a number of American universities globally, the school has received its best ever ranking, improving from 32nd in the 2011 QS rankings.

The rankings were announced at a QS event held in Trinity’s new Biomedical Sciences Institute on 11th September.

In the overall rankings, Trinity rated 67th, slightly down from last year’s 65th placing.

Trinity’s only two top 100 faculties were Arts & Humanities (62nd, down from 60th in 2011) and Life Sciences & Medicine (84th, down from 80th). Every faculty fell in the rankings, and Trinity’s overall ranking continues along its downward trajectory, having fallen every year since its highest position ( joint 43rd) in 2009.

Trinity’s School of English currently has 32 senior lecturers and five administrative staff. It currently caters to about 500 undergraduates, 90 postgraduates and 100 visiting students.

The school is smaller than many others on the list, with both Oxford and Cambridge having significantly larger numbers of senior lecturers, administrative staff and students.

The head of the School of English, Eve Patten, spoke with Trinity News about the school’s recent success.

What do you think are the reasons for the English school’s success in this year’s QS rankings?

The School of English offers a very strong curriculum, which combines core and traditional literary history and theory with innovative critical developments such as popular literature and children’s literature.

The four-year degree and our system of small-group teaching enable us to maintain both elements. In addition, we emphasise the development of essential skills in critical thinking, original research and professional presentation, and these are the factors which make

our students so attractive to employers. Finally, and this is where Trinity English excels over most other Irish and many UK institutions, we are committed to a full chronological survey of English literature.

This means our students have a chance to explore old and medieval literature and language as well as the modern, and it’s often in this earlier, very challenging territory that our best students emerge and flourish.

Do you think that the school could rise even further in the rankings? If so, how do you think this would be achieved?

The school is fortunate in having a terrific teaching staff. We benefit from both experienced professors and a younger cohort of really committed and innovative lecturers. If we can continue to staff essential areas and build on our strengths, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t continue to rise in the rankings. The economic climate is against us, of course, but we’ll fight all the way to give our students the resources and quality of teaching they deserve.

Do you think that Trinity’s strong tradition of writers has benefited the school in any way?

Yes, having so many leading Irish writers associated with the School makes it a very exciting place to work. There is a real sense of literature “in the making”, not just as a historical entity. And our high-profile international writer colleagues, including Richard Ford and Sir Terry Pratchett, add to the sense that we’re a centre for creativity as well as criticism.

But I would also stress that we benefit hugely from the College library: this is a real treasure for any potential student of literature, and it makes a real difference to the quality of research produced even at undergraduate level.

What do you think are the benefits of studying English?

There’s simply no doubt that developing the ability to read, research, and critique any kind of text is a huge benefit to anyone going into the professional workforce. I hear this time and time again from outside institutions and businesses. Students of English literature gain an intellectual maturity – a capacity for sophisticated critical engagement – which gives them the edge over their peers in many other disciplines. It’s not just about reading novels and talking about them!

Trinity News

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

4

News In Brief

News

Provost appointed to European Institute of Innovation and Technology The provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast, has been appointed to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) as one of 12 new members of its board. Established in March 2008, the EIT is an EU body with the aim of increasing European sustainable growth and competitiveness by reinforcing the innovation capacity of the EU. In July, the provost was invited to become a member of the EIT’s governing body, consisting of 22 figures active in the business, research and education sectors. Subject to the approval of the Board of Trinity College, he has accepted the invitation. Prendergast is the only Irish member of the board.

The minister for research and innovation, Sean Sherlock, spoke positively about the appointment: “I wish to congrat-

ulate Prendergast on his appointment to the EIT board, an achievement that reflects his expertise and experience, and the esteem in which he is held across Europe. EIT will play an important role in the development of Europe’s innovation capacity in the years ahead and Ireland must play an active role in these developments. With its focus on creating a new generation of entrepreneurially-minded graduates, EIT can create a cultural shift towards a more innovative Europe and a more entrepreneurial labour force.”

The EIT is responsible for the management of “knowledge and innovation communities” (KICs). These are separate legal entities which bring together individuals from universities, research centres and businesses in a number of centres across

Europe. Work in these labs focuses on topics with high societal impact, with the three current KICs researching climate change mitigation, information and communication technologies, and sustainable energies.

The EIT governing board will also oversee the implementation of the EIT’s “strategic innovation agenda”, proposed by the European Commission.

This aims to create up to 600 start-up companies and to train 10,000 master’s students and 10,000 PhD students in new curricula combining science and entrepreneurship.

Speaking of his appointment, Prendergast said: “I am deeply honoured and aim to bring my knowledge and understanding of excellence in higher education and research in making a meaningful contribution to sustainable growth.”

Trinity applies for ‘Green Campus’ status Trinity College has recently applied for Green Campus status under the Foundation for Environmental Education’s Green Campus initiative, operated in Ireland by An Taisce. Similar to the Green Schools programme, it aims to promote knowledge and responsibility surrounding environmental issues in Irish third-level educational institutes. The Green Campus programme does not reward specific environmental projects or the implementation of new technology, but instead a long-term commitment to continuous improvement from the campus community.

The seven steps of the programme which must be completed before attaining Green

Campus status are: establishing a Green Campus committee, incorporating student and staff representatives; undertaking an environmental review; implementing an action plan; monitoring and evaluating actions carried out; linking the programme to curriculum work; informing and involving the campus and wider community; and developing a green charter.

Since the programme began in 2007, three of the 18 campuses registered on the programme have been awarded the green flag: University College Cork, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology’s Castlebar campus and Coláiste Dhúlaigh, Coolock.

To assess Trinity’s completion

of the seven required steps, an expert committee will be formed and a decision should be made by December. College’s Green Campus committee have been working with the TCD Sustainable Development Policy (2008), with the aims of reducing harmful emissions, promoting sustainable transport and waste management, and increasing student involvement, amongst others.

Information about Trinity’s Green Campus committee and a comprehensive summary of the green flag application are available online at http://www. tcd.ie/greenpages.

LGBT Ally campaign The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) launched the first national LGBT Ally campaign on Monday 1st October at 11am in the Blue Room of the student centre at University College Dublin (UCD).

In attendance were Labour TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, senator Averil Power and Dublin city councillor Rebecca Moynihan.

A number of regional launches also took place, with University College Cork, Waterford Institute of Technology, Queen’s University Belfast and St Angela’s College, Sligo helping to promote the campaign. Politicians who have supported the campaign and spoke at these events include Labour TD Ci-

Clare county council: Student grants contingent on household charge Mod quiam acerfereium nectas quam es et aces as exerfere sinturero mi, offic te pos volupta inci doluptas sitium inis nis nume Controversy surrounding reports that Clare county council had decided to make student grants contingent on payment of the new household charge has subsided as the council denied planning any such action.

It had initially been thought that the council, by asking those applying for renewal of grants whether they had paid their household charge, would make the grant contingent on payment of the charge. A number of county councils who had considered following Clare council’s lead in processing applications for third-level grants have since backed down.

Clare county council has stated that at no stage had it demanded proof of payment of the household charge as a requirement for renewal of the grant, although the council would “prioritise” those who provided proof. On 18th September a press release announced: “All eligible applicants, irrespective of whether they have paid the charge, will have their payments issued as expeditiously as possible.”

The controversy erupted as students seeking renewal of the grant, some 800 under Clare council’s jurisdiction, received a letter which enquired as to the payment of the new charge.

Though the council has since

decided not to ask applicants for proof of payment, it did defend its actions. In a press statement the council said: “The household charge was introduced to provide funding for local services such as the assessing and processing grants, for which there is no charge to the customer in terms of a grant application fee. The budgeted cost for administering higher education grants in 2012 is €91,000. The council doesn’t receive any direct payment for processing grants.”

The USI president, John Logue, harshly criticised the actions of Clare council in a statement to the media: “The action taken

by Clare county council must be condemned in the strongest terms. This is an unprecedented move. Never have I heard of a grant being refused until proof of payment is offered for a completely unrelated tax owed by another person. Students are being punished for the decisions of their parents and their education is being put at risk.” In addition, a protest was organised by the students’ unions of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, the National University of Ireland, Galway, the University of Limerick and Limerick Institute of Technology on 18th September outside council offices in Ennis,

“

The action taken

by Clare county council must be condemned in the strongest terms.

John Logue, President of the USI.

County Clare.

When asked to clarify the matter by Gerry Adams in the Dáil, the taoiseach, Enda Kenny, stated that local authorities do not have the power to withdraw third-level grants from students. He said that Clare county council was “… not entitled by law to reduce or withhold a portion of the third-level grant, but as a matter of course it is entitled to as much information about the numbers who have paid the household charge as is required in law.”

This action came independently from county councils, and was not sanctioned at ministerial level. “I do not micro-manage local authorities,’ said the minister for the environment, community and local government, Phil Hogan.

The minister for education, Ruairi Quinn, and the minister for jobs, enterprise and innovation, Richard Bruton, both described the request as “reasonable”.

Tipperary county council claimed to be considering withholding the grant, but later reconsidered. Also open to the possibility, when asked by the Irish Times on 19th September, were a number of other county councils, including those for Kilkenny, Leitrim and Roscommon.

ara Conway, independent TD John Halligan, Sinn Féin TD Michael Colreavy, the lord mayor of Cork, John Buttimer, and Peter Agnew of the Green Party in Northern Ireland.

The aim of the campaign is to highlight the support that people have for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights and to raise awareness of LGBT issues among third-level students. In establishing the campaign, the USI is following the example of a number of American universities like New York University, which runs an annual “LGBT Ally Week”.

Laura Harmon, the USI vicepresident for equality and citizenship, said: “There is a huge

amount of support for LGBT rights among third-level students, as was evident at the huge turnout USI had for the March for Marriage last August. The momentum is building behind campaigns for marriage equality and transgender rights in Ireland and the USI is proud to be playing our part in these campaigns.”

The launch featured a video screening for the campaign, featuring words of support from the actress and LGBT campaigner Whoopi Goldberg, Avan Jogi from the US organisation Straight But Not Narrow, and students from across Ireland.

College to award BAs in Catholic Theology Commencing in 2013-2014, Trinity College is to award a bachelor’s degree course in Catholic theology. This is the first time in its history that the college is to award specialised Catholic theological qualifications. The move comes as a re-

sult of College’s recent association with the Loyola Institute, a centre of higher education based on Jesuit teaching. The alliance comes after unsuccessful negotiations with UCD, who declined to introduce a degree in Catholic theology in

2008. The Loyola Institute is a branch of the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy, which became a recognised college of the National University of Ireland

Freshers Week robberies run A number of thefts in College during Freshers’ Week have been reported. Incidents occurred in both House Six and the Graduates’ Memorial Building. According to the Hist’s auditor, John Engle, “roughly €600” was stolen from the Hist committee room on the Monday of Freshers’ Week. He said that it was returned a day later by “a member of security”.

Thefts were also reported in House Six. Two cameras and camera equipment were taken from the office of the Publications Committee on the second floor, while two iPhones be-

longing to the Students’ Union’s communications officer, Owen Bennett, and former ducation officer Rachel Barry were stolen from the union’s office on the ground floor.

Incidences of theft in College appear particularly frequent around the time of Freshers’ Week. This is when societies see a large intake of petty cash, usually stored in committee rooms before being deposited in a bank. Though the CSC advises society treasurers to keep the amount of cash in their rooms to a minimum, this advice is not always followed.

Last year, during week three of Michaelmas term, over €1,000 in Freshers’ Week takings were stolen from a cash box in the Sci-Fi Society’s room in House Six. When asked to comment on the latest incidents, the College’s communications office replied: “It is College policy not to comment on individual personnel issues. The theft in question was referred to An Garda Síochána and neither College nor the Gardaí will comment on an ongoing investigation.”

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

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TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

6

InDepth

SEEMAXSLVNPLZKTNX Trinity Internet Mess ups

>> p.10

Photo: George Voronov

The pragmatic radical Rónán Burtenshaw interviews dissident academic and arch-critic of Israel, Dr. Norman Finkelstein, thirty years after he entered the political arena.

Q. Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

You have spoken about the role your mother, a Holocaust survivor, played in your early political development. Could you elaborate on this, and also speak to some of the other political influences in your early life?

A. The foundational influences were my parents, my late mother in particular. Both of my parents passed through the Nazi Holocaust. They were in the Warsaw Ghetto from September 1939 to April 1943. After the ghetto uprising was put down they estimate that there were about 20-30,000 survivors in the ghetto, all of whom were deported to Majdanek concentration camp. Both of my parents were deported there. My father ended up in Auschwitz on the death march. My mother ended up in two slave-labour camps. She was liberated by the Russians, my father by the Americans. Every single member on both sides of my family were exterminated, except for my mother and father.

We had no relatives, and my parents had very strong opinions on topics which nobody around me even grasped.

My parents were very deeply committed to Stalin and the Soviet Union, because they saw the whole world through the prism of the Nazi Holocaust.

As far as they were concerned, it was the Soviet Red Army that defeated the Nazis, and that’s all they cared about. To grow up in a home where you could not criticise Stalin – in a Jewish neighbourhood in Brooklyn – was weird.

Also, my parents were not just passionately against war like, say, a pacifist. They were hysterically against war.

We would watch the news from Vietnam in the evening, which was the leading news story in my formative years, and when the scenes from the battlefield came on my mother would turn her head. She would say: “Tell me when it’s over”. She physically could not look at it.

By the time I got to college, I had become a Maoist. “Mao Tse-Tung, live like him: dare to struggle, dare to win.” Maybe it was naive, certainly there were errors. But we were committed not just to

correcting this or that problem in society but to radically transforming it. We didn’t want to just mend it, we wanted a revolution. I know exactly when it lasted until: the day when Mao Tse-Tung died. He had four followers, the Gang of Four, came to power. Believe it or not, I remember the names: Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen. When they were overthrown with relative ease within weeks of Mao’s death, I was wise enough to recognise that there must have been something fundamentally wrong there.

I had a breakdown.

I was in bed for three weeks, totally shattered. The whole world came caving in on me.

And then I was a radical in search of an ideology. I wasn’t going to have anything to do with Marxism-Leninism any more. It was too much in denial, consistently fabricating arguments to justify things that couldn’t be justified. I was pretty skilful at justifying the unjustifiable, mostly because I read so much. I could always find a fact here or a fact there to support my opinion.

After that collapse of my personal worldview, around the late 70s, I discovered Professor Chomsky. The appeal of Chomsky was that you were able to construct a radical view of the world that was firmly grounded in facts. You didn’t need any kind of ideology – as in, if somebody disagrees with you, he or she is a bourgeois or a petty-bourgeois. In Professor Chomsky’s style, if somebody disagreed with you, you had to answer them factually.

You couldn’t just label them.

And I found that an appealing style. We were going to deal with facts and reason, and it’s going to be ideology-free. I didn’t want to have anything to do with ideologies any more. I wanted to be a radical without the ideology.

Q. Do you still consider yourself to not have an ideology?

A metanarrative or cohesive worldview?

A. Let’s put it this way: I don’t think you can radically change the world unless there is some cohesive vision of where you

want to go. If there are lots of little groups, and no cohesive worldview, how do we organise in order to achieve a coherent alternative to what exists?

Marxism provided that cohesive view such that we were able to unite. I recognise that it doesn’t exist now – countersystemic movements are very fragmented. I recognise that no person or group has come up with something convincing about a common goal. But I don’t believe that we can hope for systemic change unless we come up with something like that.

But ideology for me has a special connotation. It’s using rhetoric rather than facts in order to confront your opponents. It’s a substitute for reason. That, I don’t want to have anything to do with. But in terms of a comprehensive alternative to what we have, to the capitalist system, I think we need that. The other side is very well organised. And they have so many hundreds of years of history behind them. I don’t see how we can try to displace that without having a comparable degree of organisation and cohesion.

In my opinion the best exposition of this is Rosa Luxemburg’s essay “The Russian Revolution”. She wrote it while she was in prison in 1919. She’s hearing about all of the repression in the Soviet Union and she has these lyrical paragraphs where she says, “Ok, we’re all socialists, we know what our goal is but, in the course of trying to achieve our goal 10,000 questions keep coming up. We don’t have any of the answers because we have no experience.” So, she argues that you have freedom of expression and contesting ideas because there’s no blueprint for this. We don’t have the experience.

Q. You ve been described as a forensic scholar . I ve also seen you talk about how you focus on what is behind a book, rather than the content of the book itself. Would you describe yourself as a deconstructionist?

A. No, because those terms are stupid. They don’t mean any-

thing! I do like forensic scholar’, I do treat books as a kind of criminal act and try to solve the crime.

Once I got into this Israel-Palestine thing, I became hyper-focused. I got involved in June 1982 – thirty years ago. I became a small-scale celebrity when I exposed a purportedly scholarly book by Joan Peters as a hoax. From there on in I reached a conclusion that the most useful thing I could do is to master the facts in almost fanatical fashion, because the Israeli propaganda machine was so effective and overwhelming.

It commanded so much authority and there was so much paper produced each day that the only way you could counter it is by devoting yourself almost fanatically to trying to track down every fact, every figure and every date.

My general opinion of life is that everybody has something to offer to this world, some gift, something in which they shine. And I have my little talent. What I do is very narrow but I know that I do it well. I have a good eye for fraud and fakery, I have patience to track down every source. I look at most books I read as an intellectual mystery: how is this argument constructed? Let me look at the logical links, the evidence. I’m pretty old-fashioned, I’m not interested in the conclusion.

When I was reading, for example, Marx’s Capital’ – I’ve read volume one three times and the other two twice each – I copied out every paragraph and then I commented.

In columns: one paragraph, one comment, one paragraph, one comment. I wanted to know the logic behind the argument.

It’s not the greatest talent in the world. It’s not going to win me nine medals at the Olympics.

But it’s a little talent and I invest in it – recognising that it is both useful and very narrow.

Q. You have been critical of the Palestinian solidarity campaign s Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, of its goals as opposed to its tactics. Could you describe your criticism briefly?

A. As a matter of principle,

of course, people are going to support things like boycotts, divestments and sanctions as a means of trying to put pressure on any country when it is engaging in human rights abuses.

Countries should be held accountable for any human rights abuses, no matter what the magnitude.

But I’ve been reading a lot of Gandhi over the past few years. His collected works are quite extensive; they run to 98 volumes at 500 pages per volume. So, it’s a lot.

I have read 47 of the volumes, or about 25,000 pages. One of the things that was important was his notion of politics. It’s very different to the one I grew up in. I grew up in the MarxistLeninist tradition, where there were a handful of people who knew the truth – the truth was Marxism-Leninism – and everybody out there were ignorant masses. They suffered from things like false consciousness and commodity fetishism. Our job was to bring light to the darkness and enlighten people about the realities of the world.

Or, as Marx put it in “Capital”, if appearances corresponded to reality, we wouldn’t need science.

His point was that what appears to be is very different from what actually is, and it’s the job of politics to show people what the reality is and free them from the illusion of appearances. Gandhi had a very different view of politics.

He believed that everybody knows that there are all sorts of things wrong with the world.

The problem is not people’s ignorance, the problem is getting people to act on what they know. That’s the challenge of politics.

I bet that everyone in this room knows that there is something seriously wrong with how wealth is distributed in our societies. But most people will ventilate about it, will wax indignant about it, but don’t do much about it. So, Gandhi’s strategy was using forms of non-violent resistance to, as he put it, quicken the dead conscience of the public into life. To get people to act. His basic premise, which I more and more think is right, is that unless people are willing to get themselves arrested, get their skulls broken or get killed people won’t act.

So, what does this have to do with BDS? The premise of Gandhi’s argument is that people will act if they agree with your goal. If they don’t, you can have your skull cracked, you can fast until the death and people won’t do anything. So, if I was to ask you, are you pro-choice or pro-life?

[Burtenshaw: I’m pro-choice] Let’s say, behind the camera, there are four people and they’re pro-life. They say that they are going to go on a fast until the death in order to get abortion banned. Would that action of theirs move you? No, of course not. Many people who are pro-choice will say

I hope that they do fast until death!

Non-violence as a tactic can’t work unless the broad public agrees with your goal.

Otherwise you’re wasting your time. BDS were asked: “What is your goal regarding Israel?”

They say we don’t take a position. No broad public is going to support a movement which doesn’t state clearly and unequivocally that Israel is a state that has the same rights as every other state, and we accept this reality.

Q. Do you think Israel s legitimacy as a state is still as deeply embedded in the public mind as it was ten or twenty years ago?

A. Well, it depends what you mean by that. Public opinion has vastly changed on Israel in terms of its decency. But has it changed to the point that there is a broad public ready to support the dissolution of Israel?

No. But the difference between the cult and the public is that when you go to the public it has not one ear but two ears.

So, you go to them and you say: “The occupation is immoral and illegal,” and the public nods their head. It sounds true.

And then they hear the other side. Israel makes sure of this; it has a very impressive public relations machinery. The other side says: “Don’t believe a word those other people tell you.

They don’t really care about the occupation, they want to destroy Israel.” So now the public go back to the Palestinian side and ask is this true. And then the Palestinian activists say: “We take no position on Israel.”

That’s not going to win over the public.

It has nothing to do with the politics of personal preference for me. It’s about how you reach a public. The people in the cult think talking to themselves is the same as talking to a public. But it isn’t.

The public hears all sides; that’s one of the problems some people have with a democratic society.

I speak not from theory, and not from sitting in a library with books, but from thirty years’ real-life experience of the conflict: there is no way you’re going to convince a public of a goal if you say you are agnostic on Israel. It’s never going to happen.

None of this is to mention the most hypocritical aspect of this whole matter. I’ve read the publications of the BDS movement. Every publication says: “We support international law.” There isn’t a publication of theirs which doesn’t say that. Well, international law is clear. The international court of justice [ICJ], in its 2004 advisory opinion on the illegal wall Israel has been building, was unambiguous.

Look at the very last sentence.

It says we look forward to two states in the Middle East, Israel and Palestine. Look at the UN

resolutions every year: it always says the two states.

So how can you both claim to be anchoring your positions in international law and ignore half the law? Either you support the law. or you don’t.

Q. In your work you ve focused a lot on international law and it s something that a lot of proPalestinian activists see as useful to the cause. What real world relevance does international law have when the invasion of Iraq was so obviously flagrant of it, when the mandate in Libya was breached, when the Balkans conflict defied it, when extraordinary rendition continues and Guantanamo and torture continue?

International law seems to be disrespected in conflict situations far too often to be a powerful tool.

A. I agree with everything up to the last thing you said. International law doesn’t get enforced by the powers-that-be unless it serves their interest. But I don’t expect the US to enforce the law unless it preserves or extends their interests. What’s important about international and human rights law is that it has a large amount of authority among the public. It becomes a weapon for mobilising a public.

If a public hears, for instance, that 14 of the 15 judges sitting on the ICJ say that the wall Israel has built in the occupied West Bank is illegal and has to be dismantled, that’s a very powerful weapon.

The Zionists were brilliant at understanding this.

We’re now heading towards the centenary of the Balfour declaration. Bear in mind this declaration was just one sentence by a pretty obscure foreign minister. Why would it be that, 100 years later, people remember the Balfour declaration? Because the Zionist movement made sure you remembered it.

Because, for them, it was their first international certificate of legitimacy. They knew it would carry a huge amount of weight with a broad public.

Everybody knows that the UN remembers hundreds of resolutions each year.

Why is it that everyone remembers the partition resolution, 181, of 1947? Because the Zionist movement made sure you remembered it. Abba Eban, the foreign minister at the time, said: “That’s our birth certificate.” It was a signed birth certificate from the international community. They understood the power of these otherwise impotent resolutions and declarations. It’s the power to reach a public.

(Our interview with Dr. Finkelstein began late because it took him eight hours to reach Ireland from the Netherlands.

After this he insisted we note in this article his commitment to put Ryanair out of business, something he described as “a personal jihad”.)

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

7

InDepth

Martyred to Arthur Saphora Smith takes a look at the invention of Arthur’s Day and its underlying relationship with the Irish nation.

Saphora Smith Deputy InDepth Editor

At 17:59 last Thursday, as many raised their pints of the black stuff into the air and uttered in unison the now famous toast, “To Arthur”, did enough of us stop to think about what exactly we were celebrating? As we recover from only the third Arthur’s Day in history, perhaps it is time to reflect on what lies behind the wrough- iron entrance of St James’s Gate.

It is a clear indication of marketing success when a product seizes its own celebratory day. So successful was the launch of Arthur’s Day that tourists often mistake it for a traditional Irish festivity. One Erasmus student I spoke to said she thought it had always existed, was printed in the calendar of national Irish holidays, and was second only perhaps to Paddy’s Day. In fact, Arthur’s Day seems to have been conceived as a kind of second St Patrick’s Day, held six months (almost to the day) from 17th March.

True, drinks have endeavoured to associate themselves with celebratory days before. In the early 1930s, Coca-Cola made an effort to persuade consumers that Coke wasn’t just a drink for hot summer days. The company initiated an advertising campaign associating the drink with Christmas and Santa Claus. Coke didn’t entirely invent Santa or his red-andwhite suit, but the company helped to solidify and homogenise the cultural figure in his modern form. Thus Arthur’s Day is perhaps unique. Rather than trading on associations with an existing occasion, Guinness have successfully created a day all for their product. It does not attach itself to a previously existing custom, but provides drinkers with an entirely invented ritual: “To Arthur”.

The success of Arthur’s Day rests, perhaps, on Guinness’s unique strategy of getting people into pubs. That is, Guinness announces a list of world famous musicians who will honour Arthur Guinness with their music, potentially in your local pub. Ellie Goulding, Example and Primal Scream, to name a few, played last Thursday, and punters were encouraged to vote online for their local, in the hope of electing a famous act for their pub. This ensures that as many pubs as possible are packed, not just with the older, more dedicated drinkers of stout, but with young people; with students. The catch is that you don’t know who is actually playing where until after the obligatory toast, “To Arthur”, for which courtesy to the man himself demands that you purchase of a pint of the black stuff.

The advertising campaigns of Guinness are undoubtedly impressive. In recent years, Guinness has forged associations with Ireland. The English are famous for their tea, the Italians for their coffee, the Germans for their beer and the

F re n c h for their wine. It is rare, however for a specific branded drink to represent a nation. Budweiser has attempted something similar in the US by associating itself with popular national sports. Their adverts feature men “watching the game, having a Bud”.

The call to action – “grab some Buds” – suggests both grabbing beer and getting together with friends, “buds” being American slang for “buddies”.

Similarly, Guinness plays upon its Irish roots. “Guinness as a brand is all about community. It’s about bringing people together,” said Ralph Ardill, the director of marketing and strategic planning at Imagination Ltd, the London design firm who were integral in the planning of the Guinness Storehouse. Ardill’s comment reads like an echo of Budweiser’s drive to associate their drink with sociability. Many of the advertising campaigns used by Guinness focus on Irish expats and the wider international Irish community remembering home and Ireland through nostalgic images of drinking Guinness with friends.

A famous series of Guinness adverts, finishing with the tagline “Believe”, feature Irishmen pushed to their limits, motivated and inspired only by the memory or image of the perfect pint of Guinness and its homely connotations.

One advert follows the Irish explorer Tom Crean, caught in a blizzard while attempting to find his fellow explorer in the depths of the Antarctic. He comes close to giving up, but is spurred on by the memory of drinking a pint of Guinness with his friends back home in Ireland. The advert ends with the caption: “Tom Crean: Explorer 1901-1920, Publican 1927-1938. Believe.”

Another advert focuses on the thoughts of an Irish hurler immediately before taking a penalty. As he readies himself, the hurler imagines the pint of Guinness which awaits him after victory, culminating in that first glug of the black stuff.

It is no surprise, then, that Oliver Loomes, the Guinness global brand director at Diageo (of which Guinness is a subsidiary) fought hard against the former GAA president Michael Loftus’s call for a blanket ban on alcohol advertising at GAA pitches.

Loomes claimed: “Abuse of alcohol is in no one’s interest. What we want is moderate and responsible consumption of alcohol as part of a normal, balanced social life.”

The ban of alcoholic advertising on Gaelic pitches has not yet extended to other sports. It is perhaps for this reason that Guinness has encouraged strong ties with rugby. It is the official beer of the Irish rugby team, as well as Leinster and Munster.

There is even a Guinness Series, which features international games against the likes of Australia, Fiji and South Africa.

The decision to associate Guinness with rugby was shrewd, as the sport continues to grow in popularity in Ireland. It enables Guinness to associate itself with nationalistic sporting fervour, buying into the jolly, hardy, heavy-drinking reputation that Ireland has worldwide.

It is not only in their television commercials or through sport sponsorships that Guinness emphasizes its Irish roots. The Guinness logo, which incorporates the O’Neill harp, has nationalistic connotations. Throughout Irish history, the harp has been associated with movements fighting for liberation from British rule.

A popular Guinness advert shows dozens of pints of Guinness forming the shape of Ireland, extending both north and south.

For proof that the international community associates Guinness with Ireland, you only need to look at the popularity of the Guinness Storehouse. In its inaugural year, the Storehouse welcomed more visitors than the Book of Kells, a Celtic religious treasure that dates back to circa AD800.

According to Paul Carty, the managing director of the Storehouse, one in every two visitors to

Dub lin has the brewery on their itinerary.

Symbolically, when the US president, Barack Obama, and the Queen came to visit Ireland in May of last year they both posed with Guinness for the cameras, Obama drinking from a pint and the Queen smiling next to one.

This is indicative of the extent to which people consider having a pint of Guinness an Irish experience.

Guinness does not, however, have the most Irish of roots. Journalist Sean Dunne argues that “drinking Guinness does not connect one to Irish culture, because Guinness is not Irish.” Dunne maintains that, if anything, the “beliefs of Guinness ownership have always been anti-Irish”, a far cry from the nationalistic tones of Guinness’s current advertising campaigns.

Dunne’s argument that Guinness is “not Irish” focuses on Arthur Guinness’s unionist and Protestant background. Arthur avidly opposed any movement toward Irish independence, believing that Ireland should remain under British rule.

Dunne goes on to argue that such unionist beliefs became only more apparent in subsequent generations of the Guinness family.

Indeed, it is true that during the Easter Rising in April 1916, the British army managed to defeat the Irish rebels with the crucial help of supplies from the Guinness Storehouse. This included the use of the majority of its boilers to fashion armoured personnel carriers with which the British could take back the capital. Furthermore, members of the Guinness family reportedly spoke out in the House of Commons advocating the execution of the Irish rebels involved in the uprising.

The company has also never officially been Irish. In 1886, Edward Cecil registered Guinness on the London Stock Exchange as an English company. More recently the business merged with the American brewer Grand Metropolitan to become the British drinks giant Diageo.

Dunne highlights the fact that Catholic workers were barred from holding management positions in the brewery and that it was not until the 1960s that a Catholic worker was promoted to management.

However, to argue that Guinness is not Irish simply because Arthur Guinness was neither pro-independence nor Catholic is misguided.

The Guinness family was Irish and first brewed Guinness in Dublin where it continues to be brewed today. It is hard now to separate Guinness from Ireland, and maybe that’s the way it should be.

The story of Guinness is unique to say the least.

The stout is brewed in 50 different countries and sells an estimated 10m glasses per day. It is undoubtedly one of the world’s most famous beers, if not brands.

With a turbulent and impressive history and a story lasting over 250 years, it is a drink that has captured the heart of the nation. The Irish are generally proud of Guinness and Guinness, it seems, is proud of Ireland. Perhaps it deserves a day of celebration after all.

Trinity News

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

8

InDepth

From Dublin to Kolkata James Cotter tells TN about his summer in Kolkata, India.

James Cotter

T

Contributor

his summer I travelled to Kolkata in India as one of 60 volunteers participating in the volunteer programme with Suas Educational Development. Suas have been sending volunteers to work with their partner non-governmental organisations (NGOs) overseas each year since 2002. Over the course of 10 weeks, I taught, sweated and learned in a school located in an industrial estate on the edge of the Kolkata urban sprawl.

I didn’t find the mass slums which I had thought would be dotted around it.

Poverty was not confined to any specific area separate from the day-to-day life of the city. Instead, extreme poverty lived side by side with extreme wealth. The immediate proximity of the two was difficult to comprehend at times, whether it was the image of a pristine Mercedes parked beside someone’s makeshift home; a scrawny, barefoot, middle-aged man hauling a wealthy passenger through the streets on a rickshaw; or the same gaunt face staring in through the window of a westernised coffee shop.

The author Joe Bindloss described a view from the streets of Kolkata as “children playing, men bathing, women washing; lives ebb and flow.

Eating rice, selling bananas, sweeping dust; vivid colours glow. Taxis honking, autos beeping, cycle-wallahs running; harmony and chaos juxtapose.”

The densely populated environment spawns a resourcefulness that is at first difficult to discern; fruit sellers set up stalls on the footpaths, tea stalls line up opposite them and men sit on stools at the corner cutting keys and fixing umbrellas.

The school where I worked was a focal point for the local community. Originally built as a clubhouse, local men meet there to play games, but during the mornings and afternoons it houses a special school

for the education of children from child-labour backgrounds.

Each child receives a daily hot meal and a small monthly subsidy funded by the government to incentivise them to attend school. The centre is staffed and operated by Suas’s partner NGO, the Development Action Society (DAS). A school to over 50 enrolled students and staffed by four dedicated local women, it became a second home to me over the summer.

The children all had challenging backgrounds; many had worked in houses as servants, some as rag pickers and others at tea stalls to help support their families, but they were all unique: shy, outgoing, mischievous or mannerly.

Their adversity made their exuberance and gleeful enthusiasm all the more astounding.

The school has had volunteers from Suas for the past number of years, and the children , filled with curiosity and wonder, asked us all about ourselves, our families and Ireland. Every day they demonstrated their deeply affectionate and caring nature up until that point when one would smack another for hogging a particular crayon. They were never slow to remind you that they were children of 9, 10 or 11 years of age.

There were plenty of challenges along the way, not to mention the oppressive heat and the beep-if-you’re-breathing attitude to driving. The first challenge with which I was confronted was teaching, particularly trying to keep a single class occupied for two hours while teaching them English.

As a third-level student not studying primary-school teaching, this could be tricky.

Armed with very little English, abundant energy and a hit-and-miss attitude to rules, it was not rare to find one of the students had disappeared, only to reappear later smiling cheekily in the window, delighted with his impromptu

James Cotter pictured in the school where he worked in Kolkata this summer. Photo: Courtesy of James Cotter break. One obvious challenge of the programme was coming face-to-face with the welldocumented injustices of our global systems and having to bear the guilt as you glimpsed a man staring at you as you ate a sandwich. Only every now and then was I jolted back into the

reality that I was the wealthy visitor.

For every challenge, there was more than one success. This ranged from seeing the joy the NGO brought to the kids as they performed at specially organised events, to being invited into the commu-

nity to have dinner with your teacher.

This year the Indian government passed the Right to Education Act. It entitles and requires all Indian children to attend school until they are 14 years old, and was considered an important step in the right

direction by many in the nonprofit sector in India. 1400 non-profits, including those partnered with Suas, joined together to lobby for this piece of legislation. We must wait to see how the act will be enforced.

The Indian NGOs had been hoping for a greater commit-

ment from the government, but know that this is a significant development. They must continue to deal with problems of deeply-entrenched inequality and government corruption.

The time I spent in India will forever remain a favourite memory of mine. Observing the passion and hard work of my fellow volunteers, the staff of Suas and the teachers working for Indian NGOs renewed my personal sense of hope and faith in others. The children taught me a lot about the nature of people. They were of diverse talent and abilities, but all shared a vibrancy and eagerness to be together and enjoy themselves. When I arrived home on 9th September, not much had changed; the music on the radio and the headlines on the news remained constant. That prompted a discovery of its own: it’s easier to notice how much you’ve grown when everything else around you remains the same.

Applications for anyone interested in the programme open on 8th October on the Suas Educational Development website. There will also be a talk held for Trinity students concerning the programme at 7pm on 8th October, in the Hist conversation room of the Graduates’ Memorial Building.

Jan Truszczyński talks to students at the Irish Times Higher Options fair in RDS

Students encouraged on EU merry-go-round at Higher Options Fair Ruairí Casey and John Porter report on the initiative to get European youth on the move

T Ruairí Casey Deputy News Editor

he Irish Times Higher Options fair, the largest event of its kind in Ireland, was held at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) Simmonscourt complex from 19th-21st September. Now in its third decade, the careers fair, which featured over 130 exhibitor stands, offered secondary students from transition year and above a chance to engage with representatives from a great range of educational institutions and organisations, both Irish and European.

It was expected that by its close on Friday afternoon, the RDS would have seen about 25,000 second-level students from 300 Irish schools.

Most students were from the Leinster area but schools from counties further afield, such as Galway, Tipperary and Cork, also sent students. Though there are similar careers exhibitions throughout the country, the Higher Options fair is by far Ireland’s largest and best attended.

Its importance, in the

words of Claire Looby, a marketing organiser with the Irish Times, is that the event offers secondary students an opportunity to “take away the fear and apprehension” from choosing a future career. She said it “could be the only chance [these students] have to talk to people who work in universities.”

Represented for the first time, and dominating the main hall with a large, central stand, was the EU educational initiative Youth on the Move. It aims “to promote the mobility of students and trainees and to improve the employment situation of young people.” Since its launch in late 2012, Youth on the Move has travelled to over 20 EU member states.

From 10am until closing time the stand provided students with information about various programmes, including Erasmus, the European Voluntary Service and the Leonardo da Vinci programme, which funds practical projects in the field of vocational educa-

tion and training.

Present for the opening of the stand was Jan Truszczyski, director-general of the European Commission’s directorate-general for education and culture. In his speech, he encouraged prospective third-level students to make use of guidance counsellors to find something that fits right for the individual. He stressed that students must do what they like, saying that an Erasmus placement is “not a lottery [and] must be a wise choice.”

Talking to Trinity News, he spoke about the benefits of Erasmus to students and to Europe: “Exposure to study abroad helps in enriching and broadening your skill sets, the level of your knowledge and your ability to use it practically.”

He acknowledged that not all students made the most of their time, but that there is more than just the academic side to the programme: “Even if you benefit little from

the courses given by the university professors ... you nonetheless have daily interaction with the local scene, and that helps culturally.”

He also talked about the improved career prospects of Erasmus students: “A period of study abroad brings you farther in terms of landing a good permanent job soon after graduation and you tend to earn more money within the same period of time – three or five years after graduation – than your colleagues who have not gone to study abroad. That seems to be a sufficient motivation to study abroad.”

Truszczyski noted that the public perception of Erasmus is quite positive: “Usually, people do not make many positive associations when asked about European integration ... Chances are that the first positive association people in the street will make will be the first thing that comes to mind is the Erasmus programme.”

When asked whether

the education sector should be shielded from budgetary cutbacks, he replied in the affirmative, calling education “… a growth generating factor, something that contributed to future growth better than many other areas of investment,” though one which is often unappreciated by economists who don’t recognise the benefits of investing in education.

Also representing Youth on the Move were a number of ambassadors. Jessica Gough, an Erasmus ambassador, spoke about her experience of studying abroad. As an applied languages student at the University of Limerick, Gough spent a year abroad in the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and, as a current student for a master’s in conference interpreting at the National University of Ireland, Galway, her Erasmus experience has been a huge influence on her chosen career path.

“For my future career, I definitely think it helped. It

helped me learn what I’m really capable of … I have learnt a lot abroad that will help with this future career that I wouldn’t have learnt in Ireland.”

By studying abroad, her language proficiency has improved to the level she needs for a career in conference interpreting. When asked whether she now felt more of a European citizen, she replied: “Your own Irish identity becomes stronger, but you also become part of this European family,” adding that her time abroad allowed her to see the differences, but also the similarities between different European cultures.

Anthony Morrissey, a 21-year-old student of arts at University College Dublin and another Erasmus ambassador, also spent a year abroad in Barcelona.

The highlights of his experience were “being in a different culture and with different people, and learning the language.” Since his return in

August, he has been helping with incoming Erasmus students in UCD.

About his future, he said: “I want to move back to Spain or somewhere that’s Spanish speaking … I love the whole idea of going abroad again.” Overall, he had “nothing bad to say about Erasmus” and recommended it to all prospective third-level students.

The Youth on the Move stand proved quite popular with attendees, contributing to the wide variety of career information on offer. There seemed to be a genuine air of interest during the event, and students were overwhelmingly positive about the day.

Whether they used it to help find a future career to suit them or to find more information about a course they had already set their mind on, they were happy with what they found at this year’s Higher Options fair.

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

9

But mediocre as the Late Late is, don’t people all over Ireland deserve to be able to avail of their national broadcasts?

The end of analogue

InDepth

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p. 10

Live encounters at the Dublin theatre festival Neasa O’Callaghan talks to the director of this year’s Dublin theatre festival, Willie White, and gives an overview of the festival

Promotional photo from Dubliners ,which in this year’s theatre festival

“I Neasa O’Callaghan Contributor

must have been precocious. I was selected and sent up to the convent to rehearse with the girls in Abbeyleix for the local community drama variety troupe,” Willie White tells me.

Such was his introduction to the world of theatre in his primary school. That drama group went on to win the county final and later represented County Laois at the Community Games in Mosney, where he admits they were “totally outclassed”.

White isn’t quite sure which year he was at Mosney, but one thing is certain: 2012 is his first year as artistic director of the Dublin theatre festival, Europe’s oldest, which opened on 27th September and runs until 14th October at various venues around the city.

White read for a BA at UCD and was actively involved in the university’s drama society, Dramsoc, of which he became auditor. After winning praise and a coveted Irish Student Drama Association award for directing in university, he went on to co-found Loose Canon Theatre Company in 1996. He then co-founded Irish Theatre Magazine with Karen Fricken and Maura O’Keeffe in 1998, before starting with the Project Arts Centre in 2002 as its director. He remained in that position until last year, when he was appointed director of the Dublin theatre festival.

As director, White is responsible for the overall programming of the festival. Selection for the festival is highly competitive and, if featured in the programme, companies gain heightened exposure with Dublin audiences and also with international producers who often attend the festival. For Irish work, White explains that the process of choosing productions is a discursive one. He

admits: “People come to you as they know the festival is a great platform, and so you begin a dialogue with artists. You’ve a responsibility as that platform; we’ve a lot of Irish work this year. There’s a responsibility to exercise judgement so you can pick the right kind of work, so artists do well out of it and the festival programme is enhanced.”

Coming from the Project Arts Centre, a multidisciplinary venue in Dublin’s Temple Bar, White has worked with many younger and emerging theatre-makers throughout his career. “With Theatreclub and the Company,” two companies participating in the festival, he says, “they were artists I had known from Project, and they were in the Fringe [festival] as well.” But it is not just his involvement in the Project Arts Centre which has aided White when considering Irish work.

Indeed, his experience as a theatregoer has informed his view that theatre in Dublin is not exclusively for more established artists, as one might expect.

“Dublin is an ecosystem. Artists like Amy Conroy have been in the Fringe, the Project, the Abbey and this Festival … It’s not like us’ and them’. There is a series of opportunities all the time, which have different facets to them.”

White’s view of the connection between artists in Dublin is incorporated in the tagline for this year’s festival: “Your Cities, Your Stories.” As a Dublin-based festival, the programme is centred on the experiences of the people in the city.

“The important thing for me,” says White, “is not that it’s happening in Dublin, but that it’s happening for Dublin. We want to make a contribution to the cultural life of the city and the social opportunities for its citi-

zens. Theatre is not just about the art on stage. It’s about how you or I, or you and a friend, or you and a family member, will go out and have an experience with lots of other people.

Together you are having this theatrical moment that you can then take away with you and discuss. I think the fact that it’s social, especially when so much of the media is consumed via our screens, whether in our hands or at home, that having to deal with the unpredictability of a live encounter is very exciting.”

White’s programme includes both recognisable and new faces on the theatre scene. DruidMurphy, directed

by Garry Hynes, will run at the Gaiety theatre for its only Dublin run. The work celebrates one of Ireland’s most acclaimed living dramatists, Tom Murphy, with three productions: Conversations on a Homecoming, Whistle in the Dark, and Famine. If you are feeling particularly voracious, you can see all three of the cycle in one day, but be warned: it takes nine hours. Otherwise, you can see the shows separately over the course of the festival.

Project Arts Centre will play host to The Talk of the Town

by Emma Donoghue (author of Room), a play inspired by the life and work of the writer Maeve Brennan who moved from 1950s Dublin to Manhattan, and is often seen as the inspiration for Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly. The Last Summer from the novelist and playwright Declan Hughes, a comedy about love, loss and (something we can all respond to) life after the Leaving Cert will premiere at the Gate theatre. Also making their festival debut will be The Company with Politik.

Audiences can also

catch a number of successful Irish productions which they may have missed in the last twelve months. Winner of best production at the Dublin Fringe festival in 2011, Bird with Boy returns and is performed by three dancers, two musicians and six boys from Company B, Ireland’s only contemporary dance group for younger boys. On the heels of I [Heart] Alice [Heart] I, HotForTheatre brings you Eternal Rising of The Sun, an inspiring story of one woman’s transformation, while Calipo Theatre Company and the Drogheda arts festival present Pineapple from writer Phillip McMahon (Alice in Funderland, Danny & Chantelle).

For international work, White’s task includes scouting and travelling abroad.

This year, the festival will see cutting-edge American theatremakers The Wooster Group performing in the Ireland for the very first time. Acclaimed by the New York Times as “American theatre’s most inspired company”, they are internationally renowned for reimagining classic texts. Festivalgoers can experience their HAMLET, which recreates and reworks the film version of Richard Burton’s legendary 1964 Broadway adaptation of the Shakespeare play. Audiences will also be able to attend screenings of some of their previous performances.

“It’s a really big deal,” comments White. “People read about them in university courses, but rarely have seen the work live. So it was very important to me, not to present them as a trophy and say, Yes, we got them,’ but to provide a context for that material that people probably haven’t seen. The Wooster Group are very sophisticated about their

archive, [so it’s] a great opportunity to say, Here’s one show and here’s the context for it.’”

The screenings will take place in the Irish Film Institute and were recently shown in New York last February; this is the first opportunity for Irish audiences to view them. “Rather than just putting on the shows … I’d like to have a substantive and discursive contextualizing programme,” says White, “so, when work is not familiar, you are given many different opportunities to access it.”

White feels that the festival has a “responsibility to increase the knowledge and understanding of a production”, and to do this he has commissioned a number of texts for the programmes which he hopes “will add value to the experience”. In the future, he is eager to continue producing textual materials to accompany productions and he hopes eventually to see published anthologies for the festival.

As a force for developing new theatre and encouraging artists, the popular In Development section will also feature in the programme, with readings of new plays, panel discussions and previews of the progress of three new productions, including a new opera by Julie Feeney, titled Bird, which follows the story of Wilde’s The Happy Prince.

New for this year’s festival is Play On, a playwright development programme which will take place in the Project Arts Centre. The festival aims to be a platform for new voices, new stories and experiences coming from the city. For White, one way of being relevant as a playwright is to engage with what is going on now, something which Play On is trying to encourage and ignite.

“

Ours is a contemporary theatre festival.

That doesn’t mean it has to be set now, but it has to engage with what’s happening now.

“I’m a little impatient with Write what you know’, because I think people aren’t curious enough,” says White.

“Ours is a contemporary theatre festival. That doesn’t mean it has to be set now, but it has to engage with what’s happening now. There was no orthodoxy for Play On, just an invitation to playwrights, with What can you contribute to this?”

Following an open call, playwrights were selected and offered individual meetings and writers’ groups, in return for a response to that question. Six out of the 29 entries were chosen for readings at the festival, but, for White, “It’s not like a prize, it’s about an interesting programme that represents the work that’s being done.”

The festival draws some inspiration from Batman with its own skyline light installation, so keep an eye out for the giant neon smiley in the sky, called Public Face III. The face will change from a smile to a frown and to an indifferent grimace as sophisticated software reacts to the expressions of passers-by. If the festival is about Dublin and its stories, maybe the neon smiley is a prism for reflecting our responses to our own stories, or the representation of them on stage. Or maybe it’s just a giant smiley face. Either way, it’s like the festival: something new and different which is inviting our response and is here for a limited time only, so be sure to give it a look.

Tickets start at €15, with a discount of 10% for students available from the festival box office. You can also avail of Final Call, a standby scheme where a limited number of €10 tickets will be available for certain shows on the day of the performance. For further details, see dublintheatrefestival.com .

Trinity News

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

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InDepth

Trinity internet blues With the cat in the cable – but no timetables soon – Max Sullivan lists Trinity stumbles online

F

ollowing the launch of my.tcd.ie, Max Sullivan gives a rundown of Trinity’s recent history of digital hiccups.

The first iteration of the Apple iPhone was released in 2007. While it is more of an oversight than a blunder, IS Services have failed to provide network connection support for users of iOS (the operating system for iPhones and iPads) as well as other mobile devices, despite their ballooning popularity. A recent letter to the editor of the University Times claimed that wireless internet access from mobiles and tablets is being given to members of staff. Granted, it’s hardly the greatest injustice of our times that Trinity students have to go to KC Peaches or Starbucks to avail of free Wi-Fi, but it’s annoying all the same. IS Services have promised that they will provide support for connecting iPhones and iPads to the network in 2012 or 2013.

In April of last year, the entire undergraduate and postgraduate population of College received an email from “trinity.cat@tcd.ie”, which made light of College’s late revisions to the exam timetable in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Trinity. “CAN WE HAS OLDD TIMETABLE BK PLZKTNX”, the message read. College-wide mailing lists can, in theory, only be accessed by a limited number of College officials, so when the person responsible donned the persona of Trinny (a black-andwhite cat residing in the area behind the Museum Building) to contact most of the College population, it constituted a considerable breach of network security.

In September last year, the School of English’s

Infographic: Éna Brennan

The end of analogue Ireland’s analogue television airwaves will be switched off at the end of October. Do you know an older person who mightn’t be aware of the switch to digital?

Help them out before they start to miss Ryan Tubridy.

“W Max Sullivan InDepth Editor

e all know someone who loves a bit of telly. But on October 24th, the telly lover you know may well be sitting in front of a blank screen.” This worrying piece of news is gleefully delivered by a collection of contemptible RTÉ presenters, with what sounds like the music from the Teletubbies playing in the background.

The video is part of Saorview’s “Let’s Get Connected” campaign, which aims to forewarn us all about the imminent obsolescence of our grandparents’ television sets.

At the end of October, Ireland’s analogue television signal will be switched off; no longer will you be able to pull an old TV out of a cupboard or attic and fiddle with the bunny ears until fuzzy white noise turns into the Midweek Movie.

Analogue television first came to Ireland from England. The erection of a highpower BBC transmitter near Birmingham and another in Wales provided some patchy signal along Ireland’s east coast.

BBC Northern Ireland began broadcasting in 1953, with UTV following in 1959. We were a little slower on the uptake of “modern” media, the pronounciation of that word indicating the national confusion with, and mild distain of, all things modren.

A Dáil Éireann debate transcript from January 1952 shows growing concern about spillover analogue signals into the young republic and the need for native Irish broadcasting in order to combat this cultural invasion: “Mr Everett asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs [Erskine Childers] whether he is aware that in districts along the east coast television broadcasts are being received from another country and whether, in view of the cumulative damaging effect which these broadcasts may have on our national culture, he will take the necessary steps to introduce television broadcasting in the Republic of Ireland with a minimum of delay.” Of course, a minimum of delay became some 10 years.

In 1950 Leon Ó Broin, secretary to the Department of

Posts and Telegraphs, began the decade-long long struggle with the Department of Finance to establish television broadcasting in the republic.

They rejected his request to purchase a television set, and infamously labelled TV a “luxury service” which would only be available to the rich. Years later, however, under Seán Lemass, plans for terrestrial analogue television gained momentum.

Telefís Éireann first aired on New Year’s Eve in 1961, and began with an address by President Eamon de Valera.

“Sometimes, when I think of television and radio and their immense power, I feel somewhat afraid,” worried the president. “I have great hopes in this new service. I am confident that those who are in charge will do everything in their power to make it useful for the nation, that they will bear in mind that we are an old nation and that we have our own distinctive characteristics, and that it is desirable that these be preserved.”

Has TV preserved whatever de Valera was on about? Television didn’t exactly cement the “ideal Ireland” that he famously laid out in his St Patrick’s Day radio broadcast of 1943: “… a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age.” The TV room, a forum for wisdom indeed.

The Late Late Show, first airing as something in the way of filler in 1962, is now, although astoundingly parochial, the world’s longest running chat show. Gay Byrne presented the flagship Friday-night show for 37 years, during which time he and his guests repeatedly attracted the censure of members of the Catholic clergy. In 1966 Gaybo asked a Mrs Fox from Terenure, Dublin, if she could recall what colour nightdress she wore on her wedding night. “Transparent,” she responded, “I didn’t wear

any.” The audience erupted with laughter, and the next day Byrne was branded a peddler of “filth” by the bishop of Galway. Fortunately for Gaybo, the people of Ireland usually sided with their favourite presenter; unfortunately for Ireland, the Late Late’s subsequent presenters, Pat Kenny and Ryan Tubridy, haven’t exactly done the nation proud.

Caitlin Moran, a columnist with the Times and the author of the international bestselling book How to Be a Woman, appeared on the show two weeks ago. Afterwards, she tweeted: “3am. Just returned from doing the Late Late Show in Ireland. if you’ve never seen it, there are no words to describe it.” Moran shared the stage with the former Miss World winner Rosanna Davison, who was recently featured topless on the German edition of Playboy, and Louis Walsh, the reality TV personality and Ireland’s most embarrassing export. If you think that wasn’t exactly a recipe for stimulating or intelligent conversion, remember that Ryan Tubridy was moderating, with the highest degree of smugness and ignorance, always ready to derail the conversation if Moran ever made an intelligent and funny remark.

But mediocre as the Late Late is, don’t people all over Ireland deserve to be able to avail of their national broadcasts? The obsolescence of analogue which comes into effect at the end of this month will undoubtedly leave many unsuspecting viewers staring into a fuzzy abyss. Most of us already have digital TV, or can cope easily with the transition.

But for some – the aerial and rabbit-ears users – it doesn’t really matter how many times RTÉ and Saorview tell us we need to buy a new-fangled digital box or an analogue-to-digital converter.

After all, no Irish person in their right mind would believe that one autumn day the Late Late and fuzzy analogue TV, arguably the only stable features of Irish life since the 60s, would just stop being there.

Illustration: Sadhbh Byrne

website shot to fame when it boasted a new member of staff: Dr Conan T Barbarian, BA (Cimmeria) PhD (UCD) FTCD, Long Room Hub associate professor in Hyborian studies and tyrant slaying. Barbarian’s credentials were undoubtedly impressive, and the accompanying staff portrait, of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the title character of the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian, was dashing.

None of that stopped College from removing all mention of Dr Barbarian from its website.

The Students’ Union president for 2010-2011, Nikolai Trigoub-Rotnem, fought long and hard to improve printing services for students. At last, in March 2011, Nikolai could announce that double-sided printing had now reduced in price from 10c to 9c, among other improvements. “While it has taken a long time, the negotiations with Ricoh have finished and you can see from the changes below printing in Trinity will be cheaper, better and more reliable in future.” It is the future, and both Ricoh and Kopikat have been scrapped as printing and photocopying service providers. What does this mean for you? There is one less photocopying unit in the Arts Building concourse, your Kopicat cards will soon be defunct, and there is a shiny new system to struggle with as you desperately attempt to get your essay in on time.

Most recently, students at Trinity, especially junior freshmen, suffered with the implementation of a new student registration and information system, my.tcd.ie. While College used the new website to process payments and debit money from students with astounding efficiency, the publication of students’ timetables has been delayed indefinitely.

Trinity News

Tuesday 2nd of October 2012

11

InDepth

Débutantes

Freshers Competition Beginning university, all over again

W Nathaniel Zavin Contributor

hat is it like to enter university for the first time? I’m not well qualified to answer that question. What is it like to be a freshman? I’m not sure if I can tell you that, either. But I’d love to speculate. You see, I’ve been here before, and I’m here again now because of two things: dodgy health and true grit. I don’t mean the film.

And of course, there’s the third thing, my pure love of philosophy; what most refer to as idle chatter.

Oh, and lest I forget, the craic. Let’s talk about the nature of feelings, shall we?

Deconstruct and find the essential quality of what it is to be a freshman? My bet’s on fear. Yep, you heard me, fear.

Am I good enough? Will they like me? What if I don’t make friends? Why aren’t I getting laid? (Men and women may worry in equal parts.) Why are they staring at me? Maybe I should talk to them? Oh my god, I’ve just realized they’ve been engaging me in a conversation for the past five minutes and I’ve been caught up in this long and somewhat ambiguous inner monologue … and so on, and so forth. Of course, there are always the hopes and the expectations. I’ll spare you the rant. I first came to Trinity in 2009 as a fresh-faced fresher. If I remember correctly, that was a while ago.

A lot of thoughts were flitting through my mind, as through an open window that one has trouble shutting in Halls, where I lived. I met a lot of cool people, some of whom

became great friends. The courses were great, the parties were wild, and the societies knew how to make people social. Now, although I’m the first to tell you every cloud has a silver lining – a cloud? Where?

– some things just don’t work out when they’re going as good as they were. To put it simply, I crashed and burned, in complete and utter failure. The courses started feeling more difficult, I was having a harder time concentrating, I became less willing to socialize, and even the trek to get a meal felt like a marathon. This, however, was not a result of the freshman blues. In fact, the complete and utter failure I mention had everything to do with my kidney. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Or did you? You did?

Congratulations, you’re a very impressive person.

My medical history is such: born with one kidney which didn’t work too well, I received a transplant when I was five years old from my mum, and then one 12 years later from my aunt. Apparently, transplanted organs just don’t last. The year after the second transplant – you guessed it, you very impressive freshman you – cancer. So, you see, for me coming back to Trinity meant a lot; mostly a distancing from the past with a clean bill of health in hand.

The truth is, it wasn’t a smart decision by any means.

With that type of medical history, and with the rigour I would need to go through with clinic visitations, keeping on

top of my blood levels and my medications, living for four years in a country where you’re uninsured is the last thing you want to do to yourself. No matter how many times people told me this, I remained ever optimistic ever determined that Trinity was where I wanted to be and where I needed to be, and that everything would work out fine. Although “everything working out fine” is a tough sell in my case, I remain convinced to this day that Trinity was and is exactly where I need to be.

I think that’s partly what it means to be a freshman, or a student in general.

You know, or at least you think you know, what you want. In my opinion, this amounts to the same thing. There are days where you really don’t have any idea what you want, and being a student means that you can make those days few and far between. Often, people casually toss around the vague idea that university is the time in which to “find yourself”. I can see their point, yet I think the concept needs to be dissected a bit.

It’s possible that we can spend all our time here at university as though we were just wandering through a series of nameless buildings in whose lecture halls and corridors we learned a few new tricks along the way.

This is how I would rephrase that worn out aphorism:

University is a setting under which, because of the diversity of its population and the experiences that are fostered through it, people be-

come highly aware of the permeability and fluidity of life, as well as their own innate ability to change themselves to direct the course of their life.

When I started out three years ago, I really had a ball. Although I never ended up attending an actual ball, I enjoyed myself thoroughly with the time I had. No grudges, no regrets. As a freshman, you throw yourself into the game and don’t look back. In the winter of 2009 I went into kidney failure for the third time in my life, and I was only diagnosed after I had returned to the US, after I had told all my comrades in arms that I should be back in a short while after getting everything “sorted”.

Whoops. It became only about looking back, or having regrets later on, being away from Trinity. When you’re in the game, you’re in the game.

It’s truly tautological. Or tautologically truthful? Whichever works best. The friends I made, and the societies I joined, were the bee’s knees, the best of the best. I know that because they’re still around today. My friends, that is, not the societies. Well, yes, the societies, but of course the societies. The Phil and the Hist weren’t likely to disappear overnight, were they? All part of being a freshman, I suppose.

Then, of course, there are the hitches that come with the territory, which in my case happened to be not being a freshman for a rather long time.

Shortly after I was diagnosed, I was put on dialysis and put on

the waiting list for a kidney, seeing as none of my family members or friends who volunteered to donate on my behalf were compatible. Previously, I had been fortunate enough to avoid this outcome. There is nothing so unpleasant, at least not that I’ve experienced, as waiting for an organ for two years. It took me a while before I picked myself up again and stopped waiting for the day to come when I could return to Ireland and life would be again what it was, or what I thought it should have been. Eventually, I had the good sense to try my hand at acting again, my love before philosophy. I enrolled in the Strasberg Institute for Theatre and Film, where I made many of my closest friends over the last two years. Without that experience, I wouldn’t have thought it a necessity to audition for the DU Players, in spite of the fact that doing so constantly burned in the back of my mind in 2009. After all, less than 1% of 1% of university is about where you end up, really. It’s about where you are.

That’s what’s great about it, and that’s everything we as freshmen have to anticipate: years of being in the moment.

Freshman fanaticism is how I like to think of it. It’s the only type of fanaticism I like, devotion to getting things done. It ran rampant then and it still does today, and probably won’t go away anytime soon.

What did I learn from my experiences being confined to my home in the US? That independence is a valuable tool that

should be used well when you have it. What did I learn from being in kidney failure? To avoid being in kidney failure.

And at Strasberg? At Strasberg I learned a little bit about acting, a little about those qualities I admire within teachers, and those qualities which I aspire to have as a student and as a human being. See Aristotle on virtue. On top of which, I knew there was something wrong when 80% of the student body at Strasberg was international, but in spite of that I only managed to meet three Irish people over the two years I was there.

There just wasn’t the same level of craic. Crack, on the other hand, there was in abundance.

You only realize what partying means when you hang out exclusively with actors. And trust me, it means something terrifying, and rather unpleasant.

Throughout the course of the time I spent back home in the US, I managed to see three friends I met at Trinity with some frequency. We’re close, and those bonds will last, and I’m not worried. For as much as things do inevitably change, some things last.

You can be as nihilistic as you want about this, and conjecture endlessly about the inevitability of death, and deduce from that the futility of things, and fold up your arms and exclaim, “Why bother?” Here’s my counter conjecture: those things that are important, those things which I refer to as lasting, last insofar as they continue to give your life meaning even after they themselves have fallen

away. That can last quite some time.

Lots of things have changed in the past four years.

Ireland’s come out of a recession; President Obama is up for re-election against a dunderhead named Mitt, who I hear isn’t very popular overseas.

Also, the course I was actually studying, philosophy and political science, no longer exists, so I’ve been moved into philosophy, political science, economics, and sociology. I have to study math? What’s up with that? God knows what the next four years will look like. I’m sure you all will learn something yourselves by then, my fellow freshmen.

The Metafizz, née Metaphysical Society, seems to be at the top of its form, with brilliant guest speakers lined up from across the face of academia, and more free wine than ever. I’m particularly pleased about this turn of events as it remains the society with which I most strongly identify: a point for the Metafizz is a point for philosophy. And of course, there’s the old routine of Freshers’ Week. Slightly different this time round, as it always is, but mostly the same. Again, I’ve joined a plethora of societies, for all of which I have only the most sincere intentions of participating, and all of which I’d recommend, from the Hist to the Phil, from the Politics Society to the Athletics Club, from Yoga to Fencing, from Aikido to Capoeira. And the Metafizz.

Conclusion? It’s nice to begin, and it’s good to be back.

Photo: George Voronov

In the beginning there was the Illiad

A Aoibheann Schwartz Contributor

lexander the Great always kept with him a copy of Homer’s Iliad, as a guide during his own epic conquests. Tucked under his pillow as a never ebbing ember of fuel to the insatiable and revelling dreams of the terrific mind which lay upon it, Alexander and his Iliad achieved world domination, a prelude to an epic of his own. Now, in a 21st century race of all such imaginations which ever ran away with themselves, that of a student beginning university would surely run Alexander close.

We begin the voyage which must be made, soliciting farewells of silent tragedy.

Of course, an end must come before a beginning, an ending which is met by all, yet greeted respectively. The safe monotony of secondary school which must be mentioned in our departure to university, so despised yet somehow beguiling still, is now no longer an option.

While some may continue to inhabit the same cave of a bedroom for at least another year – thanks to the occasional geographical proximity of home to the uncharted area of university campus – our oversized duvets will no longer follow us

any further than the front door.

Forced to face this absence, we suddenly discover a nostalgic, awe-gaping fondness for our secondary school years: for the maths teacher who tried to convince us that the quadratic formula would help us in life, and for the English teacher who put more thought into the poems than the actual poets did. In the limbo which we currently find ourselves, we can’t help dwelling on the end behind us, before facing the beginning ahead.

Thousands are breaking that chord of nostalgia, grasping the chance to flee the oppressions of family home life, leaving its comforts and conveniences for the adrenaline rush of student accommodation (and the plush finery it promises). Facebook stalking owes 90% of its existence to this phase of university beginnings.

Thanks to modern technology and its evolving network universe, we can socialise with each and every one of our flatmates in advance of ever even meeting them in person, and gather online flocks of pals originating from homogenous subject groups,

like species of plants. “Anyone out there doing [post subject course here]?” (So I can just have a good scan through your Facebook page and decide beforehand whether I am going to like you or not).

I, for one, have never seen my Facebook inbox so popular, not to mention the extendable grief this has caused my parents when signing onto the email to be greeted by hundreds of worried posts about online registration confusion and enlightening us to the existence of a course in Human Disease (note to newly independent college self: set up own email account). Judging from the monumental heap of brochures, advertisements and magazines from some of Trinity’s 2759 clubs and societies, we feel as if this beginning university bravado is really just the precursor to one massive Oxegen line-up announcement.

Of course, beginning university and beginning university at Trinity College Dublin are two totally different things. On a subjective note, the cosmopolitan lifestyle awaits those “Trinners for Winners”, a life full of Starbucks coffee cartons, nonchalant

strides, philosophical gazing, perfecting our individual mainstream behaviour in an attempt to distinguish ourselves from the inferior tourists daring to grace our concrete carpets of knowledge. Freshers’ Week is now something of the past; only Freshers’ Fortnight will suffice in the ever expanding university hipster epidemic, of which we have already imagined ourselves as the main catalysts: the protagonists of nightclub hysteria and unintelligible college comedy hysterics, the centrepiece of memories not to be remembered and the companions of something “Fresh”. Alexander the Great himself experienced all sorts of personality complexes, peer pressures and self-confidence issues when thrown into the Persian status quo; even he felt the need to dress and act just like them to fit in. So it looks as if the times haven’t changed a whole lot since 330BC after all.

Moving on to a more objective note; whether it be UCD or NUIG, Trinity or Queen’s, choosing a university in the first place can feel like a bit of a “Sophie’s Choice”. Beginning university, we all hope that the life we have dealt our-

selves is the saved one. That, at least, is one surprise which internet research and prospectus scouring cannot exhaust. Who knows? It may teach us a little certain something about ourselves which we did not know was there before. However, although I’ve heard university brings out every kind of ability, unfortunately that seems to include incapability.

The desk at home is now bare. Everything has made the monumental leap over to the other side of my room, where it waits for the fourth and final stage of university packing (the primary stages including that stimulating prompt to begin shifting one’s belongings from their original boding, and the reflective assessment of each object’s worth and necessity of transportation: do I really need this Newton’s cradle? Yes, I am sure it will be vital to my Classics degree). The suitcases are finally full. Still searching for the Iliad.

Both the paperback version, and the guardian angel form, which I can use as my metaphorical image of inspiration for future college survival. I’m pretty sure Alexander the Great never even heard of College.

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a life full of... perfecting our individual mainstream behaviour in an attempt to distinguish ourselves from the inferior tourists daring to grace our concrete carpets of knowledge.

Abbott Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard University from 1909-1933, once said: “Of course there’s a lot of knowledge in university; the freshmen bring in a little; the seniors don’t take much away; so knowledge sort of accumulates.” The one rare opportunity that will ever be handed to you in life is a beginning. Beginning university is only the prologue; but if it is written well, it may just prove to be the foundation of many terrific Iliads to come; which we can keep, as did Alexander, as our own expression and promise of ambition, belief, surprise, friendship and adventure. It is a far, far better thing that I study, than I have never studied; it is a far, far better university that I go to, than I have never gone. So let’s make its beginning our Iliad, our first triumph, our enduring guidance for the acquisitions which lie ahead. For the Odyssey which already beckons.

Trinity News

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

California dreaming – Eoghan Hughes assesses the student experience on America’s west coast

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Rory McIlroy at Belfast City Airport with the US Open Trophy Photo: Lighthouse Communications

Oh McIlroy, the snipes, the snipes are coming Callum Jenkins explores Northern Irish identity post the Good Friday agreement

Callum Jenkins

I

Contributor

t was once remarked: “The middle classes went to the golf course in 1969 and still haven’t returned.” This was Tim Collins referring to the political disengagement of middle-class moderates in Northern Ireland.

However, the golf course is no longer a safe haven when it comes to the issue of nationality. The world number one, Rory McIlroy, is a British citizen but due to the all-Ireland nature of golf he has proudly represented Ireland from a young age.

Now that golf is to enter the Olympics in 2016, McIlroy is faced with the choice of representing Ireland or Great Britain. The issue has already raised some controversy, with McIlroy’s recent success coinciding with the London Games.

No matter which team he represents – and, hopefully, wins gold for in Rio – he risks alienating a part of the community of his native land.

Although I am, unfortunately, not faced with the decision over who to represent at the Olympic Games, the is-

sue has made me think where I fit in. Am I Irish, British, or both? As with McIlroy, I am a (slightly worse) golfer from a quiet town on the north Down coast, and as with many others in Northern Ireland – and, probably, McIlroy himself – I have been taught from an early age to avoid the subject of nationality in order to escape confrontation.

Before I go any further, I will make it clear that this is not an article on whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK or otherwise. As a British citizen, I support the union, at least until the majority of the people of Northern Ireland wish for a change.

For some, that would be the end of the matter: “I am British,” end of story. Why, then, is it my long-held dream (which, admittedly, will more than likely remain unfulfilled) to play golf for Ireland?

I believe that there are many like me in the North who do not fit in with the sectarian stereotypes created

during the short but troubled history of our country. For example, many would think that being a regular attendee at Northern Ireland football matches and hoping that the Republic’s team also does well are mutually exclusive practices. There is, without a doubt, a significant group of people who do not feel comfortable waving flags because they have been claimed by the extremes.

In my case, the area of cultural identity becomes even more blurred. I watch British tv and not Irish, I follow British politics before Irish, British sport before Irish, and so on. Yet, obviously, I go to university in Ireland and I feel more of a cultural link with the Irish than the English in terms of humour and other matters (no offence to my many Anglo friends).

When it comes to language, there is, again, a melting pot. I use phrases that only my Irish friends understand, phrases that only my British friends understand and phrases that nobody understands,

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I believe that there are many like me in the North who do not fit in with the sectarian stereotypes created during the short but troubled history of our country.

though that might just be because of my accent.

Given the choice, I would define myself as Northern Irish, British and Irish.

There are still many who view this as impossible. This shouldn’t stop me, as it is my own decision as to how I define myself, but it does make me more guarded in terms of whom I reveal this to. This is not through a fear of violence, as we have moved on significantly from the dark days of the Troubles, but more through the sense that it creates a certain awkwardness that I would rather avoid.

Unfortunately, this leads to situations like what we are now seeing with McIlroy.

Only those who are likely to be offended by the decision (who I doubt are true golfers) are voicing their opinions on the matter, making it even more difficult for the young Ulsterman.

This is one of the motivations behind me writing this article, to show that it is not easy to define national identity by the colour of your

passport, the area in which you were born or your religion. Indeed, in the area of religion it may surprise some on all sides to learn that those original Irish rebels, the United Irishmen, had a significant following amongst the Presbyterians of Down and were, indeed, led by a Protestant, the former Trinity student Wolfe Tone.

Missing the point Trinity’s pilot admissions programme is a vanity project, but one which is ultimately in vain, argues John Porter

T John Porter Contributor

he dean of undergraduate studies, Dr Patrick Geoghegan, is piloting what is being described as a “radical new undergraduate admissions programme”. The programme aims to end the current “points race” method of admissions, which has been criticised both for allegedly being unfair and for not selecting the best students.

The new programme would select not simply on performance in the leaving certificate, but also on a “relative school performance rank”, which would privilege students who had performed highly in under-performing schools.

The proposed programme would also select students based on “contextual data”, meaning that students would be asked to produce an application form to explain why they deserve a place in a particular course. It would first be implemented in small num-

bers in 2014, and then expanded if successful.

For years there has been widespread agreement that the leaving certificate system requires some form of quite radical change. It has faced continual accusations of merely rewarding rote-learning at the expense of real critical thinking skills or passion for a particular field of study.

Most clearly, the system privileges those who are privately educated or whose parents can afford to pay for grind teaching. Of the top ten performing schools in Ireland, six are fee-paying, while the other four are Irish-speaking.

Trinity’s top 20 feeder schools are fee-paying and are located in the Dublin area.

Surely, therefore, introducing some form of school ranking system would be highly beneficial in correcting the inequities of the system? The

ranking system would mean, for example, that a student who attained 480 points in what was deemed an under-performing school, but was one of the highest achievers in his or her year, might be given preference over a student at another school who achieved 500 points but who was only an average achiever for the school.

The thinking behind this ranking is evidently logical.

It understands that the quality of the school is as important to success in the leaving certificate as individual talent. A student who has great potential butattends an under-performing school could succeed in Trinity if given the opportunity, and perhaps should be privileged over students who have achieved high grades largely due to being taught at the best institutions.

However, it is necessary to raise some objec-

tions. This may seem like an obvious point, but: Trinity will have to rank schools. This may be workable within Ireland, but, given the fact that all EU students must be given equal treatment in any third-level institution, College would also have to rank the schools of foreign students who apply; at least, for the sake of parity, Trinity would have to rank UK schools, given the high number of applicants from Britain. This could cause considerable controversy across Europe with a university in Ireland taking it upon itself to judge the educational quality of their schools.

This is not the greatest problem with the proposed ranking system. Parents, knowing that one school is ranked lower than another, may decide to send their child there for sixth year, thereby manipulating the system. You would create a paradoxical scheme

whereby the worst school would become the best.

What would almost be a certainty if the new scheme is introduced is some form of grinds school for the application process. Students and parents would pay for coaching in writing their application forms, or if interviews were introduced they would pay for interview coaching. Some may raise the criticism that this is unlikely to occur and that I’m highlighting the worst-case scenario, but if the programme were implemented nationwide (which is the ultimate aim) then this seems highly probable.

The current system is manipulated by those who have the means to do so; why would this new system not suffer similar problems? The scheme could, therefore, only succeed if it failed and remained a relatively small-scale affair for

some Trinity applicants.

I don’t wish to suggest that this system will provide no benefit whatsoever. I have no doubt that a certain percentage of students may be helped into Trinity via this new programme. However, it certainly will not make the revolutionary transformation that Geoghegan seems to be heralding. He has spoken of Trinity’s “public and moral obligation” to Ireland in implementing this new programme, and said that Trinity will prove there is a “better and fairer way of doing things”.

What we must remember is that wealth and status have been and will continue to be the greatest determining factor in educational success. Middle-class parents will always find a way to get their children into the best schools and the best universities. The programme being proposed is a cosmetic solution to a systemic

problem in societies across the world. You cannot solve the inequality in education by focusing on university, its final stage. If there is any desire to improve educational equality, radical change must be implemented at the primary-school and secondary-school levels.

Obviously, I am not suggesting that it is the duty of Trinity to suggest such change, or even promote it. I am saying that this is a feel-good reform, implemented more to assuage guilt at the disparity between the privileged and the unprivileged in our society rather than to provide any actual transformation. It will look good if Trinity are seen to make more of an effort to bring in students who didn’t attend fee-paying schools and are from a lowerincome background, but it will be appearance without real substance.

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

Ungovernable: Fearghal Ó Ruadh on why he became an anarchist

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State of the Unions Manus Lenihan addresses the student representative movement at both local and national level

I Manus Lenihan Comment Editor

hope this article will be the first in a series airing diverse views on the role of a students’ union. Assumptions on this question lie behind almost everything said or written about college fees, disaffiliation and many other issues. I’ll be examining how the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) and our own Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (henceforth, the Students’ Union) fall miles short of what a union is supposed to be, why this is the case and how to fix it.

The first thing to say is that the debate is shamefully narrow. Very few of us vote in Students’ Union elections and other ballots. Tiny numbers showed up to the union’s “town hall” meeting last Michaelmas term. Doing a vox pop during the last union elections, I couldn’t find a single person in the Hamilton Building to voice any opinion, though silence and indifference were as informative as any statement.

It’s possible that this article will just echo around a closed circuit of people who are already closely engaged with publications, the union or society-related intrigue. This is useless: any action or statement in student politics needs to be directed not at convincing this small circle but at activating new layers of students.

At every election, practically every candidate proposes cosmetic measures to engage more students but in reality the disengagement and disinterest that we’re seeing reflect the nature of the Students’ Union itself.

Years of a bubble economy and a wealth effect have disarmed our movement.

The rank-and-file have lost all confidence and experience in struggle, while the leadership has passed largely to people with no appetite for activism at all. We have the structures, but not the activity. We have only the zombie of a students’ union, a more or less intact body still walking around, with no blood flowing or organs working. Signs of decomposition are becoming too obvious to ignore, and parasites are lodging everywhere they can.

For example, I can see the purpose of Ents: provision of affordable entertainment for students in this rip-off of a city. But it’s not affordable, and in any case I don’t see why it needs a full-time officer. It seems our union can’t organise a sustained campaign against fees or any popular debates, discussions or ballots; but it can organise an incredible number of expensive club nights and international piss-ups.

It’s not a question of demand, but of the deformation of the Students’ Union under the boom, the withering away of any political or activist apparatus and the swelling to a ludicrous size of Ents, like an enormous beer gut hanging off the union. The words of one critic of USI last term – that student leaders are “wannabe Che Guevaras” – were hopelessly out of touch. The problem with our students’ unions is the exact opposite: there’s a spurious “non-political” (in reality, conservative) attitude and there’s massive hesitation and fear about activism. Government ministers have praised the leadership of today’s student movement as “responsible” and “coherent”; they are

“partners in education”. The ministers have no doubt been even more impressed by the commitment of John Logue, the new USI president, to turn toward lobbying instead of protest.

If the ministers consider you their partner while the members consider you irrelevant, that’s a pretty bad sign for a students’ union. In fact, John Logue is a useful example of many of the things a students’ union officer should not be. He proudly claims credit for JobBridge, a deeply exploitative scheme whereby you work full-time for a €50 top-up on your dole while the company pays you nothing. Three quarters of people who took up JobBridge placements saw it was a scam and dropped out; only 6% of placements have ended in job offers. One of Trinity’s sabbatical officers has also been an enthusiastic advocate of such “workfare” schemes.

Neither seems to realize that it’s impossible to square the idea of a union, which draws its strength not from the “magic of the marketplace” but from what economic libertarians would consider to be the “coercive” weight of numbers, with the Thatcherite principles and superstitions that lie behind such work-fordole schemes. In other words, if neo-liberals can find a home at the highest levels of a students’ union, then that union has strayed very far from its purpose. Logue also promises that, instead of organising protests, the USI will document waste in education to create a “moral outrage”. Of course, I’ll cheer if the UCC president gets his €232,000 salary cut down to size, but we’re not going to achieve that with a website, and it is absolutely impossible that Logue will uncover the hundreds of millions or billions needed to make any actual difference to the general situation.

At best, this will be a distraction from the political inactivity of our unions; at worst, it will be another general demonization of public sector workers. “Waste” is Sunday Independent code for “decent pensions” and “a living salary”, so we’d want to keep a close eye on what Logue classifies as “waste”. Lobbying, meanwhile, is what industries and thinktanks do. A union is neither of those things; it represents people who have no power individually but have immense power as a group. If the USI doesn’t mobilize huge numbers of students, then it won’t win anything. Lobbying will be a useful avenue for wannabe taoisigh in the student movement to get used to the inside of government offices and to get a pat on the head from the minister for being a bright young person, but that’s not particularly valuable to the rest of us.

This turn further toward the right in the USI leadership, replicated on a smaller scale in Trinity, was preceded by a period of confused activity.

The matter came to a head in November and December last year with the USI march and later occupations of government premises. The occupations were condemned by our then-president, Ryan Bartlett, for being embarrassingly militant, when in fact they were embarrassingly non-militant.

The USI under Gary

This year’s sabatical officers pictured at the start of the academic year. Photo: Dargan Crowley-Long

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As for the leadership, most of them (if there were no union) would be the very last to get involved in setting one up.

Redmond sought to escalate 2011’s “Stop Fees, Save the Grant” campaign. They played on the then-current Occupy aesthetic by camping outside Government Buildings after the national protest, and planned to occupy government offices. The occupations which followed weeks later were, like the camp-out, supposed to be an escalation of the campaign; like the camp-out, however, they involved only a handful of people. The occupations were short-lived and no attempt seems to have been made to mobilize even a few dozen or hundred students to play an active part.

They wanted to escalate the struggle with an occupation; at the same time, they didn’t want the risk of the occupation getting rowdy or outof-control. The result was that the attempted escalation was isolated and disempowering. It was too cautious to be in any way effective, and it backfired.

A students’ union should, fundamentally, be able to struggle. The historic student demonstration of November 2010 could have been the start of something like what happened in Chile or Quebec. The USI not only failed to build on its momentum, but accepted a fees hike of €500. A year later, only half the numbers marched. Any movement that can’t fight and can’t win guarantees only the demoralisation of the most active, and the emboldening of a more conservative layer.

An ability to struggle can only be built on an under-

standing of the political and economic situation. But students’ unions generally are devoid of ideas, intellect and politics. Most public statements from the USI and the Students’ Union sidestep real issues as far as possible, aiming for a lowest common denominator rather than outlining a position. Elections, at least in Trinity, are farcical. Candidates say nothing about their own politics and promise simply to do as they are “mandated” by students. We’re not asked to look at a candidate’s policies; we’re asked to look at all the committees they’ve sat on and at all their mates who are walking around the place in their T-shirts. A valid “mandate” never emerges, because most students aren’t participating.

On the whole, students and their representatives still hold on tight to the “free fees” policy, recognizing that, despite its limitations, it was a huge step forward. Our task, if we want to regain “free fees” and fight on for free education, is to wise up to the situation around us. The movement has to realize the fundamental contradiction between the needs of students on the one hand and, on the other hand, supporting billions in cutbacks for the purpose of paying off the gambling debts of the rich and bailing out a failed financial system.

In fact, both Logue and a former TCDSU president have said they don’t actually agree with the “free fees” position that they advocate. They call for it anyway, of course,

because otherwise they’d be out of a job. So, while we noted at the start of this article that there was massive disengagement with the Students’ Union, this reflects not apathy about politics generally, but alienation from the Students’ Union specifically.

The membership of the student movement consists of hundreds of thousands who are actively discouraged from engaging in activity on every day of the year save one, and now not even that. As for the leadership, most of them (if there were no union) would be the very last to get involved in setting one up.

We need radical, militant action if we want our Students’ Union to do what a union is supposed to do; that is, protect our collective interests. But action flows from politics. Confused action flows from confused politics, and no action flows from Thatcherite politics. You won’t get militant action if you take your politics second-hand from a thoroughly discredited political, media and business establishment.

Nor am I demanding that the current Students’ Union leadership try to address all the criticisms I’m raising. The movement needs a change of substance before it can carry through a change in approach.

A great political foment and the activation of masses of students around clear demands and ideas would be the necessary foundation for reclaiming the Students’ Union and rebuilding the movement.

for Block T, it might be empty even now. It’s capable of providing for a staggering 90 artist studios, as well offering as gallery space, workshop rooms and a dark room. As well as frequent exhibitions, they also run exceptionally fun nights. In a rare moment of fusion between Shane’s lifestyle and my own foggier one, I have been drunk in Block T for both New Year’s Eve and the closing party of last year’s Trinity Arts Festival.

Similarly, Supafast occupy a building that otherwise might be vacant. Except, because of the hard graft of Hugh Cooney and Tom Lynn, the little lane opposite Panti Bar on Capel St is host to gourmet DIY food clubs, zine fairs, art exhibitions, fundraisers, theatre and creative, slightly manic fun.

Like Block T, I can also confide that I have been drunk in this building. It’s an experience I would heartily recommend.

Their Set Food Club combines seasonal, unusual gourmet food served on a banquet table for a modest donation. As ever, it’s BYOB. Other art collectives/creative spaces such as Basic Space born

behind Vicar Street and Pallas Studios on Francis St are also leading the way as original and imaginative users of resources and funds. If you need a space to discuss a new idea, Seomra Spraoi and Exchange will facilitate you free of charge – as well as running workshops, events, exhibitions and gigs of their own.

These spaces are not just exclusively cultural, but also frequently political. Similarly, recent venture Dublintellectual is not merely cultural, but academic. Interestingly, the Exchange was built in a former plush boomtime furniture shop, echoing the make-do and mend ethos of Block T and Supafast. Regular events such as Milk and Cookies, a popular yet intimate storytelling night, find their home there.

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the last five years, music promotion in Dublin moved from the clutches of several promoters to whoever had the gumption to get organised. People decided they wanted to put on and see cool shit for little to no money. It lead to collectives

such as Popical Island and to record shops like Elastic Witch and The RAGE. This DIY attitude also fostered a host of venues: BYOB space The Joinery consistently attracts stellar line-ups and the Unitarian Church offers beautiful surroundings for select gigs. In true cross-over do-whatever style, Monster Truck Studios in Temple Bar now hosts BYOB gigs in addition to being a gallery space by day. The message to draw from this is: if your balcony is big enough, put a gig on in it you chump.

You get my point. From new zines such as Garter Magazine and podcasts from The Antiroom ladies, to unique shopping in Lucy’s Lounge, the Flea, the Ferocious Mingle Market and Siopaella, THEATREclub, the Shakespeare Festival – all in all, despite cutbacks and austerity, creative Dublin is alive and kicking. Meanwhile, as this city and its culture thrum and grow, I spill pasta on my bedsheets and do not change them for an entire weekend because my head hurts.

It’s my life...

I Fiona Hyde Contributor

It’s now, if ever, to experience Dublin’s cultural exploits

am a recent graduate of Trinity, currently employed as a salarywoman drone. Every day, Monday to Friday, I get up when it’s almost dark and sit in an office until it’s almost dark. The disadvantage to this is having to work. The advantage is getting to drink copiously at the weekend. Actually, I lie; there is another advantage, or two, and one is being able to pay my own rent.

Shortly after I joined the dead-eyed workforce, I moved in with my good friend Shane. I like to think of us as a happilymatched odd couple, bickering over the housework and wearing matching pyjamas on our frequent cosy film nights.

However, this fantasy flies in the face of the fact that all we do is bicker about housework, and we neither own matching pyjamas nor have ever watched a film together. Never let the facts get in the way of a good relationship with your housemate, that would be my advice.

Anyway, one thing Shane and I don’t agree upon is how to spend an ideal weekend.

I enjoy spending my weekend drinking and then lying

around in bed. I repeat this twice, and then, inevitably, it’s Monday again. Shane enjoys spending his weekend “doing things”. Can you believe that?

He wants to be out and about, actively enjoying his free time, engaging in fun cultural pursuits. How did I ever decide to move in with such a deviant?

My weekends are mostly spent in bed, hungover and fending off Shane’s efforts to rouse me into to taking on the city. Shane is adamant that there’s always something good to see and visit in Dublin these days, and that these ventures need support. I argue that my butt needs support and generally fall back asleep.

Shane’s right, though. There has never been a better time to get involved with everything cultural that Dublin has to offer. Well, not since the Boomtown Rats and U2 were hanging around Grogan’s! No wait, sorry, there definitely has never been a better time.

The grimy recession, while being an all-round champion pain in the hole, has had a beneficial effect on certain aspects of city life. It has made

spaces more accessible to theatre groups, art collectives, flea markets, small music promoters and everyone in between. It has galvanised creative people into speaking up and organising themselves into groups. In addition to this, social media has made it easier to find something that interests you, share it, spread a message and make your voice heard.

It’s said that one of the silver linings of an economic doomcloud is an upsurge in DIY, innovation, self-started cultural activity and initiatives. People start taking note of resources available to them, communities pull together to create and a spirit of resurgence reigns.

When there are buildings lying empty, the creative among us will ask why they can’t be used for studio spaces or galleries.

When a generation talks about emigrating, someone will always stay behind and write the story or the play or the song.

It’s up to us to go and listen, or else they might leave too.

And let me tell you, as soon as someone tells you to sign up for the Visual Artists Ireland email bulletin because art openings

always have free wine, culture suddenly gets hugely more interesting. (It’s worth noting that beer goggles not only work for the opposite sex but also for otherwise-baffling contemporary art.)

A good example of tackling and using the recession advantageously is Block T out in Smithfield. Smithfield is almost a monument to the crushing failure of Ireland’s property, bubble and the resulting ghost estates and buildings that lie empty remind us of past folly.

Block T calls itself “an organisation that provides a platform for visual and performing arts, as well as fostering philosophical, creative and social innovation, locally and internationally.”

After a recent move, Block T’s current headquarters are located in the former probation office and a former tile factorycum-warehouse on Smithfield Square, encompassing 2,800 square metres in total. In a time gone by, this five-storey building would might have been rammed full of offices and cafes and all manner of Celtic Tiger ventures – and if it weren’t

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

15

“Our lives are our own, not simply vessels for the lives of others” – Sally Rooney on reproductive rights in Ireland

Comment

p. 16

Subjective idealism at Berkeley To be is to be perceived at University of California, Berkeley.

But, Eoghan Hughes explains, the gold standard is too high a cost for too many.

Y Eoghan Hughes Contributor

ou’ve probably seen it all before: the cheerleaders hosting a pep rally as a booming marching band gets the crowd going, the sweaty frat houses where beer pong is followed by beer bongs and several attempts at a keg stand, while teens sip watery beer from red plastic cups.

You can’t have missed the snapshot images of student dorms where every night is another party; where college isn’t just the heart of the town, but a town in itself, a sprawling campus teeming with Romanesque lecture halls and a hundred thousand student activists preaching this or that, some pleading with you to vote Democrat, others exhorting you to support the Republican cause, still others kicking around uni without any shoes or worries.

This will seem as familiar to you as a night at the movies because, believe it or not, the movies were telling the truth: they captured college life in the US in a nutshell. And do you know what? For the most part, it is pretty spectacular.

That is to say, it is a spectacle. In the University of California, Berkeley, it is not enough to just be a student in the college; you have to be seen to be a student in the college.

Every second person you meet between classes will have donned the college colours, or have a golden bear, their mascot, emblazoned on their chests. College football games, jam-packed with students, are not that great in themselves (to me, the sport seemed like rugby with a hell of a lot more breaks), but the fervour in the crowds is something to be admired. The cheer squad’s woeful rhymes were taken up by the students with thunderous enthusiasm, and when – after four hours, mind you – the game ended with Berkeley’s defeat, there was genuine grief brooding around the campus.

It is this that Trinity College, and nearly all Irish universities, lack: college pride.

It is one of several things that, if I had the choice, I would bring back to Trinity. College pride in Berkeley is what motivates and

inspires its students to excel, not just for themselves, but for their university; pushing them to try that much harder, to make their societies and clubs truly worth joining, to do all the better in exams and to produce, through serious diligence and moxie, works of their own, all of which help to push Berkeley to ever greater heights in the world.

It is no secret that Trinity has slipped further down the university rankings as the recession has taken its toll, and I know as well as anyone else that this has a lot to do with troubled finances. But in a milieu where academic excellence may be admired in spite of economic hardships, where students can do an awful lot to bolster the reputation of their universities, could not college pride be a saving grace that we Trinity students should embrace, for ourselves and for the college community in which we live?

The lectures here, while fascinating, are hardly ground-breaking – at least for my course, English literature and history – and they lack (crucially, some might say) the mandatory tutorials that help so many of us back home grapple with core concepts. The exams are more spread out, including not only Christmas exams but midterms as well, not to mention plenty of essays, all ensuring that your mark at the end of a module is not determined by a one-off memory test that could go either way depending on how the night before treated you.

All in all, this system – assuming, and it is a big assumption, that you do the work – is easier than what we do at home, and will hopefully be something that the grand old Board of Trinity College will consider implementing in the future. The spread-out nature of the marking scheme is complimented greatly by yet another brilliant aspect of college life in the US – undergraduate research. Students in all schools of the college are granted what amount to academic apprenticeships; they are paired up

with professors and researchers from the academic staff, and are allowed to aid them in their research in exchange for course credits.

This inspired mechanism of US universities not only gives students first-hand experience in researching in their given fields before the penny drops at the commencement of postgraduate research, but also provides researchers with willing hands to expand upon their works. It encourages enterprising young students to attempt to publish academic works of their own from an early point; all of which, aside from advancing the careers of those involved, help bring prestige and academic grandeur to Berkeley. If there was ever a system to be emulated by Trinity, it is this one. It adds something truly priceless to student life.

While acknowledging that certain facets of the US university would undoubtedly improve student life in Ireland, there are nevertheless certain insidious aspects of US student culture. Most obvious are the fraternities.

Don’t get me wrong, by the way; although they are centres of testosterone-induced machismo, frat houses are usually full of the exact same kind of lovely people that populate Berkeley, and I would be lying if I said that their parties are quiet affairs, though that might have a lot to do with the copious amounts of free alcohol they churn out to the eager, underage college students.

Yet underneath this fairly harmless party-boy facade lies the looming reality that, in a country where college fees are already at extortionate heights, fraternities are just overpriced student societies that make you pay for the privilege of having friends and being hazed (or “rushed”, as they call it in euphemistic language).

Another aspect is the gaining of respectable contacts for the future, something that more affluent students will use for networking in later life; this gives frat members an unfair advantage when applying for a

Graphic: Éna Brennan job, particularly those well-paid positions often filled by college graduates.

In this regard, Trinity’s many societies come out ahead, as they charge next to nothing for admittance, are all-inclusive to the student population, offer some of the best nights out you can have in Dublin and bond people not through money and a shared experience in being bullied by older members of the club, but by common interests and passions. In regards to the aforementioned college fees, Irish universities again prove kinder

to the student population.

Here, college fees, if they do not prevent a large proportion of the population from attending college at all, will at the very least leave an extraordinary number of students with a financial dumbbell fastened to their legs for a great deal of the foreseeable future in the form of loans.

The best – if not the most pleasant – way of illustrating the disparity between those who have money and attend university and those who don’t can be illustrated by my noticing that, despite the large pop-

Hitting students home and away Punishing children for the sins of their parents is bad; but punishing them for taking a stand is a step too far, argues Adam Noonan

O Adam Noonan Contributor

n 18th September, news broke that Clare county council had requested proof of payment of the household charge on application forms for higher educational grants. This provoked widespread comment and anger, while the minister for education, Ruairi Quinn, called the request “reasonable”.

Requesting proof of taxation payment in order to receive funding from the state would seem to be reasonably legitimate. Taxation and services are nothing like the chicken and the egg: taxation most definitely must come first. Criteria for receiving benefits are attached to almost all payments that the state makes to citizens.

To receive unemployment benefit, one must prove that one is searching for work; if you do not pay PRSI with regard to your contributory pension, you will not receive the same level of state top-up. In general, it is safe to assume that the state will ask you to do or contribute something, monetary or otherwise, if you are to receive subsidies from the state.

Why, then, has the reaction to this move by Clare county council (and expect more of the same as councils in Sligo and Cavan consider this option) been so overwhelmingly negative? At base level, it can be said that there are two reasons. The first is the seemingly unfair punishment that is being levelled at students for their household’s failure or refusal to pay the household charge.

It is reasonable to assume that if a family are applying for a grant their financial situation does not permit them to send their child to college of their own accord. With this in mind, it is fairly clear that this action lands the hammer strike directly on the student for a decision in which they had no part. It is an attack which laughs at the concept of proportionate response. But

there’s a more sinister side to this action. The coalition has been labelled a bully, most notably by the United Left Alliance and, to a lesser extent, by Sinn Féin, for the way it has pursued or said it will pursue those who have not paid.

Unsurprisingly, many members of the government have rejected this and have attempted to shift focus onto the importance of the tax itself.

It is something of a back-step on this claim for Clare county council to threaten the future of its constituents’ children, which is exactly what this action does. It’s perfectly fine for a state to highlight the importance of a tax, but it is another thing altogether for it to say: “Pay, or we will remove your child’s ability to receive thirdlevel education.”

To add to that, given that the cost of third-level education is substantially more expensive for those from a rural background (considering accommodation, travel costs and so on), it is the students for whom college is particularly expensive that are being targeted. If we are to call a spade a spade – or, in this instance, a shovel – the council are blackmailing those who refused to register for the household tax.

That, however, delivers us to the main question of this incident: the validity of the household charge itself. If we consider it legitimate for the state to take action against those who withhold income tax or any other legally owed money by withholding subsidies, even if their dependents suffer, then the problem is deeper than the face value of Clare county council’s inconsiderate action.

If this tax is considered legitimate, then a re-evaluation of the council’s actions is required. If not, then the council’s actions can be considered completely illegitimate and

“

Quinn needs to do some soul-searching, preferably out of office, and a good deal away from it at that.

they should be condemned as such. There are several reasons to consider them illegitimate.

Firstly, the citizens of this state have swallowed numerous increases in taxes and cuts to services, to an extent unparalleled in any other European country. Given the large amount of resistance to the household charge, and the level of compliance preceding it, the issue remains one which must be re-evaluated by the state.

They have not done this; they have ignored it and treated it as a minority problem, even though 600,000 households have yet to register for the charge. Even if the tax could be reworked, the state’s refusal to engage on the issue means that it loses the moral (used in the loosest sense possible) high ground.

Secondly, we must

examine the manner in which those in power are looking to make savings. This government and its predecessors have shown that they will always take the easy option: the path of least resistance. Up until the introduction of the household charge, this meant hitting those who have felt the recent downturn the hardest. James Reilly’s proposed cut to personal assistants for people with severe disabilities was met with fierce resistance. This was replaced by a proposal to cut the bloated administration costs of the HSE. How was this not the first option? It beggars belief that the choice to more or less take away the independence of severely disabled people could be considered more viable than reducing administration costs.

A third issue is the charge’s potential to increase to several times its present level, as was demanded by the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union. Even though the state has adopted most of their recommendations, there is no talk from any senior government officials regarding the possibility of this increase. Cue a massive amount of mistrust on behalf of the electorate, a serious amount of duplicity on behalf of the state and a dose of “expletive you” on behalf of both.

An act that is, at its base, founded on something illegitimate and can be considered blackmail is not something that a minister should endorse, which is why Quinn finds himself in the minority.

The vast majority of people in this country, the ones who are trying to get by, have accepted and dealt with so much. So, when they speak up, as they have, the only legitimate action is to listen. Quinn needs to do some soul-searching, preferably out of office, and a good deal away from it at that.

Illustration: Mice Hell

ulation of African Americans in the US in general and the city of Berkeley in particular (about 13.5%), I could probably count on my hands the number of black students I’ve encountered while attending Berkeley. With black people making up only about 3.5% of the college population and firmly entrenched as the poorest ethnic group in the US, one has to wonder how much money plays a part in attending university in the US. The Irish fee system, which may justifiably be under fire at the moment, does at least not exclude such a large

segment of the population from attending college based on their wealth.

All in all, student life in the US is – assuming you have the money – pretty excellent and full of life, academic promise and great people in general. Its dark economic side cannot simply be ignored, nor can the hegemony of the fraternities be brushed aside, but one has to admit that, if you are lucky enough to attend UC Berkeley, then student life is something to be envied.

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

Comment

Justice for the 96 – Hannah Cogan on the Sun newspaper and the Hillsborough disaster

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p. 19

Your education, your responsibility

T Henry Hill Contributor

Coming to terms with abortion

A Sally Rooney Contributor

Even if one life begins at conception, it does not follow that the other life becomes a means to its end.

s a pro-choice feminist, I’ve never had any particular interest in arguing about when a foetus becomes a life: as far as I’m concerned, life starts at conception. As debate heats up in anticipation of the upcoming report on Irish abortion legislation – a government-appointed expert group on abortion reports in October – this stance appears to be intriguingly uncommon.

In the popular framing of the discussion, there are simply pro-choice activists on one side, who deny the essential humanity of the unborn, and pro-life campaigners on the other, who try to prove that human life begins at the moment the ovum is fertilised. But a more sophisticated debate is possible; maybe even a more humane one. It starts with the recognition that, because we have no real reason to believe otherwise, both foetus and woman are human and alive.

In her seminal 1971 essay, “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Jarvis Thomson sketched out a thought experiment. You wake up one day, attached, without your consent, to the world’s greatest violinist. The plan is to keep you attached for nine months, incurring some risk to your own health, and some pretty irreversible changes to your body. If you detach yourself, the violinist will die, and you’re the only one who can help. The question is not about the morality of detachment; the question is whether the law should stop you from doing it. There’s no debate at all about whether the violinist is a human life. But is it your legal responsibility, as an unsuspecting stranger, to keep that violinist alive?

Irish law includes no duty to save a life: it’s legal, however morally questionable, to let someone die because you couldn’t be bothered to save them. Preserving the life of another human being isn’t allowed to impact on our own freedoms even where it poses no inconvenience to us, much less where it would put us through physical, mental or emotional struggles of our own. This state doesn’t impose authoritarian moral duties on its citizens. You might not be allowed to commit evil, but you’re not required to go out of our way to save lives either.

But our inability to save all of the lives all of the time is something we take for granted. It’s a natural part of

our freedom to live in the world and move around in it as we choose. We choose expensive foods while people are starving; we study art history while the world needs doctors; we make decisions every day that fail to maximise the potential number of lives in this world.

The bargain of being an autonomous human being is a death toll immeasurably long. While our government tries to ensure we live comfortable lives, we accept that it does so at the cost of other lives, the world over, because that’s the sad and necessary story of living. You can’t sacrifice your own freedoms to the notion of potential lives you could otherwise support.

That is, unless you’re a woman who gets pregnant.

Because then, unlike in any other situation, you’re required to give of your own freedoms, without consent, to sustain the life of another human being. In the case of rape, statutory or otherwise, this is a life you had no real say in creating, a violinist you woke up next to. From a legal standpoint it’s difficult to argue that, while in general we have no duty to inconvenience ourselves to save the lives of strangers, that same duty should suddenly and viscerally materialise in the case of pregnant women. The solution to such a difficult argument is not to make it. We don’t curb the freedoms of individual citizens just because they might be able to sustain the lives of other individual citizens. That’s our principle, so let’s stick to it.

If this seems reductive, it almost certainly is. Pregnancy is no violinist. In cases where contraception was improperly used, or not used at all, the woman in question certainly bears some responsibility for the life she now wants to terminate – it’s not simply the unfortunate stranger involved in good Samaritan law.

But conversely, waking up attached to a violinist would just be kind of wacky and quaint. It is unlikely your friends would be embarrassed to associate with you as a result.

It is unlikely that your family would abandon you, or that it would cause you any major financial trouble, or that you’d be subject for the rest of your life to rumours about your private life and preferences. It is unlikely that it would invite the opinions of others – who have certainly never been surgically attached to any kind of musician – about what’s best for

you, your body, and the body of your mysterious violin-playing friend.

Pregnancy takes place within a cultural context. Even in the abstract, there are good reasons why abortion should be legal, like those above; but even then, it becomes an area that requires legislation especially urgently. Women and their bodies are not theoretical. In our public spaces, those bodies are endlessly critiqued, examined, invaded and assaulted by those with more physical, financial or social power.

The right of women to exert ownership over their own bodies can’t be parsed into convenient thought experiments; it interacts with a history of sexual violence, commodification and continuing inequality. If we acknowledge the harrowing frequency of rape in Ireland, we must also acknowledge that Irish women live on a constant precipice of forced pregnancy, beyond our own control and enforced by our state.

Women make up just 15% of Dáil Éireann, the same body which now declines to comment on abortion policy, instead awaiting the findings of an expert group; the body which, on 25th September, declined to offer an apology to survivors of the Magdalene laundries, instead awaiting – you guessed it – the findings of an inter-departmental group.

These decades-long delays in addressing gender inequality are not just political accidents. They are our lives.

Whatever the outcome, survivors of the laundries have died and will die without apology from their state; and women who become pregnant will have to travel out of their home country – if they can afford it – to exercise their own freedom to choose.

Ending a life is never preferable, but it is a bargain that we are forced to make all the time. Improved access to contraception and better education about sex can make abortion rarer, and those groups with a genuine commitment to the unborn should probably turn their attention there. We cannot ask women, whose freedoms have been so compromised for so long, to continue to make this extraordinary and unparalleled sacrifice. Our lives are our own, not simply vessels for the lives of others. However sad the decision is, it should be a woman’s decision alone.

hen travelling abroad, it is always nice to catch sight of something familiar from home.

That’s how I felt when I opened the pages of the Trinity student press during Freshers’ Week and discovered a raging debate about fees. The problem of paying for higher education is one that the UK and Ireland share.

It is a topic that splits students along ideological lines and provides them with a keystone issue by which to measure political parties in which they might otherwise take little interest.

Indeed, the fees issue has come to define, and may well destroy, the junior partner in Britain’s current coalition, the Liberal Democrats. Ireland and Britain also seem to share the fact that the majority of students (or, at any rate, student activists) passionately believe that someone else should pay for their degree, whether through the retention of the old grants system or the imposition of a graduate tax, and are strongly averse to identifying students as consumers.

The case I want to make to you is simple: that a fees-and-loans model is the best and fairest means for paying for university; that higher education is treated as a fundamentally private good (and that this is something to be glad of ); and that students are ill-served by any refusal on the part of their advocates to adopt a consumer mentality. Before beginning, it is worth pointing out that I do not subscribe to the notion that third-level education is a “right”, a belief which renders any debate about the costs and benefits of higher education entirely otiose.

Rather, I take the view that spending four years enrolled in a university is not a fundamental part of the human condition but something that must be justified on its merits, and it is in that spirit that this case is offered. The one irrefutable point around which the funding debate rages (and I use that word advisedly) is that higher education has to be paid for somehow. The question is who pays for it.

Under a grant model, the burden of your undergraduate degree is shouldered by the population in general.

Under a graduate tax, successful graduates pay for their own degree and the degrees of those less successful. Under fees and loans, everybody pays for their own, with the upfront cost met by a low-to-no-interest government loan to remove any barrier to entry posed by cost.

Put that way, I feel the unfairness of the first two suggestions is apparent. Although a relatively light burden during the age when university was simply another stage in the life cycle of a narrow professional class, the cost to the taxpayer of grant-funding university today would be phenomenal, and would fall on great swathes of people who don’t enjoy the advantages of higher education and never will. It also provides no incentive to make the most out of a degree, and could lead to people using it as an excuse to postpone adult life for four years without taking academia seriously.

A graduate tax takes this even further and conjures a whole set of perverse incentives. Those who feel they have a good chance at making a suc-

cess of themselves, and those wealthy enough to afford it regardless, may well prefer to take out even a commercial loan and face the repayments rather than sign off a section of their income for the rest of their lives. If no opt-out existed domestically, this could drive many of a country’s best and brightest abroad.

In either scenario, those high achievers who are expected to pay for the rest will be out of the system. If they’re not, it does not strike me as fair to have a funding system that provides no disincentives to the lazy or aimless – whose university education will be free if they make little of it – whilst thrusting the costs onto the hard-working and ultimately successful. In contrast, a feesand-loans system combines personal responsibility with equality of opportunity. Government loans ensure that everybody can go to university if they choose to, whilst incomebased repayments (as in the UK) ensure that graduates only pay back when they can afford to.

The upside is that everyone has to take ownership of their degree. If they feel that they will receive sufficient reward from it (whether in terms of income, personal development or any other measure) to justify taking on the student debt, then they will go to university, and the system will incentivise them to take as much from the opportunity as they possibly can. On the other hand, those who might have simply drifted into university for want of anything better to do will be forced to give the decision, and the potential alternatives, proper consideration.

“Ah,” the opponent of fees might say, “but higher education is a public good. It is in the government’s interest to have a better-educated workforce, and so it should pay for our degrees.” This is true up to a point. It is certainly in the national interest to have a pool of graduates, particularly in areas where it sees potential for economic growth (such as Ireland’s high-tech sector).

Yet it is surely impossible to sustain the conceit that every degree is a public good, for which it is in the public interest to pay from general taxation. If the government genuinely treated degrees as a public good, then both the number of degrees it funded and the subjects which received those degrees would be government decisions, decided centrally. The government would, in line with its own priorities, work out which degrees were in the public interest and provide them.

As with all things government decides, this would doubtless fall prey to opinion polls and popular perception.

For an arts student, let alone someone studying a subject not held in high public esteem (beware any subject with the word “studies” in the title), the outlook would be grim. How many historians or psychologists would the public be willing to pay for, if it were actually presented with parties which had to dole out degree places as a matter of public policy?

In these austere times, reducing the higher education budget by cutting ill-regarded courses would look like

an easy win to a government with its back pressed to the financial wall, and “Do we want to pay for [insert degree] when we’re cutting [vital public service]?” is a question that “give us more stuff” education activists probably don’t want politicians asking the public.

Rationed places, distributed according to centrallydetermined intake priorities, are a long way from equality of access or opportunity, and, like most central planning, serve to disempower the people who use the service: students.

Happily, the government operates a different system: one where a student can choose to study whatever they like within the limitations of the grades they left school with.

Students are free to follow their personal preferences, even when this leads to low takeups for subjects the government and the public want more of and very high take-ups for popular courses neither government nor public thinks are very useful (in the UK, those positions are represented in totemic fashion by mathematics and psychology respectively), or when the number of “graduate jobs” fails to grow at a rate commensurate to the number of graduates and produces large over-qualification levels (as in Britain).

In short, the government treats a degree as a largely private good, whose benefits accrue primarily to the individual who holds it. Government and others such as businesses and the universities themselves can fund the public good within this framework via bursaries and scholarships, but it is the private good framework that affords students the freedom of choice that we cherish.

By removing barriers to entry and allowing students to choose where they go, the government allows us to act like empowered consumers.

Although it doesn’t sit easily with a student self-image that casts us in the mould of workers, with unions and strikes to match, the fact is that our relationship with our university is that of consumer and provider, and we are ill-served if we refuse to recognise this.

Students need a Which?-style consumer information and advocacy organisation to help them make informed choices about what degree to choose and lobby to ensure they get the best possible value for money. If the government does not allow the price mechanism free rein in higher education (and few people in Europe want the American system) then the need for such a group is all the greater, because of the vast difference between cost (which would be nationally uniform in most systems) and value for money.

An organisation that tracks graduate employment, student satisfaction and a host of other measures for each degree, and makes that information easy to find and compare, will serve prospective students far better than sit-ins and walkouts by empowering them to make well-informed decisions.

We’ve not got one yet, because such an approach lacks the anti-capitalist style and class-warfare glamour with which much of the “student movement” is so unhelpfully enamoured.

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

17

Comment Individualism, not atomism Libertarianism honours traditions of community, contrary to popular misperception

A Sam Bowen Contributor

No gods, no bosses: Why I became a teenage anarchist A portrait of the anarchist as a young man.

I Fearghal Ó Ruadh Contributor

t was the day of the 2012 Labour party conference. A large group of protestors, whom the Irish Independent’s ever-entertaining Lise Hand would later describe as “a circle of students sitting on the grass merrily rolling joints”, had gathered to make it an uncomfortable experience for them. I watched as hundreds, flags flying, broke the lines and forced bewildered gardaí to flee for safety against the sheer mass of people power. Despite the deployment of pepper spray and numerous attempted arrests, we had done it.

Nothing can describe the rush of excitement when even a small victory is won against the long arm of the law. This was no act of mindless violence; this was the party who were savagely attacking the livelihoods of students, the elderly, the disabled and the working class, and yet still dared to try and shut down the National University of Ireland, Galway campus for a day, turning it into an occupied zone.

Looking back a few years, I could not have foreseen myself in the middle of such a situation.

The image conjured upon hearing the word “anarchist” is universal, and false.

To those who seek to discredit anarchists, they are a horde of black-clad hoodlums bent on destroying order and civilisation. Indeed, one would be foolish to pretend that violence has never played a part in the history of anarchism over the centuries. But what is omitted from the picture, after generations of demagoguery, are words like “solidarity”, “respect” and “love”.

Since the age of 15, I have identified as an anarchist.

Anarchism is a political ideology which opposes authoritarian and hierarchical social structures and seeks to bring about a society based on individual and collective freedom; a society without capitalism, without the state, without patriarchy.

My earliest exposure to politics came through the charade of RTÉ, as a child, and more specifically, my parents’ never-ending rants at the TV about corruption and “gombeenism”. As I hadn’t been paying attention in 2004, when ridiculous scare stories about

how anarchists were planning to launch a gas attack in Dublin abounded, the word “anarchism” was utterly alien to me.

Since I was very young, however, I had an instinctive hatred of wealth, privilege and the more obvious excesses of capitalism. When I became a teenager, this began to develop into a more coherent and cohesive political ideology. My father was an old-Labour socialist who came from a working-class coal-mining family in the north of England; my mother was from a small farming family from Monaghan.

Like many of my generation, I never experienced at first hand the childhood hardship that my parents did, but their experience of life that they passed down to me was coloured by poverty.

In school, I was constantly questioning what I was being fed by those in positions of authority, especially the dominance of Catholic moralist thinking in our education system. By the time I was 12, I had rejected what seemed like the ultimate hierarchy – the hierarchy of the Supreme Being and His dominion over me.

Unfortunately, this also led to several years of insufferable atheist smugness.

By the age of 13, I felt deeply that there was something rotten with the way the world was set up. Why did those who contribute the least to society – the managers, the bosses, the bankers – have the most? Why did those who really keep the world running have the least? Why were millions starving while tonnes of food were thrown away every day?

Critical consciousness about these questions was frustrating, and there seemed to be no answers, no alternative. I was resigned to sit and be an observer, a consumer of politics that was happening somewhere else, totally alienated from me.

For my 14th birthday, my brother bought me Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled album. I’m not at all ashamed to say that it had a huge impact on my political development. I heard in their music the anger I was feeling, railing “against the machine” of international capitalist exploitation. It wasn’t long be-

fore I had identified the only solution: revolution. I began to identify as a communist.

Still, though, I was alone. Castlebar, my hometown, despite its 18th and 19th century history, is not a hotbed of political radicalism. It’s a strange experience to be passionately consumed by an ideal and able to do nothing about it.

Seeing the world through a radical lens with an understanding of the systems of exploitation we encounter and are part of daily, I was starting to find my life fruitless and empty. What was the point of all of the mundane, everyday experiences of life in a system which, by nature, crushes and bludgeons people’s desires? I poured much of my spare time into educating myself about history and politics, and became particularly fascinated by post-revolutionary Russia.

This led me to realise the failings of “authoritar-

“

By the age of 13, I felt deeply that there was something rotten with the way the world was set up.

ian” communism. It took a lot of thought, study and debates with my anarchist brother before I came to consider myself a libertarian communist.

Revolutions of the “old” left throughout history had ended in either failure or slavery. It was clear to me that the early 20th century model of highly disciplined factorybased syndicalism bears little relevance to a person in the age of the networked individual, and attempts to build class solidarity on this basis are doomed to failure. Those who refuse to learn from the errors of

the past are doomed to repeat them. The old left has failed.

It is anarchism, in all of its diverse forms, that will define the struggle for collective liberation.

About this time, I got involved with the radical student group Free Education for Everyone (Fee). Although I’d been going to whatever political demonstrations I could, it was at Fee where I first cut my teeth as an activist. In the aftermath of the November 2010 student riots, I was involved in instigating a second-level walkout in my school which saw 150-200 students marching on Beverly Cooper-Flynn’s constituency office in Castlebar. The action galvanised me, and made radical politics and tactics seem more tangible. Nothing is more empowering than seeing firsthand what people can do when they organise for themselves, without the need for leaders to guide them. Within a year I had joined the Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM), an anarchist-communist political organisation in Ireland, and have since been involved in a number of struggles.

Across the world recently we have seen numerous uprisings, riots and clashes. We have seen the emergence of mass social movements almost from nowhere. The global Occupy movement and the 15-M movement in Spain put the key principles of anarchist organisation into action. They were non-hierarchical and democratic, emphasising mutual aid and solidarity.

The problems of the world require a revolution.

But a successful one will not be controlled by one person or a group of people. It needs to be a consequence of the collective effort of the sum of its parts. This is what anarchism offers: socialism and freedom.

As the 19th-century anarchist Mikhail Bakunin put it: “We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.”

Fearghal Ó Ruadh is a member of the anarchist organisation Workers’ Solidarity Movement, which can be found online at www.wsm. ie or at www.facebook.com/workerssolidaritymovement.

Friedrich von Hayek (pictured above) has strong views about the importance of tradition and social cooperation in understanding society and individuals.

post on British blog ConservativeHome last month wrote about the differences between individualism and conservatism: "While the concept of personhood is central to philosophical conservatism, so is the connectedness of each person to other people within the organic institutions of family, community and nation, each of which of which stretch out beyond ourselves not only in space, but also in time through the traditions that sustain a living culture."

The post sparked an interesting discussion on Twitter about the differences between conservatism and libertarianism. I think the writer's main point is that small-c conservatism places a lot of emphasis on tradition and community cohesion in a way that libertarianism does not. I think the writer is talking about a sort of atomism ("men are islands") that is rare in most libertarian thought.

Adam Smith may not have been a libertarian by modern standards, but he was one of the first great liberal individualists, and he was certainly not a conservative. Yet his work was all about the power of cooperation and compassion to better the human condition. The great achievement of The Wealth of Nations was to show the productive powers of individuals working in peaceful cooperation with one another, specializing and trading with one another to both people’s benefit. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, similarly, emphasised the social nature of morality and decency. We are good because we see ourselves in others, and empathise with their plight.

Modern libertarian writers carried on this emphasis on cooperation, most notably Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. In Human Action, Mises is clear that all the achievements of man that we call civilization have been the result of peaceful cooperation between human beings. The "feelings of sympathy and friendship and a sense of belonging together … are the

of a society's autonomous and independent existence, of its life, its soul, and its actions is a metaphor which can easily lead to crass errors."

The questions whether society or the individual is to be considered as the ultimate end, and whether the interests of society should be subordinated to those of the individuals or the interests of the individuals to those of society are fruitless. Action is always action of individual people.

This does not mean that the fabric woven by individuals acting together is not valuable, but simply that we cannot understand society except as the product of many individuals acting together to achieve their own ends. Those ends might be selfish or they might be altruistic.

Hayek is even stronger about the importance of tradition and social cooperation in understanding society and individuals. The latter period of his life – in works such as The Constitution of Liberty, Law, Legislation and Liberty and The Fatal Conceit – was devoted to studying the importance of tradition in society, and the pitfalls of a rationalism that tries to fix or improve on tradition that ain’t broke.

Hayek, again, was an individualist and favoured libertarian or classical liberal institutions. He understood the power and importance of tradition as phenomena that emerged as the result of human action, not of human design – in other words, as "organic institutions" that hold people together and establish the very bonds of trust and empathy that allow market institutions to flourish. Hayek was an archskeptic of grand plans to improve the human race.

Ayn Rand’s celebration of selfishness is the aberration in the libertarian tradition, not the rule. (Indeed, she didn’t consider herself a libertarian and didn’t like people who did.)

The sort of atomism that the writer of the ConservativeHome article is rejecting is, I think, quite different to the sort of individualism that I and many other libertarians adhere

source of man's most delightful and most sublime experiences.

They are the most precious adornment of life; they lift the animal species man to the heights of a really human existence."

Mises’s (and my) individualism lies in his view of individual people as being the most basic unit of analysis in human affairs – only the individual acts: "The individual lives and acts within society.

But society is nothing but the combination of individuals for cooperative effort. It exists nowhere else than in the actions of individual men. It is a delusion to search for it outside the actions of individuals. To speak

to, and is very rare. Even the most grisly caricature of a selfish libertarian would have to admit that she could only get rich by trading with others.

The core of libertarianism is the belief that people can only prosper by cooperating peacefully with each other, socially, economically and spiritually. Individualism, yes – the interests of individual humans should always be our ultimate concern. But atomism, the idea that men are islands? No. Sam Bowman is an Irish libertarian who works as Policy Director at the Adam Smith Institute, a thinktank based in London. The institute can be found online at http://www.adamsmith.org.

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Tuesday 2nd October 2012

19

Editorial Vote No

T Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

rinity News is advocating a No vote in the referendum on disaffiliation from the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), the polling for which takes place until Thursday in locations around College. This article will seek to outline the case for remaining affiliated to the national students’ union, as this paper sees them.

It is worth acknowledging that the USI has serious flaws. It has consistently been overly-bureaucratic - eschewing democratic organisation in favour of empowering a group of officers who have often been out of college for years. (Although, as our lead story shows, they are making some effort to remedy this.) It remains a stomping ground for would-be politicians on the make’, whose designs on a career in professional politics colour their activities, making them unlikely to really challenge the political establishment they hope one day to join.

In the twenty years between 1995 and 2015 fees for higher-level will have increased 1,579%. From an adjusted figure of a shade under €190 in 1995 to €3,000 in three years time. Our fees, at the moment, are the second highest in the EU and they stand to rise substantially. During this period of exponential increase in the cost of education the USI has consistently failed to do what

is required of it: draw a line in the sand. Instead of a firm decision to resist the hikes, like those taken by successful student movements in Quebec and Chile recently, the USI has met annual increases in fees and cuts to grants with grudging acceptance.

But the Yes side of this campaign does not provide an alternative to this. It does not offer a concrete proposal on the formation of an alternative national students’ union. It has no coherent answer to how the already-busy sabbatical officers of the Students’ Union in Trinity are to achieve national representation for the college.

If the USI levy is withdrawn, in the present climate, it is highly unlikely that College would sanction its value being redirected to hire a full-time lobbyist on behalf of TCDSU. And, even if it was, who would they meet? Probably only the TDs in the College’s local constituency. If TDs and Senators are given a choice between meeting a representative of a national students’ union with hundreds of thousands of members from all across the country and one from Trinity College they will chose the former every time.

In reality this campaign is an ideological proxy for battles being waged on a much larger scale in Irish society. The Yes side will find that

their reasoning achieves greatest purchase amongst those enamoured with the free-market.

If you support pay-for-service arguments and believe that Irish higher education would be better suited by students paying higher fees then voting yes makes sense. If you are opposed to unions in principle then the same standard applies.

But if you oppose rises in fees and cuts to the grant, as every poll conducted in the College in recent years has indicated Trinity students do, then it is clear that only the USI has the capacity to execute a strategy aimed at meeting those ends on a national level.

There is a very real risk that, if we vote Yes, Trinity will be left without national representation.

This campaign, billed as an issue for Trinity students, has also become a proxy battle between two other organisations: the USI itself and Young Fine Gael. The USI’s ability to organise, co-ordinate campaign material and fill campus on polling week with members of officer-board gives it an unfair advantage.

But the Yes side being so overwhelmingly made up by members of Young Fine Gael should be treated with suspicion by students, too. This is a party that, in government, has inflicted hardship on many students and forced many others

out of education altogether. It stands to benefit from a weak and atomised student movement that offers little resistance. Here its youth wing is co-ordinating a campaign that, if successful, would see one of Ireland’s largest colleges vote to leave the national students’ union just before the budget.

This confluence of interests should alarm those heading to the polls.

The student movement needs to grow in strength rapidly if it is to combat further fee increases and cuts to the grant. The current trajectory of Irish higher education - with the introduction of private finance schemes without government guarantees or assistance - is towards the American model of ballooning debts and narrowing access to education.

The USI is an imperfect union, but it is the only means available to students to fight the battles they need to win in the coming years.

In February I wrote an article for the other college newspaper which asked those in favour of disaffiliation a simple question: then what? The Yes campaign has not provided a good answer, and certainly not one that satisfies widespread opposition to fee increases. As a result, this disaffiliation referendum is a no-brainer: vote No.

USI campaign?

What USI campaign?

Elaine McCahill Editor-at-Large Walking through the Arts Building and Hamilton Building, one would be hard pressed to find any campaign presence on either side. Even online, it is dismal. Nowadays, social media tends to be at the centre of campaigning; it’s not difficult to clog Trinity students’ Facebook timelines and Twitter feeds with links to articles, pictures and Twibbons. The means to spam us are endless, and yet … nada.

At the time of writing, some campaign managers are yet to add a Twibbon to their profile pictures or to change their cover photo to their respective campaign image. Even the USI’s Twitter feed is grim.

One Instagrammed picture of a campaign poster is not really going to convince thousands of students to vote. If even those who are supposed to be leading the campaigns are apathetic and scarcely present around campus and online, then how are students supposed to be convinced to actually vote?

And, if they do, how are they supposed to be informed?

Where has it all gone wrong? Is it mass disillusionment among students, or wil-

be a greater chance that the USI, with its superior organisational capacity and ability to get out the vote, will carry the day.

A number of articles on the subject have been published by Trinity News and The University Times, but their reach is relatively limited. The University Times have cancelled their referendum issue and Trinity News is not running a supplement. Unfortunately, there is still a relatively large number of students who do not read the publications that we produce on a fortnightly basis or the articles we post online. It is unfortunate, but true.

Most students would probably only recognise the newspapers at a push and probably could not tell you who the editors were. On the other hand, they definitely know who the ents officer is or who runs the ski trip. Not to say that those elements of university life are not incredibly important, but over the last year or two the idea of “student slacktivism” is one that has been discussed at length. It was the subject of articles last year when it came to Students’ Union elections or the student march against the increase in fees. It is only a relatively recent phenomenon that students have become less active, especially when one makes comparisons to the changes

always been OK for us, and to an extent it is still OK now. But what about those for whom it is not, or those emigrating? What about our younger siblings, or, way off in the future, our own children and their education?

The decisions we make now will affect them.

This referendum decision may well change the face of College, and the apathy that the student body has towards the future of our university is just so frustrating. Where are all the campaigners? Where are all the students who care enough about one side or the other of the argument to give up their free time to hand out information leaflets, to try and talk to other students about what it’s all about?

In my opinion, disaffiliation is just a bad idea and referendums like this take away from more pressing issues closer to home. We should be campaigning for better library opening hours, proper functioning toilet facilities for the meagre 24-hour library space, Christmas exams for the unfortunate science students who have up to 12 exams at the end of the year, a functioning WebCT or Blackboard system, an internet service that can connect to our smartphones and tablets, improved access to healthcare and being informed of our modules and timetables

Cartoon Editorial: Manus Lenihan

It is a big issue and, if it is not continuously brought to the attention of students and the voter turn-out is kept fairly low, then there may be a greater chance that the USI, with its superior organisational capacity and ability to get out the vote, will carry the day.

The truth

W Hannah Cogan Public Editor

e’ve known about the Hillsborough disaster for quite some time. We’ve known how 96 men, women and children were killed in the chaos and crushed by panicked supporters. But we’ve never known what came next; how unforgivable lies about the behaviour of Liverpool fans came to be spread (and recycled) by national newspapers, and whether there was a systematic, collaborative cover-up instigated by police, Yorkshire emergency services and local politicians, as many of the victim’s families allege.

The role of newspapers in the tragedy is particularly provocative. Lawyers acting for Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editorin-chief of the Sun, have written to South Yorkshire Police seeking an apology for the circumstances that have led to his “personal vilification for decades”.

Writing in the Spectator last week, MacKenzie spoke out for the first time in detail about his fateful decision to print the now infamous “THE TRUTH” headline in the redtop the day after the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. “I was by no means the only man in Fleet Street who believed the police’s story,” Mackenzie writes, and then cites some examples: the Daily Star headline on the same day said: “Dead fans robbed by drunk fans”; the Daily Mail said: “They were drunk and violent and their actions were vile”; the Daily Express said: “Police saw sick spectacle of pilfering from the dying”. In fact, Mackenzie himself has offered “profuse apologies” for the front page.

The terms of the apology are to be debated, but MacKenzie tells of police patrols being increased around his house and the physical danger he faces in the city of Liverpool. Kelvin admits that he was wrong: “… but the people who have got away scot-free are South Yorkshire Police.” He is seeking an apology for “the lies

their officers told”. His excuse is, at best, tentative: “Liverpool fans didn’t turn on other media, only the Sun. That has always puzzled me. Was it picked out because the paper had always backed Thatcher, while the city had always been pro-Labour?”

There were thousands of proThatcher Suns being sold in Merseyside before the boycott, so that’s probably not the answer.

By April 1989, when the Hillsborough disaster occurred, MacKenzie was at the zenith of his powers as a salesman and spin doctor. It is noticeable that in his Spectator article he makes no mention of Harry Arnold, the reporter who was given the Whites news agency copy and assigned to write the article. Yet Arnold’s recent BBC interview was very revealing. He said he wrote the story in a “fair and balanced way” because he understood that he was dealing with allegations. He explained he was about to leave the newsroom when he saw MacKenzie drawing up the front page. He continued: “When I saw the headline, I was aghast, because that wasn’t what I’d written. I’d never used the words the truth …

So I said to Kelvin MacKenzie, You can’t say that.’ And he said Why not?’ and I said, Because we don’t know that it’s the truth.’ This is a version of the truth’.” Britain’s best-selling daily, with a claimed readership at the time of 12 million, had tipped over from being amusingly anti-establishment into being irresponsible. For all the faults and right-wing politics of the Mail and the Star, they were not as successful as the Sun, not so in-your-face; and none of them had dared to publish a front page conclusively saying “THE TRUTH”.

Our world is better wired for transparency than Yorkshire in the 1980s. If such an incident happened today, it would be nearly impossible to

cover up, particularly given a growing distrust of government statements and police departments generally. The monopoly on the state of reaction in the hours immediately following a major disaster has shattered; with a phone or camera in every pocket, eyewitness accounts can stand against police testimony. Think of the role mobile phones played in 9/11: the precise circumstances of such a tragedy are permanently etched in public consciousness, and remain the most authoritative account of precisely what happened aboard each plane.

As the world gets more and more connected, we seem more

and more willing to accept that there are always multiple versions of the truth, generally all with a grain of accuracy covering several sides of a highly emotive story. Allegations and imperfect material are par for the course in journalism; by definition, we don’t know the facts that we don’t know or don’t have access to. Our sources are imperfect and our bias in outlook, in sources, in the choice of story itself will shine through. Those who want to bring you an interesting, controversial story are worth listening to; just beware of anyone who claims the absolute truth.

ful ignorance? Do we prefer to pretend it is not happening? Or is it just hard to be a motivated campaigner when nobody appears to care? If, as soon as you hand someone a pamphlet, it drops to the ground a few steps away without even being glanced at, it is bound to be demoralising.

Another reason for this USI referendum campaign being a bit lacklustre is because it is being held during the first week of term. Nearly everyone is still nursing hangovers, either mental or physical, from Freshers’ Week. Junior freshmen are clogging the Arts Building, trying to out-dress each other while catching the eye of whomever they snogged last week. It is just not conducive to successful campaigning.

If I were being cynical, there might be another reason as to why campaigning is so thin on the ground. It is a big issue and, if it is not continuously brought to the attention of students and the voter turn-out is kept fairly low, then there may

that students since the 60s have pushed for.

Before, one might argue that students were campaigning for a better world, a better life for themselves and their families in the future; they campaigned against the injustices in their lives and throughout the wider world.

However, this generation grew up in a world with the victories our parents won. Jobs were plentiful, people had disposable income and took holidays, good education and healthcare were abundant and most never really wanted for anything. Then it all collapsed around our perfectly coiffed tiger-cub little heads.

Now we need to learn how to care again.

It would not be a stretch to claim that many of us still believe that it’ll all be alright in the end, that they won’t really raise fees so much that we can’t afford to go to college, or cut the grant to the extent that students will need to get huge loans in order to complete their degrees. It has

at least two weeks before we return to College.

There are multiple issues to be dealt with and none of them are being actively addressed by the student populace. Instead, year in, year out, we have an absent union which talks shop about these issues with no results. We need the USI to campaign for us nationally so that the Students’ Union can give its primary focus to current problems within Trinity. And why is there not more debate about the administration funnelling its energies into a global relations strategy, spending more and time and money trying to entice foreign students rather than focusing on the basic needs of its current students?

There are more important issues to debate about and campaign about. The present referendum not only distracts from them, but could greatly affect our abilities to campaign for them further down the line.

Trinity News

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

20

Science

Science in Brief Stephen Keane

CRANN keeps beer bubbling

Researchers at Trinity’s Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN) have joined forces with brewers SABMiller to use new nanomaterials to better store beer. The research led by Professor of Chemical Physics Jonathan Coleman and his group will be looking for a new material to add to plastic bot-

tles that will keep beer stored in them bubbling. The hope is that an improved plastic will be able to keep oxygen and carbon dioxide from permeating the bottle and making the beer lose its fizz. An improved bottle will lead to a longer shelf life which is beneficial both in production costs and environmental impact.

Coyotes Lovely

Puffins in peril The last seven years have seen a major decline in puffin stocks over vast stretches of Iceland, culminating in a collapse in 2011.

T Gavin Kenny Contributor

The Westman Islands (Vestmannaeyjar) located off the south coast of Iceland have a number of claims to fame. In addition to including one of Earth’s youngest islands – Surtsey, which will celebrate only its 50th birthday in 2013 – the archipelago was also the scene of a dramatic eruption in 1973 which saw a previously nonexistent volcano, which now stands at an elevation of 200m, spew out enormous volumes of lava to destroy about 400 homes and ultimately add approximately 2.5km2 to the area of Heimaey, the largest and only inhabited island of the group.

However, this summer the islands lacked what is usually their single greatest piece of tourist bait: Iceland’s iconic puffins, which regularly flock to the islands’ black volcanic cliffs in their millions. So why the decline?

The cause appears to be common knowledge among Icelanders, as sand eels, the principal food source for pufflings, are in drastically short supply as a result of shifting ocean currents in the north Atlantic Ocean. Sand eels, despite their name, are not eels but slim, silvery little fish which commonly inhabit the sea floor, and are perhaps best known for hanging from colourful puffin

bills on the front of postcards.

The course of action to be taken in order to rejuvenate puffin numbers, on the other hand, is a more divisive issue. In June 2011 the environmental and planning council of the Westman Islands banned puffin hunting, an enterprise woven into the fabric of everyday life on the islands, on a short term basis, apparently to the general understanding of the islanders. Since early this year, however, the government has been working towards a countrywide ban, which many worry will never be revoked.

This August, I found myself making the 45-minute ferry trip out to the Westman Islands, flicking through my trusty Lonely Planet and learning about the ancient art of sprangan, or cliff-swinging, apparently “an essential skill for egg-collectors and puffin-hunters”.

However, on reaching the islands, the cliffs were bare of man and almost as bare of puffin. I would soon learn of the current hunting ban from locals. Throughout the summer breeding season, the Westman Islands are home to the world’s largest puffin colony with approximately 800,000 couples, but in 2011 only one-fifth of these laid eggs. Although early reports this summer indicated

that about half of the islands’ stock appeared to have laid, this figure is far from comfortable.

In east Iceland, such as on the island of Papey where puffin stocks were thought to be somewhat healthier, the figure this year was preliminarily reported as being as high as 75%. By late July, half of the chicks had died and the outlook for the remainder was grim.

The acute shortage of sand eels, the single most suitable foodstuff for young puffins, in the waters off south and west Iceland has been attributed to shifting ocean currents.

Water temperatures have been rising rapidly since 1996, and the most popular theory purports that this is drawing vast schools of mackerel into Icelandic waters where they feed on both sand eels themselves and on plankton, the sand eels’ food supply. Alternatively, the warmer water may simply be intrinsically poorer in plankton resulting in fewer sand eels.

Héðinn Valdimarsson of Iceland’s Marine Research Institute has noted that the region is probably experiencing a natural temperature fluctuation reminiscent of the period of warmth between 1925 and 1964. In the north, the ocean temperature has not climbed as

significantly as in the south and west and, consequently, puffin stocks appear to remain in good condition.

In August, three avid puffin hunters from the Westman Islands, determined to catch some birds for their annual celebration in autumn, travelled as far as the island of Grímsey in the Arctic Circle off the north coast of Iceland.

However, the countrywide ban being proposed by the minister for the environment and natural resources, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, would criminalise hunting in areas that apparently support healthy populations.

Bodies such as the Farmers’ Association of Iceland fear that the amendment will never be revoked. Their representative to the government task force, Guðbjörg Helga Jóhannesdóttir, maintains: “There is nothing that indicates that traditional exploration jeopardizes the existence of the bird stocks in question; lack of food is the main reason.”

This view is shared by most scientists and lay people alike; yet, if the puffin – much more than simply an icon of Iceland, but a major tourist draw and a food supply for the Westman Islands – is to reverse its currently dire situation then major concessions will have to be made.

“

However, this summer the islands lacked what is usually their single greatest piece of tourist bait: Iceland’s iconic puffins flocking to the islands’ black volcanic cliffs in their millions.

A new study from the Ohio State University in the US has shown that coyotes living in urban areas are completely monogamous. The findings come on the back of six years of study into coyotes in Chicago.

Scientists were shocked by the discovery as they had expected the abundance of resources in urban environments to lead to

increased philandering. They now believe that females in cities are able to produce larger litters, which require greater help from the male in raising.

There was also evidence of couples becoming inseparable during the period between litters, staying together until one of the partners died, sometimes up to ten years later.

Early microbes beget the world Findings from the University of Washington announced recently show that life on land may have begun earlier than expected. Analysis of data from several studies over the past few decades has shown that microbial life was widespread across the planet several million years earlier than previously thought.

These microbes were busy eating away at continental rock releasing much of the oxygen into the atmosphere which later allowed other life forms to flourish. The evidence for this early life comes from deposits of sulphur and molybdenum found in the sea which had been released from bedrock by early microbes.

Salamander research grows legs

NFC: The next step in connectivity Although not for consumption with Apple, Jawad Anjum explains how NFC is the product of the future

N Jawad A. Anjum Contributor

ear-field communication (NFC) is a set of standards for radio communication between two devices. It isn’t anything revolutionary – in fact, the basic technology has been around since 1983 – so, why the big furore over it now?

2004 was the gamechanging year when Nokia, Philips and Sony formed the NFC Forum, which opened the way for thousands of other NFC-related enterprises to emerge. Recently, NFC has been hitting the headlines because Apple has excluded it from its iPhone 5 upgrades.

Will Strauss, an analyst for research firm Forward Concepts, was quoted in the New York Times as stating: “Clearly, Apple chose beauty over functionality …”

Apart from this, you may have seen, in Insomnia cafes around Dublin, something called a “Zapa Tag” in lieu of a loyalty card. This is a major advantage of NFC: your smartphone can connect with “tags”,

or unpowered devices, which is useful at cash registers, information points, tollbooths and so on. For NFC to work, your phone has to be at a distance of 4cm or less from the second device or tag.

The much anticipated “Google Wallet” has been by far the most publicised of all NFC applications. The idea is that there will be no more credit cards; you simply enter a pin number into your phone and tap the phone against the tag at the checkout for payment.

When money gets involved in anything, so does security, and as with anything involving online payment a certain amount of faith is required, mainly that Google will keep your financial data secure on their own servers. As hacking group Anonymous has shown us over and over again, nothing online is 100% secure, but this has always been the case and it hasn’t hindered progress in this arena in any significant manner.

Hold on. Doesn’t

Bluetooth already do everything NFC does? Yes, yes it does, and it has done so prolifically for quite some time.

However, though NFC is slower, it consumes far less power, reduces rick of interference, doesn’t need pairing and establishes connections quicker without having to deal with finicky passcodes, not to mention that it works with unpowered devices. Checkmate.

The long-term vision of proponents is that you will use your smartphone to start your car, lock your house, pay for goods, open staff-only doors at work, log in to your computer and much more. It looks set to overtake Bluetooth and all competing standards in a big way. Once the keystone issue of security is overcome, there are very few limits on what can be achieved if this technology is employed in an efficient and innovative manner, with those limits now left to the exploration of programmers and developers.

“

NFC establishes connection quicker than Bluetooth, without having to deal with finicky passcodes, not to mention working with unpowered devices. Checkmate.

New research by the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California has shed new light on how salamanders regrow limbs. The research has shown that aside from the genes required to begin tissue regeneration, another process is required to prevent other gene activities from hindering the growth. This is carried out by two proteins which switch

off the other activities while growth is in progress. Salamanders are known for their ability to regrow missing eyes or even pieces of their brain.

Understanding how this process works could have many applications in treating human illnesses down the line, but the current goal is to first understand tissue regeneration at a molecular level.

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

Trinity News

Sport

Photo: George Voronov

Interview: Tomás Corrigan Sarah Burns interviews current Gaelic football captain and Fermanagh corner-forward Tomás Corrigan.

T Sarah Burns Sports Editor

rinity never had much of a reputation for GAA successes, and in particular not in Gaelic football. The GAA ban on foreign games, which was still in effect up until 1970, initially limited the sport’s development within the college. This was tied in with the fact that Catholics were still restricted from attending Trinity by the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, until his death in 1973. Now all that has changed; Trinity GAA is one of the largest societies in the college, consisting of five clubs, most notably a senior men’s Gaelic football team who kick off their season against St Mary’s University College, Belfast, in two weeks’ time.

Over the past number of years Gaelic football has gone from strength to strength within the college, with the men’s senior team winning the Trench Cup last year while also boasting a number of county players, including the current captain, Tomás Corrigan, who plays corner-forward for Fermanagh. Corrigan, a senior sophister law student, broke into the county squad in 2011 and put in impressive performances against the likes of Limerick and Wicklow in Division Four of this year’s Allianz League.

Corrigan, originally from Enniskillen, understands the deficient GAA tradition within Trinity, but points out that the club is currently expanding. “Obviously, Trinity is not well known for its GAA tradition, if you like,” he says. “But the people who are involved in the GAA clubs in Trinity are just amazing. Every club has brilliant people who are just doing so much work, organising buses and trips and nights out and things like that. Tradition-wise, the reputation of a college team always depends really on how the men’s football team do. It’s the same in DCU, it’s the same in every college.

So last year winning the Trench Cup and the league brought good publicity, we got a bit of

recognition. This year we’re in the Sigerson Cup, which is the main competition for college GAA, so we’ll be hoping to give a good account of ourselves.”

While playing for your county is every Gaelic player’s dream, Corrigan reveals he’s had more enjoyment playing for college rather than county. “Playing with Trinity, it’s been the best experience playing football I’ve ever had.

You see the lads every day.

You’re going to parties with them. You just have a great bond with the lads playing in college. And it’s the same for my friends from Queen’s, Belfast or Jordanstown [University of Ulster]. They love playing with their colleges. With Fermanagh there’s a bit more pressure and it’s more intense.”

While Trinity might not brag the same Gaelic football successes as rivals UCD or DCU, the same can be said for Fermanagh who have yet to win either a provincial or All-Ireland title. Their greatest and most recent achievement was to reach the semi-final of the Championship in 2004, forcing a replay against Mayo, who went on to play Kerry in the final. Corrigan explains: “I suppose a lot of people in Fermanagh are living off the success of the 2004 team that got to the All-Ireland semi-final. It would be nice to relive those glory days but the holy grail in Fermanagh is the Ulster championship. We’re the only county in Ulster not to have won our championship, so that’s a big monkey which would be great to get off our backs.”

However, similar to Trinity, the team has begun to show promise, with promotion to Division Three in the Allianz League, as well as attracting former Tyrone player and six-time GAA All-Star Peter Canavan on board as manager.

Canavan, who won two All-Ireland Championship medals and four provincial titles, took over the side in November 2011 from John O’Neill.

Corrigan notes how, initially, “there was a lot of controversy over some of the players who wouldn’t play for the new manager, there was a lot of media attention, bad media attention surrounding the team. However, overall I was delighted with Peter. He’s a superb manager, he was a superb player. I don’t know what it is about past players when they’re managing, you always feel you want to impress them.

And especially with Peter being a corner-forward and me playing in that position as well. I was always keen to impress him because he’s been there and scored the points.”

While Fermanagh had an impressive league campaign, reaching the final of Division Four this year, the same cannot be said for either their Ulster or All-Ireland championship efforts, as they lost to Down and then got beaten by Cavan when they tried to come through by the back door. Corrigan looks back on the Down game in particular with dissatisfaction.

“Against Down in the Championship we were awful.

But we were very unlucky to get a man sent off after eight minutes which basically cost us the game. Actually the guy who got sent off punched Conor Laverty, our [Trinity’s] GAA development officer in the stomach. A very light punch if I may add.”

Laverty, who picked up the Monthly Merit Award for June from the Ulster GAA Writers’ Association this year, became the college’s GAA development officer in 2011.

Laverty has been involved with the Down panel for nearly seven years, coming to prominence within the side for the last three seasons. “Conor went down as if he was shot by an AK47 but that’s neither here nor there,” Corrigan laughs.

“He was seen and it was a sending off. Few refereeing decisions went our way that day. I’m not making any excuses, Down

“

The hype?

“It’s fine, once I don’t buy into it.

It’s easy to start reading it and thinking you’re great.”

were the better team.”

Despite the disappointing championship performances, Donegal’s victory over Mayo in the All-Ireland final over a week ago provides hope and optimism for smaller counties such as Fermanagh. Corrigan, who was a spectator at the match, explains: “Donegal were previously getting beaten in the first game of the Ulster championship and then in the first game of the qualifiers. I think two years in a row that happened. And then Jim McGuinness came in and basically transformed them, got them in the right mindset. They wanted to work, they were motivated.

They just all had this one desire to win for their county and it proves exactly that you don’t need 20 Colm Coopers or Bernard Brogans. You just need everyone pulling in the right direction.”

While only twelve months ago Donegal were criticised for their defensive style of play, in particular in their AllIreland semi-final against Dublin, Corrigan is more interested and impressed in the physical shape of the Donegal players rather than their style.

“Those lads I’d say parked their lives for two years at least to get themselves to that shape. They were in the best shape I’ve ever seen any Gaelic footballers. And you don’t get in that shape unless you just devote your life to football and put everything on hold.” That their next-door neighbours have won a first All-Ireland title in 20 years will surely be a motivation for Fermanagh’s squad when they knuckle down to pre-season training next spring.

A tragedy haunting the team will be another motivating factor. Less than three weeks ago, Fermanagh’s Brian Óg Maguire died following an industrial accident at the for-

mer Quinn Group premises.

The 24-year-old half-forward had been part of the senior squad for the past three years and also captained his club, Lisnaskea Emmetts, to victory in the All-Ireland Intermediate Football Championship in 2011.

“He was my roommate for all the away games in the league this year so I got to know him pretty well,” says Corrigan. “I was just in shock when I heard the news. Everyone is still in shock. It’s just awful. We owe it to ourselves and Brian Óg to train as hard as we can this year because he was always great at training and put everything into football. So I think it would be fantastic for his family and Brian Óg himself if we could win an Ulster championship in his honour.

It would actually be incredible.

He’s a massive loss to the team in terms of his ability because he was a fantastic player. We’ll have him in the back of our minds in training sessions this year when it’s tough. You know if we’re thinking training is tough, it’s tough for his family who’ve lost their brother and son.”

Fermanagh will kick off their 2013 season in Division Three of the Allianz League next February, coming up against neighbours Monaghan and Cavan as well as Sligo, Meath and Wicklow.

However, for the next few weeks Corrigan’s thoughts lie here in Trinity with the season kicking off in two weeks.

“We have the league which is called the Ryan Cup and we are playing against all the Belfast teams – St Mary’s, Jordanstown and Queen’s – which will be very tough because they all have rich traditions of performing well, so we’ll definitely be up against it. We’re hoping to take a few people by surprise because you know they’ll not be expecting too much from Trin-

ity. We’ll be hoping to get a few wins.”

Aside from the league, the team will also be playing in the Sigerson Cup, having been promoted from the Trench Cup which they won last season. The Sigerson Cup, set up in 1911 by Dr George Sigerson, is one of the most competitive competitions in college Gaelic football.

“I suppose it all depends on the draw,” Corrigan explains. “We’ll be hoping to get maybe a nice draw. You know, not one of the bigger teams like DCU or Jordanstown – the top teams. We’ll just be hoping to do as best we can.” DCU picked up their third Sigerson Cup title in seven years last year after a comfortable win over NUI Maynooth.

Looking back on the recent All-Ireland football final, there are few who would have predicted it to be an Ulster-Connacht encounter. Probably fewer would have anticipated a Donegal-Mayo final despite both counties reaching the semi-finals of the All-Ireland last year. The fact that a county such as Donegal, with nowhere near the same Gaelic football tradition or facilities as say Kerry and Dublin highlights exactly what can be achieved with hard work and determination. Donegal were a side that only a few seasons ago were barely ranked yet beat heavyweights Kerry and Cork en route to their 2-11 to 0-13 victory over Mayo.

Their All-Ireland achievement will not only act as an example for Fermanagh, a county craving some silverware, but also Trinity College, a university that may not have a decorated history of GAA successes but instead consists of players such as Corrigan, who are committed and enthusiastic about the side’s chances this year.

Trinity News

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

23

Sport

The Real McCaw The openside flanker, saviour of his nation, closes the chapter on one phase of his career, but after Richie McCaw takes a sabbatical, he is set to rise again

L Kate Rowan Contributor

Babe Ruth trumps Barry Bonds in public affection, if not in statistical production

Babe I’m gonna leave you: the ruthless Barry Bonds James Hussey charts the course of star-cross’d sluggers George Herman Ruth Jr (“Babe” Ruth) and Barry Bonds

I James Hussey Deputy Sports Editor

n the grand narrative of modern American life, there are few truly transcendent figures for a faltering superpower to cling to. Americans, according to Barack Obama, still believe in a United States where anything is possible; they just don’t think their leaders do.

Since the roaring twenties, the fickle public of the US have maintained an unwavering love for their last great romantic pursuit. It is a discipline that transcends the field it is played in, the equipment it uses and the sabermetric quantities that define it; a sport that lives ethereally in a realm beyond the mere physicality of its material existence; a game that, like the transcontinental railways of the 19th century, entrances and engulfs but continues, on a higher plane, towards its destination.

Never mind what the critics say about New England’s transcendentalism, Walt Whitman’s poetic vision and Song of Myself, or even the dialectic tensions of Hawthorne. The US’s great romance is, and has been for a century and a half, the game of baseball.

This lengthy preamble and explanation of baseball’s position in society is as pertinent today as ever. The annual election of retired players to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is an often-problematic process, with popularity sometimes overshadowing the true quality of the athlete regarded as worthy for induction. The 21st century will represent a new obstacle for the Otsego Countybased baseball temple as the white whale-sized problem of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) lurks eerily beneath the surface of the great American pastime.

There are few sports that can look up to one defining figure for the genesis of the modern game. George Herman Ruth Jr, later known as “Babe” Ruth, was the first true American sporting celebrity. A larger-than-life personality with talent to burn, the “Bambino” revolutionised sport in a way unique to his era, fitting seamlessly into the wild, hedonistic rush of the roaring twenties. To call Babe Ruth a sacred cow is to underestimate his appeal, his statistics and his charisma. For many, Ruth was, is and forever shall be baseball.

Forward 40 years.

Henry “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron broke the Babe’s home run record in 1974. Finishing

the 1973 season one home run short of Ruth’s 714 career number, the unassuming Alabama native received death threats and vitriolic hate mail throughout the winter break before he returned to overhaul the sacrosanct achievement. The picture of Aaron running the basepaths was best described by the legendary Dodgers commentator Vin Scully in his game commentary: “What a marvellous moment for baseball; what a marvellous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvellous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the deep south for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us.”

Hank Aaron’s recordbreaking numbers and consistently outstanding hitting made him a first ballot Hall of Fame member (elected in his first year of eligibility) in 1982, where he received the second highest number of votes in the history of Cooperstown.

Why do the ghost of Babe Ruth and the shadow of Hank Aaron stand so imposingly on baseball in the second decade of the new millennium? In a recent interview, Barry Bonds, a player so mired in controversy that he has become known in media circles as the “poster child of PEDs”, declared that “without a doubt, [there’s] not a doubt in [his] mind” that he belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Bonds should be a success story, a man who defied every expectation and every natural boundary of age to reach the pinnacle of his sport.

In 1998, at the age of 33, Bonds slugged 37 home runs, batted in 122 runs and hit a solid .303 batting average. Three seasons later, the US was in the centre of Barry Bonds-mania. On the way to collecting the mostvaluable-player award for the fourth time, Bonds hit a record 73 home runs, a figure made more astonishing by the fact that he had never broken the 50 home runs in a season barrier in his career.

Bonds drew continuous rumours of PED abuse in the late 90s and early in the 21st century. There is tragedy at Shakespearean levels in Bonds’s story (although he has never admitted taking performance enhancing supplements, Bonds was found guilty of obstruction of justice, and his case is currently under appeal) and it is not a stretch to

say that public opinion of him is harshly critical. Despite recording some of the greatest results in baseball history, the tainting of his character is too much for many to bear. There is, before any potential Hall of Fame voting, an asterisk on his career. Innocent until proven guilty may be the public mantra, but proof beyond reasonable doubt that Bonds did not cheat is what most are searching for.

The ill-will felt towards Bonds is breathtaking, and this is irrevocably linked with the status of the great Bambino. Ruth, sui generis, was gregarious in interviews, lived like a star, trained intermittently and still walloped the ball further than anybody else.

Bonds, on the other hand, was reserved and cool with reporters, less open than his famous predecessor. It was said that Ruth loved the people, and the people loved him back. Bonds represents the individual in American society as it has become throughout the latter half of the 20th century, more Dirty Harry than Louis Armstrong.

When Bonds passed Ruth’s record, he commented that he should no longer have to hear the name of the Bambino following him around the country. For the baseball fan, it is sad that Bonds wished to distance himself from the “sultan of swat”, isolating himself from a sport so interested and enriched in its own history.

In 2013, Barry Bonds will be eligible for the Hall of Fame vote (having been retired for five years). Already some voters have voiced their unwillingness to elect anyone caught up in the PEDs scandal. Commentators have observed that it might be media hatred, and not suspicion of drug use, that keeps Bonds out of Cooperstown.

His statistics make Bonds a no-brainer for induction, but it is the contempt with which he is held in many baseball circles that muddies the waters of his Hall of Fame question. In an age where batters and pitchers have been suspended, subpoenaed and dragged over the coals for confessions of cheating, the former San Francisco Giants player simply will not confess to any wrongdoing. It is his eternal link with the (doubtlessly romanticised) players of the past that makes Barry Bonds’s place in the great American epic a particularly interesting one. If he is inducted into the

hall, there will still be suspicion, unhappiness and media contention about his presence amongst the greats.

Bonds may be entirely innocent in the story, and his super-productive final years in baseball the mere culmination of hard work and training coupled with better conditions and determination. For Bonds however, in the eyes of the baseball world, to insult the memory of Babe Ruth is sacrilegious.

The fact that other baseballers could deign to defeat the Bambino’s home run record is one thing.

That there may be a question of cheating on their part is entirely different. The man who beat Ruth and Aaron, in the eyes of the public, needed to be Arthurian in his purity. To pull the metaphorical sword from the stone and leapfrog such legends of the games, one needed to have the purest intentions, deference to a broader history and respect for their predecessors. Bonds did none of this. His icy manner with journalists did not enamour him to anybody; he was the king that nobody wanted.

Bonds’s career was cut short after the end of the 2007 season, with the slugger remaining unsigned after a lack of interest from other baseball organisations. The glorious celebrations and reminiscing that followed immediately after Ruth’s official retirement contrast sharply with the ignominy and ill-will towards Bonds.

Despite being the home run king, Bonds has failed to transcend American society in the way the Babe could. Both were suited to their eras: Ruth epitomised the roaring twenties; Bonds the individualistic, unceasing pursuit of greatness in a perpetually moving capitalist society.

Their records will stand, but perhaps it is pertinent to ask who will eulogise Bonds’s career in future decades, if anyone will at all. Ogden Nash’s charming alphabetical poem celebrating the greats of baseball, entitled “Line-Up for Yesterday”, features the Babe in a suitably awestruck verse of simple poetry: “R is for Ruth To tell you the truth, There’s just no more to be said, Just R is for Ruth.”

To what Barry Bonds?

Baseball’s narrative continues unrelenting; his place in Cooperstown is problematic, but represents a tiny strain in the sport’s meandering song.

ast year’s Rugby World Cupwinning New Zealand captain, Richie McCaw, tends to pop up in Irish sports pages while the All Blacks continue to uphold their unbeaten record against their Irish counterparts, and there may be brief mentions of him as New Zealand continues to add to its southern hemisphere silverware.

However, in his home country, there is not much avoiding the open-side flanker in the sports news and, indeed, in most corners of the media.

In the past week he has clocked up a few more headlines than usual, as he has announced that, with support of the New Zealand Rugby Union, the All Blacks coaching staff and his Super Rugby franchise, the Crusaders, he is to invoke a special clause in his contract that will allow him to take a sixmonth sabbatical from rugby at the end of New Zealand’s season in December.

It has openly been stated that this break is to preserve McCaw for the 2015 World Cup in England, both physically and mentally. Aged 31, the 110-cap veteran will miss much of the 2013 Super Rugby season and the three-test series in June against France, before lacing his boots back on for the climax of the Crusaders’ Super Rugby campaign and then returning into the All Blacks setup for the Rugby Championship (formerly the Tri-Nations) against Australia, South Africa and Argentina.

The agricultural-science graduate has hinted that the break is as much for his mental approach to the game as his physical, saying: “It’s when you lose that desire to get yourself over that, ready for the next week; that’s when you start to have had enough, and just to have a break here and there will remind you just how fun it is to pull on the jersey, because I still absolutely love it.”

Popular opinion in New Zealand is very supportive towards McCaw’s plan for a sabbatical, and no one seems to begrudge someone who has had such a reputation of consistent excellence for over a decade.

Many of his fellow Kiwis will always feel indebted to a man whom many regard as a vital factor in returning the Webb Ellis Cup to rugby’s spiritual home for the first time in 24 years.

Why, though, does a sportsman’s prolonged holiday deserve so many column inches and so many different views on what he should do with his time off?

An Irish friend with little interest in rugby observed that Kiwis claim the All Blacks “as their own”, like sons or brothers, and that is something you really get a sense of, whether New Zealanders themselves are conscious of it or not.

While I was visiting New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup, waiting in a postoffice queue, I overheard a conversation between two middle-aged women, the gist of it being along the lines of: “I am very surprised a boy like him is single.” The other replied:

is similar to the spirit of Gaelic games in parts of Ireland where the sports permeate all aspects of life, except that, in the case of New Zealand, the sport is professional and played on an international arena.

Fly-half Dan Carter is an obvious favourite and could probably sit as an equal to McCaw on the list of the nation’s favourite sons. If it is flamboyance you are after, though, you may choose the now-rugby league bound Sonny Bill Williams, or, if you prefer the erudite, the qualified lawyer Conrad Smith might pique your interest.

The fact that McCaw captained New Zealand to a much anticipated World Cup, and did so under not only the weight of the expectation of a nation but also virtually on one leg (as he suffered a foot injury that caused him to miss much training), adds to his status as something of a folk hero.

This injury caused quite a few jitters amongst Kiwi fans and media as, of course, the talismanic Carter had been ruled out of the tournament due to a groin injury and it seemed the loss of the captain also could be one blow too many for the host nation.

Press conferences can often be daunting places for young aspiring journalists to ask questions, but McCaw’s boy-next-door take on being a world-class captain won me over (as it has most of New Zealand) and put me at ease to ask a question that had been playing on my mind during the series.

After Ireland’s hammering in Hamilton, where some of the All Blacks’ test rugby rookies shone in the post-match press conference, I asked McCaw what he felt about his role as captain with the new caps in the squad.

The question was received with enthusiasm: “I think, when you have been around a while, you want to make the new fellas coming in feel as comfortable as possible and teach them what playing test rugby is all about. That it is different, very different from Super Rugby or anything they are used to, you have to get them up to speed as soon as possible.”

He went on to explain that, as rookie Sam Cane was a fellow openside, he would make sure to “have plenty conversations with him and you make him feel as comfortable as possible, but it is the same for me as with all the other boys coming in.” He also expounded that other established players played their part in talking to new caps who shared their position.

Finally, with a smile, he told of his satisfaction that “the new caps have gone out there looking pretty at home in the All Black jersey, and that is what you want. I have been impressed by how much they have been willing to ask and soak up.

They are just so keen, and, if they keep doing that, you have got something good to look forward to.”

It would seem this

“Sure, why not, he is still young, he has plenty of time.” The debate went on, back and forth, about the pros and cons of some young man’s relationship status; I presumed him to be a nephew or some sort of mutual acquaintance of the pair.

I was rather taken aback when this conversation turned out to be in relation to McCaw. This intimacy with the captain was rather amusing and I continued to eavesdrop.

One of the women quipped: “Sure, what do we really know, we have never even met the bloke!”

This deeply ingrained sense of family and heritage, including the importance of passing down the All Blacks traditions to grassroots level and vice versa, at first seemed unique, but the overall sense

forward-looking attitude is exactly what will be needed while McCaw takes his break from the game he loves, and it will be interesting to see how some of those such as Cane step up in his absence.

Of course, thinking of the New Zealander embarking on this new stage in his career brings our memories back to when he was one of the “new fellas” back in 2001 as a 20-year-old, and as an Irish person it is quite gratifying to think this test career began in Lansdowne Road. Here is hoping the post-sabbatical McCaw will make at least one more visit to Dublin before taking a permanent break.

TriniTy news

Tuesday 2nd October 2012

Erneside Story: Sarah Burns interviews Fermanagh and Trinity footballer Tomás Corrigan

Sport

p. 22

Photo: Peter Wolfe

Runaway Trinity pass through Blackrock

John Colthurst

I

Copy Editor

DUFC

29 - 11

BCRFC

Teamsheets DUFC 15 - Dave Fanagan 14 - Neil Hanratty 13 - Ciaran Wade 12 - Paddy Lavelle 11 - Ariel Robles 10 - David Joyce 9 - Michael McLoughlin (Capt) 1 - Ian Hirst 2 - Paddy Carroll 3 - Martin Kelly 4 - Jack Kelly 5 - Colin McDonnell 6 - Pierce Dargan 7 - Brian Du Toit 8 - Jack Dilger Replacements: 16 - Warren Larkin 17 - Tom Collis 18 - Max Waters 19 - Alan McDonald 20 - Niyi Adeolukan

BCRFC 15 - Jan Simon Byrne 14 - Mark Scott Lennon 13 - Emile Van Wyck 12 - Rob Keogh 11 - Ian Byrne 10 - David Godfrey 9 - Billy Glynn 1 - Ryan Fisher 2 - Cian Cuilleton 3 - Colin Philips 4 - Des Dillon 5 - Owen Cullen 6 - Jullian Mackey 7 - Paul Ryan 8 - Job Langbrook Replacements: 16 - David Lewis 17 - James Manion 18 - Cian Carroll 19 - Richard Liddy 20 - Michael McKeever

n the classic 1955 John Sturges B-movie, Bad Day at Black Rock, the startled station telegrapher exclaims to Spencer Tracy's protagonist: "Nobody told me this train was stopping … It's the first time the streamliner's stopped here in four years." It's been slightly longer since Dublin University Football Club were on the schedules of Division 1 of the Ulster Bank All Ireland League, and though it's been a long time coming, they showed no signs of stopping by Blackrock on Saturday.

Having been controversially relegated from the old Division 1 in the 2005-2006 season, Trinity then lingered in Division 2 limbo, finishing 6th, 12th, 5th, 9th and 10th in the following seasons. They got on the right track last season, however, winning Division 2A of the reorganized All Ireland League, losing just one game all season, building their success on the bedrock of a defence which conceded less than 10 points per game.

Over the summer they then retained their All Ireland Club Sevens title and kept chugging over in the Leinster Senior Cup, beating Division 1A side Old Belvedere 26-20 and Blackrock 26-17, losing 17-10 to last season's Division 1A runners-up Clontarf by a last-minute try before beating Greystones 32-11 to secure a place in the semi-finals for the first time in 16 years.

With such a head of steam built up, not even the concession of the first score could derail them. In terms of names, if not titles, Blackrock is one of the most renowned in Irish rugby. It has turned out players from Fergal Slattery and Willie Duggan to Brian O'Driscoll and Luke Fitzgerald.

On Saturday, former Leinster player Des Dillon, who played over 50 times for the province, was joined in the second-row by Cullen – Owen, that is – and by Paul Ryan on the flank, whose promising career with Leinster was ended by injury in 2011.

With such heritage, having been relegated from the

top tier for the first time last year, facing the newly-promoted students must have seemed like an ideal opportunity to stamp their authority on this lower ground. From the kickoff, Trinity cleared well into the wind to their 10-yard line, but from the ensuing lineout Blackrock's heavyweight pack rolled the maul one way and then another, traversing about 10 yards before Trinity conceded a penalty. David Godfrey converted from about 15 yards to the left of the posts as the gauntlet was laid down.

Blackrock kicked early and often when in possession, clearly looking to make use of both the wind and their superior lineout. Facing the spitting image of Leo Cullen in the line would throw many hookers, although the movement of lifters and jumpers also failed to find much separation.

This was one factor that figured into Trinity's allaction approach to the game.

With Trinity under the cosh in their own half, Blackrock piled in, counter-rucking, and though they drove over the ball, some were adjudged to have come in from the side.

Eschewing the sideline and the set-piece, Trinity took a quicktap, spreading the ball wide to full-back Dave Fanagan, who flicked the ball behind his back to inside-centre Paddy Lavelle on the wing and into Blackrock territory. Although he was then isolated, he did well to stand up three defenders until support came and Blackrock stragglers were penalized coming across in the next phase. Near the righthand touchline inside the Blackrock 10-yard line, Trinity fly-half David Joyce had the distance but pushed his kick to the right of the posts. This, though, would serve as both a sighter for his later attempts and a signal of Trinity's intent to keep the ball in play and at pace.

With captain Michael McLoughlin having forced a knock-on from his opposite number at the base of an otherwise ascendant Blackrock

scrum, the ball then spat out of the subsequent Trinity scrum.

Showing quick wits and feet, Joyce gathered the loose ball and kicked it well inside the Blackrock 22. Although they then won the ball in the air, they lost it when prop Ian Hirst scragged the jumper as he hit the ground and held on to the ball. Trinity took another quicktap but knocked on. McLoughlin and the back-row held up Blackrock's eightman from that scrum, and were awarded a penalty at the next scrum. They went quickly again, but perhaps pitying the students the scolding they stood to suffer from their coaches on the sidelines, the referee called them back, seemingly for not taking it from the mark. From 10 yards to the right on the Blackrock 22, Joyce leveled the scores after about 15 minutes spent in the Blackrock half.

In terms of the railway terminology running through this piece, Blackrock were running along a narrow gauge. When they did spread the ball out, Trinity's midfield defence of Joyce, Lavelle and outside centre Ciaran Wade were well-organized and the back-row of Pierce Dargan, Jack Dilger and Brian Du Toit were quicker across than the Blackrock pack, who seemed to stay close to the sidelines, waiting for the next set-piece.

If this was their party piece, the referee crashed it. In one series of scrums, they lost the toss on a wheeled scrum, drove Trinity into the ground as retaliation on the return before being penalized at the next engagement as it was reset. While Blackrock will feel hard done by in this part of the game, and it was hard to tell from further away what some of the penalties were for, seeing the Blackrock loosehead getting a grip on Martin Kelly's jaw rather than his jersey for his bind suggested these were no Holy Innocents.

From another scrum platform in the Trinity half, Blackrock worked the same blindside over and over again, until Wade interrupted pro-

ceedings with an interception.

A Blackrock player managed to get to Wade's kick ahead, but all he got for his trouble was a thumping tackle by winger Neil Hanratty, whereupon he let the ball loose again, for the other winger, Ariel Robles to swoop in and score the game's first try. From the same sort of angle as nearly all his kicks at goal, Joyce missed the conversion, this time to the left of the posts.

Having taken the lead, Trinity dropped the ball on the restart, and after more heavy hauling by Blackwork, Du Toit was penalized in front of the posts for Blackrock to close the score to 8-6. What came next was a sight to see – one older Blackrock followers might recognize from the early years of their most famous product. Following the classic outside arc of the 13, ball in two hands, loosehead prop Ian Hirst glided past the despairing grasps of the interior defence.

With the outside winger coming to meet him, he cut inside before beating the covering fullback with a dummy (to nonexistent support). Bouncing the next defender, he made it nearly half the length of the pitch to the opposition tryline. Indeed, so stunning was his run that nothing of substance kept up and he was penalized for holding on to the ball, assuredly still in two hands.

A few phases later, Dave Fanagan knocked on an up-and-under in the middle of the field. Blackrock were all over the ball, but also all over each other and the ball was passed backwards like a hot potato until it found the cool hands of Du Toit, lurking in their midst, who turned about, beat a few lingering defenders and released number 8 Dilger to run in untroubled from 40 yards. Joyce converted from that same spot, 15 to the right of the posts, and Trinity led 15-6 at half-time. It turned out that the only trouble Dilger had on his run in was from one of his own legs, as he was replaced

by Alan MacDonald.

Despite their lead,

Trinity insisted to themselves that they had to get the next score and at the next opportunity, Lavelle took on two defenders in the Blackrock midfield, releasing Du Toit rampaging inside the opposition 22.

McLoughlin then darted blind and was high-tackled in the right-hand corner, resulting in a Blackrock yellow card. This time Trinity went for touch, before working the ball over to the right of the posts. After sucking the defence in, the ball was released to the backs. One of the few remaining Blackrock defenders shooted out to Joyce's outside and he showed good composure to step back inside rather than forcing the pass. From the recycle, Trinity went left again and Wade – often switching with Joyce and appearing at first receiver to good effect – faded left before passing inside to the onrushing Pierce Dargan for another try, converted for a 22-6 lead.

When Blackrock's restart didn't go 10 yards, their outside centre kicked his own gum-shield the distance to emphasize the point and their plight. Blackrock were again penalized for wheeling at the subsequent scrum, with Du Toit again grabbing the initiative with another quick-tap, making 10 yards before Hirst, Joyce and lock Jack Kelly picked up the baton, relaying 10 yards each until Martin Kelly finished from close in and Joyce converted, the score now 29-6.

Tom Collis, Max Waters and Niyi Adeolukun then came on for prop Martin Kelly, lock Colin McDonnell, busy throughout in the engine room, and winger Neil Hanratty respectively.

From a box-kick following a Trinity lineout on their 22, cleaned up by Du Toit, Adeolukun won the bouncing ball and Trinity rumbled into the 22 of Blackrock, who were penalized for another ruck infringement. This time 15 yards to the left of the posts, Joyce's kick also stayed to the left, leaving him 4/7 for the day.

From then on Blackrock chased a consolation score and

Trinity tried to keep their opponents tryless. The Blackrock 21 (not listed) ran from 22 to 22, setting the stage for the endgame, or at least for the game to end.

Time and again Blackrock approached the Trinity line, only to be repelled by two white lines – the one on the ground and the one in their faces. When they weren't knocking on or into each other, they were being knocked back.

As the coaches repeated the mantra "white line" – or was it "wide line" – one imagined the opposition catching white line fever further and further from the tryline. Collis was penalized and sent to the sin bin in one corner after coming off his feet at a ruck, although he was pulled over the top by the opposition. Cullen made a halfbreak in the middle of the Trinity defence, but this was quickly repaired by Du Toit. At the end of the line, Adeolukun tackled his opposite man head-on, oneto-one. MacDonald, having done well to allow Trinity to clear from a retreating scrum, was then sent to the sin bin after infringing as Blackrock came back and kept coming.

Choosing to scrummage to the right of the posts, the scrumhalf broke to the blindside, fixed the last defender and fed his winger silver service in the corner, with the acute conversion missed.

The game finished 29-11, a valuable bonus-point secured and third place in the table tentatively staked out.

Next up, Trinity go to Stevenson Park to play Dungannon, who, though they lost their opening match 36-13 away to Malone, were just two points from promotion last season and have young Ulster backs Peter Nelson and Chris Cochrane to add to what will be another punishing Division 1 pack.

With five of the ten teams in the division from Ulster, such demanding away trips could come to define the season.