Trinity News Issue 4

Irish Student Newspaper of the Year 2008

BRAIN DRAIN

UNFORGETTABLE

Can young entrepreneurs save us?

Team erases memories from mice

BUSINESS 18

SCIENCE 19

Tuesday 11 November 2008

PISTE OFF Snow holidays on a shoestring budget TRAVEL 20

www.trinitynews.ie

Issue 4, Volume 55

Flyers out as SU promos slammed

€800,000 Pav plan revealed

By Naomi O’Leary

» Function room available to sports clubs » New toilet facilities to end queues » Pav may remain closed next September

By Conor James McKinney THE DUBLIN University Central Athletics Club (DUCAC) plans to begin work on a major redevelopment of the Pavilion Bar this summer. An application for planning permission was lodged late last year, and granted on February 1st 2008. Architects Arthur Gibney and Partners, of Harcourt Street, have drawn up the plans, which were approved by the College Site & Facilities Committee in November 2007.

The new Pav will be extended out on either side, such that the only outdoor seating remaining will be be at the front, to the immediate left and right of the front door. To the right of the existing building, as viewed from the front steps, will be new toilets, which should see the end of the queues that currently form for the facilities during busy periods.

To the left will be a function room, accessible through sliding doors from the main indoor seating area, which will be available for sports clubs to rent out. Both new wings will have a glass and timber frame facing the front of the building, with panelling at the rear. In all, around 89 square metres of new floor area will be added.

In another sign of College’s commitment to universal access, a lift will be installed at the north-east corner of

the building to allow wheelchair users to access the bar area. The existing concrete staircase at this point will be replaced by a more modern metal structure.

DUCAC have not been able to provide an estimate of the cost of the development Dr. Trevor West, DUCAC Chairman, said the project would be “pushed hard” as of yet. Trinity News understands from one source however that the project is expected to cost €800,000. The last major work to be carried out on the building in 1989/90 – when women’s changing rooms and other facilities were added to the ground floor – cost around £250,000. Part of the Pav’s €116,000 profit for the last financial year will be put towards the redevelopment. A further unspecified amount will be returned as usual to the main DUCAC budget to support its activities.

One matter of concern for students is that it looks likely that the Pav will be closed for part of next year, leaving Trinity with no bar on campus for that period. A DUCAC spokesperson was keen to stress that there was no desire to close the Pav on their part, since the profits made from Continued on page 2

Med Day participants were well prepared as the scene outside the Physiology building attested. Photo: Rachel Kennedy

Cancer Society get cheeky

By Deirdre Robertson College News Editor ‘CLOTHES MAKE the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society’ said Mark Twain. Yet Trinity College Cancer Society would strongly disagree with this statement as they launch their 2009 naked students calendar.

The society has warned students not to be too surprised ‘if you catch a glimpse of college studs in the nip around the Ussher library or other unexpected spots”.

The calendar is a fundraising initiative by the society who have raised over €80,000 in the past two years for cancer research. ‘Students go starkers – all in the name of charity!’ says the society of their new calendar, which will be released on 24th November.

This latest fundraising idea will see the ‘crème de la crème of Trinity hotties’ strip off in various locations around campus. Speculations are rife that the Trinity Rugby Team will be assuming ‘compromising positions’ on the college pitch but nothing has yet been confirmed.

The Trinity Cancer Society members are far from the first people to publish a naked calendar in aid of a charity. In 2007 12 students in University College Cork posed naked for a calendar sold

The November spread from UCC’s naked calendar. during their Rag Week. The students volunteered to strip off in various locations around college including the science lab, the café, a classroom and the canteen.

The photographs raised €5,000 from the 1,000 calendars bought. This influx of donations is explained by the Trinity Cancer Society’s opinion that ‘the novelty factor of seeing unsuspected people strip is a moneymaker.’

UCC’s inspiration, in turn, came from the 2003 film Calendar Girls which documented the true story of a group

of middle-aged Yorkshire women who were trying to raise money for Leukemia research. Since then, naked calendars have emerged in every aspect of society from Sligo farmers to French rugby players to the Dublin Firemen Brigade.

The Trinity Cancer Society has become one of the largest societies on campus having signed up over 1,300 members.

Alumni student Rory McGowan set up the Cancer Society in 2006 in order to raise cancer awareness throughout college and raise money for research. Trinity is the only university in Ireland that has a

Cancer Society.

Previous events organised by the society have included members running the New York Marathon, the ‘Pink Party’ run jointly with DUBES, a Buttery table quiz and the annual Daffodil Day collections in which 40 volunteers raised €10,000 selling daffodils, pins and keyrings.

This year, however, the society has planned more elaborate events. The Charity Ball on 25 November will be the first mixed Charity Ball in Trinity, a Full Moon Thai Party will include the essential glow paint and buckets and the afformentioned naked calendar promises to ‘get your blood boiling on those nippy Winter evenings’.

According to the society, the calendar will ‘celebrate the beauty of the naked body’. Society members described it as the ‘first annual Trinity College Cancer Soceity calendar’ suggesting that this is an event students can look forward to every year.

Claire Duffy, Marie Claire Collins and Suzanne Gaffey pointed out that students who pay €6.99 for photographs of their naked peers will not only gain ‘a feast for the eyes but (will) also be supporting an extremely worthy cause’. ‘Think Calendar Girls meets the Full Monty but with an added twist, naked people you know!’

JUNIOR DEAN Emma Stokes has sent an email warning students not to distribute promotional material within college as it constitutes “littering”.

Ms. Stokes noted that many flyers advertise “cheap alcohol”. This warning has particular resonance following much negative portrayal of Trinity students in the media. An Independent Complaints Panel decision in April upheld that Student Union promotions on campus encouraged excessive drinking. The Panel ruled that the Student Union promotions were in breach of the Mature Enjoyment of Alcohol Society (MEAS) Code of Practice on the Naming, Packaging and Promotion of Alcoholic Drinks.

Anonymous members of the public had made complaints about promotion for the “ENTS Christmas Party” and “Twisted Tuesdays”. The ‘Ents Christmas Party’ was held at the Purty Kitchen in Temple Bar and was promoted by posters advertising ‘mulled wine, Santa’s helpers with vodka supersoakers! €2 drinks!’. The Panel concluded that this was a drinking game, likely to encourage excessive drinking. In the case of the SU event ‘Twisted Tuesday’ held at Citibar, the Panel considered the use of the term ‘twisted’ and the student market at which it was aimed. It ruled that the phrasing encouraged excessive drinking. Citibar said that the event was run by the SU and when a complaint was made, every action was taken to pull all promotional ‘Twisted Tuesday’ material. Alcohol watchdog MEAS has asserted that Licencees Citibar and the Purty Kitchen are responsible for their promotions, even when those promotions are run by a third party.

Former Ents officer Ed O’Riordain, who was in charge of promotion of both events, said that he found the promotion of events on campus was already severely restricted. He stressed that over regulation and bureaucracy of the necessary promotion was an inhibition to the creation of a vibrant student social life, of which SU events remain an essential part.

HOUSE 6 SKETCH

“Ring the alarum bell!”

THE RINGING of the alarum bell didn’t have quite as dramatic an effect on House 6 as in the closing scenes of MacBeth, when it called the tyrant’s armies to battle, but as the fire alarm sent out its urgent peals on a particularly dismal afternoon last week it certainly sent the hacks scurrying.

This unexpected distraction from the vital business of the day rendered the great and the good of College society temporarily powerless as they huddled together under umbrellas, bemoaning the time spent away from their various machinations.

Here was Joe O’Gorman, telling anyone who would listen that the official gathering point in such emergencies was the Campanile.

There stood Ronan Hodson, who was the best dressed of the bunch and knew it. Notable by her absence was Orlaith Foley, evidently having decided that her role as Welfare Officer charged her with remaining in the building lest any student needed rescuing from the potential flames.

Her fellow SU officers, natural leaders to a man, kept their heads in the midst of crisis – though it was apparent that

even as they stood in the downpour, the minds of these public-spirited gentlemen were still bent on casting down the Great Evil that menaces the the student way of life. As the shrill clamour of the alarm ceased, the thoughts of all four ran as one: the bell tolls for fees.

Thankfully, the denizens of House 6 didn’t have too long to wait - had they gone down with pneumonia out there in the cold, whatever would we have done without them? - as our beloved College Fire Safety Officer was on hand to give the all-clear. Commendations were given to all present for the timely manner of their exit: the evacution took place in under a minute, confounding those who feel that the hacks have too little appreciation for their own importance. Eyeing each other with redoubled suspicion, back went the stalwarts of officialdom to resume their daily grind.

PS: It’s a long way down from the second floor, but Martin McKenna seems to possess, among many other thing, the power of levitation, such was the speed of our editor’s ingloriouzvzs flight. But hush! Here he comes now...

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

“Volunteering is like being a fan at a football game: if only one person scream then there is no effect, but if everyone does there’s a huge effect. And even though one voice really doesn’t matter, we still scream because it’s a collective effort.”

- Nate Morgante, College Democrat at Columbia University in New York City, about the student campaiging effort in Virginia for the Presidential elections “Most of the time you’re on playlists, so you end up playing a lot of music you don’t actually like… I mean, I can’t stand country, but I end up playing a lot of it because that’s what people want to hear.”

- Larry Gogan, RTE presenter, in a TN2 interview

THIS FORTNIGHT THEY SAID...

“Thou shalt not kill.”

- Archbishop of Cashel and Emly Dr. Dermot Clifford, reminding the Governors of UCC of the Fifth Commandment after they voted 16 against 15 to allow stem-cell research at the university “Some of the shows coming up are the biggest on the tour, so I’d feel like such a quitter if we went home early just because we lost our pants.”

- Dan Wiese, guitarist of Kill Hannah, in TN2 interview with Catriona Gray

Compiled by Kasia Mychajlowycz E: quotes@trinitynews.ie “We wanted to create a young Irish brand that was sexy… I believe at Farrel & Brown we have succesfully filled the gap.”

- Paula Hanley, Design team member at F&B, TN2 Fashion

NUMEROLOGY

“It’s something to do.”

- DU Triathlon Club captain Luke Feighery, on completing the triathlon.

“Vivisection is a Lies Money” - Graffiti painted on the walls of the Arts Block at the Nassau St. entrance to College over the weekend of October 25-26.

“I am still gutted, and in recent years have only stopped taking this disaster out on my own children.”

- David Bergin, former UCD rugby player, on being dropped from the side a couple of weeks before Colours in 1975 “Obama has a short life-line and he’s going to die young. That’s a prediction going back in our archives.”

- Helen Barrett, the White Witch of the Isles, leader of the nation’s thousands of witches and wizards, to TN2 Editor Hugh McCafferty at the 8th Annual World Ghost Convention.

89 m to be added to Pav 2

Compiled by Kasia Mychajlowycz Continued from page 1

40 million » Projected number of young men that will be left without female partners in China if current demographic trends continue, according to the UN Population Fund. Feature: page 11

€800,000 The approximated cost of the Pavilion Bar redevelopment according to one source.

13 » age of Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Feature: page 10

50% » Proportion of students surveyed at Cambridge who admitted to plagiarising

10-20 » Trinity News’ prediction of UCD’s winning margin in the upcoming Colours rugby game.

the bar is important to its finances.

However, the Honorary Chairman of DUCAC, Dr. Trevor West, speaking at last week’s DUCAC AGM, indicated that since the work was likely to take around four months, barring overruns, and modularisation will bring undergraduates back to College in September next year, there was a possibility that the Pav will be closed when term begins. He also said that the project will be “pushed hard” between now and Christmas so as to finalise all the arrangements for work to begin in June.

There has been as yet no indication as to whether a contractor has been engaged or when exactly construction will begin.

Above: A rendering of the planned extension, showing the new toilets on the right; below, plans showing the new staircase to the main entrance.

“A STRUCTURE OF SUCH MAGNITUDE AND FINISH” THE PAVILION Bar was first built in 1885. It was extended to the north in 1919 and again to the south in the 1960s, restoring the original symmetry of the building.

It was originally designed by Sir Thomas Drew, a Belfast-born architects with a practice in Clare Street. Some of his best work was reserved for ecclesiastical structures, generally for the Church of Ireland, but he also designed the Ulster Bank on College Green and the Graduates Memorial Building on Library Square.

“A light-hearted Doric Pavilion”, according to Arthur Gibney Architects, the following description of the original Pav appeared in the Irish Builder on June 1st, 1885, just after its completion: “The new pavilion, a handsome structure, and, unlike the majority of buildings for similar purposes, does not partake of the temporary in its construction. The arrangement of the basement (writes the Irish Times) seems all that is desirable for the accomodation of the various clubs in the University Athletic Union. It contains two large bath rooms and lavatories, and a fine kitchen and drying-room and two

large dressing-rooms. A series of vaults, arched in concrete, extend under the steps in front, and seem just the thing for storing the multitudinous sundries of athletic requirements; their very shape suggests a repository for bicycles, to which we daresay they will be at times applied. A corridor with glazed doors communicates at each end with the park, and through these doors and the staircase they lead to, is the approach to the pavilion proper or large assembly room.

The stand and its flanking platforms will accommodate about 350 spectators, and if the long range of doors which separate the assembly room from the stand are thrown open, fully 500 people could with comfort witness the sports from this vantage point.

The style of architecture is Doric of the Roman type; the entablature is of wood framing, and illustrates early Roman building, and should be of interest to architectural students, showing, as it does, the motif of the later stone construction. The cost of the completed building will be under £1,500, and it certainly seems a small sum for a structure of such magnitude and finish”.

CLARIFICATIONS AND CORRECTIONS The photograph accompanying the article ‘Battered Bertie Gets Hist Medal’ published on 28th October should have been credited to Graham Kelly.

INFORMATION EDITOR: DEPUTY EDITOR: WEBSITE: BUSINESS MANAGER: COPY EDITORS:

PHOTOGRAPHS: COLLEGE NEWS: NATIONAL NEWS: INTERNATIONAL NEWS: NEWS FEATURES: FEATURES: OPINION: WORLD REVIEW: TRAVEL: BUSINESS: SCIENCE: COLLEGE SPORT: TN2 EDITOR: FILM: MUSIC: FASHION: BOOKS: THEATRE: ART: FOOD AND DRINK:

Martin McKenna Anna Stein Stuart Martin Lia Prendergast Tom Lowe Nick Beard Kara Furr Kiera Healy Ruth Mahony Rachel Kennedy Deirdre Robertson Una Geary Kasia Mychajlowycz Deirdre Lennon Emily Monk Aoife Crowley Aaron Mulvihill Derek Larney Grace Walsh Luke Maishman Conor James McKinney Hugh McCafferty Michael Armstrong Steven Lydon Patrice Murphy Jean Morley Kathy Clarke Caroline O’Leary Melanie O’Reilly

All Trinity News staff can be contacted on firstname.lastname@trinitynews.ie.

Trinity News is funded by a grant from DU Publications Committee. This publication claims no special rights or privileges. Serious complaints should be addressed to: The Editor, Trinity News, 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

Trinity News is a full participating member of the Press Council of Ireland and supports the Office of the Press Ombudsman. This scheme in addition to defending the freedom of the press, offers readers a quick, fair and free method of dealing with complaints that they may have in relation to articles that appear on our pages. To contact the Office of the Press Ombudsman go to www.pressombudsman.ie

Freshers’ Co-op gets rear in gear

Rehearsals were in full swing over the weekend, with the dulcet tones of the participant’s singing voices eminating from Regent House. Photo: Rachel Kennedy

By Deirdre Robertson College News Editor DU PLAYERS are currently putting the finishing touches to their ‘pantomime style extravaganza’, the Freshers’ Co-op.

The event is an annual occurrence which sees a cast of 40-60 students write, direct and perform a huge production that runs for 6 nights in week 6.

Like many College societies, it is an event advertised during Freshers’ week aimed particularly at first years who want to become involved in the society.

However this has sometimes been criticised as a way in which the society becomes a ‘clique’ where participation in the Co-Op becomes an essential attribute.

One ex-director noted that almost all of the people who act in the Co-Op become the main leaders in the society within a few years.

However, he stressed that this year

the emphaisis has changed slightly as the Freshers’ Co-Op is just one of many plays in the new ‘Freshers’ Festival’ that encourages students who do not want to be involved in the hectic Co-Op to get involved in Players.

Hannah Partis-Jennings, one of the producers of the Co-Op this year “Encompasses more insane situations and outrageous gags than ever before” described the reasons behind the new system. “Players wanted to expand membership and broaden the appeal of the society by offering a range of different theatre pieces for the Freshers to get involved in.”

The festival comprised of two short Pinter plays, a Berkof play, an adaption

of a James Joyce short story and a new writing piece.

The new writing piece this year is the Freshers’ Co-Op called ‘The Ballad of Susan McJilty’. It was written and directed

by Ross Dungan, Emma Gleeson, Ciaran Clarke and Greg Willmot and includes a cast of 50 students. “Following a murder of epic proportions, a series of nameless and random characters are thrown into the time/space continuum to try and save the world ... as you do”.

Ms Partis-Jennings said ‘The story involves a search to solve a strange crime that spans many timezones, involves every kind of character and encompasses more insane situations and outrageous gags then ever before.’ The focus, this year will be on the techinical side of the production making it ‘a visual spectacle to remember’. The Co-Op is the culmination of the festival and will run every night this week at 8pm and a matinee on Saturday.

FRESHERS’ CO-OP 2008 ‘The Ballad of Susan McJilton’ 2007 ‘Bang!’

2006 ‘A Fish Called Wilhelm’ 2005 ‘An aristocrat named Gustav’ 2004 ‘Cruddling the Voice’ Previously ‘3 plays for coarse actors’

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

November 11, 2008

Goldsmith residents compensated over works

By Naomi O’Leary & Conor Sullivan ACCOMMODATION OFFICER Anthony Dempsey this week sent an email to all Goldsmith Hall residents announcing compensation of almost €900 for disturbance from building works adjacent to the Pearse Street apartments.

The email to residents announced compensation in the form of a rent reduction to the amount paid for standard rooms on campus, such as rooms in New Square - a difference of €863. Scholars will be refunded energy charges of €600 they would otherwise have had to pay.

It was stated that the decision had been taken due to a combination of “heavy noise”, “dust from the site” and “loss of

daylight” from the construction works of the new biosciences building which has been commissioned by College. The development is so close that the site offices will be less than 2 meters from Goldsmith Hall. The compensation applies to residents on the east facing side of Goldsmith Hall.

Residents will also be provided with extra lighting, blinds and net curtains to provide privacy from the site offices, which will be located 1.8 metres from windows in Goldsmith Hall.

The decision has been welcomed

by Goldsmith Hall residents, who have suffered problems with central heating and hot water.

Residents have also reported that companies have distributed flyers advertising “cheap earplugs” for

Goldsmith Hall

residents. Mr. Dempsey stated that “Rooms in Houses 70 and 71 on floors one and two will lose some light because of the site offices. Rooms on floors three and four may experience some disturbance due to noise and dust from the site but will not be at a loss of daylight.”

While residents, who were notified of the works with their offer letters, aren’t formally entitled to be compensated for the building work according to the Conditions of Occupancy, Mr. Dempsey stated that he had negotiated an “ex-gratia contribution from the development” for residents on the East facing side of Goldsmith Hall.

So far this year, the Accommodation Office has been the subject of scrutiny.

It was revealed before term began that Trinity is the only college in Ireland to

charge an application fee for requesting accommodation on campus or in Trinity Hall. The €15 fee is non-refundable to all students regardless of whether they get accommodation or not. Despite using an online application system, in common with the other Irish Universities, Mr. Dempsey said the fee pays for “the considerable workload and systems involved in the application process”.

Subsequently, students who had been granted accommodation in the Rubrics building, in Front Square, were asked to move into temporary accommodation on campus as building works on their rooms had not yet been completed.

Students were due to move in on October 1st but by October 28th they were still living in other areas of campus, some sharing twin rooms but paying for

No time for tomfoolery with Stewart

By Michael Armstrong PATRICK STEWART, OBE, captivated a packed audience in the G.M.B. on Halloween night, giving an interview to Newstalk’s Orla Barry as part of an event organised by the DU Historical Society. Before the interview Mr. Stewart officially launched the Bram Stoker Society of Ireland’s treasure hunt in aid of MS, and donned a Dracula-style cape in order to make an entrance fitting with Newstalk’s Orla Barry was asked if she was making a proposition during the interview the holiday season Before giving a brief talk and taking questions, Stewart gave special thanks to Hist Correspondence Secretary James Walsh for setting up the visit, and was presented with the society’s prestigious Samuel Beckett award by the society’s Auditor Thomas Kinsella.

Due to work commitments Mr. Stewart was only in Dublin for a one-day visit, but is no stranger to the city. While filming Excalibur he lived in a caravan in the Wicklow Mountains, and would regularly make pilgrimages into the city for “the drinking.”

In a wide-ranging and entertaining interview, the 68-year-old actor began by giving a brief account of his early years growing up in Murphy, a small town near Huddersfield in Yorkshire.

Far from his now famous magisterial accent, the young Stewart spoke with a distinctive regional dialect that led to some confusion when first hearing Shakespeare, as he mistook a famous soliloquy from Hamlet for a passage about coal mining.

A “chaotic and sometimes dangerous” home life led him to find safety and self-expression on stage, as he found it was the only way to “tell the world who Patrick Stewart is.” The violent behaviour of his father led to his later involvement in several charities that help victims of domestic violence, including Refuge and Amnesty International. Mr. Stewart was quick to point out though that despite

the abuse his mother suffered, his father instilled in both he and his brothers a drive to succeed, and a “passion for justice and fairness.”

This passion led him to become involved in politics throughout his life, supporting the Labour party from a young age and even becoming an unofficial liaison between New Labour and those in his profession for a spell. When asked about the current U.S. Presidential election, he replied that the election of Barack Obama would represent a “cultural, if not political revolution,” giving it the same historical importance as the end of apartheid in South Africa, or the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Inevitably the conversation strayed towards his most famous role, that of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Stewart spoke humbly of his shock at being offered a huge television role, and praised his co-stars for teaching him how to be silly while doing serious work. This represented a serious change in work ethic for the Shakespearean theatre actor, who once called an infamous meeting early on in the show’s production to confront the cast about their “tomfoolery.”

Despite claiming that he had more in common with Ebenezer Scrooge than any other character he had portrayed, Stewart displayed good humour and a sharp wit throughout the interview, fending off questions about his current personal life.

When asked about a comment he once made about not meeting women his own age, he turned to Barry and coyly asked if she was making a proposition herself.

For young Trinity students hoping to pursue a career in acting, Mr. Stewart advised that only those who could be truly fearless while performing could avoid short-changing their audience, and warned against going into acting unless it was a lifelong passion.

When asked for comment, Hist Auditor Thomas Kinsella said he was very pleased with how the event had gone, and praised Mr. Stewart’s “honest, open and enjoyable” approach.

Patrick Stewart is currently starring in an RSC production of Hamlet with David Tennant, and his next project is a production of Waiting For Godot, playing Vladimir to Ian McKellen’s Estragon.

a single room in the Rubrics; without compensation.

Record applicant numbers forced Trinity Hall to allocate rooms in the Dartry complex through random selection. One service that has been flling the gap is Griffith Hall of Residence, which has taken in some of the Junior Freshmen turned away from Trinity Hall.

A single room costs €7,200 in Griffith Hall for the academic year, utility bills not included, and residents must also pay a non-refundable €1000 deposit.

“It’s a scam. They do everything they can to get money out of you.” said one Trinity student. says Danielle Neale, a Junior Freshman student of Pharmacy from Tullamore who took a room at Griffith following her rejection by Trinity Hall, “And we had bedbugs, too.”

Clinton initative approaches

By Thomas Raftery

Stewart in the stairway of the Graduate Memorial Building during his visit on October 31st. Photo: Michael Armstrong

Abortion Aftercare Freetext aftercare to 50444 or visit www.abortionaftercare.ie for a list of agencies that provide post-abortion medical check-ups and counselling services.

Free. Non-judgemental. Supportive.

THE CLINTON Global Initiative – a global activists group – may become a student society in Trinity this year.

The Clinton Global Initiative University, a specific division of the main initiative, was set up in 2007. It aims to develop and expand collective responsibility overseas and to address major global problems to affect real positive change. One CGIU spokesperson said the project has targeted students with the hope that they can offer ‘practical and innovative solutions’ to issues that will affect our futures.

Danielle Ryan, Trinity’s CGIU campus rep, is currently in the process of establishing CGIU as an official Trinity society. After applications to the CSC, signatures, and an approved society constitution, she hopes that CGIU will grow to become part of student’s everyday lives.

The inaugural meeting of the CGIU attracted thousands of students, university officials and global activists to Tulane University in New Orleans.

The crowd comprised of people from nearly every state and over 15 countries.

They pledged their support to initiatives fighting climate change, global health, poverty alleviation and human rights.

Some programmes include teaming up with Brad Pitt’s ‘Make it right’ project, and preparing sites in New Orleans lower ninth ward (devastated by Katrina) for construction and regeneration.

Ryan pictures the initiative starting on a small scale, ensuring there are energyefficient light bulbs in all classrooms or bike share programs, but hopes that once the society has established itself among students, then larger and more universal ‘commitments’ can start to be made. For example, one campus in America has begun to distribute lifesaving water filtration kits and medical backpacks to nomadic doctors in Africa.

Since the inaugural meeting, over 1000 commitments have been made by students worldwide.

President Clinton opened CGIU with these words, “Today’s generation of young people has more power to change the course of our future than any previous generation”, and it seems that with the hard work of Ryan, and the commitment of Trinity students, we too should work to effectively instigate positive change.

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SHORT CUTS TRINITY SURVEY

TRINITY SURVEYS COLLEGE LIFE DEAN OF Students Dr. Gerry Whyte has commissioned a student satisfaction survey, the results of which to be released before Christmas.

The decision was taken by the Trinity Experience Forum, a student feedback initiative established under the college Strategic Plan that has brought together students such as Paul Gallagher and Eoin O‘Braoin in what is described by the Dean of Students as a “fact finding initiative“. The survey willl be conducted by the Geary Institute at UCD. Dr. Whyte has admitted that negative feedback was anticipated, but refused to conjecture about what the criticisms might address, stressing that action would been considered and taken where appropriate.

LIBRARIAN’S INQUEST

‘EXEMPLARY’ LIBRARIAN A TRINITY College librarian who was found unresponsive at home suffered from anorexia according to a recent inquest.

Anne Walsh died in November 2007 of bronchial pneumonia secondary to malnutrition, secondary to anorexia nervosa.

The inquest heard that Ms Walsh had been diagnosed with anorexia nervosa when she was 18.

Deputy Librarian Jessica Curtis described both Ms Walsh’s work and her attendance record as ‘exemplary’. She had attended work the day before her death and had not taken sick leave since 2005.

The Coroner, Dr Kieran Geraghty, expressed his condolences to the family.

COMPETITIVE DEBATING

PHIL FRESHERS WIN NOVICE FINAL A FIRST-YEAR team representing the University Philosophical Society won the novice final at the Cork Intervarsity Debating Championship last weekend. Andrew Linn and Shauna Maguire won the final successfully defeating three other teams from University College Dublin. The motion concerned developing countries’ rights to develop nuclear technologies.

The pair had previously taken part in the PhilSpeaks initiative which runs public speaking workshops and debating competitions for secondary school children around the country. A workshop for Dublin schools is being held in Trinity on Tuesday November 11th in the GMB.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

Trinity’s artworks distributed to students

By Brian Barry THE COLLEGE Gallery Art Hire Scheme has been reintroduced this year after a five year hiatus, giving Trinity students who live on campus the opportunity to become proud owners of Trinity College’s finest and most famous artworks, albeit temporarily for the academic year.

Catherine Giltrap, who was appointed as the first full-time Curator of the College Art Collections in 2007, resurrected the scheme for this academic year after a lack of human resources made it impossible to administer it after 2003.

Last month, the valuable collection was put on display at the Science Gallery.

Students and staff submitted for their favourite artworks from the display.

The paintings, prints and posters were then allocated on a lottery based on the submissions. Thankfully, students got one up on staff members - who had to wait their turn as the first round of allocations went entirely to students.

Although everyone who attended the display ended up with a piece on ‘ballot day’, some were undoubtedly luckier than others, walking back to their rooms with extremely impressive works under the arm. Ms Giltrap told Trinity News - “If you want to know about famous works of art, you can’t get any more famous than Picasso. Suffice it to say that one student, the identity of whom I cannot divulge, is the lucky temporary caretaker of an original linocut print signed by Picasso

One lucky student left with an original linocut print signed by Picasso. himself.”

The scheme first began in 1959 by Professor George Dawson, who also helped establish the Genetics Department the previous year. “The objective was to enable students, first and foremost, and staff at a later stage, to become familiar with Irish and, subsequently, international artworks by developing a collection of modern and contemporary art displayed in student rooms, staff offices and common areas in College. It was Professor Dawson’s hope that ‘each

Trinity News awarded grant for India report

By Fionn McLaughlin TRINITY NEWS has been awarded a grant from the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund to send a delegation of reporters to New Delhi, India this December in order to report on education and development there.

The Fund is aimed at “assisting assisting and promoting more and better quality media coverage of development issues in the Irish media.” As a result of receiving the grant, Trinity News will send three journalists abroad. Luke Maishman, International Development Editor and Science Editor, will lead the delegation. Maishman spent three months last summer living and working in New Delhi.

Maishman travelled to India with the SUAS volunteer group. There, he spent the summer working as a teacher in schools in New Delhi. These schools will be visited again by the Trinity News team in order to report on the progress that has been made.

Editor of Trinity News, Martin McKenna will travel in his capacity as photographer. Mr. McKenna has previously studied photography full-time before he became a student in Trinity.

The third member of the party will be Catriona Gray, an experienced writer with Trinity News and editor of TN2 in 2007-8. All the members of the team have been nominated in the national Student Media Awards, though neither Gray nor McKenna have visited India before.

Editor Martin McKenna said, “I’m honoured and proud to be able to send a team of journalists on such an adventure.

For a student newspaper to produce original international content is highly unusual.”

Trinity News joins the ranks of the Irish Times, RTÉ, Newstalk, the Irish Examiner, the Sunday Business Post and the Sunday Tribune as previous reciepients of grants from the fund.

During the trip, the team will blog daily on the Trinity News website at www.trinitynews.ie. Mixed media will be produced, including written articles and audio slideshows of still photographs.

With the material that will be produced during and as a result of the trip, Trinity News will publish a supplement in Hilary Term on the topic of education and Simon Cumbers was killed while filming for the BBC in Saudi Arabia. development in Delhi.

The Fund was set up in the memory of Simon Cumbers, who was murdered by terrorist gunmen while filming a report for BBC Television News in Saudi Arabia.

The attackers opened fire on Simon and his colleague, BBC correspondent Frank Gardner, in a suburb of Riyadh in June 2004. Simon died at the scene and Frank was seriously injured.

In 2005, a little over a year after Simon’s tragic death, Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Conor Lenihan TD, in close consultation with Simon’s wife and family, decided to establish the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund in his memory.

Page 8: Extracts from Maishman’s experiences during his summer in Delhi, as well as more on the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund

generation of students will be aware of major works by Irish artists of their own time’” Ms. Giltrap explained.

Ms. Giltrap also re-established the College Gallery Student Committee this year who volunteer to help with administering the scheme, and also to help assist in choosing new paintings to purchase for the collection. At present the Committee consists of Junior and Senior Sophister History of Art and Architecture students, but it is hoped that students of different disciplines

will become involved in the near future, with the 50th anniversary of the Trinity College Modern Art Collection falling next year. At the display last month, each Committee member received a pile of ballot sheets of submitted preferences, and according to Ms. Giltrap “worked very hard” in securing the best loot for their randomly allotted group of students or staff.

Sorcha Richardson, a member of the student committee said that the scheme was a success this year although it was

unfortunate that not all paintings were allocated. The remaining paintings will be put on display in common areas around campus. “It is a great initiative and a huge task in itself. The scheme is new to many people. Hopefully it will grow next year” Ms. Richardson said.

Ms Giltrap explained that the lack of gallery space and the two day display held this year “made it difficult to display the collection long enough for everyone to view them but we might try a new online viewing system next year”. Ms. Richardson also told Trinity News that it was interesting tmore males than females expressed interest in the scheme.

When asked about trusting the student body with such precious material, Catherine Giltrap said “no priceless paintings have gone missing surprisingly” and although there were a few stories of near-disasters over the years, “the students probably know more about them than I do. This is an active collection, nothing like a museum collection, so one has to accept that the artworks live and are lived with! I don’t think this kind of scheme runs anywhere else in Irish universities to the same extent as at Trinity College.”

Ms. Giltrap also expressed some optimism and faith in the artistic tastes of the Trinity community - “We purposely only labelled the pictures with their collection numbers rather than artist names and titles, so that people could free their visual eye to just choose what attracted them.”

EVENTS GUIDE

What’s on this coming fortnight Tuesday November 11 Management Science Society: Society Poker Night in McTurcaills on Tara Street, all welcome. Food provided along with Drinks promos.

7PM Law Society: Maidens Debating Competition Final. Followed by after party in Lillies Bordello. 7PM, GMB Genetical: Pub Quiz. €20 per team of five. Downstairs in Kenneddy’s on Westland Row (near the Lincoln Gate entrance), 7PM.

Keplinger of the WIPO. 7:30, GMB. Free Reception afterwards, followed

by Philthy Electro in the Button Factory, Temple Bar. Visual Arts Society: Guided Tour of the National Gallery’s new exhibition of Finnish Painting from turn of the 20th Century. Contact visarts@csc. tcd.ie to attend tour. 6PM, National Gallery Liteary Society: Dermot Bolger will read from his work, discussing his career and answering questions from the audience. 7PM, location TBC.

Wednesday November 12 Entrepreneurial Society: Internship Night. A variety of employers will be represented in all sectors. Free reception to follow. 7PM, Emmet Theatre, Arts Block.

Photography Society: Introduction to composition. Learn how to take better and more interesting photos.

7.30PM, Room 5052 Arts Building Thursday November 13 The Phil: Debate on Music Piracy, “Should all music be free?”. Guests include Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, Kevin Marks of Open Rights UK, and Michael

Geological Society: DART Crawl.

Two evenly matched teams will venture along the northern and southern DART lines. Meet at Museum Building, 7:30PM. Gamers Society: Boardgames Night, everything from old ones like Risk to new ones like Fluxx. Goldsmith Hall, 7PM. Management Society: Distinct, a management consultancy, will be meeting students to discuss careers.

Eliz Rooms, House 6, 7PM Friday November 14 Photography Society: Photo Walk around College. Take photos of some

of the most interesting places in College. Feedback and assistance will be given. Depending on weather conditions. Meet at DUPA noticeboard at front arch, 7:30PM Monday November 17 The Phil: John Negroponte, former US Director of National Intelligence, former Ambassador to Iraq and current Deputy Sectetary of State of the United States will give an interview in the GMB chamber.

Reception to follow, 7PM Free Legal Advice Centre: Students welcome to attend a legal clinic where a qualified solicitor will be available to answer your questions confidentially. Room 4, the Atrium, 7PM. Thursday November 20 The Phil: Gay Rights Debate. Debate on Civil Partership and Marriage, and current government proposals.

Guest speakers include Sen. Alex White, Dervla Brown SC, and Eoin Colley of the Equality Authority.

Friday November 21 The Phil: Tommy Hilfiger will give an interview in the GMB chamber at midday.

YOUR VIEW WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE INCLUDED IN THE REMODELLED PAV?

CAITLIN CRAWFORD SS POLITICS Being able to sit in the lawn more, more loos… and more sunny days!

AMY WICKHAM

SS MECHANICAL ENGINEERING I’d like to see more social events, I know they’re trying to get Sports evenings on Saturdays, so maybe possibly on Sundays as well.

DILWYN ROBERTS PH. D. CHEMISTRY

I dunno, more places to sit- I know that sounds really old!

But apart from that, the staff are good, the music is good- it’s a good place.

DAMIAN BRAVO PH.D. PHILOSOPHY

I’m not really used to going there, but I’d like there to be better food, with more varietymaybe sandwiches. Fast food, yes, but properly made.

CHIARA POPPLEWELL 2005 ALUMNUS, EUROPEAN STUDIES There should be a student centre as well, if they’re extending the Pav. Like the UCD Student Centre, because people actually use it. There’s only the GMB, which is great if you’re part of the Phil or the Hist, but there should be something for everybody.”

TRINITY NEWS

NATIONAL NEWS

TRINITY NEWS November 11, 2008

Southern Area Officer resigns from USI

By Oisín Collins Reporting from NUIG STUDENTS OF Munster colleges have been left without representation at a national level following the sudden and unexpected departure of Kris McElhinny, formerly Southern Area Officer for the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) from the Officer Board. The Southern Area Officer position is currently a full-time, paid position within USI and as such, any individual taking the position may not be engaged in full-time education. In this instance, Sin (NUIG student newspaper) understands that Mr. McElhinny ran for election despite his intention to continue in full time education the following academic semester. Mr. McElhinny said in his defence, “When I stood for election

I was always open that I hadn’t decided if I would or wouldn’t be going back to College.”

Mr. McElhinny, last year’s SU president in UCC, had applied for a Master’s in Information Systems. As no-one else put themselves forward for the elections, he ran for the position on the premise that he would “do it for a few months and see how it went.” His intention was to focus on the non-policy work of the USI. Having been offered a place on the Master’s course in August, Mr. McElhinny had the option to defer up until the first of September. However, he decided to continue with his studies.

Although he initially attempted to juggle both commitments, this quickly proved unfeasible and after just two months with the USI, he resigned. Mr. McElhinny

commented, “I’m really disappointed, the Union of Students in Ireland are having their strongest year in a long time. It’s a great team and I’m disappointed not to be continuing with them.” He added that McElhinny attempted to juggle his commitments to his studies and his position to continue in his position as Southern Area Officer while in full-time education ultimately “wouldn’t be fair on the people involved.”

At the time of writing, no official announcement had been made as to the next step and USI press office also declined to comment. Two main options

exist for resolving this situation. Either a by-election could be held for this position, or the remaining members of the USI Officer Board could instead opt to share the duties and responsibilities formerly held by Mr. McElhenny for the remainder of his elected term in office.

Due to the complexity of organising elections for a full-time sabbatical position mid-term, it is widely believed that the latter of these two options is the most likely to be adopted by USI. This has led to concerns from students in the southern area colleges, who fear that they may not have the same level of representation as would be normal. Concerns have also been raised by students in other regions who fear that having their elected officers dragged away to deal with what is essentially another constituency may

Go-ahead for UCC stem cell research UCC has become the only university in the Republic to officially endorse the use of embryonic stem cells in research. The controversial move was passed by a vote of 16 to 15.

By Kate O’Regan Deputy National News Editor THE GOVERNORS of UCC last week voted in new legislation regarding the use of embryonic stem-cells in research at the university.

The motion, which called for guidelines on the acquisition of embryonic stemcells required for research purposes, was passed by one vote. The new code of practice, endorsed by 16 votes to 15, effectively facilitates the use of embryonic stem-cells in research at University College Cork. This decision comes over a year after the Irish Council for Bioethics released a report supporting the carefully regulated use of embryos produced in in vitro fertilisation.

The new legislation means that UCC is now the only third-level institution in the Republic to clarify its endorsement of embryonic stem-cell research. The issue has been side-stepped by the Irish government for many years, and UCC’s decision was met by some dismay from members of the clergy and the Seanad.

However, Mr Michael Murphy, current President of UCC last week spoke in favour of the landmark code of practice.

He referred to a number of high-profile scientific researchers at the university, who claim that stem-cell research is necessary to make advances in the field of understanding and treatment of degenerative diseases.

The Irish government has been slow to approve legislation regarding the use of embryonic stem-cells in research, despite endorsement of the practice by the Irish Council for Bioethics. This reluctance was effectively overcome last week when the board of governors at UCC passed their own code of practice.

The government’s hesitation on the issue is widely regarded as an opportunity for European legislation to circumvent national policy. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the

European Union carries guidelines on bio-ethics and the use of embryonic cells in research. Under this charter, research activities in member states should respect fundamental ethical principles.

Under UCC’s new guidelines every research project involving the use of stem-cell lines must be submitted to the University Research Ethics Board for ethical review before the start of the project. A subcommittee will then be established, including specialists in the area concerned, who will advise the board in relation to the scientific merit of the research aims of the proposed project.

According to the newly ratified policy, procedures used in and procurement of embryonic cells will be closely regulated.

Ethical concerns overseen include informed consent for recipients and donors, possible exploitation of duress on donors and bio safety issues.

The decision by UCC governors was not met with unanimous praise.

Stem cells have been hailed by some as the way forward for the treatment of diseases Certain members of the clergy and the Seanad have staunchly opposed the new legislation. A heated debate erupted in the Seanad this week when Senator Jim Walsh of Fianna Fail likened the authorisation of embryonic stem-cell research to the flimsy defence of someone possessing child pornography.

Mr Walsh objected to the sanction of embryonic stem-cell research on the grounds that the embryo was destroyed prior to the removal of the stem-cell strips. The senator compared this defence to that of somebody found in possession of child pornography who claims that they are innocent of abuse as they only came into possession of it after the pornography had occurred. In

This tray contains vials of frozen human embryonic stem cells in long-term storage in liquid nitrogen in researcher James Thomson’s lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Photo: Jeff Miller retaliation, Senator Ivana Bacik described Mr Walsh’s comparison as “an appalling analogy”.

Further objection to UCC’s innovative decision came from Dr. Dermot Clifford, Archbishop of Cashel and Emly. Dr Clifford reasserted the concern of many Irish people when he reminded those on the governing board of UCC of the Fifth Commandment; “Thou shalt not kill”. For those that believe that human life begins at conception, destruction of embryos is akin to extinguishing life.

Embryonic stem-cell research was a contentious issue surrounding the Lisbon Referendum debate, because it conflicts with Christian values. Many attribute the lack of conclusive legislation on the issue as a cause for opposition to the proposed treaty. Addressing the Oireachtas this week, Cardinal Sean Brady warned of the lack of Christian vision in both the failed Nice Constitution and the Lisbon Reform Treaty.

In his first appearance at the Oireachtas, Cardinal Brady addressed the Oireachtas sub-committee on Ireland’s future in the European Union.

He highlighted the growing concern

among Christians at the position of the European Union on social issues and bioethics. Referring to the recently failed Lisbon referendum, he suggested that the Irish government should clarify its position and that of the EU with regard to issues of bio-ethics and embryonic stem-cell research.

Since his influential speech at the Humbert Summer School in Co Mayo last August, The Archbishop of Armagh has continued to assert the opinion that EU policy undermining Christian values and failure to clarify issues which may offend Christians, including stem-cell research, was possibly a decisive factor in the Irish people’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.

Those in favour of the new guidelines hailed them as a brave and realistic solution to an issue widely ignored by other governing bodies. Senator David Norris said that the UCC governors had done the honest, decent and courageous thing by passing the new code of practice.

Speaking to Trinity News this week, Mr Norris described objections to it as an example of the “typical hypocrisy” that surrounds the issue. He praised the “courageous decision” of the UCC

seriously dilute the amount of time they spend dealing with local issues.

This resignation is another blow to USI, which was so spectacularly rocked with scandal last year when a memo outlining plans to call for a vote of no confidence in USI President, Richard Morrisroe, allegedly written by the then Equality Officer, Steve Conlon was leaked over the internet. Further resignations followed and the officer board was left decimated by the events. These events caused opinion articles in Sin at the time to question the competency of USI, calling them “a bunch of cowboys” and led to discussions at Class Representative Council level whether or not NUIG should disaffiliate from USI, the council voted by a handful of votes not to let the issue be put to a student body referendum. governors and said they acted properly in the absence of any affirmative action by the government.

He described the landmark vote as a reproach to legislators who haven’t already acted on the issue. When asked if he hoped to see a similar code of practice approved for research studies at TCD, he said it would be “useful” for Trinity officials to look at UCC’s new policy.

The Irish Council for Bioethics released a report on the use of embryonic stem-cells for research in April 2007.

The ICB is an independent, national body set up by the Irish Government in 2002 to consider ethical issues raised by biological research and biomedicine, such as stem cell research.

They surveyed the Irish public opinion on the issue and published their findings and recommendations in 2007.

The report entitled “Ethical, Scientific and Legal Issues Concerning Stem Cell Research: Opinion”, highlighted the importance of human stem cell research for rapid advancements in the treatment of debilitating diseases and injuries.

Stem cell research is often the only promise of a breakthrough in treatment and cures for diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and injuries such as those affecting the spinal cord. The ICB remarked on the astonishing rate at which developments are being made in these areas of research, and insisted that legal and ethical issues associated with the research be addressed.

While stem cells can successfully be extracted from adult donors, it is the issue of embryonic stem cells which causes the most concern and calls for decisive legislation. The ICB concluded that embryos should be granted significant moral status as opposed to full moral status.

The moral value that embryos possess is based on the recognition that they can develop into persons, as well as the value they derive from representing human life in its earliest stages.

The report goes on to state that the ICB supports the carefully regulated use of embryos produced but not used during in vitro fertilisation, that are otherwise destined to be destroyed for the purpose of embryonic stem cell research. In a decisive move, the ICB asserts that is does not object to the use of therapies or the importation of stem cells derived from embryos.

However it prefers that embryos already existing due to in vitro fertilisation be used as opposed to the creation of embryos specifically for research purposes.

Dr Siobhán O’Sullivan, Scientific Director of the ICB said, “Ireland has no specific legislation relating to assisted human reproduction or embryo research.

Failure to provide a comprehensive regulatory system to govern stem cell research and its application undermines the moral value of the human embryo.”

In the absence of critical legislation in Ireland, the board of UCC has paved the way for stem cell research at the university and the possibility of advancements in the treatment of degenerative diseases and spinal cord injuries.

Trinity part of national nanoscience consortium

By Aine Pennello Southern Correspondent IN A €31.6 million project funded by the Higher Education Authority, ten third level institutions have teamed up to further develop Ireland’s growing nanotechnology industry. The participating colleges are TCD, UCD, DCU, NUI Galway, UCC, UL, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Ulster, DIT and Cork IT. The project is led by the national nanoscience consortium INSPIRE (Integrated Nanoscience Platform for Ireland) and was launched last Thursday in Trinity by Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology Dr. Jimmy Devins.

Nanotechnology is the study of particles less than 100 nanometers in width. To give you an idea of how small that is, a single nanometer is one million times smaller than a millimetre.

Considering the small size of its particles,

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

nanotechnology is capable of achieving huge feats including the production of faster and lighter computers, increasingly effective chemotherapy treatments and furthering the future generation of microelectronics. In the upcoming years Dr. Jimmy Devins, Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology, launched INSPIRE experts predict that new products based on nanoscience will be part of and shape our daily lives.

The project will grant the ten participating colleges and over 500 researchers access to state-of-the-art laboratories fitted with the most up to date equipment available. The consortium has spent the last year purchasing this equipment, which previously was confined to usage in world renowned

computer chip manufacturing companies.

Professor John Boland, Director of consortium partner CRANN (Center for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanotechnolgy) at TCD explained that the participating institutions and members will be able to come together in an “all-island integrated approach to research, teaching and learning”.

INSPIRE also aims to improve fourthlevel education in science through their graduate programme NANOGRAD. The PhD course is expected to become internationally respected, attracting students from both home and abroad.

Professor Roger Whatmore of UCC states the programme will provide “the very best teaching and learning in nanoscience and nanotechnology” in the hopes of advancing the Irish economy. Graduates of the course can expect to be in an excellent position to enter a wide range of industries including biotechnology, electronics, chemical technology, new and

TINY FACTS THE FIRST scientific paper to include the word “nanotechnology” in the title was published by Norio Taniguchi of the University of Tokyo in 1974.

The US National Science Foundation has estimated that governments worldwide invested $4.1bn in nanotechnology R&D last year, compared with $432m in 1997 and $1.5bn in 2001.

Industry has been investing heavily as well. According to research, companies spent $3.8bn on nanotechnology in 2004. US companies were the biggest spenders, investing a total of $1.7bn, followed by companies from Asia ($1.4bn) and Europe ($650m).

smart materials or further research and development. Experts believe knowledge of nanoscience and nanotechnology will become increasingly in demand in these industries in the next five to ten years.

This will be encouraging news to budding science majors!

Ireland is currently ranked sixth in the world for its research of nanotechnology with the likes of Switzerland, the Netherlands, America, Canada and Belgium leading the way. However with the help of INSPIRE, Ireland is predicted to rise as a world leader in the science. Government funding in nanotechnology was prioritized during the Celtic Tiger, with funds reaching €25 million in 2004 and €28 million in 2005, the highest funding per capita in the world. At the launch of the project Dr. Devins was hopeful that developments in nanotechnology could increase the value of Irish exports to more than €13 billion by 2010.

SHORT CUTS UNESCO

NUIG AWARDED IRELAND’S FIRST UNESCO CHAIR NUI GALWAY has been awarded Ireland’s first UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) Chair.

The Chair in Children, Youth and Civic Engagement has been established at the Child and Family Research Centre in the University’s School of Political Science and Sociology.

Professor Pat Dolan, Director of the Centre, has been appointed Chairholder. He said, “ It is an honour and a challenge to take a lead role in exploring civic engagement in young people as a method for mobilising children’s rights and addressing needs in Ireland and across the world.”

The UNITWIN/UNESCO Chairs programme was launched in 1992 and is funded under the UNESCO University Education Twinning and Networking Scheme. Currently, a total of 617 UNESCO Chairs and 60 UNITWIN networks have been established in over 740 institutions across 125 countries.

In NUIG, the programme will focus on the exchange of knowledge in the domain of children, youth and civic engagement between University partners and affiliated child centres in countries such as Bulgaria, Lithuania and Zambia.

(Una Geary) FEES

ATHLONE STUDENTS MARCH AGAINST FEES STUDENTS OF Athone IT were the latest to take to the streets in protest against proposals to reintroduce tuition fees. The march took place on Wednesday November 5th. About 1,500 students gathered outside the IT at around 1pm and marched to the Civic Centre in Athlone town.

Banners proclaimed, “AIT, we won’t pay the fee!” and “Slam the Fees”.

Micheal Fogarty, AIT SU president,commented that, “We were delighted so many students turned out for the protest – we weren’t expecting so many.” He added that students were disappointed by the conspicuous absence of local Fianna Fail senator, Mary O’Rourke, who had been invited to the event. Students had previously laid a wreath at her door with the message, “With sincere and deepest sympathies on the death of free fees from your constituent students in AIT We remember.”

(Una Geary) NEW DEGREE

DCU’S NEW LAW DEGREE DCU’S SCHOOL of Law and Government has just announced a new three-year BCL undergraduate degree in Law & Society. DCU is marketing the degree to prospective students as “a law degree with a difference”. The level eight degree will distinguish itself from other traditional law degrees through its objective to arouse social and communal awareness within the structures of the law. Lectures will be taught from a socio-legal perspective and will focus on the interactions between law and society; in particular how social factors influence the development, regulation and application of the law.

Dr. Olivia Smith, Chair of the degree’s Programme Board, said that applicant places will be limited in order to create an intimate learning environment which will be directed by professors experienced in sociolegal research. The course also offers final year students the opportunity to develop their skills through work placement.

(Aine Pennello)

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TRINITY NEWS TRINITY NEWS

NEWS FEATURES

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

The real Library Essentials Tour Campus libraries are the real deal, the venue for hours and hours of study, not merely there for casual browsing. Anna Laine reveals the secret of the college libraries through the students’ eyes. This is the REAL library orientation.

Books

T

he massive campus can come across as a giant maze of forgotten corners and noisy sitting areas especially for a first year student. When it comes to finding a quiet hide-out for studying the giant BLU tri-library area is generally the best place to start from.

However, there are great differences in the reading

Special features

atmospheres between each library.

These mystical havens of wisdom should help you to magically absorb all the wise words and irregular verb declinations they conceal on their shelves, or the very least make you feel like you are learning.

Trinity News helps you gain the full experience, not only a sore backside.

Berkeley Stepping in the Berkeley Library is like a time warp to the 1970’s and as a first impression a total let down for a

Pros

venue for history books. There should be far more “Old Library” and far less “USSR”. Lighting creates a very hollow atmosphere to this library, and it’s definitely very uninviting for a longer study session, especially on the bigger central reading areas.

However, this is the only library that caters for your delicate derrière with comfortable cushioned faux-leather seats.

Ussher The great atrium between the bookshelves and study areas

Cons

Best suited for

Atmosphere

Limited power points for laptops

Attracting a migraine

Time warp to the 1970’s

is a gigantic feature of the Ussher.

Crossing the walking bridge over the atrium on the 5th floor is not for those suffering of acrophobia and you will feel like the winner of Fear Factor just for getting to the reading area. There is a lot of table space and individual reading lights, and it gets better, power points for your laptops and iPods! As a first feeling, it’s quite comfortable; however, it’s the only library that doesn’t offer soft seating in any of the reading areas. Lot of the crowd seem to be in for a long one, armed with piles of books, stacks and stacks of handouts, laptops and iPods.

Users comments

Type of crowd

Lecky Lecky has the best location for Art students. Upper floor windows offer an inspiring view overlooking the Old Library. On the upper floor behind the owl collection there are private booths, the seats are bit old and grubby, but have cushioning, so that’s a bonus. Worst reading areas are on the lower floor facing the walls and fitted with bright orange dividers. Who knows what staring at that would do to your psyche!

Soundtrack

Overall experience

Berkeley Level 1

Level 2

Law History Psychology Biography

Very soviet deco Alcoves with single desks, surrounded in old books

Photocopying Quiet Comfy cushioned faux-leather seats

Halogen lights

Having a nap in the Parliamentary debates alcove

Smell of old books

There’s no one “Redemption Song” by here Bob Marley and the Wailers “ I come here because I love history”– Seymor

Dusty historians

“Virtual insanity”

by Jamirquai

“My head hurts” Best seats Worst light

Lecky Lower

Upper

Business Economics Education Geography Chinese Japanese Sociology Politics

Big skylight

An Owl Collection Individual booths

Photocopying Close to toilets

Grubby seats and reading areas No power points

Photocopying “Introduction” Another jump chapters of all those non-LEN in time to the books you have to review for 1980´s reading at home

Lot of people seem orange, “ I gotta run, my maybe because of class is starting in the light?

5min, sorry”Eleanor

Easy access

Quick 15min homework session Lot of before meeting friends for thoroughfare coffee during the intended hour of intense study

None

Owl enthusiasts?

Looking up the atrium

No nose picking-zone

Casual

All types

“Raindrops are falling on my head”

by B J Thomas

“Does the job”

Best location Worst study “Another brick in the wall pt.2” desks

by Pink Floyd

Ussher Level -1 Levels 1 -3

Level 4-5

Periodicals English German Art History Irish Music Nursing Russian Spanish French Philosophy Ancient History Theology

Atrium Beautiful panoramic windows overlooking the rugby grounds

Dim room and individual study lights Best view

Lounging at the bottom of the atrium

Hard seats Power Panoramic 3 hour session on a 5000 word window offers points for essay about the “European laptops and too many Union regional policies and their distractions for chargers efficient realization” Good lamps chronic procrastinators Photocopying Really high Quiet area walking bridge Good scary to cross lamps for Really far reading Lift

A non - rushed hour of study and daydreaming

Can I smell a People armed with hint of a tons of handouts, “I just love to forbidden books, laptops, gaze at those banana in the iPods and even rugby players air? blankets sorry books across the atrium” - Clara Soaks in intellect and Intellectual contemporary thought

W is for Writer.

Be one.

www.trinitynews.ie/index.php/staff

“Imagine”

by John Lennon

“Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel

“Makes me feel smarter” Best study desks Worst seats

“La vie en Rose”

by Edith Piaf

TRINITY NEWS

NEWS FEATURES

TRINITY NEWS

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

November 11, 2008

Gender equality: is there still room for improvement?

Undoubtedly, gender equality has been improved in recent times, but how have the issues surrounding the inequalities on both sides been examined in Ireland? ask Deirdre Lennon & Lorraine Wemyss

most workplaces. In Trinity at present, the provision for the number of paid paternity leave stands at three days.

Within the last six months, the Equality Authority and the ESRI launched a report calling for paid paternity leave and encouraged the introduction of new laws to ensure that there are flexible working arrangements for men. It was intended as a springboard to help increase equality for both sexes on this issue.

The media in both Britain and Ireland have been following the issue of pay differentials closely. A recent report in Britain showed that women in full-time work were being paid, on average, 17% less than their male colleagues. The figure for part-time work is even more shocking, where a 36% gap was cited. It is 2008, and there remains in Ireland too, a significant gap between the genders, paywise. The same CSO report shows that in 2002, a mere six years ago, that women’s income was 82.5% of men’s income. This remains the case, despite Equal Pay legislation, and EU directives. The recent controversy in Britain regarding the Equalities Bill has not gone unnoticed in the Irish media.

The Irish government has taken steps to promote equality too, and incorporated Gender Mainstreaming into the National Development Plan 2007-2013. Gender mainstreaming includes a requirement that equal opportunities be part of the criteria for selecting projects which are funded by the NDP, as well as striking

S

INCE THE very foundations of the modern state, gender equality has posed a potent problem in Irish Society, when the specific inclusion of the word “Irishwomen” caused a mass furore upon the publication of the Irish Proclamation in 1916. But is the notion of gender equality still an issue in contemporary society or in a world where calling someone a leprechaun lands you in court — has the notion of inequality between man and woman become redundant?

According to the Gender Equality Division: “Gender equality is achieved when women and men enjoy the same rights and opportunities across all sectors of society, including economic participation and decision making, and when the different behaviours, aspirations and needs of women and men are equally valued and favoured.”

But what is Trinity’s policy on the gender debate?

Trinity College Dublin openly advertises itself as an equal opportunities employer. College’s policy division unequivocally states that it “is committed to the introduction and development of policies, procedures, and practices which do not discriminate on any of the grounds contemplated in equality legislation.” Like all employers, Trinity is bound by several legal documents in relation to gender equality. These include The Employment Equality Act 1998 and 2004, Equal Status Act 2000 and 2004 and The Universities Act 1997.

These serve to combat discrimination

Trinity’s continued commitment to the issue of gender equality has ensured that it is now “the academically strongest Gender and Women’s Studies Centre” and promote equality of opportunity in employment. These certainly emphasise the point that there are more transparent requirements in state bodies and educational institutions like Trinity with regards to employment rights/equality legislation. They’re also more vulnerable to legal action as a result.

The Access and Equality Policy of Trinity College Dublin “sets out a formal commitment by the college to treat with equal respect all those who apply to join the college, whether it be staff or students, and all those who are members of college, staff and students alike, with regard to gender, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, age, disability, race and membership of the traveller community.”

W

omen are integral to the University both as students, staff and academics.

According to Trinity’s Staff Office women make up 51% of all Trinity’s staff, 36% of all academics and 47% of all research staff. But it is not just in the employment arena that women play an integral role: females also make up 62% of undergraduate students and 61% of the overall undergraduate and postgraduate student population.

Within the last six months, the Equality Authority and the ESRI launched a report calling for paid paternity leave and encouraged the introduction of new laws

“At least with a glass ceiling it is possible to see through to the next level”, as one CEO put it. Photo: Drew Hadley 2004 was a landmark year for women in Trinity. It was the centenary of the first admission of females to the institution and Trinity celebrated the achievement of its female alumni with a number of events. Over the course of the year women graduates, former women staff and colleagues from a number of other institutions met to discuss the achievements of their predecessors, and the opportunities and barriers which female graduates will need to surmount in the future.

It is reported that in 1895 the board of Trinity College Dublin noted: “If a female had once passed the gate it would be practically impossible to watch what buildings or what chambers she might enter, or how long she might remain there.” This notion was repudiated in 1904 when the first women were granted matriculation rights to the college; however, this was certainly not the end of the saga.

As recently as the sixties, women were forced to leave the university’s grounds by 6pm and readmission to use the library facilities or even to attend an evening event required that they sign themselves in at Front Gate. Women were also forbidden membership to the main societies active on campus, and were not allowed to dine at commons or even to be elected as a foundation scholar.

IN NUMBERS » Statistics from a 2003 CSO report show that significant gaps exist between average hourly earnings, particularly in areas of employment such as the Irish financial sector, where women are earning two thirds of what men are. » Conversely, women outnumber men 3 to 1 in the education sector. » Women make up 51% of all Trinity’s staff, 36% of all academics and 47% of all research staff. » Dublin University Gender Equality Society (DUGES) was founded in Trinity in 2007 to promote gender equality from a student perspective, and focuses on extremely relevant issues relating to both sexes. » The ESRI and the Equality Authority are calling for greater equality regarding maternity and paternity leave, and want to make working arrangements more flexible for both genders. » The National Women’s Strategy 2007-2016 plans to get a clear view datawise of where Ireland is at in all aspects of gender equality.

From the 1960s, however, female students were given a new and provocative sense of empowerment. The decade marked the appointment of a woman Chancellor, a woman Vice-Provost and women in a number of high profile administrative and academic posts.

Trinity has maintained its commitment to equality and the special role of the female population within the college, perhaps suggesting that the so-called “glass ceiling” does not exist as much as we previously thought.

This is demonstrated not just in terms of policy, but also more acutely and on a practical level with WiSER – Women in Science and Engineering Research, as well as the Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies.

WiSER “seeks to develop sustainable mechanisms and practices to ensure that women can compete in research on an equal basis using their scientific expertise, knowledge and potential.” It is particularly involved in unearthing and publicising the obstacles faced by both genders at all stages of their careers.

The Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies was established in 1988 in order to reflect the increasing diversity of the college community, and in 2005 became a fully fledged member of the School of Arts and Humanities. Trinity’s continued commitment to the issue of Gender Equality has ensured that it “is now the academically strongest Gender and Women’s Studies Centre in Ireland.”

The student body is doing its bit to maintain gender standards within the college too. A recent addition to the many societies in Trinity was the Dublin University Gender Equality Society (DUGES), founded in February 2007

by Harriet Johnson. Speaking to Trinity News, the vice-chair, Alison Treacy, said that the society was set up to “address a balance from a feminist viewpoint, as well as providing a viewpoint from both sides of the gender divide.” The society has a mixed gender committe, something which offers a range of opinions on the sort of events which should be held.

Treacy mentions that the society looks to the international scene to investigate gender equality policy in other countries.

DUGES also focuses on issues such as domestic violence for men and women, holds workshops on rape awareness and examines high suicide rates.

T

wo of Trinity’s most illustrious female alumni are Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese.

Both of these women have succeeded and reached the pinnacle of possibly one of the most male-dominated arenas in Irish Society today: politics.

According to Tony O’Reilly, politics is “a job for the boys” and it certainly seems that women have categorically being consigned to the doldrums of the Irish political scene. The fact of the matter is that women do indeed take up some of the most important policy making positions within Irish Society, but for some reason the media seems to prefer to run stories in relation to their male counterparts, designating women to the bench.

Leading female lights of the Irish policy scene such as Ms Justice Laffoy, Patricia McKenna, Geraldine Kennedy, Senator Ivana Bacik and Kristina McElroy compare poorly in terms of column inches awarded to their male equivalents.

The majority of political parties certainly have many active female groups.

In recent decades, the constitution of the main stream political parties has been altered to ensure that there is an adequate female candidacy. These changes, however, seem to have effected little change with young males topping the polls for Fianna Fail and Fine Gael respectively.

The Women and Men in Ireland 2004 CSO Report revealed that Ireland had the eighth-lowest proportion of women in parliament of the twenty-five EU member states, with the figure 13.3% cited. This did not get any better in the next general election, as 2007 witnessed one of the lowest returns of women to the Dail.

Fianna Fail nominated more men to the senate than before, and the Green Party gained only one female senator.

Both Patricia McKenna and Joan Burton, of the Green Party and the Labour Party, respectively, were overlooked for leadership of their parties. Perhaps there is a glass ceiling at the top of the Irish political scene. Apart from Mary McAleese, Mary Coughlan and Mary Harney, where are the other prominent female politicians?

One of the major recurring gripes in many work places concerns the issues of maternity and paternity leave. In relation to Trinity, the provisions for both seem to be bound by the general set of rules for

a balance between the number of men and women who sit on Monitoring Committees. The plan itself is divided into Training, Advice, Statistics and Research.

It appears from various reputable sources that the major issue surrounding gender inequality was the lack of comprehensive data available until recently enough. The introduction of several strategies to combat this is interesting to examine in relation to the wider sphere of society.

A further more specific initiative is the National Women’s Plan 2007-2016, which aims to acquire this missing data on a range of issues, including the aforementioned topic of gender mainstreaming.

This plan asks whether it will go further to achieve one of its main aims to equalise socio-economic opportunities for women. The intention is a worthwhile one, if the scope and drive for gaining a clearer view of which projects work in each sector of society, for both women and girls.

However, while this is an admirable aspiration on the national level; when you break it down locally, it doesn’t quite attain its stated goals. One such policy is to “ensure that all women have access to information on fertility, contraception and sexual health matters”. This national policy is failing at a local level in the Coolock Well Woman Centre, where they admit freely that funding has not kept pace with demand.

E

ven as recently as last Wednesday, at a conference organised by the European Commission in Dublin, it was stated that higher levels of gender equality in the workplace increase productivity by 15 per cent in some cases.

One aim of the conference was to bring both genders into workplaces dominated by the other sex. The European Commission has also been actively involved in pushing for the advancement of its “Roadmap for Equality between Women and Men” since 2006.

It certainly seems that in some areas of Irish society gender equality remains an aspiration rather than an actuality.

The Irish Constitution makes overtures to the fact that a women’s place is in the home and despite tireless effort it seems that females in a position of power are the exception rather than the norm.

Massive improvements have certainly been attained, but that does not necessarily equate with egalitarianism.

According to the National Women’s Plan, such progress needs to be maintained and steps taken to erode even more inequalities.

Perhaps it is important to bear in mind a prominent executive in the UK’s observation about the “glass ceiling” concept: “At least with a glass ceiling it is possible to see through to the next level.”

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TRINITY NEWS TRINITY NEWS

NEWS FEATURES

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

Clockwise, from top left: A busy street in Delhi; a rubbish field in south Delhi where some children eke out a wage by sorting through the rubbish for items of minute value to sell; a thoroughfare in Paraganj; a market stall in Delhi; a roundabout in Paraganj where traffic rules are non-existent. Photos: Luke Maishman

New Delhi, India: The city of a hundred thousand smells International Development Editor Luke Maishman spent his summer teaching in Delhi. In this extract from his first email home, he describes his first impressions of the city.

A

s the Virgin Atlantic flight touched down in Delhi Airport on Friday morning I could not possibly have imagined the strange, wonderful and disgusting things that I have seen so far in Delhi. The flight was uneventful - a film, two surprisingly good meals and a glass of red wine (with dinner), several hours of trying to get to sleep and about twenty minutes of actual sleep saw me through the seven, or so, hours’ journey.

Shortly after touchdown we had our first experience of Indian bureaucracy when a few other Suas volunteers tried to buy local network simcards for their phones. About 45 minutes and five or six signatures, 2 passport photos, their passports and a copy of the letter from

SIMON CUMBERS S I M O N CUMBERS was 36 when he died.

He was murdered by terrorist g u n m e n while filming a report for BBC Television News in Saudi Arabia.

The attackers opened fire on Simon and his colleague, BBC correspondent Frank Gardner, in a suburb of Riyadh in June 2004.

Simon died at the scene and Frank was seriously injured.

Simon was an experienced journalist and cameraman with an insatiable curiosity about the world and what happened in places thousands of miles away.

He wanted to make a difference by telling the stories that needed to be told and his camerawork gave him that opportunity.

Prayas inviting them to India later the exhausted volunteers received their new simcards and we all left the airport by private coach to our new home from home.

It is hard to imagine how so many people can live so close together in anything approaching reasonable conditions.

We are staying in guest accommodation in Jamia Hamdard University, a Muslim university. The campus is large and green in a wild and unkept kind of way, but it is thankfully peaceful compared to the Indian roads, streets and markets. There are tennis courts, small and helpful stalllike shops (a far cry from the poverty stricken roadside stalls), a couple of playing fields and several large red, not particularly beautiful but nonetheless authentic Indian looking buildings with names like “Faculty of Allied Sciences” and “Faculty of Medicine”.

The students that we have met have been intelligent and have near perfect English. Our accommodation itself is acceptable. We have several toilets, including two western-style toilets (most here are of the hole in the ground, crouch over it variety) and enough rooms to be sharing only two or three per room.

We also have a living room and kitchen (no cooking facilities though). The only downside has been our guests, at least one mouse/rat has made an appearance several times and the geckos hardly bother to hide.

Not so worried about the geckos but because of health concerns and the screaming when one of the girls sees “Mickey” (we have convinced ourselves he is a mouse, despite his size) we have started putting down poison.

The roads are crazy. There is no way

of doing them justice in mere text. There are motorbikes everywhere! Possibly the most agile road vehicle, they are perfectly adapted to the frantic, every man for himself, beeping, lane-less, overtaking, 20 centimetre gaps between vehicles madness that is the roads here. On that first trip we saw a motorbike with a male driver, a child in front of him, his wife behind and another child on her lap. We also saw buses so packed that not even one more person standing could fit in, the doors open and those men closest to the door practically leaning out (and it is generally only men on the buses, a sign of India’s highly patriachal society). We saw a car driving along in traffic in which both the passenger and the driver were reading books on their laps, and cows, cows on all of the central road divides, cows wandering relaxedly out into the stream of moving traffic causing a pandemonium of swerving and beeping.

Yes the roads are quite something, and even more than the mad traffic, which one gets used to surprisingly quickly, are the things we see and smell from the roads on our many short journeys through New Delhi. There is rubbish all over the place, merging almost seamlessly with the roadside slum-like dwellings and the multitude of stalls that line any street outside the rich areas of the city.

The smell of excrement is everywhere, from the doings of the cows, the roadside dwellings (some volunteers have seen children hunkered down, going to the toilet on the street!). As one rides a rickshaw the smells come in waves, first

maybe manure, then a stench of definitely human doings from some roadside makeshift tents, then perhaps the scent of spices and a waft of frying from some of the roadside stalls, then the all pervasive smell of decomposing rubbish from the piles of plastic, food and who knows what else waste that line almost all the roads and are a constant underfoot feature of the markets and smaller streets.

There are people everywhere.

Sleeping at the roadside, passed out on

I had to think long and hard to be able to grade the pupils. Whipping out the old phone calculator just didn’t seem like the right thing to do. a bus stop bench, walking on the roads (more often than not carrying some exhaustingly heavy looking load), begging in the market-places, sitting around or in the market-stalls or shops. Indeed overstaffing is a feature of the shops here, as if the owners ask themselves “Why have only one stall-seller/shopkeeper when five can take turns at advising/ helping/advertising/haggling?!”

On a more serious note, it is hard to imagine how so many people can live so close together in anything approaching reasonable conditions. The frantic,

SUAS AND PRAYAS

Luke travelled to India as part of the Suas Volunteer Programme 2008.

This Programme runs every year sending enthusiastic volunteers to education focused partner organisations in India and Kenya for tenweek placements. The Programme consists of three face to face preparation weekends and the placement which happens in the summer. They are now open for applications to

the 2009 Programme, the closing date is the 4th December. Visit their website at www.suas.ie or attend their presentation in college on Monday the 18th of November.

Prayas are one of Suas’s partner organisations in India. They serve around 50,000 children in seven states of India, providing shelter, home, clothing and education to underprivileged children. Suas works specifically with their Juvenille Aid Centre in New Delhi and Suas volunteers act as teaching assistants in Prayas Education Centres in Delhi.

crowded streets with the medley of stalls, the rubbish everywhere and the ever-present smell of excrement can hardly be described as pleasant working conditions. As for homes, I think that the roadside “tents” erected outside the Jamia Hamdard campus and along other major roads are far from being the worst of it.

In sharp contrast to the poverty that we see all around us are the lives of the rich middle and upper classes. The western-style restaurants have been a lifesaver for us when the local food got a bit much but a closer examination of the richer lifestyle reveals some harder to swallow realities: There are “clubs” of picturesque middle class houses with beautiful and above all clean gardens in estates surrounded by a tall perimeter wall and guards on the gates. Rubbish, people, manure, stalls and makeshift tents pile up metres from the wall.

One night in a richer market place we were reduced to open-mouthed shock when a beggar-girl, between eight and twelve I’d guess, with messy, dirty tousled hair and wearing a brown rag, who had previously been pestering us, approached a wealthy looking business man. The man promptly whacked her across the head, sending her reeling across the street, before continuing along the street, not seeming in the least concerned.

It is now Thursday afternoon and we met our children this morning. Roisin and I will be helping Sangeeta, a very short, young looking lady (“she looks about twelve!” in the words of one volunteer) every weekday morning in a tiny, approximately 3 metre by 3 metre basement room in a street just across the main road from Jamia Hamdard University. Sangeeta does not have very good English and she seems to be really quite shy of us. As a result the morning was fraught with a continuous sense of not knowing what we should be doing.

After arriving and greeting the children (mad rush for attention from the children, all smiling and desperate to shake our hands with the memorised “Hello!” on their lips) we were able to introduce ourselves properly using the Hindi we had frantically learnt over the last few days. After a quick round of ring-a-ring-a-rosy to cement our good relationship with the children we sat down and observed the way Sangeeta ran the class. Each child has one copy book

and a pencil given to them by Prayas and during class a constant stream of children came up to us with pages of the alphabet or numbers written out, or in one slightly older girl’s copy book long multiplication sums difficult enough that I had to think long and hard to be able to mark them! Whipping out the old phone calculator just didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

After the children had left [we each had to shake hands and say “namaste!” (hello) to each of the 14 children] we had a quick discussion with the teacher of the room next door to ours (also 4m x 4m) where two other Suas volunteers, Alex and Jean, are teaching assistants. Their teacher has much better English and she explained a little more about how the classes are organised and answered our few questions. Another example of a breakdown in communication arose – it seems that our schools start at eight, which is when Sangeeta and the other teacher want us to arrive; not at the later time of 9.30 which Suas had been told since the beginning and had planned quite extensively around.

Ah well, this is India I guess.

THE GRANT FUND TRINITY NEWS has been awarded a grant from the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund to travel to Delhi in December to report on education and development there.

This article forms the start of our reporting which will include a blog from our travels and a special supplement to be published after the trip.

Previous recipients of the grant fund include RTÉ, the Irish Times, and Newstalk.

The Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund is funded by Irish Aid. It is a grant scheme aimed at assisting and promoting more and better quality media coverage of development issues in the Irish media.

TRINITY NEWS

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

TRINITY NEWS November 11, 2008

Global Campus

Survey: half of students plagiarise Cambridge student newspaper the Varsity asked students if they had plagiarised, and the student body was candid; Wikipedia, copying and re-using are material favourite strategies

By Michael Stothard Varsity, Cambridge University HALF OF Cambridge students have committed plagiarism as defined by the university, according to a Varsity survey.

49 per cent of students admitted that they have plagiarised work, although this differed radically between subjects and colleges. Ironically, students of the Law faculty plagiarised the most out of any subject, with 62 per cent of them breaking the university rules. The second highest was the Archaeology and Anthropology department with 59 per cent.

“It is a depressing set of statistics,” said Robert Foley, a Professor in Biological Anthropology at King’s College.

The college at the bottom of the Tompkins Table, (a ranking which lists the colleges of Cambridge in order of undergraduate performance,) St Edmund’s, had the highest proportion of plagiarising students, with 67% admitting to breaking the university rules.

Selwyn, at the top of the Tompkins table, had the fewest number of plagiarising students.

“It stands to reason that those students who are performing less well will resort to more underhand means to get by,” said a member of the University Council, the principal executive and policy making body of the university.

It is perhaps not surprising that 80 per cent of students said that the university is doing enough to punish plagiarism. “You can see why students, a great number of whom are frequently breaking the rules to their own benefit, would be keen to uphold the impression that the system is working,” said a member of the General Board, the body responsible education policy at the university.

“Sometimes when I am really fed up,” said a Land Economy student at Pembroke, “I Google the essay title, copy and throw everything on to a blank word document and jiggle the order a bit. They usually end up being the best essays.”

100 per cent of Land Economy students admitted to plagiarism, but these results should perhaps be taken lightly as less than five per cent of the student population replied to the Varsity survey.

82% of plagiarists use Wikipedia for their essays, compared to only 75% of non-plagiarists.

Over 1000 students responded to the survey, answering whether they have ever done any of the following, all of which are defined as plagiarism by the university: handing in someone’s else’s essay; copying and pasting from the internet; copying statistics, code or field-work; making up statistics, code or field-work; handing in previously submitted work; using someone else’s ideas without acknowledgement; buying an essay, or having an essay edited by Oxbridge Essays.

CUSU Education Officer Ant Bagshaw said the university was largely to blame for the high rate of plagiarism. “If the university is not going to take teaching people about avoiding plagiarism seriously, which it manifestly isn’t, then it has to expect headline figures like these,” he said.

Many students were surprised when filling out the survey to find out that they were technically plagiarists. They were “I Google the title, copy it and throw it into Word and jiggle the order. They’re the best essays.” unaware what the university defined as plagiarism. “Of course I use other people’s ideas without acknowledging them, but I didn’t think that this made me a plagiarist,” said an Oriental Studies student at Girton.

Other students did know the university’s definition of plagiarism, but disagreed with it. “To say that using any idea which is not entirely your own is plagiarism is absurd,” said a historian at Murray Edwards.

Some students, well aware they were plagiarising, simply were not afraid of the consequences. “I have used the same essay three times in two years for three different supervisors... I wasn’t particularly worried about being caught,” said an English student at Homerton.

“In one term I handed in twelve essays, nine of which were other peoples... Even if I did get caught, I’m not

UNIVERSITY OF MUNSTER, GERMANY

GERMAN STUDENTS LONG-TIME OBAMA SUPPORTERS

convinced anything would happen,” said a Management student at Girton.

Only five per cent of students surveyed say that they have ever been caught plagiarising. There is some doubt over whether the university can do a great deal if students are caught, since the recent attempts by the university to make their definition of plagiarism official have stalled.

“They claim that they can punish you for plagiarism, but how can they punish someone for something they haven’t officially defined?” asked Bagshaw.

The university denied that they were impotent to punish students. A statement by the university said: “the university regards deliberate acts of plagiarism as a serious and potentially disciplinary offence which can lead to failure to obtain, or withdrawal of a degree.” The university is also introducing ‘Turnitin’ plagiarism detection software into many of the faculties.

To justify their plagiarism, many students in the survey commented that it was simply impossible to do as much work as they were expected to do at Cambridge, and so cutting corners was the only solution. “I plagiarise when I am late with an essay or finding it difficult, which is very often for Law as we have a massive amount of work. I ask someone

in the year above if you can use their work from the previous year. I’ve done this three or four times,” said a Law student at King’s.

Comments left by Engineering students suggested that plagiarism was common in the department. “Second and third year labs are always the same, so lab reports are always passed down through the years,” said an Engineering student at Emmanuel.

“Part One Engineering lab reports are largely copied off lab partners and older students, but they’re for standard credit so it’s not about doing a good job but just getting it done and getting four out of six,” said an Engineering student at Jesus.

Four per cent of students have written for Oxbridge Essays, which provides essays to university students all over the country. A History of Art student from Downing College, who admitted to writing for them said; “I find it damn satisfying writing essays riddled with errors and having them accepted by public school students.”

Some students expressed anger at the high proportion of plagiarising students found in the survey. “Were I to have my way, the cheating bastards would be strung up by their genitalia,” said one Law student at Jesus.

Students of the Law faculty plagiarised the most out of any subject, with 62 per cent of them breaking the university rules.

Photo by Phil Hilficker

Student, Democrat fights for Virginia

By Whitney Yax Guest Writer, Barnard College OUR OVERSIZED van was total mayhem all the way from the Days Inn in Leesburg, Virginia to Columbia University in New York City—about a five hour trip—as polls closed few-by-few and states’ results rolled in nationwide. We tallied electoral votes by hand, with only National Public Radio coverage and frantic cell phone calls to guide us, growing increasingly exuberant as it became decreasingly likely that McCain could pull out a win.

“Someone grab a piece of paper, start writing down which states we won!”

‘Ok, we got Pennsylvania!’

“Pennsylvania, are you sure, who called it?”

“CNN!” “Anyone know how many electoral votes Pennsylvania has?”

“Someone look it up!”

“OHIO! My mom says we got Ohio!”

“No Republican has ever won without Ohio!”

“Who called Ohio?”

“CNN!” When the race was called around 11pm EST – marking the moment that the United States elected its first African-American president in a landslide – tears and hugs flowed freely and our pride in America bubbled over with cheering and chanting: “YES WE CAN! YES WE WILL! YES WE DID!” 132 Columbia University College Democrats had just spent the

9

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

weekend in Virginia campaigning for Barack Obama for President; three days and 364 electoral votes (and counting) later, I am still smiling earto-ear.

But if you had asked me over the weekend if the race was in the bag, I would have told you there was no bag. The College Democrats arrived in Virginia’s Loudoun County on the Friday before Election Day to a virtual army of McCain-Palin yard signs and bumper stickers. We ate breakfast early Saturday morning in front of the television, with pundits showing the race tightening in Virginia and commercials questioning Obama’s experience and patriotism. During our first day of canvassing, I spoke with as many folks for McCain as for Obama. Many supporters described their neighborhood as decidedly “mixed” in presidential preferences, and expressed deep concern that Virginia would remain as Republican as ever. As campaign veterans, my partner-in-canvass, Justine Lai, and I relished the challenge. ‘This was the first time I talked to non-Democrat voters on a campaign,’ says Justine of her experience on the trail, ‘so while that made it a bit uncomfortable when canvassing McCain supporters, I did get the opportunity to talk to undecided or independent voters and at least inform them of my point of view, which I do feel had some influence.’

If Saturday’s mixed crowd was challenging, Sunday was a disappointment: almost every door I knocked on went unanswered, and those who were home had already

Student voter’s tshirt. Photo: Adam Flanagan voted or had no interest in hearing my spiel. I fell into bed late that night, wearied from the grueling weekend and less than optimistic about the next twenty-four hours.

On Monday, we used our patented ‘Seth Flaxman shotgun method’ to conduct a literature drop: one person shouts out house numbers while two others sprint around in response, hanging doorknockers reminding voters that Tuesday is Election Day! VOTE! Who could really forget about such an historic election, you may ask? Beats me, but in reality little more than half of all Americans actually vote in presidential elections, so every reminder matters. Our group alone dropped literature on

over 6,000 doors in just a few hours, and Loudoun County ended up with record voter turnout—certainly no coincidence! We were lucky enough to attend Obama’s last rally that evening, in a neighboring county.

Obama was very late arriving, but the gigantic crowd—of all ages, colors, and creeds—waited patiently and responded overwhelmingly when finally he addressed us with inspiring stories and a final reminder to vote.

Admittedly, the final day of campaigning raised everyone’s spirits enormously. We watched volunteers flood into the local campaign office—dispatched immediately and effectively to canvass, lit. drop, drive voters to the polls, and so on

on Election Day. We remembered the feeling of being surrounded by 90,000 Virginians chanting “YES WE CAN” in response to Obama’s strong and steady message of hope the night before. We jogged from door-to-door through the rainy final hours, urging people to vote and thanking those who told us they already had.

My last canvass, in a suburban neighborhood occupied primarily by immigrant families, brought a young Muslim-American woman and her daughter to the door. “I already voted, for Obama,” she told me. I thanked her enthusiastically and began my sprint onward.

‘Thank you so much for doing this,’ she called after me. “You make America a special place.” I paused and turned back to her. “You make America special,” I exclaimed.

“Thank you for voting!”

In the end, Virginia was won by a comparably small margin of about 155,000 votes, a reminder that Barack Obama’s very special victory on Election Day depended on both of us: every voter who waited for defunct machines or in long lines, and every volunteer who knocked on doors and made phone calls for change.

Nate Morgante, a fellow College Democrat, said it best: “Volunteering is like being a fan at a football game: if only one person screams then there is no effect, but if everyone does there’s a huge effect. And even though one voice really doesn’t matter, we still scream because we know it’s a collective effort.”

“WE SUPPORT Barack Obama because we believe in the change. Because we hold him for a newer and better JFK and Dr King. Because he shows hope for the USA for us.” So reads the introduction to the group “Barack Obama Supporters Germany” on the German online social network for students (www. studivz.de), one of more than 300 groups that had been created to discuss the recent American election.

Most of them, like “Barack Obama – Yes We Can”, to support the democrat candidate. In an online vote that has been arranged a couple of days before the actual election, 91 percent, more than 1,5 million members of the StudiVz, voted Obama for President.

The world reacted with enthusiasm towards the election of Barack Obama as US President: a Reader’s Digest survey, where 17,000 people from 17 countries were questioned whether they would vote for Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama, showed that most countries were hoping for a future with Barack Obama.

In Germany, where 85 % of the questioned decided to give their vote to Obama, the Democrat has been supported for a very long time. The now President-elect was welcomed as a superstar in Berlin, and many spectators were enthralled by his speech.

“It’s his voice,” a Czech journalist said afterwards, “I understand now why people think he is charismatic.

There are not many politicians in Europe that can fill an audience with so much enthusiasm.”

Apart from Barack Obama’s rhetorical talents the Germans were also impressed by his political aims like the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his environmental policies. Many German students who have been fighting for those changes for many years started supporting Mr Obama.

The University of Münster’s English department organised an election party on the night of the elections last Tuesday to give the students an opportunity to follow the results all night. German students have high hopes for Obama’s presidency; Muhammad Hamawi, 23, English and Social Sciences student at the University of Münster, said: “As most Europeans and Germans, I was, of course, more than excited about the outcome of this election. After a painfully long Bush-era, the American citizens have finally succeeded in voting for a candidate who seems - despite his youth and his alleged inexperience – determined and, most importantly, able to lead a country like the US. In terms of international relations I also believe that Barack Obama will revive the friendship between the different nations.

Nevertheless, one must not forget that he still has a long way to go and the upcoming years will show whether or not this President can live up to those high expectations. I hope he will.”

Monika Urbanski

UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS, USA

ANOTHER CAMPUS SHOOTING STUNS THE UNITED STATES JUST THREE days after the shooting panic and false alarm at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY, which led to a lockdown of the whole campus on the 23rd of October 2008, another campus shooting shocked the American public, as two students were killed and another injured in an incident at the University of Central Arkansas. The university, which is about 30 miles north of the state capital, Little Rock, is the second largest university in Arkansas. The three were shot just after 9pm local time on Sunday the 26th near a campus dormitory.

Four suspects have been held since Monday the 27th of October; Kawin Brockton, 19, Kelsey Perry, 19, Mario Toney, 20 and Brandon Wade, 20, none of whom are students at the university. Two of the victims, however, were: Ryan Henderson, 18, and Chavares Block, 19. Block was a sophomore preengineering major and Henderson a freshman who had not yet declared a major. A third victim, Martrevis Norman, was treated at hospital and released.

Campus police Lieutenant Rhonda Swindle states: “We don’t believe this to be a random incident like some of the other shootings on other campuses.” The arrested suspects were charged with two counts of capital murder and one count of attempted murder, while police are still trying to figure out the motive for the shooting. “It is an incredibly heinous case,” Prosecutor Marcus Vaden told reporters at a news conference. “When you have a situation where it appears some, if not all of the victims were innocent bystanders, that’s bad.”

Similar to the procedures at Western Kentucky University a couple of weeks ago faculty and students received calls and e-mails through an automated system shortly after 9:30 p.m. Sunday, warning them of the shooting and urging them to stay inside behind locked doors. It was the first use of the university’s new emergency system, purchased last year after a gunman at Virginia Tech killed 32 people and himself.

A memorial fund was established and a candlelight memorial, as well as a prayer vigil were arranged.

“We will move forward,” Wendy Holbrook, associate dean of students, told those gathered. “We will not forget.”

Monika Urbanski

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A NEW LOOK AT THE BARD

Love is in the language The films have been well-watched and plays well-studied but Izabella Scott urges us to relive ‘Romeo and Juliet’ through re-reading the original text; the words alone explain our addiction to Shakespeare’s most tragic love story WHY ARE we so addicted to the RomeoJuliet myth? The tale of tragic love speaks to us across centuries, emerging persistently in film, adapted on stage, imitated in literature, mutating beyond the delicate verse in Shakespeare’s original play. Why is it such a powerful love story? It has permeated deep into Western consciousness, creeping into our vocabulary – what a Romeo! – into our entire perception of young, hopeless love.

The success of Baz Luhrmann’s film – and its soundtrack – has propagated Shakespearian verse, meshed with 90’s pop and the effortless, rich soul of Quindon Tarver.

Luhrmann’s reinterpretation of the play as commentary on American gang warfare- set in contemporary Verona Beach, a fictionalized suburb of Los Angeles- has both popularized the play, yet simultaneously choked any of the original language which didn’t make the final cut.

How many of us have actually read the original text – or can think of the play without Luhrmann’s vision saturating our thoughts? I almost didn’t pick it up.

I pictured Leonardo de Caprio kissing Claire Danes in a swimming pool, merged with a vague memory of an English lesson aged 14, our teacher’s desperate attempt to engage a class of spotty, uninspired teenagers.

When I began the prologue, I found I knew it already ‘… two households, alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we lay our

scene…’ I almost stopped there. ‘Don’t bother,’ Tom joked, ‘I’ll tell you what happens in the end.’ Who couldn’t? A grief stricken Romeo drinks poison beside the body of his beloved Juliet - thinking her dead - unaware she has merely swallowed a potion provided by Friar Lawrence to conceal her life beneath seeming-death – escaping the wrath of her father, a forced engagement to Paris – and so Juliet wakes to find her husband just-dead - stabs herself – moments before watchmen uncover the bitter scene – Familiar?

If you do anything this week, I seriously recommend you read this play.

It’s incredibly powerful. I don’t say this

“The story has permeated deep into Western consciousness, creeping into our vocabulary, into our entire perception of young, hopeless love.” lightly. Obviously, the ending won’t come as a surprise, especially if you’ve just read the above – but there are surprises, narrative facts you may not be aware of: Romeo kills Paris as he enters the Capulet crypt; Rosaline, like Juliet, is a Capulet; Juliet is 13 years old.

Photo by Jason Specland While Luhrmann kept much of Shakespeare’s original verse, still segments of the play were omitted.

Inevitably they lie forgotten. It’s accessible, ironically, because we know the plot; we can focus, rather on the beauty of the language, as the furze of printed black marks break into the confusion of a girl, sweetly high in a mad rush of early love.

Why is this tragedy so compelling? So haunting? From a formal perspective, it is often observed to be an imbalanced play – with far more Capulet than Montague scenes – departing from the classic pattern of a tragic drama.

Romeo is a difficult character, especially in his love for Rosaline, which so quickly melts into a love for Juliet. He is inconstant, he is whiny, he is clichéd.

They are so young – the play moves so fast, set over three days, the couple alone in only two scenes - and we can’t help but ask, can they really fall in love so deeply?

Is there enough time? And ultimately, is it true?

And the answer is - yes. Of course

it’s true; its truth speaks to us, across barriers of language, time, custom. It isn’t the fact they both commit suicide in fits of passion. Their death is inescapable, told in the prologue, written in the stars - a fact of the play. Rather the play’s power resides in a love that survives against every odd, blossoming despite a social misunderstanding of their love, misinterpreted by family, by friends, by the law.

Juliet stands at the centre of the play.

Though she barely leaves her bedroom, it

“Of course their love is true; it’s a type of love that you don’t get in adults, a love with all abandon, without caution, without boundaries.” is her courage which is the very buttress of the play, a courage she discovers in herself as she discovers love. It is this constancy which teaches Romeo how to love. Like Romeo, we fall in love with Juliet. For Shakespeare’s contemporary audience, this wouldn’t be visually – Juliet

‘For ever and a day’ His works transcend time, fashion, generation, culture, language, but what makes Shakespeare’s plays so immortal, asks Emily Monk HIS POETRY and narratives still speak to us truthfully, despite the social, cultural and historical changes of the last four hundred years.

His lasting and seemingly unabating popularity can in part be attributed to his ability to illuminate the human experience. Essentially, he understood the nature of human beings and the essence of feeling, illustrating emotion in a way never before seen and never since.

Shakespeare knew something that we are increasingly loath to acknowledge; that there is no technical fix for the problems of humanity. He

knew that our problems are ineradicably rooted in our nature and he atomised that nature with a characteristic style never since equalled. Every time we consult his work, we emerge with a deeper insight into the heart of our own mystery.

He encourages introspection and inspires passion.

These complex human emotions, inexplicable by science, are summarised in eloquent but simple verse, touching on every kind of sentiment. His readers can relate to the passion and reaction whilst losing themselves in his remarkable stories.

Shakespeare knew that there was no technical fix for the problems of humanity.

was played by a man, or young boy – but through her words, her constancy, her bravery and independence. Her helpless, hopeless love for Romeo. A Romeo who is flawed, feisty, fatally spontaneous, rushing to his death, immature, brimming with emotion, lonely, loving. As Juliet teaches Romeo how to love she changes his crummy poetry into very beautiful words, which are beautiful because he has thought about what he is saying, rather than reciting typical oaths and odes.

It’s the type of love that you don’t get

Tolstoy and Sophocles told of tragedies and people in trouble, Homer told of men at war and adventure, Terence and Mark Twain told cosmic stories, Plutarch told histories, Dickens melodramatic ones and Hans Christian Anderson told fairy tales.

But Shakespeare told every kind of story; comedy, tragedy, history, stories of love, adventure, melodrama, fantasy, fairy tales; each of them told so brilliantly they have become immortal.

And in every great story live great characters, no more so than in the works of Shakespeare.

The truly compelling characters, particularly his tragic heroes, are unrivalled and unequalled in literature, dwarfing and conquering even the sublime creations of the Greek tragedians.

Their popularity reigns because of their complexity. We can see ourselves as gentle Hamlet, flawed by procrastination, forced against our better nature to seek a murderous revenge; we want Romeo to fall in love with us for our beauty and articulate words; we dream of being as noble and great as the initial Macbeth still unmarred by overruling ambition, as kind as Desdemona, as beautiful as Olivia, as heralded as Othello; to be passionate and honourable enough to love and to fight completely against the wills of society or the norm, sometimes hindered by a moral conscience, often to tragic end. But most of all, we want to understand them. Shakespeare offers just enough ambiguity to evoke thought, inspiration and a subjective interpretation and answer about each of his creations.

But above all and perhaps most obviously, it is the words, the language and Shakespeare’s ability to turn a phrase that have immortalised his work.

His infinite influence on literature and the English language since can be realised by the number of his phrases now used as common clichés.

Authors use his lines as titles; Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ is a line from The Tempest, Robert Stone’s ‘Dogs of War’, a phrase read first in Julius Caesar and ‘The Undiscovered Country’ which Arthur Schnitzler took from Hamlet, to name only a few. It seems Ben Jonson was right when he said that Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all time”.

in adults, a love with all abandon, without caution, without boundaries. According to the society they live in, which pivots on a long, bloody feud between two old men, who hardly remember why it began, Romeo and Juliet should hate each other on sight – like Tybalt to Romeo. But they

don’t; rather, they love on first sight, Romeo who knows she is a Capulet, but only aware she is the sun, a torch, the light. Juliet knows too late that her love is forbidden – yet she does not falter.

It’s so heartbreaking. Romeo’s sweet and sincere whisperings to a dead wife, as he lies deep in a crypt of rotting Capulet’s, the warm body of a just-murdered Paris somewhere beside them. “O my love! my wife! … I will stay with thee, and never from this palace of dim night depart again.”

Read it. It’s addictive. The poetry plucks at some deep cord. It feels ancient – like reading Aeschylus’ early Greek Tragedy, awkward translations of Agamemnon which capture a startling beauty in the bitterness of hate in love, of love in hate, men reduced to urns and ashes, a royal household to a savage battlefield. It touches some primitive emotion, some base circumstance – what happens when two young people fall hopelessly in love, against the will of their families and society? And Shakespeare shows their heavy love will not be staunched.

“We sit through Shakespeare’s plays in order to recognise quotations” — OSCAR WILDE THE AVERAGE high-calibre university graduate has a vocabulary of about 11,000 words. Shakespeare’s is estimated at around 25,000. Even more impressively he is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the introduction of nearly 3,000 words into the English language including ‘assasination’ and ‘bump’. Only a hero like that would leave his second best bed to his wife in his will.

Oscar Wilde once said that we “sit through Shakespeare’s plays in order to recognise quotations.” We have all been told not to protest too much, that the game is up, knowing we owe the Bard. We’ve realised that the question often is to be or not to be and that usually what’s done is done but few of us are aware of quite how many colloquial phrases derive from one of Shakespeare’s 38 plays, 154 sonnets or five other poems. » “My salad days, when I was green in judgment” Antony and Cleopatra, Act I Scene 5 » “He hath eaten me out of house and home” King Henry IV Part II, Act II Scene 1 » “Exceedingly well read” King Henry IV Part I, Act III Scene 1 » “I’ll not budge an inch” Taming of the Shrew, Induction Scene 1

» “As good luck would have it” Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III Scene 5 » “The short and the long of it” Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II Scene 2 » “The world’s mine oyster” Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II Scene 2 » “I have not slept one wink” Cymbeline, Act III Scene 3 » “For ever and a day” As You Like It, Act IV Scene 1 » “We have seen better days” Timon of Athens, Act IV Scene 2 » “The green-eyed monster” Othello, Act III » “T’is neither here nor there” Othello, Act IV Scene 3 » “In the twinkling of an eye” The Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 2 » “Lend me your ears” Julius Caesar, Act III Scene 2 » “Love is blind” The Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 6 » “Nothing will come of nothing” King Lear, Act I Scene 1

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

November 11, 2008

China’s changing minds

POPULATION POWERHOUSE » China has a population of over 1.3 billion. Despite the onechild policy, introduced in 1979, it is still a sharp rise from under 600 million in 1950.

There is a common conception of China as state-influenced and overpopulated. Will Clowes tests his speculations and meets the determined people tipped to take over the world.

AS I broach a subject that evokes strong opinions, may I issue a quick disclaimer?

I don’t mean to be seen as condoning the censorious oppressor of the Dalai Lama and his people. But neither do I want to appear as having a case of Western sour grapes in light of China’s glorious and global summer. Rather I intend to irresponsibly sit on my cosy and distant fence and airily point to just a few of the curious and often incomprehensible characteristics that the eager and judgemental tourist observes in China.

In my case, that I spent only 3 weeks this summer in the most populous nation on the planet most likely diminishes the likelihood that I record anything truly

“A prominent aspect of China in the Western mindset is that the influence of state machinery is far reaching and all powerful. I still hold this view.” accurate.

It is a habit of anyone who fancies themselves as something of a ‘traveller’ (although I would never admit it out loud) to extract evidence of a wide held national psyche from the occasional passing comment or specific event. But in China these sorts of matters seem more consistent and significant. This tendency is inevitably enhanced when it comes to China due to the extent to which it represents the cultural ‘other’ in the West.

A prominent aspect of China in the western mindset is that the influence of state machinery is far reaching and all powerful. I certainly held, and still hold, this view and it was dramatically reinforced while still in Dublin. While queuing for my visa, I picked up two leaflets. The first was entitled ‘The truth about China’s Tibet’ and the second ‘Have you been harassed by Falun Gong?’ For those that do not know about Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa), according to www.falundafa.net it is ‘a high-level cultivation practice

Photo By Peter Morgan

guided by...truthfulness, benevolence and forbearance...with 100 million practitioners in over 80 countries’. From this side of the argument come the many accusations of victimisation at the hands of the Chinese government, including that Falun Gong adherents have been used for organ harvesting. However, in the words of the official embassy document, it is ‘a cult’ that ‘spreads heretical fallacies... says computers have been invented by people from other planets to control mankind... has claimed the lives of 1700 innocent people...(and) is a common vermin to humanity’.

Stereotypes thus far fulfilled it was no surprise when I could not access my Myzone email account once we reached Beijing. But, up to this point, this all refers to the workings of Chinese policy and, due to my preconceptions, provided no real alarm. It is in the conversations with the people themselves where interest was truly aroused.

In China Road by Rob Gifford, the China correspondent for National Public Radio between 1999 and 2005, he claims as a general rule that the majority of the population will echo the official line that China has too many people and the one-child policy (and therefore the nasty implications when this law is broken) is a positive measure. This turned out to be accurate. On our numerous and very long train and bus journeys, often without provocation, we were faced with a united front in support of State policy.

There were also other opinions we encountered regularly, such as that the upcoming Olympics were very important for China to introduce its qualities to the world. This was no hollow sentiment and the veracity of it was manifested by the nationalistic fervour, genuine pride and tangible excitement that were on display as the Olympic torch made its procession through the cities of China.

I own a T-shirt, along with probably another billion people, emblazoned with ‘I love China. One China, one family.

1,300,000,000 Chinese hearts support the Beijing 2008 Sport Games’. Whereas I probably bought mine with an aloof and unattractive cynicism, the remaining sixth of the world wear theirs with nothing but a very real gusto.

Whatever one’s opinions are- on the surface, at least- this all points to an almost universal zeal which really does

» Due to the preference for boys, according to the UN Population Fund, figures show that now 119 boys are born for every 100 girls. The long term result of this could be up to 40 million young men without wives. » In a traditionally agricultural society, there is now globally unprecedented urban migration in China. There are now over 550 million people living in urban areas and that figure is expected to rise. » To put this in perspective the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences predicted that by 2010 there will be about 125 cities in China with a population of over one million.The corresponding figure in the USA is 9.

Photo by Trey Ratcliffe believe the progress of their nation is a greater cause than the individual. This impression was encapsulated best when a very bright eighteen year old called Larry from the Inner Mongolian capital, Hohhot, asked us why our country hated China. While I spluttered out answers to the effect that Western governments did not hate the Chinese people, but rather their problems lay with the government of China, the separation of State and people seemed to have no resonance with him. This comes as quite a shock to people who live in countries where criticism of national politics is the default setting.

When we think of China, it is unavoidable that Chairman Mao immediately enters our minds alongside MSG and Jackie Chan, who incidentally is in almost every advert. To the uninitiated surveyor of China, the national treatment of the man and his reign of terror is absolutely baffling. Evidently no one would expect to understand the psychological effects of a man who not only caused the death of over seventy million people in peace time, but also tried to erase 2000 years of Confucian values and Imperial culture, in a mere three weeks. The lasting results of a thirty year period where putting your family before the State or owning land could sign a death sentence is impossible to assess, especially on a summer holiday.

However it is alarming when on your first day in Beijing a street salesman offers you a ‘Mao watch’, alongside fake Nikes and ladies of the night. They do not sell Hitler clocks in Germany and, maybe more comparably, Pol Pot hats are not on offer in Cambodia. However you can purchase a Stalin mug in Russia. Further turmoil of comprehension is provided upon entering Mao’s vast mausoleum, which takes centre stage in Tiananmen Square, when tourists, mindful of a murderous despot, are confronted by locals taking part in their pilgrimage to kow tow to their former leader and lay flowers before his embalmed corpse.

This veneration seems particularly peculiar when you consider the horror with which the Chairman would view The Communist Party’s vigour in embracing big business and growing the economy. In short, the only way I could begin to understand the attitudes shown towards Mao was to simplistically put it down to careful management in the years following his death in 1976.

His old house in Shanghai is a popular tourist destination both for foreigners and Chinese and is presented as the place where the revolution to remove the Japanese sympathising Kuomintang fermented. But conversely when we asked Larry what they learnt in history lessons, it appears that 1976 followed 1949. It must be remembered, though, that these events occurred within living memory and it is not surprising if it should take the detachment of a wholly new generation to bring about an entirely frank confrontation with these morbid

years.

Inevitably I was always going to judge China to a certain degree by my own cultural preconceptions, especially since, bar Russia, no other nation provokes such ideological and political tension and contrast with the West. Whether it is attitudes towards the autonomy of ethnic minorities (of which there are over 50 in China) or their support of pariah regimes, such as Myanmar or Zimbabwe, China seems to evoke strong criticism. Also it is clear that this moralising disapproval, however justified, has a basis in our alarm at their apparently unshakeable strength. After all sending a team into space while the rest of the world lurches into recession is quite the statement.

What makes this all the more real is that China bashing is not a solely Western phenomenon. Rather in my experience due to the more tangible effects that proximity inevitably brings, it is all the more virulent in the border nations. Over the last two summers the racism I have encountered towards China in its neighbours has been telling.

not militarily (although a number of Mongolians told me they did not think this unrealistic), but economically, culturally and demographically. This problem can also be seen in China itself.

In a nation of over fifty ethnic groups, yet over 90% Han Chinese, you will now find Han majorities in Hohhot and Urumqi (capital of Xinjiang province, a traditionally Uighur Muslim area) and ever more in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

Psychologically this may in part be down to the Imperial rulers having never been of the majority Han ethnic group.

Nevertheless it certainly is part of the unstoppable surge to use every available corner of the country for employment and profits.

In the neighbouring countries, too, some of the fears seem justified. As Chinese goods flood out, resources inevitably pour in. For example, in Mongolia, the cashmere industry has suffered at the ability of state subsidised Chinese businesses to outbid the locals.

Furthermore I was told due to difficulties in regulating Chinese operations in the

“What intimidates the unprepared Western tourist is the unashamed vigour with which the young Chinese go about their task of self-improvement; the positive conviction of their assault on the world” In Tajikistan, upon seeing a road being constructed from the Chinese border towards the capital, Dushanbe, I was told it was being built by Chinese convicts so that the country could be flooded with cheap products. This view appeared more institutionalized in Kyrgyzstan upon hearing from a young girl that ‘Chinese’ is used as an adjective to describe shoddy workmanship. In Mongolia, the antipathy was best expressed among other incidences when I was told it was better to buy a Russian motorcycle rather than Chinese, even though it would cost double.

Seeing that Mongolia was a Soviet satellite state until 1990 and suffered harshly from purges, their goodwill towards Russia provides further evidence of the ingrained dislike of China.

Furthermore on train journeys through Siberia I noticed carriages entirely of Chinese, armed with their pots and pans, on a mission to find work, usually as labourers in Russia’s ever expanding construction sites. For those of you who subscribe to the ‘how dare they come over ‘ere, steal our jobs, steal our women’ school of thought, thank your lucky stars Poland does not have a population of 1.3 billion.

The point is that, even if the Chinese road builders were not convicts or Chinese motorcycles were actually very efficient, the hostility one finds in the nations within spitting distance is founded in a very real and concrete apprehension.

They fear an invasion, most likely

Gobi Desert it is difficult to know just how much oil is being transported back over the border. These tensions are manifested by the not infrequent border scuffles between China and its neighbours.

As I left China, heading towards the incomparably more tranquil and sleepy environs of Mongolia, I still did not have a clue. I was truly unnerved at the totality of officialdom (most visible in the overpowering police and military presence everywhere; as we crossed the border, the platform was lined with soldiers, while the national anthem blared from loud speakers) and the remnants of Mao’s generation left behind by the social surge. Visible through the number of over 50s, blank faced, scouring the bins of China’s cities, it seemed modern China is very much a young person’s game.

However overseeing 1.3 billion people and improving life for as many of them as possible will unavoidably have its victims.

So, with this in mind, what I think really intimidates the unprepared Western tourist is the unashamed vigour about which the young Chinese go about their task of self improvement. This should never be sneered at. After all what kind of cynical reception would a young professional woman get here if she spoke of a play she had written about a love story that blossoms out of the wreckage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks? While I tried to suppress my sceptical sniggers, I also felt envious at the positive and unerring conviction of her assault on the world.

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

Why did 46% vote Republican?

The U.S. electorate has decisively voted for change. In less than two months an AfricanAmerican president will enter the Oval Office.

Bruff O’Reilly looks into why 57 million Americans cast their ballots for the Grand Old Party HAVING LIVED in America for the last seven years, in a mostly conservative area, I feel it may be helpful to explain to people abroad why someone would be a Republican. No, they’re not physically damaged or inherently insane; they just see things differently. And like so many oft subjugated and poorly educated people before them, their vision is blurred by a machine that they themselves find almost impossible to fully comprehend.

For all intents and purposes, the Republican party is comprised of two groups. The first is populated by the wealthy and secure - the old white men lounging back in their leather chairs, smoking cigars. These people exist, are powerful, and are resolute about their principles. They are the product of a system which advocates personal responsibility and private wealth. They are the businessmen,

bankers, doctors, lawyers, and members of the governing elite who have benefited from the status quo and who do not want it to change. The other group, the vast majority, are the undereducated, poorly paid, and religiously fervent. And because of the issues listed below, they do not dare question the fairness of the system in which they live.

There are many reasons why so many Americans voted Republican, most of which are well publicised, but not always well understood. I would like to highlight just three of the many factors which contribute to the Republicans’ process of indoctrination.

Education It is difficult to overemphasise the effect that the American public educational system has on the populace. While private, expensive schools provide topnotch education to America’s elite, most of America’s youth attend public institutions. While these vary from state to state, and from region to region, there is a trend: most are not well run, and the standards are not high. Poorly written and executed standardised multiplechoice tests, along with underpaid teachers and culturally ingrained ignorance, perpetuate a system that does not encourage students to achieve academically or question virtually anything. Outrageously

expensive universities leave the concept of third level education as just that, a concept, for almost all poorer students.

Even with acceptable results, third level is something that they will not experience without accumulating a serious amount of debt. While some will do well and go to university, the majority will either drop out of high school, or graduate without the capacity to perform anything but a low-level job. The Republican party speaks simply and does not mix words, appealing to the undereducated. And for this reason the educational system acts, put crudely, as a conveyor belt for the Republican party.

The Republican Party speaks simply and does not mix words, appealing to the undereducated Religion Religion plays a large and obvious role in the Republican party. Almost all of the party’s constituents are Christian, and another large percentage are the more

extreme ‘born-again’ evangelicals. The practices of some American churches are nothing new, but they still manage to amaze those of us who are not swept up in their fervour. The churches are too varied to make one damning criticism, but the message of personal responsibility – a message that runs at the core of the Republican Party – is ever present, and plays an insidious role in a Republican’s mindset. While not inherently unethical, this message is used to explain that the reason you are unsuccessful or ill-educated is that this is how you deserve to be. Had you worked harder, or been smarter, you would have avoided the difficulties that face you now.

The message completely ignores the fact that the largely unregulated capitalistic American system is inherently unfair and, when compared to other Western countries, geared against the lower classes. What this message achieves is to provide the people who subscribe to it with a fair justification for their sorrow.

It allows them to know that there is an explanation for why they have not fared well, and that it rests squarely on their shoulders. This is almost always a lie for most people, but because it goes along with an entrenched American ethos of “hard work will get you anywhere”, it sticks.

The Media Many people have seen it on YouTube, the video of Bill O’Reilly of U.S. Fox News infamy, ranting and raving at a guest that said something he disagreed with. It’s a funny sight but it’s also terrifying because it’s peddled as the truth. To many people, having just graduated from a High School where their teacher probably watched it too, Fox News, and other similar “news” outlets, are sources they can relate to and understand. Right-wing news provides a clear description of the events in such a way that it goes along with the cultural ethos of its viewers, regardless of the actual events. It is not difficult to see lies and bias, but because it not only speaks to the inherent thought process of its viewers, but also taps into the themes of life to which they subscribe, it has an overwhelming, and overtly damaging, influence.

America is a country with incredibly serious problems. Growing income disparity, inaccessible and unaffordable health care, poor educational systems, a massive prison population, a looming energy crisis, and a financial system now on the brink of collapse, represent just a few of America’s issues. The success of the nation will

depend on a cohesive effort, from all if its population, in order to survive and re-establish itself as a leading state in the eyes of the rest of the world. Republicans will have tough decisions to make with a liberal Democrat agenda in power, but it is possible for positive change to occur if the issues above are addressed and the systems of thought remodelled. It is not impossible for this to happen, and will rely on those people who are in charge of the systems in place. If they can shift their agendas positively, and engender support from the currently despondent or misdirected, America can heal itself and become a formidable nation once again.

It is a country that has a precedent of enacting remarkable change when need be.

Bush’s legacy: autocracy in Azerbaijan

By Sinead Walsh THE US presidential race is run and the question on most people’s lips is whether or not George W. Bush intends to go out with a bang; with the recent raid on Syria having fuelled much speculation on the subject. Well, here’s one of his plans, revealed in a letter written to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev which was published on the Today.az website on October 28: “In the coming few months we will strive for deepening the bilateral partnership and friendly relations between our countries. In particular, we hope for further advancement towards our goals in the sphere of global energy security and attainment of agreements on basic principles of the resolution of Nagorno Karabakh conflict.”

Given that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev beat Mr. Bush in the race to host Mr. Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart in talks aimed at preventing the frozen Karabakh conflict from escalating into a South Ossetia-style crisis, Bush is left with one priority - draining Azerbaijan of all the oil he can get and shoring up NATO influence in the region, while turning a blind eye to political realities in the Caucasian country sandwiched between Russia, Turkey and Iran; and faced with a staggering refugee and IDP (internally

displaced persons) problem.

The occasion of Bush’s foray into the sophisticated world of letter-writing was Mr. Aliyev’s re-inauguration as president following elections on October 15.

According to official statistics, 3,232,259 people – that is to say, over 87% of the 75% of the electorate who showed up at polling stations - voted for Mr. Aliyev. Not one of his six rivals received even three percent of the vote. The main opposition parties all boycotted the elections in protest against what the the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe(OSCE) called a “lack of robust competition and vibrant political discourse facilitated by the media”. All in all, a pretty poor return on attempts to democratize the postCommunist country. But nonetheless, Mr. Bush saw fit to congratulate Mr. Aliyev on the results and even express his support for efforts at “strengthening democratic institutions”.

It’s hard to imagine any of Mr. Bush’s Cold War predecessors sending a similar letter to Mr. Aliyev’s father, Heydar, a man who ruled Azerbaijan for over thirty years in both its Soviet and post-Soviet form. In 2003, the dying Mr. Heydar transferred power to his son in an election which was characterized by violence and other violations of democratic norms.

Since then, Mr. Ilham has cashed in on his father’s legacy, sponsoring a

JOURNALISTS SILENCED In March, Azadliq reporter Agil Khalil was attacked by an assailant with a knife. In July, a court in Baku convicted a man called Sergei Strekalin of the crime, despite the fact that Khalil, present at the trial, swore that Strekalin was not the man who had attacked him, and that the whole trial had been fabricated to discredit him by casting aspersions on his sexuality. Meanwhile, at a closed trial held in June, Novruzali Mamedov, editor of a Talysh minority language newspaper, was sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of treason. The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN, an organization defending his right to freedom of speech and association, has called in vain for details of the trial in which he was denied access to his defense lawyer - to be made public.

cult known to its critics as Heydarism.

Everywhere one goes in Azerbaijan after one’s arrival at the Heydar Aliyev airport - one finds Heydar Aliyev streets, Heydar Aliyev squares, Heydar Aliyev monuments, Heydar Aliyev schools, libraries and cultural centres. Along the roadsides, Heydar smiles down

Bush is left with one priority - draining Azerbaijan of all the oil he can get and shoring up NATO’s influence from enormous billboards, occasionally accompanied by his son in pictures of the two of them gazing out over building sites in Baku and oil rigs in the Caspian, or enjoying a talk in an impressive looking office. I was lucky enough to be in Baku to celebrate what would have been Heydar’s 85th birthday - had he lived. The cult of personality surrounding Mr. Heydar - and, by extension, his son - reminded me irresistibly of the traces of the cult to Lenin that remain indelibly marked on Russian towns. The difference being that the Lenin cult is so old it has become a quaint sort of novelty, whereas Heydarism is terrifyingly current.

A few stories from the past twelve months serve to demonstrate the limited reach of efforts to democratize the Azerbaijani media. This time last year, members of the Azadliq (Freedom) opposition block and independent media representatives were on hunger strike, protesting their lack of a free press. At the time, journalist Eynulla Fatullayev had just been sentenced to eight and a half years in prison on charges of threatening terrorism, inciting racial hatred, and tax evasion. This followed an article he had written suggesting that Azerbaijan would be at risk in the event of U.S. military strikes in Iran, and implying that the authorities were obstructing the investigation into the murder of Elmar Husseynov, the editor of the Russian

Heydar and Ilham Aliyev. Photograph by Alma Sudi language newspaper Monitor who was assassinated in 2005. Part of the evidence against Fatullayev was an article posted online in his name, but which he denies having written, accusing Azerbaijani troops of participating in the 1992 killings of inhabitants of the Nagorno-Karabakh town of Khojali.

I

n December 2007 Mr. Aliyev pardoned five out of the eight journalists then facing jail (Mr. Fatullayev wasn’t one of them).

However, the following March, courts went on to sentence Ganimat Zahidov, editor of the Azadliq newspaper, to four years in prison for “deliberately causing light injuries” and “hooliganism”. Key witnesses were prevented from testifying at his trial. In his final speech, he made the following statement: “The mind of the 21st century calls on the state to be the locomotive of progress and direct the community towards the most progressive ideas. We live in Azerbaijan and we are engaged in media activities. We do our best to establish the traditions of

media in our country in a way which will correspond to international standards.

But we have to do that taking the risk of death, being beaten half-dead, or arrested because of the articles we wrote. Why? Why does the logic of the 17th century shows up to this degree in the present governance of Azerbaijan?”

The run-up to October’s election was notable for Ilham Aliyev’s - and the late Heydar’s - dominance of the media, and a general sense of fatigue amongst the opposition. Following the election, the opposition also cancelled protest rallies after being denied permission to assemble by authorities in Baku, no doubt remembering the widespread arrests and beatings that followed the fraudulent 2003 election. Then on November 1st it was announced that the State Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting intended to put a stop to local broadcasts

by Radio Liberty, Voice of America and the BBC. The body’s chairman said that it was now policy to broadcast only programs of national origin, adding that

these stations would remain accessible by satellite, cable and Internet. Bearing in mind that in their 2007 report, which classified Azerbaijan as not free, Freedom House estimated that only 10% of the population has Internet access, this will be another significant strike against the media in Azerbaijan if it comes to pass.

Through all of this, Elmar Husseynov’s murder has remained unsolved.

Along with the bigger headaches inherited from the Bush administration, Mr. Obama will also have to deal with the problems posed by states such as the overlooked, oil-rich, illiberal and uncompromisingly nationalist Azerbaijan.

It may be that Azerbaijan will remain an overlooked ally of the oil-hungry superpower, just as it was in Clinton’s day.

Or it may be that Mr. Obama will push Mr. Aliyev closer to Moscow, sacrificing a strategic foothold in the Caucasus to criticize the increasingly repressive Aliyev dynasty.

It should prove interesting. After all, they say you should judge a man by how he treats his servants, not his equals.

TRINITY NEWS

WORLD REVIEW

TRINITY NEWS

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

November 11, 2008

Eastern promise Russia and China have not escaped the financial turmoil unscathed. But while investors are wary of committing to emerging economies, Ruth Mannion finds the local markets buoyant

F

OR THE past few months we have heard of little else but that loaded term ‘recession’.

So another article about the recession, you think? Not quite. If anything positive can be drawn from the global economic crisis it is that everyone, including the most insular and self-assured have been made aware of their vulnerability to world markets. What stemmed from a subprime mortgage scandal was to make the news in every nation around the world.

I first encountered word of an alleged financial crisis when I was still on my Erasmus year in Moscow in May. It came in the shape of a rejected job offer. The explanation was curt and panicked: “Plans for Celtic Bear have been shelved for the foreseeable future. When you spoke to us we had not heard of the subprime market and the woes that have followed. Investors are nervous. I suggest you should widen your options.” This is when I began to pay closer attention to the workings of Wall Street and the increasing withdrawal of investors from Russia. The situation, as we all now know, is going to get worse before it recovers.

Ireland has gone from being known as the Celtic tiger, to being Europe’s leading trendsetters in equally positive and pejorative ways. Saying ‘No’ to Lisbon and being the first EU member to fully guarantee bank deposits has placed us in a rather uncomfortable spotlight. It is however far more interesting to ask questions about what we do not know than what is pretty obvious.

A military misadventure in Georgia and a shareholder dispute with TNK-BP have shattered investor confidence in Russia. While having a secure surplus on its current account, the overseas liabilities of Russian firms now exceed their foreign assets by $103.5 billion. The partial sell out of Renaissance Capital, Russia’s leading Western investment firm, is testament to the tough times ahead for Russian companies. Business in Russia has always held an element of risk, but now more than ever it looks like Western investors will definitely veer away from a politically complicated country and stick to the safest options available. Now is an interesting time to stop and consider where the key emerging markets stand in the world economy. The four main countries making up the ‘BRIC’ group (Brazil, Russia, India, China) now face

another test aside from their ‘emerging market’ stigma. What I mean by this are the factors that make Western investors cautious about doing business in these countries. Political uncertainty, economic disparity and corruption are the main dangers that foreign investors are keen to dodge. The two BRIC countries I have visited this year, Russia and China, both struck me as firmly confident of their ability to withstand an economic tempest.

China is in an especially healthy state and with $1.9 trillion in foreign currency reserves and little connection to foreign banks it is in a position where it could help out Western companies with sovereign wealth funds. China is not of course impervious to the global downturn. Wealth is being squeezed as asset prices decline and China will suffer from a decline in exports to the United States and Europe. The property bubble is Beijing may have popped but this does not mean that the growing urban middle class is going to stop spending. The opening of the first Marks and Spencer stores in Shanghai and Beijing signalled long queues, not seen in Ireland since Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: “The economic crisis, let us face it, is far from over.”

Kate Moss came to Topshop. Middleclass Russians are similarly spending as vigorously as ever. The market for luxury brands in Russia and China is still expanding. The rise in the standard of living in both countries has been accompanied by a desire to splash out on everything from new houses to cars to designer labels.

American consumers, demoralised by the economic crisis, are now in an entirely different frame of mind. It is worth asking whether the $150,000 sum spent on Sarah Palin’s new election wardrobe would have caused such an outcry if it had happened a year before. Media censorship and modest govenement forecasts have helped comfort the Russian and Chinese consumers. Which does make one wonder whether the Western media needed to stress the bleak financial state of our economies. Even if China’s growth rate continues to slow below its double digit rate of recent years, its present

GROWTH: BRIC BY BRIC BRIC is an informal economic alliance make up of four of the world’s largest countries with rapidly growing economies: Brazil, Russia, India and China respectively.

The four economic giants, made up of two energy-rich nations and two manfacturing powerhouses, have been forging stronger links since the 1990s.

Goldman Sachs predicts that if their current rate of growth continues, the four BRIC countries will be the dominating economic forces in the world by 2050.

Russia hosted the first formal summit of the BRIC nations this May in the Eastern Urals city of Ekaterinburg.

Skyscrapers under construction in Beijing, China. Photo by Alexandra Moss rate of 9% is more than healthy and as Zhou Xiaochuan, head of China’s Central Bank, said China has a vast domestic market, abundant liquidity and a good source of labour. In short, he considers the foundations of the economy strong enough to withstand the fall-out from a Western economic crisis.

Russia and China differ enormously in their approach to foreign trading. Russia, while still attracting comparatively low levels of foreign investment, has ironically availed of foreign lending. Russia will no longer be able to lend and in turn borrow dollars from Western banks as the credit crunch hardens. The dollar-dominated RTS index and the rouble-dominated MICEX index have both seen huge falls.

The Kremlin’s attempts at suspending trading and introducing technical procedures have managed to damage the credibility of Russian markets further.

The Chinese Yuan is in nowhere near the same amount of trouble. China has succeeded, unlike Russia, in securing a record amount of foreign investment and in turn has invested billions abroad.

It goes to show that WTO membership pays off.

However these current account balances should not stop us from seeing what each country has in common. Both states are enormous countries, where

the governments respond aggressively to foreign companies who enter ‘strategic areas’. Both countries have enormous wealth inequalities between urban and provincial areas. Neither state has democracy or free media. HIV, and human and political rights issues are more than problematic in both cases. Yet both countries have been, and will be, considered for foreign investment. When I met Western ex-pats who worked in multinational companies in Moscow I often wondered how much the company

do hopefully sooner rather than later, the multinationals will once again begin to target the BRIC countries.

Perhaps in the wake of this crisis people will pay closer attention to the part multinationals have to play. Some things, it seems, are not meant for scrutiny at home. The reluctance and even refusal of the US government to allow Chinese, Indian and Russian companies to purchase US stock has shown how Westerners are uneasy when it comes to allowing these nascent economic superpowers to

Russia and China respond aggressively to foreign companies who enter their ‘strategic areas’ bent their rules in Russia. Company policy often clashes with local procedure in the BRIC countries. The French retailer Carrefour experienced unprecedented protests this year, after pro-Tibet campaigners interrupted the Olympic torch in Paris. This is an example of the difficulties that can be encountered with the BRIC countries. However politicised capitalism and fear of the unknown cannot stop multinationals from investing in these expanding markets. Once investor confidence picks up, as it ultimately will

encroach on world markets. Any forwardlooking economist can tell you that integration is necessary for globalisation.

What my travels have taught me is that it is important to know your intended market. Most foreign businesses fail in Russia because they cannot come to terms with the local mentalitet (mentality).

Equally guanxi (relationship) is essential to doing successful business in China.

Having government officials on your side will also pay dividends. Demanding coherent trading arrangements will

All four BRIC members also meet as part of the group of 20 industrialised nations (G20), another semi-formal group made up of the world’s 19 largest countries and a representative from the European Union. The G20 nations collectively represent 90% of the global GNP as well as two thirds of the world’s population.

The G20 will convene in Washington on November 14 for talks on the economic crisis. improve transparency and respect for the law everywhere. Companies should not compromise their standards to secure a quick deal. The days of making a quick buck and pulling out rapidly once things get cold will become outdated as foreign markets become stronger.

BRIC countries will begin to demand a greater understanding of business practices before deals are sealed. This might happen sooner than anticipated, now that some BRIC countries have sovereign wealth reserves. The future’s uncertain but as markets continue to fall the world economy needs some survivors.

Let’s hope understanding will prevent bankruptcy.

African National Congress facing split The oldest party on the African continent, the African National Congress is facing its biggest crisis in 50 years

By Andrew McKenzie Deputy World Review Editor THE BEGINNING of November marked a decisive moment in the history of post-apartheid South Africa, with the governing African National Congress (ANC) on the verge of a split. Dissidents led by the former Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, and former premier of the region around Johannesburg Mbhazima Shilowa, broke away from the ANC and called a national convention of all likeminded South Africans in Johannesburg.

They intend to set up an opposition party to challenge the hegemony of the ruling ANC in elections early next year.

In the 18 years since Nelson Mandela was released from jail the ANC has moved from one of the most successful and respected liberation movements in the world to a deeply divided organisation, led by Jacob Zuma, a man who is facing charges of corruption and racketeering, and has previously been charged with rape, although he has since been acquitted of the crime.

Addressing more than 6,000 delegates, including all of the current opposition parties, Mr Lekota accused the ANC of abusing its power. He asserted that it had lost the values it had cherished under Nelson Mandela, and he proclaimed that a new party was needed to prevent the country from returning to apartheid-style

rule.

Mr Lekota said the “dominant political forces” in the country - the leaders of the ANC - were “determined to abuse their power to advance their personal interests” as white minority government had done during apartheid. “The threat the nation faces is that we will see the reaffirmation of important elements of that terrible legacy under our new masters”, he added.

“Shall we keep quiet and do nothing as we see the open betrayal of everything people saw as their hope for their future?” he asked to cries of “No!”.

Helen Zille, winner of the world’s

best mayor award for her work in Cape Town and head of the current opposition party the ‘Democratic Alliance’, said the convention could be a “turning point” for democracy in South Africa. “The ANC should be very afraid,” she warned. Mr Shilowa announced that the launch of the party will take place on December 16th and it is expected that it will be called the South African Democratic Congress (SADC) A key moment in the development of this breakaway party came during last year’s ANC conference in Polokwane, when then President Thabo Mbeki lost his fight with Mr Zuma to remain party president. Mr. Zuma’s supporters went on to force Mbeki loyalists out of key positions of power, and Mr Mbeki was forced to step down as president in September.

Trevor Manuel, South Africa’s hugely respected finance minister, resigned in

AFRICA’S OLDEST POLITICAL PARTY » The African National Congress (ANC) was formed in 1912 to oppose white minority rule and promote democracy in South Africa. Its members were drawn from a broad spectrum of society, including tribal leaders and church bodies. » It was a major force in the struggle against apartheid. Throughout the 20th century the party grew to encompass a mass civic movement for racial equality. » Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned for 27 years for his anti-apartheid activism, led the party before and after his imprisonment. He became the country’s first black president in the first fully democratic elections in 1994.

protest, although he agreed to return to the position shortly afterwards. Furious at losing influence, Mr Mbeki’s allies have since turned on their former comrades.

Among their accusations were that the pro-Zuma faction would lead South Africa into an economic shift to the left by affording the ANC’s allies in the South African Communist party (SACP) and the unions too much power. Mr Lekota wrote that it was unprecedented for the SACP to hold the most senior offices within the ANC. “The ANC is NOT the SACP,” Mr Lekota wrote, “and the SACP is NOT the ANC.” The dissidents maintained that they are true to the ideals of the ANC as they have been in the past.

Mr Zuma said he was not surprised by the resignation of his former comrades, saying it had been in the air for quite a while. “It is just disappointing that people who have been in the leadership, who have been leading people within the ANC, are not able to show leadership when they come across difficulties,” he said. Others went further, accusing the defectors of preparing to ditch the ANC because it is questioning the conservative economic policies adopted under Mr Mbeki.

The trade union movement, Cosatu, called Mr Shilowa a “whisky-drinking egotist”, and a black sheep who had betrayed the movement. “He changed from being a darling of workers to a member of expensive, elitist, whiskydrinking and cigar-smoking clubs,” said Cosatu.

From this perspective the division in the ANC is a left-right split, with Zuma supporters on the left and Lekota supporters on the right. In reality, the

situation is more complex, with some alleging that tribal differences are at least in part responsible for the divisions.

Xhosas, used to holding influence under Mr Mbeki, are said to be angry at being sidelined under Mr Zuma, who is a Zulu. However these are inflammatory statements, more often spoken behind closed doors than openly aired.

In the wake of their breakaway and in preparation for the party’s launch, rallies have taken place around the country, at which supporters of the new party have torn up or burnt their ANC membership cards.

Mr Lekota has spoken at these meetings, where his supporters wore yellow and white T-shirts carrying his image. But the rallies have been countered by demonstrations by ANC loyalists, some of whom chanted “Kill Shilowa, kill Lekota”.

Some meetings have been attacked, and only police intervention has prevented Lekota supporters from being injured.

T

he organisers of the new party complain that venues they wanted to book have been denied them. The ANC has condemned the violence and called for calm. But the party has also accused the dissidents of intolerance for burning ANC emblems.

“The ANC has noted with utter disgust the rising levels of political intolerance in the country by supporters of the group,” it said.

The violence that has greeted some of the rebels meetings has lead to fears particularly in white communities that the split in the party may lead to serious violence similar to that of Zimbabwe from ANC supporters unwilling to see

a wane in their party’s power. Yet if the split is peaceful, as is largely expected, a credible opposition will provide the current government with the impetus to attack the problems facing the country, especially the still huge number of people in poverty and shockingly high crime Former Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota and his supporters may split from the ANC rate.

The rebels have a very promising constituency in the black middle and upper class that expanded under Mr Mbeki. They do not appear to be short of cash but they are short of time if they want to mount a credible challenge to the ANC at next year’s poll. The ruling party could even opt for an early ballot to complicate such plans. Even if all goes well, the new party will struggle to secure a mass defection of ordinary voters, who still view the ANC as the party that best represents their interests, and would not expect to win.

However, the rebels could potentially dent the ANC vote, taking the ruling party below the critical two-thirds threshold in parliament; and if the gains were more significant, they could potentially become a significant player in the medium term.

The political schism does however mark a dramatic shake-up in a country where the ANC has dominated political life since the end of white-minority rule in 1994, and after 14 years of ANC rule there is now a palpable wind of change in the air.

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TRINITY NEWS TRINITY NEWS

OPINION

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

Breaking up is hard, but breaking up in public is worse PAMELA HUGHES CLICK. “PAMELA Hughes is now single.”

There are few reasons to hate Facebook, but it making you cry is certainly reason enough. Status updates are not supposed to be painful. They can however prove to be fatal, one woman’s husband murdered her for changing her status to “single”.

I suffered a Facebook break-up a month ago. I can assure you that neither now nor then did I harbour murderous sentiments. However, to say that my physical response to this public declaration of destitution was painless would be a lie. Lying about break-ups can be tempting, especially as everyone seems to be interested in who did what to whom. Prying questions used to always irritate me. The beginning and ending of relationships are subjects that people of all ages find innately interesting.

Ironically, both are times when staying silent is often the wisest option.

My break-up began with the best of

intentions; “being friends” afterwards and so on. I have since realised the impossibility of that aim. It seems that even the most amicable break-ups are fraught.

The opening drama was easy to handle, but afterwards, when the genuine reality struck, my situation worsened.

The temptation to bottle it up is everpresent. Of course you can be civil, go for coffee, speak normally, but there is a constant worry that this, post break-up, will have a negative effect, one that you are unaware of. Brief periods of civility might prove disastrous if they prompt you to reminisce or worse, hope that you

can get back together. No one with a busy college life to juggle should allow himself or herself to turn into a Carrie Bradshaw, indefinitely soul-searching and fighting off thoughts of an ex.

If you cannot save the relationship, then you must move on. In this case, dignity and poise seem to come with speed and steadiness. While the new singleton should receive plentiful sympathy and understanding from the most unexpected of places (mainly from those with previous break-up mileage, they remember the pain), there is no good in dawdling in Planet Misery. After recovery, patients should leave hospital,

leap into the air and start back into life.

Disliking crying and clichés, I did not find the break-up process at all to my liking. The only fun part was the post break-up party. This involves an impromptu gathering of close single friends, ample alcohol and unsupervised action. There is no course in “how to maximise your break-up recovery”, and there is no society that offers the recently singled tissues, sweet tea and hot rebound dates. This is a task you must set yourself.

How to move yourself on. Realistically speaking, the recently made singleton is unlikely to be someone with no prospects.

Once upon a time, you too were one of the

many Romeo and Juliet couples lounging about campus, and if you really want to you could probably join their queasy ranks again. Try something new, indulge yourself, and move on. The future looks an awful lot brighter once the tears stop and you hang out with your other best friends. Begin to notice those interested glances in your direction. Feel inspired.

Most importantly stop thinking about the ex, take some space. If they are that wonderful, then you can become friends in time, if not, it’s their loss. Now you pity those Michaelmas couples. Come Trinity term they will be in your position, and it will be approaching exam time. Ouch!

IN PROFILE

A modern crusader Although the focus has remained squarely on American presidents of late, our very own Mary Robinson is a key figure in the international crusade for human rights, writes Áine Ní Choisdealbha.

NO ONE imagines that the Irish presidential elections would rouse as much excitement as those in the US, especially given the huge disparity in power given to each figurehead, both within their own state and as an effect of their nation’s prowess on the global level.

Nonetheless, one of our former heads of state is as respected on the international stage as either of the main candidates in this month’s election. Mary Robinson has recently been given yet another highstanding humanitarian position, having become the chairperson of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.

Launched in 2000, the GAVI is a body of organisations which purchase vaccines for disadvantaged children and aid poor governments in co-ordinating their distribution and administration, and includes the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as various NGOs. Robinson has consistently allied herself to issues of human rights and of international importance. She was elected to Seanad Éireann in 1969 as one of Dublin University’s representatives, and used her position to campaign for issues pertaining to women’s and gay rights, including the lifting of the marriage bar on women in the civil service, the right for women to sit on juries and for homosexual law reform. She introduced the first bill that tried to achieve a slackening of Irish contraception laws, although it did not pass as no other senator would second it. As president, she worked on such issues as Anglo-Irish relations and on the position and rights of the Diaspora – Irish emigrants and descendants of emigrants

located all over the world.

Her vocation for matters of international significance is highlighted by the fact that she resigned from office early to become the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1997, a post she held until 2002. Declaring herself “not somebody just to walk away”, she attributed the end of her tenure to US pressure following outspoken remarks relating to violation of human rights as a result of the US-fronted “War on Terror”.

In late 2002, she founded a humanitarian organisation called “Realising Rights”, an organisation which emphasises the responsibility of international politicians, businesses and policy-makers to uphold human rights. She has also been the recipient of a number of prizes acknowledging her humanitarian work, including the North-South Prize, the Otto Hahn Gold Peace Medal and the very first Outspoken award from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

Her current position comes at a time of great economic unrest which could affect the aid available for vaccines and other immunisation treatments, and hinder the investment of poorer countries in health services. Robinson acknowledged this problem when she stated that “it will be [the Alliance’s] challenge to stay focused on reaching the Millennium Development Goals,” which include an aspiration to reduce child mortality, “through increasing the positive impact that immunisation provides on people’s lives,” in spite of the global recession into which the world economy seems to be descending.

“It will be Robinson’s responsibility to help improve the quality of millions of children’s lives”

The GAVI recently claimed that up to a quarter of child deaths could be prevented simply by administering current vaccines to more children, and introducing new vaccines currently being perfected. It will be Robinson’s responsibility to help ensure that Alliance members and donors work towards fulfilling this claim and thus improving the quality, and length, of the lives of millions of the world’s children.

Robinson also becomes GAVI chairperson at a time when the organisation is being accused of acting as a platform for pharmaceutical companies to market their vaccines to underdeveloped countries and profit from their exploitation.

Robinson will have to tackle this ideological issue, as well as the practical issues of ensuring continued support from donor governments despite their internal financial issues, assigning aid to healthcare training programmes, the purchase of medical equipment and other distribution and administration necessities, and utilising the organisation’s potentially reduced resources efficiently and effectively.

Robinson may not be the figurehead of a large and powerful nation, but her current position grants her influence over the actions of important international players in the realms of both politics and business.

BIOGRAPHY » Mary Robinson studied law at Trinity College, King’s Inns and Harvard. She later became Reid Professor of Law. » Robinson was the first Irish president to visit Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. » She was the first head of state to visit Somalia after its civil war and famine in 1992, and to visit Rwanda after the genocide committed there, in 1994. » She is a member of the Club of Madrid, an organisation that promotes democracy and is made up of global figures of merit, and of the Elders, a group of political figures and activists who convene to work on solutions for problems such as climate change and conflict.

So, what exactly are you going to do with your degree?

Secondary school teaching is not the only option available to liberal arts graduates, writes Rory Purcell WHENEVER I attend any sort of gettogether at home or college, I am invariably asked the same tedious question once people have ascertained that I am studying history: “What are you going to do with your history degree?

Become a teacher?” I am always startled by how many people, notably those from older generations, view any liberal arts degree, including History, English and Philosophy, as being futile.

There is a sharp contrast in Ireland compared to the U.K., where History is the second most subscribed course, only preceded by English. The points requirement for History in this country is significantly inferior to that of other courses and this derives from

the antiquated belief that it is nigh on impossible to be rewarded with a livelihood at the end of it. Irish parents push their children into vocational subjects such as Pharmacy, Nursing and Law without even contemplating a more flexible and (dare I say it), interesting degree.

So what can you do with a History degree? Pretty much anything. Employers see History graduates as having a valuable combination of skills. History students develop high levels of literacy and so are well suited to any type of communication employment, such as journalism, advertising, marketing and Public Relations. Through intensive reading and intimate tutorials, students build a solid

foundation in research and analysis, which makes them very attractive employees for Law and Business companies. Naturally, a career in academia can also be pursued, but much as I admire History teachers, academics and museum curators, I just

“An overwhelming number of graduates are employed in jobs unrelated to their field of study.” do not think it is for me.

History graduates have the ability to meet deadlines, can excellently marshal an argument and are ingrained with a self-motivation that is born from spending Sunday nights drinking coffee trying desperately to finish an essay by Monday afternoon.

Many of these attributes are also learnt by other arts students. I am a staunch defender of Classics, a subject that has faced far too much criticism. Sure, nobody speaks Ancient Greek or Latin any more but Classics gives students discipline, as well as a strong sensitivity and understanding of language. The course itself also demands rigorous thinking and intellectual versatility from its participants. Anyone who can read Ancient Greek or Latin is a highly cultured individual and should take great pride in their achievement.

The problems arise when people take extremely specialised, but by no means meaningless, degrees from poor institutions. Examples of this are Chinese Architectural Archaeology, Mythology, Egyptology and Fashion Design. The study of these subjects could be fascinating for the right person at an excellent institution, but too often people commit to these courses because they have not been accepted for their

first choice courses at their first choice universities.

“Classics gives students a strong sensitivity and understanding of language.”

A student should be truly passionate about the subject to embark on such a course as the job market will narrow the more specialised the subject material is.

This is why History is such a wonderful and valuable degree to do.

John F. Kennedy, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lord Sainsbury and Anita Roddick all studied History and have become extremely successful because of it. Even Tony Blair was once supposed to have said, “I wish I had studied History at University.”

Trinity College History Graduates in 2007 went on to do a wide variety of things such as Trainee Investment Manager, Parliamentary Assistant, Wealth Management and Deputy Editor for institutions such as AIB, Ashville Media and the Dáil Éireann, and of course, somebody became a History teacher at a secondary school.

It is vital to stress that an overwhelming number of graduates are employed in jobs that are completely unrelated to their field of study at University, which is why flexible degrees such as History and English are so adaptable. Large proportions of both of these courses advance to further study and are employed right across the career spectrum. It is worth noting that most of the world leaders today have done some sort of arts degree; you never see a politician having studied Theoretical Physics or Pharmacy. So from now on, when I am asked “What are you going to be able to do with your History degree?” I will reply “Just about anything.”

TRINITY NEWS

OPINION

TRINITY NEWS November 11, 2008

Fees would guarantee equality

ROUND UP AOIFE CROWLEY ENTERTAINMENT

OFFENSIVE COMEDIANS NOT GETTING THE LAST LAUGH

The return of college fees is inevitable, writes Iain Mac Eochagáin. The student unions’ anti-fees stance is flawed and misrepresents students.

WE ARE told that it was the week when an enraged public assembled and took to the streets; when young and old seized democracy by its roots and marched on the seat of power with one, unequivocal message: you have made us very angry. It was, of course, the week when pensioners and students alike protested in response to Minister Brian Lenihan’s budget for 2009.

Aside from the bombast about the people uniting in spite of age and clawing back democracy, the harking back to 1968, and the Beloved Leader-style address from Mr Shane Kelly, President of the USI, in this paper, there are two important questions that remain to be answered. Is the current system of free third-level tuition for all sustainable?

And how representative is the stance of the USI? Firstly, let us place the fees themselves in context. Our current system regarding tuition fees must be understood in both the political context of 1995, and the economic and academic context of today.

In 1995, Minister for Education Niamh Bhreathnach announced the end of tuition fees in most third-level institutions over the next two years. Why was this

“Rather than fostering the brightest minds, free-fees have made going to university an obligatory rite of passage for the young undecided.” done? Because it was politically both expedient and timely. By making thirdlevel education free, the Government of the day in effect handed back the urban

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

upper classes, the groups most likely to avail of third-level, large sums of money.

This was to calm their irritation at wealthy farmers claiming free-fees (which were available through means testing) with creative accounting. What better way to win votes?

It was a timely move – the country could afford to take on every student’s tuition fees. Unemployment and emigration were down, and the boom years were just around the corner. The result was, naturally, a huge increase in third-level entrants. Thirteen years later, and the effects are fully felt by academia, government and society. Universities are starved of capital (this year, Trinity’s deficit is €7 million), government is beholden to paying for a system that cannot be sustained in the long term, and the very degrees we earn are devalued by the sheer number of them.

Our current economic woes do mean that education should be supported and funded to ensure society can be as equal possible, but our current system is far from just. The present system demands no financial commitments, in exchange for teaching and qualifications that lead to appreciable material rewards after graduation. What can this say about the level of most students’ commitment?

Because, let’s be honest, not everyone in third-level education entered it for purely academic reasons.

Instead of making our universities spaces for the brightest minds to expand and interact, “free-fees” have made them sites of an obligatory rite of passage for the young undecided. Yes, many of them have been educated, but what, financially, have they contributed, and how much could many of them have? I don’t wish to sound haughty – of course not everyone can be sure of their ambitions at eighteen years old – but nothing in life is free.

If we continue to allow our universities to rely on the State’s funding, we are not doing them, or indeed ourselves, any favours. Colleges and universities

who participate in the free-fees scheme are simply not paid enough per student to pay staff and keep offering all the academic programmes they would like.

Any more of the one-size-fits-all free-fees regime will mean fewer courses on offer, less teaching time, and fewer places. The race for smaller courses will, of course, be won by the better-off, who have been using the money saved on fees since 1995 to put their kids through grind schools, to give them the best chance at the golden 600 points. How fair is that?

We should be considering all options – deferred payment for those on low incomes, graduate tax, low-interest student loans – instead of clinging to our

Scenes at the fees protest on October 22, 2008. Photo: Cian Clarke

“Universities are starved of capital and very degrees we earn are devalued by the sheer number of them.” own model, a product of pure politics.

What doesn’t help is how the USI, with their constituent member, TCDSU, couldn’t see this logic and went for the crowd-pleasing stance that “Fees Are Bad Because.”

The current system is beyond questioning. Any attempt to touch the system, which charges all taxpayers, benefits a minority, and short-changes the universities, is “short-sighted”. To consider reversing a political decision designed to refund the rich in exchange for votes is “cynical”.

The line that the hike in the student services charge is the back door to tuition fees also casts doubt on the USI’s mathematics. Can €1,500 per year, which barely covers buildings, exams, library services, etc., really cover tuition as well?

The USI would be a shred more credible on this topic if it could put the same people-massing muscle into campaigning on grants. The current county council grant system is slow, has very high income thresholds, and gives out grants that at the top rate cover only half of an average student’s living costs.

But, for some reason, this issue, which also affects everyone on low incomes who would like a college education, isn’t as important for the USI. Both TCDSU’s and the USI’s approach to the fees issue has presumed that all students are against fees in any form, without all of us being consulted. A referendum would be the correct way to ascertain student opinion and form policy, even if that meant deviating from the usual practise of referenda solely for constitutional questions. They presume that all of the students who marched on Leinster House were fully committed to the cause. In fairness, we and students in other Dublin colleges didn’t have far to go, but I would like to know how many came from around the country just to have the day off classes? It’s simply not credible that TCDSU and the USI can assume the support of each of us for its policy, when we did not directly decide that policy line.

The boom is over, and the government can no longer afford to blindly subsidise everyone’s third-level education, irrespective of their income. The question now is how we fund our universities in the fairest possible way. Fairness means entry criteria that measure real intellectual ability, fees for those who can afford them, and a manageable way for the less welloff to pay them. In the current debate, we should be clear about the student unions’ role and how they represent all of us. I, for one, will not trust an organisation whose website oddly omits its anti-freefees stance in 1995, as USI’s website does.

The question is too complex to generate a unanimous, enraged response from all individuals. Don’t count me in.

The fencer’s art: elitism or excellence?

DÓNAL MULLIGAN FENCERS THE world over will all, at some stage, experience “the look”. This is usually given by a bemused gym-goer pausing on the way to the water fountain to look at us prancing around in white, waving what look like car aerials at each other. It is usually accompanied by a shake of the head, and a return to an altogether more rewarding and fulfilling session lifting heavy things and then putting them down again. But just as this generalisation cannot capture the intense and incommunicable satisfaction of a good session in the gym, so the few seconds of attention paid to fencing can in no way explain why members of the college fencing squad make the sacrifices they do to train five days a week.

I make no claims of superiority in this regard on behalf of fencers – hockey players, rowers, runners and many others all juggle timetables to compete in college colours playing the sport that drives them. On the technical side, fencing shares several characteristics with other sports, such as boxing. Both place an emphasis on speed, accuracy, mental discipline and a sense of improvisation built on long hours of repetitive drills long before the pugilist dances under the lights. But when asked to write an article “in defence of fencing”, I realised that very few sports in this college, including the ones mentioned above, would be called upon to justify themselves in such a manner. The “no” we heard from prospective recruits during Freshers’ week was different from the “no” heard by other clubs. Our “no” was tinged with a certain measure of disdain.

This is not an uncommon problem for fencing clubs in Ireland. In response to perceived slights, some fencers will trot out facts such as that fencing is one of only four sports to have been present in every Olympic games since their inception, or that the tip of a foil is the second-fastest object in sport, the fastest being a speeding bullet from a rifle. Or even – clutching at straws here – that the lead singer of Iron Maiden fences sabre.

But these responses are satisfactory only on one level. Instead of reaching immediately for stock phrases that in no way convey what it means to fence, fencers need to ask themselves whether the perceived disdain is directed against their sport, or against those who practice it. Both are separate issues and deserve different responses.

Unfortunately, as one journalist from a weekly Irish broadsheet claims, fencing still struggles with its reputation of elitism. In an article written late last year, he concludes with the words “if my interaction with the fencing clique is anything to go by, then insular, upper-crust exclusivity is still an issue in the Irish branch of this fascinating fight form.” Ouch. Although one can’t imagine him making the same accusation if a boxing club neglected to return his call, his criticisms deserve to be addressed rather than immediately dismissed out of hand.

The accusation of elitism is one issue that fencing in many western European countries has always had to struggle with. It is true that modern Olympic fencing has its origins in the duelling of the wealthy and privileged upper classes in France and Britain. This cannot be denied. However, to call those who fence today “elitist” makes about as much sense as labelling all Trinity students as such.

Our college has a long and distinguished history and those lucky enough to represent it – whether in sport, debating or at academic conferences – are quite conscious of this. But each chooses the significance he or she will attach to the roots of the college. Fencers too are aware of the roots of their sport, but these

roots are not something that they should have to justify or apologise for.

Nevertheless, one quite valid aspect of the “elitist” charge focuses on the financial cost of fencing. In my first year fencing, I paid a sum total of €5. This covered coaching, competition fees and use of equipment for the year. Leaving aside for a moment the argument that having access to a university sports club presupposes a certain level of material welfare, I nonetheless spent quite a

“Bemused gym-goers pause to look at us prancing around in white, waving what look like car aerials at each other.”

bit more kitting myself out the year after. A full fencing kit costs several hundred euro, yet most people by their third or fourth year of fencing will have invested in at least a sizable chunk of this. I have to emphasise that this is strictly voluntary. Trinity fencing club opens its armoury to all its members, regardless of how long they have been fencing. Why then spend so much money? The answer is simple: we are passionate about our sport. If it still seems excessive, then ask a football fan why he or she spends a similar amount travelling abroad to see their team play or snaps up the latest replica kit at the start of each season.

Madness? For those who have never and will never feel their adrenaline pumping as a fencer does, perhaps so.

But isn’t this a contradiction? “Pumping adrenaline” can hardly refer to what was described above as “prancing around” waving “car aerials” at each other, can it? Fair enough. But imagine for a second that you,

and the person sitting next to you, both have a sword in your hand. The sword is roughly four feet long. Your task is to stand opposite each other and make the tip of your weapon land on his/her chest. That’s all fencing is. But oh!

Your opponent steps back, he’s not making it easy for you. You’re crouched, tensed, waiting for him to betray where his next attack will come from, as well as the multiple areas it could land on your body. Your opponent steps back, he’s not making it easy for you.

You increase your speed, he mirrors you. You extend your arm, a blur, he skips back; you cannot reach him. You become frustrated.

Your legs are hurting from being crouched so low. Your hand aches from the constant manipulation of the blade; you think “how hard can it be to touch him?” If it takes years of mastery to achieve a proper poker face, imagine then the discipline needed to control your every movement, to avoid, in full flight, giving this information until the last possible moment. A fencer does not fence with only a sword, he fences with his whole body.

This description cannot do justice to the intensity of a fencing match. There are fencing videos online and there are numerous films that include a duelling scene. None of them will in any way compare to the first time you lower that mask over your face and with confidence raise your weapon and wait for the referee to tell you that you can begin to fight. To be confident going into a match is to believe in the speed of your arm, the subtleness of your fingers, the stamina in your legs and the fight in your belly that will enable you to stand and fight long after your muscles have called halt. To fence furiously, yet with a precision that undoes your opponent’s traps, to know that this is not a paradox, to move like a cat but grip your weapon like a bird, to claw for those– this is fencing. This is the sport I love.

But don’t take my word for it. Talk to the fencers, ask them why they do the sport they do. And, if any of what they say makes sense, come and train with us.

THE JONATHAN Ross and Russell Brand debacle has grown to epic proportions. In Kent, an effigy of Ross holding a dog with Brand’s head under his arm was burnt at the stake as part of the town’s firework display. Closer to home, Fintan O’Toole was disgusted by their prank calls to Andrew Sachs, in which Brand boasted that he had slept with Sachs’ granddaughter, writing, “When did alternative comedy become an alternative, not just to comedy, but to basic human decency?”

However, Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter, Georgina Ballie, feels that the whole thing is “out of proportion”. She said, “I don’t hate either of them, I don’t at all. I think they’re really talented comedians and I think a world without Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand would be a very sad, dull place. You know I think Russell needs to learn a few lessons about respecting women, definitely, and maybe Jonathan Ross could maybe think before he speaks in the future.

But I don’t have any harder feelings than that.”

POLITICS

THE AMERICAN DREAM A REALITY? “OBAMA IS proof that the much vaunted American dream really does exist”, according to the Belfast Telegraph. But though the dream may exist, it has been broken for some time, writes Paul Sweeney in the Irish Times. “There is a growing recognition that US society is deeply divided. Twenty years ago, most Americans (71 percent) believed that America was not divided into “haves” and “have nots”. Today that is down to 50 percent, with growing numbers seeing themselves on the wrong side. Social mobility in America is now less that in Europe.” The dream of social mobility has become more and more inaccessible for most US citizens.

Obama’s election may represent a “reconstruction of the shattered American dream.” According to the Irish Independent, the election of the son of a single mother and an African father reaffirms to all Americans that anything is possible, and that the unquenchable optimistic dream lives on.

MEDIA

EQUALITY AUTHORITY STEREOTYPES THE IRISH Times’ Newton Emerson has had enough of the Equality Authority’s guidelines on the dangers of stereotyping groups within society. He points to their biannual newsletter, Equality News, as being guilty of the very crimes it condemns.

In one example, he writes that the newsletter stereotypes the media as being ageist and youthobsessed, when it asks rhetorically, “How often are older people portrayed on television or in the print media as participating in physical activities?”

All the time, replies Emerson. “No commercial for health insurance, multivitamins or denture cream is complete without a jogging granny or a tennisplaying granddad. Any pensioner who picks up a bat or a ball is practically guaranteed a feature in their local newspaper and an appearance on The Afternoon Show. If anything, sporting geriatrics are over-represented by the media.”

RESEARCH

EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH CONTROVERSY THERE HAS been outcry at the announcement that UCC has begun stem cell research.

In the Irish Examiner, Michael O’Driscoll writes that “since the passing of the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in 1990, more than three million human embryos have been destroyed in the course of research - without a single cure resulting. In contrast, research on placenta and bone marrow stem cells, have resulted in more than eighty fully documented breakthrough treatments and cures.”

In the same paper, Dr. Stephan Sullivan defends the decision. He writes that since it is not possible to predict where breakthroughs will be found, it is unfeasible to abandon one type of stem cell research. “Limitation of research would essentially tie one hand behind researchers’ backs and limit the discoveries that could result.”

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TRINITY NEWS TRINITY NEWS

OPINION

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

The weird, worrying and wild world of online dating SAM MEALY AS I was perusing the online edition of The Irish Times recently, I noticed that among the numerous other features provided, such as the regular print edition, cheap travel deals, and ancestry finding, there is a dating service. Now I apologise profusely for my lack of speed on the uptake, but I wasn’t aware that even national newspapers now offered cyberspace locations to find love.

Along with the proliferation of networking sites, the rapid growth of online dating agencies has been one of the most interesting phenomenons of the past five years. The internet has irrevocably changed the way society disseminates and interprets information.

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Everything is instantly attainable and instantly digestible. We want our information packaged colourfully with as many pop-ups as possible. Videos, music, media clips and headlines all dominate the processing of information online.

This rapidity of change that the internet has brought us has unquestionably had tremor effects on culture. We crave instant gratification, and although this can partly be explained by natural human curiosity and impatience, it still does not allow for the massive reduction in our individual and collective attention spans.

What has the above got to do with online dating, I hear you ask? Everything, is the apt reply. Many recent trends, such as the gargantuan consumption of pornography, the seemingly unstoppable rise of networking and dating sites and the worrying decrease in sports participation, are all intrinsically linked. The connection is this idea of instant gratification, whether it is our eating, sexual or social habits.

People would prefer to simultaneously update their Facebook profile while

catching up on re-runs of Gossip Girl than spend two hot, sweaty hours playing football. When exercise does come into the complicated equation of modern life, it is often undertaken in a gym, where it can be neatly compartmentalised like the other components of one’s life. Ten minutes bench press, five minutes on deltoids, twenty minutes on the rowing machine, followed by “cardio.” As a selfconfessed athletic junkie, this ideal of body-sculpting as opposed to good oldfashioned sport makes bile rise in my throat. But I digress.

This idea of wanting everything now, from elevated social status to toned abs, also applies to the dating world. The causation of the rocketing popularity of online dating could probably fill some sociology tome (outlining the other important social issues such as low selfesteem and internet dependence) but I’m more interested in the instantaneous aspect of it all.

Online daters admit that boredom with the “normal” dating scene and

FACTS » According to the dating site plentyoffish.com, the number of women looking for sex online has doubled since 2004. » It’s estimated that 30% cent of people who subscribe to online dating sites are actually already in relationships. lack of self-confidence are reasons for turning to the online world. As my recent stumble upon The Irish Times dating agency demonstrates, online dating has permeated all aspects of social life. It long ago ceased to be looked down upon as method of finding a partner. If you want to, you can now find a date within five minutes of starting your computer. If your attention span wanes, as it so often does with other aspects of modern culture, you can exchange your current partner/date/ whatever for a newer model. Thus, one’s

gratification can be always satisfied and rectified to suit the moment.

This instantaneous availability appears to espouse a mating culture as much as a dating one. To be fair, we have all heard of romances that have blossomed from innocuous beginnings to full-blown, consummated and even marital relationships. However, such relationships seem to be a rarity rather than the norm. Online dating agencies profess to offer a safe, comfortable environment in which true love can easily form. Contrary to such ideals, a majority of dating sites are flooded by an impatient generation seeking an instant fix. They are entertained by the allure of a quick and painless introduction, where sex is a natural extension. If hopes are swiftly dashed by the harsh reality of the online world, the prospective dater can simply move on to a fresh hunting ground.

The world of cyber-dating supposedly offers many opportunities, but it actually harms our already depreciating social skills. Our loss of the simple ability to

socialise in the real world, because of an insatiable need to satisfy ourselves minute-by-minute, represents a blow to social and cultural development. The internet is a wonderful resource, but it should be used to complement our daily lives, not replace them. I firmly believe that the net does not provide ideal conditions for romantic relationships to develop. Everyone should be able to ask a member of the opposite sex on a date over a cup of coffee, not a keyboard.

Online dating sites merely promote and perpetuate the disposable nature of society today. The Irish Times should stick to its primary strength - quality journalism - and exorcise the demons of online dating. Although hugely tempting through its instant accessibility and claims of instant gratification, we should attempt to immunise ourselves from the perils of potential cyberspace romance and continue to live in the real world.

It is, in my opinion, far more enriching and indescribably more exciting than the glossified falseness of the net.

HEAD TO HEAD: THE STUDENTS’ UNION

“STUDENTS’ UNION IS NO LONGER RELEVANT” CONOR JAMES MCKINNEY IN MUCH the same way as our appendix used to serve a useful purpose, student politics used to be relevant, once upon a time. In the sixties and seventies – times of great upheaval and change in Irish society – students indeed played a leading role. Many former student leaders are now prominent in national politics – most notably Eamon Gilmore, the leader of the Labour Party.

But times they have a-changed, as Dylan might now warble. Looking back on the SU elections of recent years, there is a notable lack of manifestoes containing pledges to do with anything of substance. National issues, party political affiliations, ideological leanings – these are all out the window. There is a simple reason for this: students do not need to campaign as a stand-alone group. We’re all consenting adults here, so if we think that the world needs changing, we’re more than capable of doing it without the aid of the House 6 clique.

So, with student politics no longer a hotbed of radicalism, the SU has turned to “bread and butter issues” to justify their continued existence.

Take a moment to reflect on the last time that anything the SU did, or didn’t do, mattered to you even the slightest bit. Perhaps you consider that Green Week, SHAG Week or RAG Week have some relevance to your life in college? I thought not. Yet this is the type of thing that the SU habitually concerns itself with.

This is not to take away from the grand achievements of the SU over the past few years. There was the Coke Crusade, which means anyone wanting a can of Coke must now buy it from a vending machine, in a blow to corporate tyranny everywhere. There was the Storming of the Arts Building, when the forces of Discomfort were cast down and the New Couches of Progress installed. There was the Irish Flag Affair, in which the students voted to have our national flag on display above the front entrance. It didn’t happen, of course, but the most important thing to note about that is

that nobody cares that it didn’t happen.

Barry Devlin, writing in this newspaper last year, made the point that the SU does its job “simply by existing”. Since doing nothing other than exist doesn’t require skilled and qualified individuals, one could argue that the SU clique fit the criteria perfectly, so well suited are they for sitting in House 6 and admiring their CVs. Which, not incidentally, is at the very core of why people run for a position in the SU. It looks good out there in the real world. There is nothing inherently wrong with people seeking to make themselves more employable – that’s why most of us are here. It’s just that it is somewhat incongruous to be told that this clutter of selfimportant careerists are the leaders of our little community, and that they care deeply about each one of us.

One way of measuring the veracity of student politicians’ claims to be driven by concern for your best interests is to have a look at what happens if they are not elected. My own memory, happily, is well enough trained that it hasn’t retained any of the names of the defeated candidates at last May’s polls, but it is 100 percent certain that you will never see any of them again. No defeated education officers continue to scrutinise the ARAM system; no former Welfare candidates pretend to give a damn about your problems on their own time; and no former Presidential candidates do a John McCain, and go straight back to working hard for the voters behind the scenes.

The elephant in the room, of course, is the fees issue. One might be tempted to conceed that if the SU didn’t exist, it would have to be invented to deal with this issue. That is only so, of course, if you accept the premise that the SU should be automatically against fees. Many students may feel that, for example, the education of an overwhelmingly middle-class, privileged section of society shouldn’t be subsidised by Joe PAYE. Your average SU officer opposes fees because they feel they should. There has been no more reasoned consideration of the issue than that, no contribution to the debate on how to reform third-level funding while preserving universal access than a rousing, Ian Paisley-style “NO”.

You could bet your Trinity Ball ticket that next year’s candidates will unanimously oppose fees, one will be selected, and it will be another year of promising much, delivering little, and nobody outside their little clique really giving a damn.

“UNIONS DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS” DAVID NORRIS WHEN I was asked initially to contribute to an opinion section on the relevance of the Students’ Union, I saw an easy way to slide out of this sudden additional weekend task. The invitation was to write against the Union. I couldn’t in conscience do that. I thought this was my getaway card. But no, they were happy enough to let me change sides.

Although my familiarity with that body is not as close as it was when I was teaching in the place, I couldn’t very well undermine the Students’ Union in Trinity. Apart from anything else, I am strongly in favour of unions. They defend the rights of the individual, and this may be more than ever necessary in these straightened economic times for students.

I am in fact a member of no less than three trade unions -- the Irish Federation of University Teachers, Irish Actors Equity and the National Union of Journalists. Indeed, I remember when the Trinity branch of IFUT was being formed many years ago. There were some voices who said they wouldn’t join if it was a trade union.

I thought this was an unnecessarily snobbish and impractical attitude, so I piped up and said I wouldn’t join it if it wasn’t a trade union.

To my great entertainment Kader Asmal, who taught in the Law Faculty, and subsequently became a South African Cabinet Minister, came over to me and said that although he was delighted at my attitude, he was rather surprised.

“Why is that?” I enquired. “Well Norris,I thought you were a Conservative.” I asked him what made him think that that was the case, and he told me it was because I wore a three piece suit.

Many years later he jokingly described Michael D. and myself at a Foreign Affairs meeting as a pair of left-wing loonies. It was one of the best accolades I have ever had.

I also have reasons to be grateful to the Students’ Union from many years back. In the seventies when there were moves afoot to establish a Gay Soc in Trinity, the vast majority of those involved were nervous of putting their

heads above the parapet. It was necessary to make submissions to the Societies Committee, and these submissions had to have a named committee for the new society.

The entire Students’ Union joined the first Gay Soc and appeared as the committee. They were almost all heterosexual and I thought that was an act of political altruism which was quite memorable in its time. In the sixties and seventies, there were a number of significant political issues, both domestic and international, in which the Student’s Union exerted themselves.

However it wasn’t all heavy political stuff.

The Students’ Union had a bright and breezy little shop. They also ran the Trinity Ball, which was then and I think probably still is now, the principal social event of the undergraduate calendar.

Look at the galaxy of names that have been associated with the Student’s Union over the years. Anne Connolly was an active member of Trinity Students’ Union, and is now a successful business woman tremendously committed to radical and feminist issues. She was centrally involved in the establishment of the Well Woman Centre in Dublin. Aine Lawlor was another active member of the SU, and her dulcet tones are now heard every morning on the RTE news. Ian Wilson also spanned the gap between political commitment and the RTE light music section as a major voice for the musical taste of the young.

And more recently? Well, I need only mention Ivana Bacik, doughty campaigner on issues of sexual liberation and other matters who courageously took on the Pro-Life Movement in a potentially very serious legal action. She is now Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity and a very good colleague in Seanad Eireann.

Add to this the production over the years of the Students’ Union Handbook, which sometimes got into trouble with the authorities but always provided a useful guide for new entrants into the university system.

Enough said? I rest my case and send my best wishes to the students and their representatives.

David Norris is a political and human rights campaigner, former university lecturer, and member of Seanad Éireann. He is the founder of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform.

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First year science students guinea-pigs for semesterisation Science modularisation has been a positive development, according to Prof. Peter Coxon THE ‘COMMON-ENTRY’ Science programme is one of the most successful courses that Trinity provides, and is the most popular science course in the country by some margin. During my period as Dean of Science, I served on College Council and saw many changes to Trinity’s structures. I also briefly served on the Working Group on Modularisation and Semesterisation, which seemed a good forum for discussion. I did note that the College–wide information sessions were so poorly attended that the ones I went to showed the organisers outnumbering the audience. One wonders if the College staff had really engaged with the debate about change as closely as it might.

However, the need to modularise our courses to fit with European universities,

and the need to regularise courses and to produce modules of five and/or ten ECTS, seemed like an opportunity to revitalise Science. It would make many more options available to Junior Freshman students. To do this, the Course Management Committee set about the task of getting agreement on ten ECTS modules for Junior Freshmen that could be taken in patterns to give students a broad base in science and lead to academically viable options in their subsequent years. This process took two years, and was assisted by the incredibly knowledgeable administrative staff in the Science Course Office, and by some particularly useful intervention by the Senior Lecturer. The modularisation we started has culminated in a range of first

year options in various patterns. We hope a survey of this year’s Junior Freshmen will reflect a positive response.

In producing modules we had focused on academic processes and on logical progression. Effectively, by the start of this year, we were offering students the option to take sixty ECTS in two sections of the College teaching year, known as semesters, with thirty ECTS in each section. The traditional threeterm structure (with nice names –which we should try and keep in some form if we can) required splitting in two. Quite simply, First Year Science runs Semester one for twelve weeks for all nine weeks of Michaelmas term and three weeks of Hilary Term. Semester two starts in week four of Hilary Term and runs through until the end of Trinity Term.

The proposed College wide semester system is far better, incorporating an earlier start but holding all twelve weeks before Christmas, with a reading week

option in the middle, so that modules can be taught in tidy blocks. However, I have to say that in my experience of teaching Geography, cramming courses into half semesters has been far from satisfactory.

Having said that, the advantage from the students’ point of view may be that there is more chance of a student being able to take up more diverse modules in Sophister years, as courses spread over a whole semester often timetable against each other. Another advantage is that as the Annual Examinations are over earlier, there is more time to collate, mark and appeal the results. Modularising into intensive blocks of teaching frees up staff time for research during the semester, rather than having continuous teaching commitments.

With the current system not threatening examinations before Christmas, I can see no objection to it.

Personally, I believe that students should

hold onto the May or June examinations, followed by Supplementals in September.

However, I feel that there is a need to debate this among the student body. As this is an important issue, students would do well to consider the alternatives.

One alternative would be to hold two examination periods to allow modules from semester one to be examined separately, although personally, I doubt this latter move would be popular with staff or students.

My concerns for a student’s “Trinity experience” are less about changing term structures, but more about the increase in student numbers. This increase has lead to problems as to where and when lectures and practicals can be held.

Complex time-tabling, a lack of large venues, quotas in Sophister year options in science and currently inadequate staffing at core areas are currently posing some major problems for our department. In the Science Course Office, for example,

we have lost experienced and seasoned staff. Without these people, the office’s ability to deal with student issues without undue stress and very late working hours has been compromised.

We need investment in the basic cogs of running courses. This is absolutely critical to the student experience. Students know that an efficient and well-run office can help them through a tangle of course options, timetables and regulations. I am hopeful, indeed sure, that the new Faculty structures will recognise the value of the interface between students and the course administration, and that students will continue to get a good service from the Science Course Office.

If they do not, then the student’s path will be a tricky one as College courses and options become more complex with semesterisation.

Professor Peter Coxon MRIA, FTCD, Science Course Director

TRINITY NEWS

EDITORIAL

TRINITY NEWS

17

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

November 11, 2008

TRINITY NEWS

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR letters@trinitynews.ie

Issue 4, Volume 55 Tuesday, 11 November 2008 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2 www.trinitynews.ie

Change is not necessary

NO SUBJECT SHOULD BE OFF LIMITS Among George Orwell’s most insightful remarks - and he is credited with many - was that “the Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent”. The forces on either side of the current controversy over embryonic stem cell research would do well to bear this dictum in mind as the debate goes forward.

In the Ireland of today we seem to have little need for either Catholicism or Communism, but some decision on the regulation of such research is urgently required. Last month in the UK, the House of Commons recently passed a liberalising measure that will allow a broad range of research to be carried out using human embryos. Whether or not one believes that such procedures should be allowed in this jurisdiction, a position should be adopted one way or the other. In the public discourse over what stance Irish law ought to take on an issue with such profound moral implications, a dogmatic approach by opponents or proponents of this research is in nobody’s interest.

Some may argue that the deliberate creation and subsequent destruction of a viable embryo in the laboratory is unnecessary and unethical. They may be right, but this is no reason to act as though the scientists who advocate such actions as being guided on their part by anything but the best of motives.

Similarly, proponents of stem cell research should not dismiss concerns over its consequences as being merely ignorant, or immune to the suffering of those with diseases that may one day be curable on the foot of such experimentation.

The lack of clarity on this issue in Ireland is but a symptom of a wider malaise: politicians are singularly unwilling to address the issue of whether the right to life attaches to human embryos.

This is most apparent in the context of abortion - remarkably, there has been no action taken to resolve the lacuna left by the Supreme Court’s decision in the X case in 1992 - but this triumph of the unwilling has more far-reaching consequences, as we now see.

If government will not attempt to lead, then academia has a duty to fill the void. The first step is for Trinity to clarify its policy on stem cell research, as UCC has recently done. As we report in this issue, taking a stand generates controversy. Such is the way with any issue of importance; the key is to conduct the debate in a constructive manner.

Our own Dean of Students, Prof. Gerry Whyte, has spoken out against tampering with human embryos in the laboratory; no doubt there are many members of the Science faculty that would wholeheartedly endorse it. Once it is recognised that this is a subject about which reasonable men may disagree, an informed decision may be taken. For what is it worth, this newspaper would support a programme of stem cell research with these walls.

Happily, it is not up to us to make such a difficult decision.

Nonetheless, the topic needs be discussed in an appropriate forum - and if a university does not facilitate free and frank discussion, what use is it to wider society? Trinity’s academics should consider their position, and contribute to the national debate.

THE STUDENT BODY IS OUR GREATEST ASSET Student endeavours of all kinds often need to shake off the impression that they are somehow not terribly serious. Certain people seem to find it very difficult to grasp that the activites that students devote their time, energy and talent to are every bit as good — if not better than — those activites carried out by the “professionals”. Indeed, the talent on display within the student body in this College is perhaps the single thing that we should be most proud of.

With a breadth and depth of talent such as that which we are lucky enough to draw on, we can be certain that Trinity’s future will be in good hands come better or worse times. For no matter what kind of travails the College is faced with, a student body that is nimble, quick to adapt and ultimately talented will find success in almost any conditions.

Indeed, we can take comfort in the fact that student activites will endure through thick and thin. With an undoubtedly thin period on the economic horizon, with uncertainty the watchword, one thing is clear: students won’t be put down.

I was deeply saddened to read in Trinity News online of the projected alteration to the paving in Front Square.

I know I have to accept the changes that evolving mores dictate. However, it is a good axiom that where change is not necessary: it is necessary not to change.

When I visited Trinity for the quarcentenary, after a decades-long absence, I was shocked to see the new buildings - they seemed gross and insensitive cheek by jowl with the graceful Georgian. Nevertheless, I could understand that the space was needed, and that there is no accounting for taste.

Two things gladdened my heart on that visit.

The first was the cobbles. What a relief to se that they were still there, a veritable icon. The second and the more surprising was the figure that flitted over them like a ghost from the past.

It was the revered RB McDowell who had been

LETTERS TO THE Editor should be sent to letters@trinitynews.ie or to Trinity News, 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2. The Editor reserves the right to edit submissions for style and length. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of Trinity News, its staff or its Editor.

Eight-page Trinity News

I was sorry to hear that disability rights fanatics have demanded that Front Square be partly decobbled (the Cobble Reduction Programme sounds distinctly Stalinist). The expression "prize cobblers" comes to mind.

It’s great to see how successful Trinity News is now compared to 40-odd years ago. The only times then that it got to be more than eight pages, was when we had careers supplements, but then we had less than a third of the staff, not all of whom were editorial, and were largely self-supporting, relying on advertising and sales to pay our bills.

One term in the mid-60s I was deputy chairman, features editor, treasurer and advertising manager at the same time, but I never aspired to chairman/editor. We got some small grants from the Board in the last couple of years I worked on it, but the rest of the time was self-funded, and the size of each week's issue depended on what advertising there was (though at one time I had to guarantee the paper's overdraft with the bank after a financially disastrous, but editorially very successful chairman). And of course, there were less than 3,000 students in the College then.

Looking at your 24 page issues, with a lot of international news — something we could never think of including — makes me tremendously conscious of what a professional job the staff are doing. And that's before looking at tn2!

Quentin Letts (TCD 1982-86)

Colin Smythe

Junior Dean in my day. All was well with the world!

But now, I read, the cobbles are under threat, and for what? Health and Safety or political correctness gone daft! Does the number of pushchairs that must cross the square really warrant such a drastic measure? And cannot the mild rattling be put up with for such a short spell? Why, it would do the liver a world of good, and hardly threatens to spill the patient.

Surely some consideration should be given to us old codgers who derive a warm feeling from the knowledge that something of our Alma Mater is still there even though we’re not, and that we could one day revisit the scene of our youth. I don't doubt that my plea to leave the cobbles alone would be echoed by graduates who lived the golden era of Trinity College.

Jose Xuereb (AKA JX Brennan)

Postcards a unique window on past OLD TRINITY

by PETER HENRY

THE SIMPLE postcard has served its purpose well since its invention in the 1860s. Postcards remain, even in this age of digital communication, extremely popular. But apart from their primary function, they have also served to create a pictorial history, often depicting scenes found nowhere else.

Postcards of the main facade of Trinity College are in abundance, from those printed early last century and before to those available in shops around Dublin today. But other interesting and more obscure images of our college have been printed and, message appended, sent around the world.

King George V spent six days in Dublin in July of 1911, and he was welcomed to Trinity by the Chancellor of the University, the Earl of Iveagh. The postcard shown records the king on the steps of the Dining Hall, in a photograph which must have been taken from the roof of the chapel. Interestingly, the photo is by Lafayette, the same company which now takes photographs at commencements.

The king wished the then newly-formed DU Officers’ Training Corps success and said that Trinity College “will, I am sure, always continue to hold its high place in the estimation of both Ireland and the world.”

The postcard of the University Philosophical Society’s conversation room is postmarked 1906.

It is not the same room today’s students repair to after debates in the chamber of the Graduates’ Memorial Building; it is the current billiards room. One has to wonder what became of the furniture, books, bookcases and framed pictures which are seen in this picture.

The card titled “A ‘Junior Freshman’s’ Entrance Examination” shows a man, with his son, enquiring about admission to the college. It would be generous to simply say that the joke is in the contrast between the local father-son pair and the educated don. Rather, it seems that this card is positively anti-Irish. It dates from the first decade of the last century.

The oldest card shown here, “The Quadrangle, Trinity College”, shows a familiar view of Parliament Square, taken from Regent House.

But there is one curious difference: the GMB has not yet been built (it was completed in 1904), and the old “Rotten Row” can still be seen to the left of the Campanile. The card’s author is forced to write his message on the side of the card with the picture in accordance with early postal rules.

The selection of postcards of our college available these days are not always particularly diverse or special, but the recent postcard of Lorraine Lawlor’s drawing of a worse-forwear Trinity Ball couple outside Front Gate is an example of the potential for postcards to continue to depict Trinity in interesting ways.

THE COMMUNICATIONS Office’s website tells us that the bachelor in theology degree is to be replaced with the master in theology degree.

The old BTh, which was introduced in 1988, will be abolished in favour of the new “MTheol” (do they mean MTh?). But no mention is made of the hood. Will the BTh hood – black, lined with black, edged with purple – be used, now with the masters’ gown? Or is there a new design? pehenry@tcd.ie

FOR MANY Senior Sophister students indecision and confusion are rife. There is an overwhelming amount of information being forced upon them at every turn. If it is not coursework, it is application forms or leaflets on postgraduate study. Future Calling has decided to explain the myths of postgraduate study.

Almost one third of Trinity students decide to undertake some form of further study after graduating. For some it is a necessary qualification for specific types of work such as teaching or law whilst for others it provides them with the necessary skills set they require in another field.

First off there are two forms of academic postgraduate study: taught programmes and research programmes. Taught programmes such as Masters of Business Administration, Masters of Science and Masters of Arts generally run for one to two years. A taught Masters usually involves a research dissertation and involves a detailed study of a particular aspect of your academic discipline.

Research programmes involve the in-depth study of your specific field, normally over a period of two to three years. A report is then completed on your research and drawn up in the form of a thesis or dissertation. For many students this means enhancing their research skills and gaining deep knowledge of their specific topic. Many research programmes, such as the MPhil, can convert to a Doctorate.

A Doctorate or PhD programme is the most wellknown research qualification. The length can vary from three to five years. A PhD constitutes an original contribution to knowledge which entails a lot of hard work and enables you to become the expert on your chosen highly specialized topic. PhD students must write a thorough and complete thesis outlining all aspects of their research and findings. Some students may also be subject to an oral examination.

For those aiming to enter academia, obtaining a PhD or at least a Masters is necessary.

Amongst the most significant issues to consider when applying for postgraduate qualifications are motivation, location, your academic record and funding. Many students are prepared to labour at their chosen subject - however if examining Petri dishes in minute detail for weeks and months on end isn’t for you then perhaps you should rethink your options. Many students will apply for postgraduate study though places and funding, in general, go to those with the best academic record.

Where to complete your postgraduate study is a very important question and there are many issues that need to be taken into account. The reputation of the department and university you plan to study at, possible tuition fees, research funding and living expenses can often make your decision for you.

Here at Trinity there are a number of awards and bursaries made to postgraduate students such as The Ussher International Studentship. Some state agencies such as the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences also give awards to students pursuing postgraduate research.

The best resources on campus for further investing postgraduate study are your tutor and the Careers Advisory Service. The Careers Advisory Service offers excellent advice and can help you chart your way through a mine field of decisions. The Trinity Careers Service Guide 2009 covers all aspects of the decision making process fourth year students face and should be the first port of call for any queries on what to do with the rest of your life.

Varies from three to five years- sometimes longer PhD

MLitt, MSc, MA Masters- Research

Doctorate

MSc, MPhil, MA, MBA Masters-Taught

Research based major thesisoriginlal contribution to knowledge

One Academic Year Taught; called a conversion course PG Dip Postgraduate Diploma

Varies from two to three years

Four Years Taught using problem based learning Bachelors Degree Graduate Entry Programme

Taught courses with a research dissertation Research based programme, always in volves a thesis

Duration Teaching Mode Known As Course

Varies from one to two years

✃

CUT OUT and keep this handy guide to the different types of postgraduate study

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

Escaping 2008’s great brain drain

POSTGRADUATE STUDY

POCKET GUIDE TO POSTGRADUATE STUDY

TRINITY NEWS TRINITY NEWS

BUSINESS & CAREERS

Future Calling

18

Graduates are plotting their getaway as the eighties are coming back and hopes are fading.

Is misery and emigration our fate or can young entrepreneurs save the day? asks Grace Walsh UNEMPLOYMENT IS rising, the recession is worsening and even the bastion of profit that is Ryanair is feeling the pinch.

The reduction in spending on education, the possible reintroduction of college fees and decline in multinational companies locating here make Ireland’s economic rebound all the more difficult.

We need new ideas, new innovations, and determined young people to make them work. Student entrepreneurs are a vital element of entrepreneurship.

Education is vital for the success of any entrepreneurial venture. It inspires, opens up opportunities to new markets and provides a dedicated knowledgeable workforce to enact the often genius ideas of the entrepreneur. In recent times a number of student entrepreneurs have made headlines for successful inventions and inspired many a resourceful classmate to follow in their footsteps.

Brendan Flood, Head of Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, Enterprise Ireland, said: “To have a vibrant, successful knowledge economy, Ireland needs to increase the number and quality of indigenous companies and create graduates who

“We just went for it.

Neither of us knew much about business.

We never wrote a business plan. We had no idea how investing or corporate structures worked. We just sat down and started writing code.” are Entrepreneurial Thinkers and Entrepreneurial Doers.”

The art of entrepreneurship owes much to the work of economist and political thinker Joseph Schumpeter who defined an entrepreneur as a person who is willing and able to convert invention into successful innovation. Entrepreneurship forces “creative destruction” across markets and industries, simultaneously creating new products and business models. This creative destruction is largely responsible for the dynamism and creation of industries and long-run economic growth.

Patrick Collison is one such successful student entrepreneur. At the age of sixteen Patrick was named BT Young Scientist of the Year. He had designed a new computer programming language, Croma, which allowed web applications to be written easily and quickly. Since then, Patrick has attended the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founded a company with his younger brother John. After having difficulty securing funding from Enterprise Ireland, they relocated to Silicon Valley, and obtained investment from Y Combinator, a boot camp-style firm that specializes in funding early stage startups. On their advice, the brothers merged with a similar UK based start up, boso.com, founded by Oxford graduates Harjeet and Kulveer Taggar. Together they built a product, Auctomatic, for managing eBay businesses which can be used to track inventories, pictures, auction templates, and monitor the traffic on auctions so that companies can optimize their listing strategy. On a deal finalized on Good Friday earlier this year, Canadian company Live Current Media paid over €3 million for the company.

Patrick is now Director of Engineering at Live Current Media.

The act of entrepreneurship is often associated with uncertainty, particularly when it involves bringing something really novel to the world whose market never previously existed. Before the Internet, nobody knew the market for Internet-related businesses such as Amazon, Google and YouTube would be so successful. Only after the emergence of the Internet did people begin to see the opportunities and marketplace that existed online.

One such student to capitalize on the phenomena of the Internet and social networking is the infamous Mark Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg founded Facebook whilst attending Harvard University, however it was not his first foray into the social networking scene. His first networking project took was Coursematch.com, which enabled students to register for courses online and to see who else was signing up for the same classes. The project came to an abrupt end when Zuckerberg’s laptop crashed from the huge volumes of students registering for the site.

Zuckerberg had just realized the potential success that voyeurism as an online industry could be. His next endeavor began when, jilted by a girl, he created Facemash.com where he hacked

Student entrepreneurs are a vital element of entrepreneurship; we need new ideas, new innovations, and determined young people to make it work.

Illustration: Brett Lamb

into Harvard’s system, downloaded photographs of his classmates and posted them online next to photos of farm animals to rate who was more attractive. The website was an instant success but pulled from the internet

by Harvard authorities within hours.

Zuckerberg, undeterred, began work on his next task, with help from his college roommate, Eduardo Saverin, Facebook.com was finally launched on February 4th 2004. Facebook was an instant success, over 4000 people signed up in the first two weeks. Realizing the potential of Facebook, Zuckerberg and some friends including Dustin Moskovitz rolled Facebook out to other Ivy League colleges.

Now four years on, Facebook is one of the internet’s most trafficked sites and has over 110 million registered users. Mark Zuckerberg is now a multi-billionaire and arguably the most successful student entrepreneur of recent times.

Another media forum where student endeavors have proved triumphant is in print media. In October 2007 Brendan McGuirk, a recent Trinity graduate, founded Analogue. Realizing the demand for a magazine that was fresh, original and dedicated to independent music acts Analogue became an instant success.

Feature pieces such as “Mental Illness and Rock”, interviews, complimentary CDs and album reviews contributed to the niche market. Many well known bands such as Radiohead, CSS and The Arcade Fire have featured in Analogue.

The magazine has since gone nationwide

and is available free of charge in bars, cafes and colleges around the country, McGuirk, the magazine’s editor and publisher, feels there is a nationwide demand for such a dedicated music title.

“The main reason we decided to bring it nationwide is because of the reaction we got for the first three issues,” he explains.

“People were really excited to see the bands we were covering and how we were covering them. As writers, we approach interviews and features from an audience’s point of view, and I think bands really open up to us when they realize we’re fans. They say things to us they wouldn’t say to the NME or Pitchfork.”

The excellence of Analogue has recently been recognized in the National Student Media Awards 2008 where it won the People’s Choice Award.

Analogue now has over 30,000 readers worldwide.

But where does the pursuit of entrepreneurship lie in the wake of recent financial turmoil?

Patrick Collison explains: “I don’t think the downturn matters. A successful company will be successful either way.”

Entrepreneurship can help ease the burden of recession. It provides employment, creates new markets and inspires confidence.

Entrepreneurs are not a definitive solution to Ireland’s economic woes but their bright eyed confidence and determination might just spark a return to the good old days.

Hopes, dreams and postgrad studies Trinity News correspondent Maeve Glavey investigates the struggle fourth years face between reality and further education.

EVERYBODY remembers the horror and confusion of the CAO form. For some students, like myself, it seems an eternity ago that we were asked to do something so horrendously unthinkable as to decide what to do with the next four years of our lives.

After careful deliberation and considerable anxiety amidst frantic efforts to study for the then allimportant Leaving Certificate. The fact that we eventually ended up in Trinity suggests that somewhere along the way we managed to make a decision. If not about where we wanted to be in ten years, then at least that we would rather delay the strains of the workplace and avail of cheap alcohol and free, at least for now, “higher education” for the next four years.

A good plan, or so it seemed at the time. Whatever you chose to study, there is and always has been a lot to enjoy in college. My own degree, BESS, really has offered a lot of benefits, both in terms of academia and in offering a great mix of people to learn from and socialize with.

So there I was for the past three years, congratulating myself on picking something so “useful” to study, joining every society I could find and meandering along with fairly decent results without a thought for what it is that happens when you finish up your undergraduate and Trinity’s cobblestones no longer beckon.

Surprise! Being in fourth year is very much like being in sixth year of school. Once again you find yourself in the uncertain position of both having to work harder than you’ve ever worked before and simultaneously deciding where to go from here. On the plus side, now that you (almost) have a degree, options are even more abundant than they were when you left school; on the other hand you’ve got less time than you think to trawl through them.

One of the first choices that springs to mind is just like the one you made aged roughly 17 or 18 – work or more schooling?

When you’re on the verge of finishing up your undergraduate, a

sizeable proportion of people have no problem informing you that it doesn’t really matter what you picked anyway because these days you need a Masters to get anywhere.

They harp on about higher earning potential and how the recent economic downturn has spurred many to advocate a return to study because, simply put, there just aren’t enough jobs for all the graduates anyway, and by next June there will probably be even less. But it’s not all so disheartening – my brief forays into

“Deciding not to do a postgraduate degree was an easy decision.

I felt ready and excited to enter the workforce for the first time” research on postgraduate life have actually got me thinking that it could be a pretty interesting path to tread.

If you enjoyed your undergraduate then postgraduate study can allow you to gain even more specialized knowledge in a particular area and

build on the base you’ve gained during your time at Trinity; for those who weren’t as enthralled as they’d hoped by their undergrad, it can give them a chance to try something completely different. The bottom line is that once you have proven yourself capable of critical thinking and hard work, you can really apply to do anything you want. And while it will require commitment and, alas, a fair bit of money, it can open up doors for you in the future and give you a more specific idea of what it is you really want to do.

If the thought of even one more year spent in a library fills you with dread, however, there is the alternative that you decided to temporarily forgo when you filled out the CAO in the first place – entry into the grown-up world of work.

Although there may be less job prospects on the horizon for Irish graduates these days, they are hardly few and far between. One thing us soon-to-be BESS graduates are swamped by are application forms for graduate programmes. Giant companies like Ernst and Young, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Google and Accenture can’t wait to dip into the talent pool being churned out by Irish universities. And this is true for companies of all disciplines. A lot of people are swayed by promises of

a good starting wage and valuable training, while others decide to take it upon themselves to search out the other employment opportunities best suited to their interests, both at home and abroad. Whatever way you look at it, working full-time is going to give you great experience, and after living on a tiny budget for years, the prospect of a real income is likely a big part of what entices graduates directly into the workplace.

So with further education and the workplace both appearing quite inviting it’s no wonder the general atmosphere among fourth years I know is one of puzzlement and indecision. You want to do what’s best for you long-term but you also want to enjoy yourself right now.

Deadlines for graduate programs and overseas masters are already looming and requests for transcripts and references are flying. At the same time you discover reading lists that are surely unreasonably long and spend a good portion of your time fielding questions from relatives, potential employers and your peers about what it is you want to ‘do’ with your life. Against this background, it’s no wonder options like disappearing off to Australia or New Zealand for a year and delaying those decisions just a little longer grow ever more attractive.

TRINITY NEWS

SCIENCE

TRINITY NEWS

19

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

November 11, 2008

Where’s your head at?

IN BRIEF LUKE MAISHMAN TECHNOLOGY

UNEXPECTED ERROR: THE OPERATING SYSTEM HAS QUIT ON 1 November Microsoft stopped issuing licences for Windows 3.x, the first of Microsoft’s graphical user interfaces to win worldwide success. Microsoft maintained support for Windows 3.x until the end of 2001. It has lived on as an embedded operating system until 1 November 2008, used to power such things as cash tills in large stores and the in-flight entertainment systems on Virgin and Qantas jets.

RESEARCH

HEFTY CONGESTION CHARGES? ANTS KNOW A BETTER WAY

By Ronan Lyne Deputy Science editor ONCE THE subject of kooky Jim Carrey/ Kate Winslet movies, the selective erasure of specific memories from our brains has become altogether more feasible. But how exactly does it work? And, if this indeed becomes a reality, should we engage it, and who exactly will benefit?

The selective erasure of specific memories from our brains has become altogether more feasible. But how exactly does it work?

Joe Tsien and his team of neuroscientists at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, and collaborators in Shanghai have succeeded in erasing specific memories from the minds of mice.

First, the mice were genetically engineered to produce much higher levels of a protein called alpha-calmodulin kinase II [CaMKII], an enzyme which is expressed in the brain and involved in long-term potentiation [LTP], the physiological basis of learning and memory formation.

The levels of expression could be returned

to normal by administering a drug. The scientists began their experiments by administering electrical shocks and loud sounds to the mice while they were in a training chamber. Upon returning to the chamber an hour later, the mice in the control group froze up with fear, but the mice with boosted levels of CaMKII remained calm. The genetically altered mice showed the same lack of fear even a month later.

A similar observation was made in experiments involving the mice’s recognition of specific objects. In those cases, over expression of CaMKII appeared to eliminate all memory of toys with which the mice had previously been exposed.

Alteration of memory formation and consolidation is not a new development in neuroscience - studies on rats have already demonstrated that this is possible.

However, this study went one step further and demonstrated the possiblity of erasing a traumatic memory after it had been formed. In a later phase of the study, by prodding the mice to retrieve traumatic memories, and simultaneously overexpressing CaMKII, the scientists seemed to erase the memory completely, whilst leaving other memories intact.

Scientists are cautious about the potential of this new information to be used in human studies. Mice are a useful experimental model of humans, especially

in neuroscience research, but the authors of this study stress that memory in humans is far more complex than in mice.

However, the therapeutic implications of such research are interesting and varied.

Consider post-traumatic stress

Is this approach even ethical? If experience shapes our personality, and memory is the facilitator of this personal growth, then is it wise to erase memories that are unpleasant?

Joe Tsien and his team of neuroscientists at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, and collaborators in Shanghai have succeeded in erasing specific memories from the minds of mice. Illustration: emberdesign

disorder [PTSD] – whereby traumatic events can be relived again and again, resulted in an anxiety disorder. Currently, PTSD is treated with antidepressants and anxiolytics, as well as cognitive therapy, but all of these have a limited success rate, and PTSD is still regarded as debilitating.

It can also increase risk for heart disease and high blood pressure. Some experimental approaches involve treatment with MDMA [ecstasy] and propanolol. Propanolol can be used

shortly after the traumatic event, to reduce its impact and the potential onset of PTSD. MDMA is thought to reduce activity in the left amygdala [the area of the brain responsible for fear and anxiety], allowing sufferers to explore the traumatic event in a new light, free from the associated anxiety. But could it be possible to even eliminate the memories themselves?

This approach has already been considered by the US military to minimise aftercare costs of soldiers returning from the Iraq war. Up to 12% will suffer from the condition, and psychiatric treatment is expensive, especially to a government body which consistently runs over budget.

This, of course, raises some thorny questions. Is this approach even ethical?

If experience shapes our personality, and memory is the facilitator of this personal growth, then is it wise to erase memories that are unpleasant? Or, more pertinently, memories which we deem unpleasant?

Will it result in our histories endlessly repeating themselves [as in Eternal Sunshine], or, if the technology falls into the wrong hands, being completely rewritten?

Tsien himself is cautious. “All memories, even very painful emotional memories, have their purposes. We learn from those experiences to avoid making the same kind of mistake.”

Writing wrongs for rats UL Membrane Prof visits Trinity

By Luke Maishman Science Editor

A LIVELY debate on the use of animals for research has done the rounds over the last few weeks after John Banville’s letter to the Irish Times on the third of October this year. It seems that the animal rights side of the discussion recently found a new outlet for their message.

The following graffiti was painted on the walls surrounding the Nassau Street Arts-Block entrance to college during the weekend 25-26 October: “False Pretense Money €€€” and on the other side “Murderers” and “Vivisection is a lies money”. From this we can deduce that the activists were aiming to convey the notion that vivisection makes researchers as bad as murderers, that somehow Trinity, or possibly the researchers, are leading the public astray in this matter and that money is the real issue. In the search for the perpetrators we can hopefully rule out all students of English.

It is worth noting here that EU and college rules for the use of animals in research are strict, expensive and difficult to comply with, but that no Trinity researchers operate outside of these boundaries.

the behaviour of a liquid and a solid.

Caffrey’s group studies different lipids at different pressures and compositions

By Luke Maishman Science Editor LAST TUESDAY, the 4th of October, Professor Martin Caffrey of the University of Limerick visited Trinity to give a seminar on biological membanes, his recent work on membrane lipid behaviour and the crystallisation of membrane proteins.

His lab uses a variety of imaginatively re-designed equipment to extract and mix the membrane components that they analyse. They also have a specially built robot that dispenses exactly the right quantity of lipid (fat) and protein into each of the 96 wells on a sample plate in less than ten minutes! Two aims of his research that he spoke about are to compile a database of information about membrane lipids and to gather data about membrane protein structures.

Lipids behave extremely strangely in the biological membranes that surround and compartmentalise our cells. They exist in a ‘liquid crystal’ state that is between

This animal rights graffiti adorned the Nassau Street enterance to the Arts Block Photos: Ailbhe Goodbody

DR JUNE Bradlaw spent the later part of her scientific career helping animal rights lobbyists present credible arguments for the advancement of alternatives to animal testing. In May 2008 she died suddenly and tragically of a stroke at William Backus Hospital in Norwich, Connecticut.

She championed the use of in vitro tests instead of testing on living animals. These tests, done on cells grown (or cultured) in the lab provided an alternative for many tests that would

?

SCIENCE WITH A CONSCIENCE Compiled by Luke Maishman

otherwise have to have been done on live animal test subjects.

In 2001 Bradlaw was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for In Vitro Biology, the “highest honour given by the Society to scientists who are considered pioneers.”

As well as being a valued academic, holding a professorship at George Washington University for several years and a 34-year career at the American Government’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr Bradlaw found time to work with many organisations to find useful scientific alternatives to live animal testing. She chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Foundation for Ethical Research (IFER), which on its website describes itself as “a non-profit organization dedicated to finding non-animal alternatives for scientific research”.

She was also a Science Advisor to the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS), an organisation that “promotes greater

Conventional methods for finding protein structures run into difficulties with membrane proteins to build a database of information that will be used to better understand these critical biological molecules.

One of the best ways to get an idea of the function of a protein is to find its structure. But conventional methods run into difficulties with membrane proteins.

The new crystallisation method that Caffrey’s group is using allows them to document structures of proteins that were not known before. This research goes towards a research initiative on the organism that causes tuberculosis.

compassion, respect and justice for animals.”

She was a member of an advisory committee on alternative testing methods for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and was co-chairman and co-author of a study on eye irritation testing that sparked the first international studies comparing in vitro testing with testing on animals.

She also found time to write a children’s book, “Tree Bear’s Adventures in Learning”, about a bear promoting forest conservation.

She traveled to Atlanta to judge the 2008 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for high school students two weeks before her death.

DIRK HELBING of Dresden University of Technology in Germany and his team have collected some interesting results from experiments on ant behaviour. When ant-congestion built up on a narrow route to some syrup, returning ants directed their untravelled onto a less congested route. If their journey had been congestion-free then returning insects did not redirect newcomer ants.

DISCOVERY

PALEONTOLOGIST TODDLER FINDS ICE AGE WOOLLY RHINO AN ICE Age rhinoceros has been unearthed by Emelia Fawbert, a five-year-old girl, at Cotswold Water Park in Gloucestershire. On 26 October Emelia found the fossilised carcass during a fossil hunt.

She and her father dug up the vertebra of the rhino which lived 50,000 years ago. This puts her well on the road to her dream job as a paleontologist!

SURPRISING SPECIES

CRYSTAL JELLY AEQUOREA VICTORIA jellyfish, also called crystal jellies, are found along the west coast of the Pacific Ocean. This jellyfish is able to produce bright flashes of green light. Blue light made by a photoprotein is converted to green by green fluorescent protein, GFP, which is a very useful tool in biological research.

EGGHEAD OF THE ISSUE

NIELS BOHR A DANISH physicist who lived through two world wars Bohr’s model of the atom is still how most people picture the atom today. He received the Nobel Prize in 1922.

Many scientists fled to his mansion (donated by Carlsberg brewers) in Copenhagen, Denmark to escape Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.

ON THIS DAY (11 NOVEMBER) … » IN 1851, the first U.S. patent for a telescope design was issued to Alvin Clark of Cambridge.

The Alvin Clark Company became one of the foremost producers of some of the largest lenses for telescopes in the 1800’s. » IN 1935, Lt. Col. Albert Stevens and Capt.

Orvil Anderson reached 72,395 feet in a sealed gondola lifted by a helium balloon, Explorer II. This set a record that stood for 21 years. They spent 8 hours in the air taking photos.

COMPETITION

WIN A YEAR’S SUBSCRIPTION TO NEW SCIENTIST MAGAZINE TO WIN this great prize, submit around 300 words of your own writing for the Science with a Conscience panel. Articles should describe a person or group in the scientific community who displays an inspiring consideration for ethics or moral concerns.

Rules: Email entries as an attachment to sciencenews@trinitynews.ie. Entries will be judged both on content and journalistic quality.

Applicants must be registered students of Trinity and must not be part of Trinity News’ editorial staff. Entries from students who have not written for Trinity News before will be viewed favourably. Closing date: 12 December, 2008.

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TRINITY NEWS TRINITY NEWS

TRAVEL

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

Powder days Snow holidays are rarely cheap so why not read on to learn how to save a few shekels and enjoy a winter holiday on a student budget, writes Derek Larney IT IS coming to that time of year again when powder hounds take their boards and skis out of the attic for a wax and tune and minds get concentrated on which mountains offer the best alpine experiences. A skiing or snowboarding holiday is rarely cheap and can typically cost nearly twice the price of a beach resort getaway so with this in mind we decided to take a look at some snow holidays that won’t break the bank.

Boarderweek Now in its twelfth year Boarderweek offers an exciting combination of the world’s largest ski area coupled with a week long concert and party. The event is held in Val Thorens in the interconnected Three Valleys Ski Area which gives access to over 600kms of piste and endless off-piste and tree runs. Val Thorens is one of the highest resorts in Europe and has a base camp of 2300m and peaks at 3230m, making it one of the first French resorts to open every season. Boarderweek involves over 10,000 skiers and boarders coming to shred the mountain by day and party hard by night; top DJ’s are flown into the Alps and the week finishes off with a large concert on the snow.

Night-skiing, equipment tests and moto-cross are all part of the Boarderweek line-up this year and it takes place from December 13 to 20. Because it is at the start of the season Boarderweek offers excellent value for money; a week sharing a self-catering apartment with entry to all concerts and a 6-day ski pass costs from €229. Flights and transfers are extra. www.boarderweek.com Jasna, Slovakia With the advent of budget flights eastern Europe has opened up to snowsports enthusiasts. This resort in the Tatra Mountains near the Polish border offers over 40kms of piste and two huge freeride zones at the top of the hill. The resort is served by the nearby town of Liptovsky Mikulas which has train links to Slovakia’s capital Bratislava. Jasna is

the ultimate budget skiing destination- a small but well-known company called Propaganda Snowboards has been offering snow holidays for a number of years now. Packages are from €390 and include transfers to the mountain every day, transfers from Poprad airport as well as bed, breakfast and a 6-day lift pass.

Jasna offers excellent après-ski- the €1 pints make sure of it and other activities such as gokarting and a hot thermal spa can be had for less than a fiver. Beginners lessons are also a bargain as is eating on the mountain. www.propagandasnowboards.com Snowbombing This snow festival is now in its tenth year and is still going strong. Held at the end of the season in Mayrhofen, Austria, Snowbombing offers an eclectic mix of sunny spring skiing and dozens of concerts and gigs to liven up the already furious après-ski. Mayrhofen is one of Austria’s premier resorts and boasts large tree-fringed runs suitable for both beginners and intermediates. Snowbombing has seen some excellent acts over the last decadeMadness and Lightspeed Champion were the highlights last year and this year they hope to go one better with none other than the King of Brighton Beach, Fat Boy Slim, headlining the closing night. The festival takes place next year from March 29 until April 4. It is hard to place Snowbombing in the budget category as the basic €340 package will only get you a bed and entrance to all concerts. Lift passes cost an extra €180 and flights and transfers will add to that again. However Snowbombing offers an excellent chance to fit in a few days at the end of the season whilst enjoying some superb entertainment. www.snowbombing.com Tignes, France Part of the Espace Killy ski area, Tignes has been mesmerizing both boarders and skiers for a long time now. Interconnected with its more expensive cousin Val d’Isere, Tignes offers

over 300kms of runs, some of which are perched high on a glacier. Normally skiing in the French Alps can cost an arm and a leg but there are bargains to be had. Chalet Charadons in the satellite town of Tignes le Brevieres offers accommodation for those on a budget for €40 per night which includes breakfast and a three course evening meal with wine.

The chalet is a 2-minute walk to the nearest lift and gives access to the whole of the Espace Killy ski area. Aprèsski is most prevalent in the nearby village of Tignes Le Lac which keeps pumping well into the small hours. www.chaletchardons.com Freshers Ski Weeks This is a new initative that is designed to get snow virgins on the powder.

Snow holidays can be expensive but even more so if you have t o buy lessons and rent equipment.

With the Freshers Ski weeks you just book your holiday as normal with one of their seven approved travel agents and total beginners get their lift pass, equipment hire and lessons for free. This offer is quite a bargain for beginners as it allows you to try the sport for a week without a huge financial commitment. Freshers weeks are available in over fifty resorts in France, Austria, Norway, Switzerland and even Canada. They depart on Janurary 17 or 24. www,.freshersskiweek.com D.U.Snowsports The Trinity Snowsports Society is running a trip to Val Thorens in the Three Valleys on March 21. The price for one week is €629 which includes a lift pass, flights, transfers, bed, breakfast and evening meals. Places are limited

On the piste at Prarion aux Houches en Haute Savoie. Photo: Alain Bachellier

to fifty and are sure to fill up fast, just like the preChristmas trip they are taking to Les Arcs in France.

More details of this trip and how to book it will be on their

Kiteboarding in the windy wild west This weeks competition sees us and LSDKiteboarding.com team up to offer an excellent prize of kiteboarding lessons for two

By Sheila Armstrong

website in the New Year. www.dusnow sports.com Borovets, Bulgaria With easy access from the capital Sofia Borovets is another good choice for the beginner. Lift passes start from €110 for a week and lessons are also good value for money.

Although Bulgaria is not quite as well known as Austria or France for its raucous après-ski it still has plenty of bars and cafes to hang out in after a long day on the slopes. There is a good mix of runs for both beginners and intermediates and the ski school puts on a night time display of precision skiing during the week. Lift queues can get big here, try to avoid going during the school holidays. www.bulgariaski.com Go last minute For those who aren’t fussy on which mountain they end up on then booking at the last minute can often throw up some bargains. Don’t always expect to get cheaper prices than those quoted for the holidays mentioned but simple things like a free lift pass or evening meals with wine can help you save heaps of money.

As long as you are flexible on where you go there are always bargains about, especially at the start and the end of the season. Avoid the peak weeks of Christmas and February and you’ll come up with something. Ski websites such as DirectSki, Inghams, Panaroma and Budget tend to have last minute offers for unsold beds throughout much of the season.

Because the snow conditions on the mountain you are traveling to can make or break your holiday, booking last minute offers an excellent advantage- you can check snow reports and forecasts of the area you wish to travel to before paying any money. Don’t leave it too late though as plenty of people use this tactic and bargain holidays can get snapped up fast!

Finally for anyone contemplating a snow holiday this winter remember that injuries are common and hospital costs prohibitive.The first port of call should be travel insurance. Be certain it covers snowsports as a lot of policies exclude it. Also apply for a European Health Insurance Card at www.ehic.ie -it’s free for all EU citizens and covers basic treatments in EU hospitals.

I’M SURE that almost all of my fellow children of the 1990’s have woken up on Christmas morning and after a few hours and a lot of help from Daddy eventually transformed a box of sticks and paper into that marvel that was, and is, the kite. After a week of compulsive kite flying, we would find ourselves the proud owners of two sticks and a piece of canvas that would be left in a cupboard to moulder along with the roller skates, Tamagochis and all the other short-lived fads of the 90’s.

However, there are a growing number of people of all ages who never quite got around to putting that kite away. Our generation’s need for speed has led to the combination of the relatively mild pastime of kite-flying and the not-so-mild sport of surfing to create the completely insane pseudosport of kiteboarding.

At first glance kiteboarding looks less like a sport and more like a prolonged form of suicide, with kiters burning through the waves and pulling off jumps, flips and spins that appear to circumvent gravity.

Forget diamonds - gale force wind is a kiter’s best friend, and the search for the perfect conditions means that kiters can show up on almost every beach in Ireland.

One of the best areas in the country for wind and waves is the northwest of Ireland. Unsurprisingly, the many beaches of Leitrim, Sligo and Donegal regularly sport a fleet of multicoloured power kites blasting along the shores. Realising this, three kiteboarders from the Sligo area have decided to make living out of doing what they love best and have set up a company offering lessons and equipment to new and experienced kiters - LSD Kiteboarding.

The school is the brainchild of Peter, Eamon and Paul Armstrong. The boys started kiting nearly ten years ago with homemade kite buggies and boards and learned how to do everything the hard and painful way. Now fully qualified kiting instructors, the team’s goal is to introduce others safely and quickly to their highly addictive hobby of kiteboarding. Whether offering a beginners package or advanced one-on-one lessons with Eamon – the current Irish champion - the instructors draw on their years of experience to create lessons to suit any student.

With kiteboarding, the sky really is the limit. www.lsdkiteboarding.com

WIN KITEBOARDING LESSONS This week we are giving away 6 hours of kiteboarding tuition with LSD Kiteboarding for two people. Whether you are an advanced rider or total beginner this is an excellent prize to help you get on the water and into the wind. To enter just answer this simple question: Which member of the LSD Kiteboarding team is the current Irish champion? Send your answer to travel@ trinitynews.ie before November 17. The winner of last editions prize of a surfing weekend was Kate O’Keefe of JS Natural Sciences

Paris: City of lights, luminaries and lovers Paris is one of the world’s greatest cities and one that should be on every travelers list. Take a peek inside this mesmerising metropolis

By Paul McDonnell DUBBED LA ville lumiére (“City of Light”) Paris is forever thriving and maintains its position as the most popular tourist destination in the world. The abundance of iconic masterpieces and buildings coupled with a history of romantic inspiration sets the French capital in a league of its own. Unlike numerous other European destinations, the allure of Paris is not confined to a central frantic tourist playground but rather over spills over into the streets of all the twenty arrondissements, or districts. Away from the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower one encounters equally impressive yet majorly overlooked sights.

It is here where travelers encounter the flipside of the ville lumiére – away from the bright lights of the city, intellectuals have sought enlightenment for centuries.

Breathtaking views of the most beautiful city in the world, ancient masterpieces and buildings created by renaissance virtuosos that remain eternally intriguing await the eager explorer.

To gather your bearings upon arrival in Paris there are countless dynamic and even idiosyncratic tours on offer. One company that stands out is Fattire Bike Tours who offer a night bike ride of the city. The tour is €28 per person and covers all the main attractions in the dramatic in twilight hours.

After battling through the mêlée of the

Metro crowds and enduring the colossal Louvre queues an escape from the frenzy can be found in the 20th arrondisement.

Situated on the extreme Right Bank the premier attraction is the renowned Père -Lachaise Cemetery. Established in 1804 the cemetery now has a legendary status, thanks to its celebrity ‘residents’. Getting off the Metro at the side entrance on Line 3 allows visitors to enter facing Oscar Wilde’s art deco memorial and then proceed down the rest of the cemetery.

Other residents include Edith Piaf, August Compte and Jim Morrison; the latter having a cult following that has caused tensions amongst families of nearby graves. The vast array of tales and myths associated with Père-Lachaise make it a thoroughly intriguing attraction; for example the memorial of Victor Noir, a journalist killed by Napoleon Bonaparte, depicts a partially aroused Noir and has since become a shrine of fertility!

Another institution bearing Parisian significance is the Sorbonne University.

Equally famous for its prestigious reputation of excellence and the May 1968 student uprising depicted in The Beatles ‘Revolution’, the Sorbonne stands as a symbol of French intellectual revolutionaries. The relaxed college atmosphere leaks out into the Latin Quarter of the city with bistros blazed with lights lining the narrow cobbled streets. One jazz bar in particular, Aux Trois Mailletz, captures the campus atmosphere perfectly.

where artists and alternatives gather to discuss life. Montmartre even has the red-light district Pigalle as a neighbour where the Moulin Rouge and the equally charming Sexodrome can be found.

Paris is a city steeped in historical

TRANSPORT » Book of 10 Metro tickets – €11.40 » Flights: Aer Lingus Dublin – Charles De Gaule €149.60 Return » Ryanair Dublin – Paris Beauvais €76.27 Return. Ryanair sale is currently selling €10 one way flights to Beauvais, however Beauvais is akin to flying to Belfast to get to Dublin » Price of a Pint – Averages €5.60 » Price of a Crépe – Beginning at €2 » Accommodation – Average 2 * €83

The Seine River from Eiffel tower. Photo: Jeff Houston Within walking distance of the Sorbonne is the Pantheon. An aweinspiring, crucifix shaped church, the Pantheon has become synonymous with the final resting place of France’s heroes; Voltaire, Victor Hugo (author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame), Louis Braille and most recently Alexandre Dumas, the author of The Three Musketeers. Dumas’ memorial is draped in a blue cloth inscribed with the immortal cheer ‘Un pour tous, tous pour un’ (“All for one, and one for all”).

Paris being the culinary capital of the

world, it is essential to experiment with the local cuisine. Even the local eateries have their tales of famous clientele. Found at the St-Germain-de-Prés Metro stop, Les Deux Magots was frequented by the likes of Hemingway, Picasso and Sartre and oozes the quintessential French lifestyle. In a similar vein are the two restaurants Polidor, a home away from home for Joyce and Jack Kerouac, and Chartier, which claims to have “satisfied 50 billion bellies”.

Two final offerings lie on opposite sides of the Seine. The Jardin du Luxembourg

can be found in the 6th arrondisement and epitomises French elegance and luxury.

Ideal on a sunny day, the gardens, though often thronged with tourists, are idyllic surroundings for wasting an afternoon and observing the Palais du Luxembourg and Fontaine de Medicis. Montmartre is conversely located south of the Ile-de -Paris. Despite the central Place de Tertre being somewhat tainted by commercial influences the backstreets of Montmartre and Sacré-Coeur Basicalla are sights to behold. This is where the best view of the Parisian skyline can be obtained and

revolution, while at the same time remaining fahionably à la minute,and continues to wear the scars and trophies of its luminaries. That so many of these somewhat lesser known attractions remain untouched is perhaps a testament to the oft-stereotyped tendency of Parisians to be uninviting to the throngs of tourists, keeping them firmly on the beaten track. The film Paris, Je t’aime, however is a testament to the charm to be found even in the locals. With 21 directors, 18 arrondissements and a cast of real people, it is a cinematic tribute to the City of Lights that highlights the true romanticism of Paris.

TRINITY NEWS

SPORT ORT

TRINITY NEWS November 11, 2008

Rowing for gold

Trinity graduate and Olympic rower Gearoid Towey talks to Paul Fitzpatrick about tough training regimes, his life at Trinity and the Olym-

Trinity graduate and Olympic rower Gearoid Towey talks to Paul Fitzpatrick about tough training regimes, his life at Trinity and the Olympic games

S

Towey outside the Sports Centre. Photo: Martin McKenna

DUCAC funding THE DUBLIN University Central Athletics Club (DUCAC) has released details of the funding given to the various clubs in College. The income generated from the like of the Pavilion Bar profits and the €4 sign-up fee charged by all clubs during Freshers’ Week all revert to DUCAC, which then decides on its allocation. Clubs submit a budget estimate at the start of the season, and a proportion of this will be paid for by the central body, with any other expenses coming out of the club’s own funds.

It is unknown what criteria are used to decide how much to allow each particular club. According to DUCAC’s Honorary Treasurer, Dr. Cyril Smyth, clubs receiving the most funding are those with a lot of league commitments, “high expense sports”, and those for which a high amount of capital expenditure is necessary in a given year. Beyond that, clubs can only speculate as to whether other revelant considerations (such as membership numbers and competitive success) come into play.

It is however interesting to note that while some female sports clubs such as Gaelic Football and Boat get roughly equal funding, insofar as these rough figures indicate, there is a wide discrepancy between the money given to ladies’ cricket, rugby, golf and soccer as compared with their male counterparts.

DUCAC FUNDING 2007/08 CLUBS RECEIVING €10,000 or higher: Boat, Ladies Boat, Cricket, Men’s Hockey, Ladies Hockey, Kayak, Men’s Rugby, Sailing, Soccer, Squash, Sub Aqua. €6,000-10,000: Basketball, Boxing, Camogie, Climbing, Fencing, Men’s Gaelic Football, Ladies Gaelic Football, Men’s Golf, Harriers, Hurling, Judo, Lawn Tennis, Rifle, Swimming, Trampoline. €2,000-6,000: Aikido, Badminton, Cycling, Equestrian, Karate, Ladies Rugby, Ladies Soccer, Surfing. €2,000 or less: Ladies Cricket, Croquet, Ladies Golf, Handball, Kenpo, Orienteering, Snowsports, Table Tennis, Ultimate Frisbee, Volleyball, Windsurfing.

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

NAPSHOTS FROM a life spent in a boat: Rousing yourself from bed to disappear down another random river into the dawn mist. Skipping breakfast to make weight and hitting the treadmill for lunch. Always existing on the fringe of the Irish public’s fickle sporting consciousness. And, occasionally, getting everything just right, gliding together in perfect, magical harmony with your three co-rowers on the big stage.

Gearoid Towey’s soft Fermoy brogue quickens. That’s the moment, you sense, that he does this for.

“It’s hard in a lot of ways because you’re with four lads all the time and you’re basically sitting on a little piece of cardboard fibre and trying to make it balance and make it go fast,” he explains matter of factly.

“Rowing is a really technical sport and the more technical a sport is, the more you have to work mentally on it, and the more you have to work mentally on something, the more irritable you can become. When things are going well and you’re moving fast though, it’s because the four of you are working together in unison and it’s an incredible feeling. We all have a really good respect for each other, we all trust each other and know that nobody is going to bottle out. It’s a pleasure to row with them.”

Not many students would list attempting to row non-stop from Spain to America among their extra-curricular activities during their college years. Then again, not many men are like Towey.

The 31-year-old is a world champion rower and is currently preparing for his third Olympics. Incredibly, he managed to balance his training schedule around a degree course in Trinity College prior to his graduation last year. “Around exam time it was definitely hard because we had exams in the middle of the World Cup season so I’d be away in Germany or Austria or wherever racing and I’d have to come back and sit exams,” he explains.

Rowing is a discipline which has always been at the forefront of sporting life in Trinity. The college has been one of the top clubs in the country for generations, and Towey attributes much of this success to the bond among members.

“There is an incredible social life in university rowing. They travel together, train together and within rowing clubs in universities there is definitely a sense of belonging, they work hard and play hard.

Rowing is a sport which gives people a lot of structure. Trinity is always very strong, as are UCD and NUIG. Irish university clubs are generally among the best in the country. You get to enjoy your first couple of years rowing without too much pressure when you’re in university. It’s a great scene.”

While the life of an international athlete isn’t best suited to that of a student, Towey is fulsome in his praise for the college authorities. “I did geography

in Trinity and they were very supportive of me, they helped me out whenever they could, shifting exam times for me and that kind of thing. They were very good to me in that regard. As well as that, when I was heading off across the Atlantic, I did that in the middle of the academic year and they were totally cool with that as well.”

What Towey refers to as “heading off across the Atlantic”, in the same sort of throwaway manner in which one might “head out for a pint”, was, in fact, the Trans-Atlantic Challenge, one of the most incredible tests of courage and stamina – both mental and physical – in the sporting world. Towey, along with Ciaran Lewis, set off from the Canary Islands in November 2005 aiming for America. After 40 days and nights at sea, rowing two hours on-off constantly, they capsized in Force 8 gales. They were eventually rescued by a passing trawler, having come within hours of death.

“It’s something I think about every day,” admits Towey. “It was a very close call and it has an influence on everything I do now to a certain degree. I think about everything really in terms of that, like if there are any hard decisions to be made, well… you realise that they’re not that hard at all.”

Towey after his heat of the Men’s Lightweight Four in this year’s Olympics where the team finished in 4th place. Photo: Brendan Moran/SPORTSFILE

Trying times for triathlon

By Conor James McKinney College Sport Editor TRIATHLON IS described in the Oxford Dictionary as “the tendency to derive pleasure from one’s own pain”. A standard triathlon, for those unfamiliar with the joys, comprises a 1,500 metre swim, a 40 kilometre cycle and 10k run in quick succession. If that sounds like a breeze, then what you need is the extra long version, which requires a 3,800 metre swim, 180k cycle and 42.2k run. That last 0.2 of a kilometre seems particularly unkind, but no doubt they have their reasons.

Luke Feighery, the captain of DU Triathlon Club, seems puzzled by the very question of why anyone would subject themselves to triathlon. “It’s something to do”, he shrugs, noting that the overwhelming majority of club members have never had any contact with triathlon before; as with many minority sports the need to sell it to sceptical newcomers during Freshers’ Week is paramount. In this, the club has had considerable success, with a solid core of active members driving the club forward. DUTC was set up just three years ago by Feighery’s predecessor, Tim Downing; SU President Cathal Reilly is currently the club’s sponsorship officer.

Its efforts have paid off, with the likes of Sinead Roche and Downing himself representing Ireland at various levels over the past couple of years.

Beginners need not be put off by the training schedule, which at first glance looks rigorous – you could do seven sessions a week, if that’s what you’re into - but Feighery says that he himself didn’t go to all that many sessions last year, and people are entitled to pick and choose.

Many of the newbies have a background in running or cycling – indeed, the cycling and triathlon clubs almost merged this year. That move fell through, but Feighery notes that the ties between the two clubs are still close, reflecting the similarities between the two disciplines.

Triathlon only got going in this country in 1983, when the first event was organized in Greystones, Co. Wicklow.

The Irish Triathlon Association, the sport’s governing body, was founded in 1984. An all-Ireland body, it has around 40 affiliated clubs on both sides of the border. Regrettably, they haven’t seen to fit to appoint a PRO in the intervening 25 years, so attempts to contact them for some more information went nowhere.

The sport itself may be going places, however: at the Beijing Olympics last August, Emma Davis became the first Irish person ever to compete in a

Ireland’s Emma Davis, who finished the Women’s Triathlon in a time of 2:06:29.36; 2008 Olympics, Triathlon Venue, Ming Tomb Reservoir, Beijing, China. Photo: Ray McManus/ SPORTSFILE

Triathlon event. Finishing 37th in a field of 55 was hardly the stuff of dreams, but at the age of 22, in just her first year as a professional athlete, there’s plenty of scope for improvement in London 2012.

Whether she’ll be joined there by any other Irish athletes remains to be seen, as the conveyer belt of young talent isn’t exactly working overtime. It is telling that insofar as varsity participation goes, Trinity and Queens are the only universities flying the flag.

Eoin McDowell, a UCD athlete who trains with their tetrathlon team (like triathlon but with horse riding and shooting thrown in, for no particular reason), feels that Belfield’s lack of a triathlon club definitely hinders his participation: “It would make the sport a lot more accessible”, he says, adding that it’s hard to get heavily involved without a club structure to motivate him.

For those Trinity students who wish to dip a toe in the water, so to speak, DUTC have organised a special ‘MiniTri’ to facilitate beginners. Taking place on the 22nd of November from 1-3 pm, it will take the uninitiated on a gentle meander through the triathlon experience: first, a 200m swim in the Sports Centre pool, followed by a 5 km static bike ride and finishing with a 1 mile run around the Trinity campus.

Conor James McKinney

THE COMMENTARY BOX THE SPARKLING HUES OF A COLOURS VICTORY The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good. …which, as a rendering of the national discourse of recent weeks into a more poetic form, has the merits of both beauty and accuracy. We’ve hit recession, they’re going to bring back fees, and there’s an extra fifty cent on all bottles of wine, no matter how foul. The country is backpedaling rapidly towards the bad old days. There’s no money in the bank, no banks in the money, and it’s off to Aldi for the dinner.

But cheer up, there’s always Colours.

The first big Colours game of the season takes place this week, with the rugby team facing off against UCD at Donnybrook. It is not, perhaps, as big a deal as in times past - God be with the days when students actually turned out to such events - but it matters. Even to those who don’t follow rugby, or indeed any sport, the thought of beating UCD is invariably a pleasant one.

Why is it that in any sport, an Everyone likes encounter being the plucky with UCD has that little underdog... it makes extra bite, not found where it that much sweeter our teams go when we do pull it off out to against DCU, say, or UCC? It’s not the ugliness of their buildings.

It’s not the ridiculous fact that their official name is University College Dublin, Dublin. It’s not even the knowledge that we lose to them far more often than we win. It’s just that since time out of mind, and in almost every discipline, they are our main rivals.

The student body of UCD is the most akin to our own in terms of numbers, interests and social background. Perhaps it is fair to say that we love to beat them not because they are unlike us, but because we are so similar. Sport, if it is anything, is about pitting yourself against your peers and striving to come out the best. Despite the invariable advantages UCD sportspeople enjoy in terms of facilities and resources, we face them on a more or less level playing field in that the opponents are similar in age, experience and commitment to their discipline. These are the people you want to beat.

This applies not just to the rugby fixture, of course, but wherever people are gathered in the good name of beating UCD – be that on a soccer pitch, squash court, boxing ring or trampoline… arena, possibly. The clubs, for their part, need to do a better job of selling these fixtures. You’re not going to entice people out to everything, of course: it’s hard enough to follow the progress of a sailing or rock climbing competition when you’re a participant, let alone a spectator. But for Colours competitions – particularly those played within a reasonable distance of the It’s a cuddly, fluffy, Pav – more of politically correct a marketing world out there. That’s effort could surely be no reason not to take made.

A cynic a bit of pride in your might point out college that nobody gives a damn anymore, that going out for €1.99 drinks, or, worse, going to lectures is a far better use of your precious time and besides, UCD always bloody win anyway. All that may be true, with apologies to those clubs that have made a habit of winning their Colours fixtures in recent years. It’s still one of the only occasions when one gets to rally behind one’s college, and indulge in some of the good-natured hatred that manifests itself at sporting occasions and the juicier sort of political rallies. Everyone likes being the plucky underdog, in any case – it makes it that much sweeter when we do pull it off. I’d like to think that going to see your team win every single year can’t be that much fun.

It’s a cuddly, fluffy, politically correct world out there. That’s no reason not to take a bit of pride in your college. After all, it’s not that easy to get in here, so the chances are that you didn’t end up studying in Trinity by chance. You wanted to be here – try to remember why, and maybe you can rekindle a little of the partisan enthusiasm so beloved of this column.

That doesn’t mean wearing a Trinity hoodie or scarf around the place (seriously, who does that on campus? It’s for representing when you’re off in some remote land like Bhutan, or Borris-inOssory.) It doesn’t mean using those Times Higher Education supplement rankings as the basis for your conversations with outsiders (no matter how snide your little dig, it’s not funny.) It doesn’t mean being enthusiastic about everything in Trinity (you’re expected to dislike the people in the Student Records Office, for instance). It just means accepting that Trinity is a pretty sweet place to while away a few years of your existence – and one of the best ways of expressing that is on the sidelines.

22

TRINITY NEWS TRINITY NEWS

SPORT

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 November 11, 2008

COLOURS PREVIEW

14 NOVEMBER, 18:30: TWO TITANS OF VARSITY SPORT CLASH AT DONNYBROOK STADIUM Our prediction:

Man to watch: Eddie Hamilton With the Trinity backline not posing much of a threat, Hamilton’s recent good form at scrum-half is timely. Provides good service and adds a sniping threat.

Trinity chase up during their draw against Bective in College Park last month. Photo: Jessica Pakenham-Money

T

HE COLOURS game between UCD and Trinity is always a more fascinating encounter than the rather lopsided results of recent years might suggest. Pitted against a UCD side used to the Division 1 rugby, Trinity have won the fixture only once in the last ten years, and went down by 50-20 when the sides last met.

Yet, despite the advantages the Belfield boys enjoy in terms of training facilities, AIL ranking and the sheer confidence that comes from such an extended winning streak, Colours is generally closer than it should be. Last year’s whitewash aside, UCD’s winning margin has rarely been by more than a score in the games played this century. The 2004/05 game was drawn, 20 all. And in 2006, Trinity famously won their first Colours title in a decade, when Johnny Watt kicked Trinity to a 16-13 victory. The beaten UCD outfit boasted a half-back combo of Cillian Willis and Ian Keatley, both of whom are now making waves at provincial level, but also Michael Hastings at centre, who happened to be the twin brother of DUFC captain Brian.

While the 57th edition probably can’t live up to such unlikely drama, it certainly promises to be a livelier contest than last year. Most of the Trinity pack has played in a Colours match before, although Brian Coyle may not start pending the results of a fitness test (Colin McDonnell is scheduled to come into the side if needs be). By contrast, none of the starting backline played in last season’s fixture.

The perennial divisional mismatch still exists, but UCD have managed only one

win in the league so far this season, and are running 14th out of 16 in Division One of the AIL. Trinity have enjoyed a much brighter start in Division Two, giving the lie to predictions that they faced another relegation struggle by losing only one match out of the four played thus far.

Although the scrum looks far from solid, the lineout – with Mark Murdoch and Scott LaValla the key architects – provides a good attacking platform. From any such possession close in, look for the Trinity pack to throw to the second man and roll out the rolling maul.

Although the UCD half backs aren’t particularly exciting, their backline overall is stronger. Any of Lett, McFadden or Hastings in the centre will form an experienced and pacy unit, and watch out for the strong running of former Blackrock College man Vasya Artimiev on the left wing. Young will have to be at his dynamic best in providing cover for an inexperienced back line – in particular young Conor Colclough, at 13 for Trinity, may find his opposite number a handful.

This game, rugby fans will be unsurprised to learn, will be won or lost in the forwards. The pack has performed well so far this season – the backline in particular looks dynamic – but the tight five isn’t particularly big. Damage limitation is the name of the game in the scrum, and if Trinity cannot be more assertive at the breakdown than they have been so far this season, it could be a long night.

Conor James McKinney is College Sport Editor of Trinity News

I

THE TEAM

T WAS a miserable, cold, dark and wet Tuesday evening towards the end of October 1975 as I walked up the long corridor in Belfield Arts Block to have a look at the rugby notice board. It was two weeks to the Colours match with one more friendly game to go beforehand and I was quietly confident that I would be selected.

Having played on the firsts for most of the earlier matches and being in the middle of a long term relationship (of at least 7 weeks) with someone who would be impressed by my selection, I had every reason to be hopeful and confident.

I turned the corner at the end of the corridor, went up to the rugby notice board (brown mahogany surround and the word “rugby” in gold leaf on top) and looked at it. My name wasn’t there. I was dropped! This meant I wouldn’t be picked for the Colours match.

I was gutted. I am still gutted and only in recent years have stopped taking out this disaster on my own children.

There was only one thing to do. I headed off to the Belfield Bar for long term counselling and medication to help me through this difficult time (well, as long as my money lasted).

Back in the 1970s and 1980s the annual Colours match was the biggest event in the rugby year. In those days there were no leagues and most matches were simply friendlies. The Colours match therefore, because of the natural hatred each University had for the other, was the most fiercely fought encounter of the season and attracted very large crowds of boisterous students, many of

15. PAUL GILLESPIE 14. CHRIS JEBB 13. CONOR COLCLOUGH 12. RICHARD BRADY 11. COLIN MURPHY 10. ANDY WALLACE 9. EDDIE HAMILTON 1. TRISTAN GOODBODY 2. MARK MURDOCK 3. JAMES GETHINGS 4. PAT DANAHY 5. SCOTT LAVALLA 6. MAX CANTRELL 7. SHANE YOUNG (C) 8. BRIAN COYLE SUBSTITUTES:

A. MATHEWS, P. MCCABE, C. MCDONNELL, J. BYRNE, J.ILIFF, S. HANRATTY, B. JOHNSTON

AIL DIVISION 2

LEINSTER DIVISION 2

14/11/08

P 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

W 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 0 0

DUFC

v

D 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

L 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4

F 113 68 52 50 93 89 79 66 64 51 39 44 64 36 40 45

A 33 38 38 47 56 62 66 58 59 53 64 46 72 89 87 125

TB 2 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0

LB 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 0 1 1 1 2 0

Pts 18 14 13 13 12 12 12 11 10 9 8 6 6 5 2 0

UCD

P 4 3 3 4 3 3 3 3 4

W 4 3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0

D 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

L 0 0 0 2 2 2 2 3 4

F 21 14 11 15 13 6 3 1 3

A 8 3 3 8 11 7 11 16 20

Pts 12 9 9 6 3 3 3 0 0

Skerries maintain their top ranking with a hardfought win over Suttonians, who slip to fourth. DUHC stay in fifth by virtue of their superior points difference over Weston and Avoca.

08/11/08

Clontarf

4

1

23/11/08 Trinity

v

Malahide

MEN’S SQUASH

LADIES’ SQUASH

PREMIER DIVISION

1ST DIVISION

P 4 4 4 3 4 4 4 3

Pts 57 56 50 42 36 29 20 6

12/11/08 Malahide A v Trinity A 18/11/08 Trinity A v Belvedere A

Pos 2.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Team Trinity A Aer Lingus A Total Fitness MH Fitzwilliam B Westwood B Mt. Pleasant B

P 3 3 3 3 3 3

Pts 33 29 27 20 18 13

12/11/08 Trinity A v Aer Lingus A 19/11/08 Fitzwillam B v Trinity A

Pos 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Team Railway Union Loreto Hermes UCD Pembroke Glenanne Old Alexandra Bray Corinthian Trinity College

Old Alexandra Glennane 3 Trinity College

Team Swords Celtic DUAFC Brendanville FC Templeogue United Clonee United Confey FC Dunboyne AFC Garda FC Verona FC Greenhills AFC Boyne Rovers Loughshinny United Rush Athletic Rathcoole Boys

P 9 7 8 8 5 10 9 7 9 10 8 8 9 7

Clonee United

W 8 6 6 5 4 3 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 0

D 1 1 1 2 0 3 2 1 1 4 3 3 2 2

5

L 0 0 1 1 1 4 4 3 6 5 4 4 6 5

1

F 32 28 21 25 14 10 22 13 20 19 13 10 20 8

A 12 6 12 9 9 11 20 20 32 31 20 21 30 22

Pts 25 19 19 17 12 12 11 10 7 7 6 6 5 2

DUAFC

ULTIMATE FRISBEE

CORK OPEN

P 5 5 5 5 5 6 5 6 6 6

W 5 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 0 0

D 0 2 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 0

L 0 0 1 1 1 2 2 3 5 6

F 14 15 17 9 8 8 10 2 3 5

A 0 2 7 3 8 11 8 13 20 22

Pts 15 11 10 10 8 8 7 5 1 0

Trinity are rock bottom with no points from their opening six games. They do however have a prime opportunity to remedy this on Saturday when they face Corinthians, who are also without a win, at Santry.

01/11/08 08/11/08 15/11/08

Pos 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

01/11/08

DUHC

LEINSTER DIVISION 1

LEINSTER WOMEN’S LEAGUE

Team Sutton A Fitzwilliam B Westwood A Fitzwilliam A Curragh A Mt. Pleasant A Old Belvedere A Trinity A

Team Skerries Clontarf Bray Suttonians Dublin University Avoca Weston Naas Navan

SAT MAJOR 1D

LADIES HOCKEY

LADIESWWW RUGBY

Pos 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Pos 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

whom knew nothing at all about rugby but nevertheless enjoyed themselves tremendously. These days the players of both UCD and Trinity have numerous competitive matches in leagues and cups, as well as representative games for which there now seem to be fixtures at Leinster or Irish level for nearly every age group.

However, there is still no doubt that for many of the players actually participating in the Colours match at all is a huge achievement and winning it an even greater one. For many players it is the summit of their career and something to boast about in one’s dotage.

The very first Colours match took place in 1951 and since then has been played every year without fail. Many wonderful players have taken part and various International players regularly refer to the Colours match as one of the highlights of their career. Of the present bunch of Irish players the likes of Brian O’Driscoll, Rob Kearney and Jamie Heaslip have all played Colours and have fond memories of the occasion.

Originally the matches took place in Lansdowne Road and were later moved to Donnybrook. This move was a result of some over-exuberant egg and flour throwing which for some reason led the Lansdowne hierarchy to suggest that perhaps their stadium wasn’t best suited for such events. However, these happenings took place way back in the last century (i.e. the mid 1990s) and there is always a chance the game might return to Lansdowne Road when it is eventually completed.

Interestingly, up until about 10 years

MEN’S SOCCER

MEN’S HOCKEY

Team Ballynahinch Bruff Malone Belfast Harlequins Lansdowne UCC Bective Rangers Dublin University Greystones Old Crescent Highfield Clonakilty DLSP Wanderers Thomond Instonians

The No. 8 has a full Leinster contract, and although he has yet to make his mark at provincial level, his physicality will be a revelation for a Trinity side more used to Division 2 opposition.

Matt Nagle of UCD in action at the last Colours match in March. Photo: Stephen McCarthy/SPORTSFILE

MEN’S RUGBY

Pos 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Man to watch: Kevin McLaughlin

UCD TO WIN BY 10 TO 20 POINTS

5 3

v

0 1

Trinity College Trinity College Corinthian

ago each team provided a touch judge for the Colours match. This arrangement eventually ended as, depending on which side of the field they were on, each touch judge suffered 40 minutes of sustained abuse which often had long term negative psychological effects. Now it is all much more refined.

In every Colours match I have seen over the years both sides play running rugby right from the kick-off. Most years one or two previously unheralded players shine in the game and often go on to greater things.

You may well ask “what exactly is a ‘Colour’?” Once you have played in a Colours match you are given the huge honour of being allowed to buy a Colours scarf. On occasion the Club itself actually pays for them. This scarf can then be proudly worn for the next 40 years, even when it becomes tattered and dirty.

The Trinity scarf is a bright positive shiny pink one. The UCD scarf on the other hand is a more muted, mature effort containing varying shades of blue.

The differing scarves obviously say a huge amount about each College and their ethos but sadly there is insufficient time to go into all of that now.

The Colours match is always played in the early evening, the weather is usually excellent and it is a great excuse for a wonderful day out to feast on running rugby and copious pints thereafter.

Everyone should go!

David Bergin is a practising solicitor. He was President of UCD RFC for the 2007/08 season.

Tennis victory TRINITY’S KELLIE O’Flynn represented the College at the National University Tennis Championships, held in Westwood during the first weekend in November.

Despite facing off against firm favourites Niamh Coveney and Laura Milner in the final of the Women’s Doubles competition.

O’Flynn and her partner Marion Hanley of NUIG ran out comfortable winners in the end, taking the title 6-2, 6-3. It was a good measure of consolation for O’Flynn, who was knocked out of the sinlges in the round of 16.

In the men’s singles, Will Wilshere also lost in the opening round, while Simon Clarke went out in the quarter finals to Simon Wrafter of DCU.

DUUFC 1: Placed 6th of 22 - see back page.

DUUFC 2: T. Brennan, G. Hogan, C. Hosp (c), J. Kwan, T. McFadden, T. Monaghan, G. Ó Fearghail (vc), N. Sherry, S. Smith, J. Sutton, D. Teeling. Placed 22nd of 22.

15/11/08: Open indoor intervarsities GAELIC FOOTBALL

INTERVARSITY LEAGUE 12/11/08

The Law School

v

Trinity

HURLING

INTERVARSITY LEAGUE 04/11/08: Trinity (2-8) (2-18) Carlow IT

Kellie O’Flynn and Marion Hanley

TRINITY NEWS

SPORT

TRINITY NEWS

23

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

November 11, 2008

Soccer team crash out of uni league

MATCH STATS

Despite being in control for much of the game, Trinity prove unable to hang on as two penalties and a sending off take their toll

COLLEGE PARK

SCORE

DUAFC DIT

1 2

DATE

5 NOVEMBER VENUE

REFEREE

STEPHEN GRANT TEAM

By Niall Walsh TRINITY STARTED their final group game against DIT knowing that a draw would send them into the knockout stages of the competition. However, it was clear from the outset that the home side were going to attempt to win the game, and the group.

The game started at a frenetic pace with captain Evin O’Reilly showing some beautiful touches in the opening exhanges and it was not long before Trinity took the lead. Cormac Ryan picked the ball up on the left wing, delivered a perfectly lofted cross into the area and striker Ciaran Lawler, Trinity’s top scorer this season so far, slid in to poke home at the back post and send the Trinity bench into raptures.

The college continued to attack and press for the second goal and DIT were pinned back into their own half for long periods of the first 45. Just before the break the in-form Lawler had a great chance to give Trinity some breathing space. After a defensive mix up he found himself in space, one on one with DIT keeper Tristan King, but inexcusably put the ball well wide of the goal.

After the break DIT came out looking like a different team. They got far tighter on Trinity’s midfielders and held on to possession much better, pushing Trinity’s defence further and further into their own half. However, John Lavelle and Colin Hyland, Trinity’s centrebacks, were providing a master class in defending, seemingly winning every header and tackle that came their way.

Meanwhile, the the pacy Daniel Moriarty

and industrious Lawler were proviing to be a constant threat on the break.

Niall O’Carroll had made a string of excellent saves to keep Trinity ahead but on the hour mark, the face of the game changed completely. DIT won a free kick on the right hand side of the box and Stephen Roche glanced a header downward past O’Carroll towards goal after a great delivery. Chris Allen, guarding the far post, instinctively stuck out his hand to block the ball. He instantly regretted his decision, and the referee was left with no option but to send him off. However, Allen and the entire Trinity bench breathed a huge sigh of relief when DIT’s full back Killian Gallagher blazed the ball high over the bar from the resulting spot kick.

Striker Moriarty was then sacrificed by manager Jimmy Cummiskey in exchange for midfielder Oisin McMahon and Trinity changed to a defensive 4-4-1 formation. The college were then pinned back in their own half as DIT desperately pressed for an equalizer. Trinity were determined to hold on, however, battling tenaciously for every loose ball. Their commitment was personified by the tireless Lawler, the lone striker chasing down hopeful long ball after hopeful long ball.

Despite their best efforts, with ten minutes left on the clock the Trinity defense was finally breached. DIT broke down the right hand side, whipped in an early cross and some truely horrendous marking left DIT substitute Kyle Cawley with the easiest of finishes past O’Carroll.

It was to get worse for Trinity, however.

1. NIALL O’CARROLL 2. MICHAEL STORAN 3. JOHNNY CUMMINS 4. COLIN HYLAND 5. JOHN LAVELLE 6. LUKE GUERIN 7. DANIEL MORIARTY 8. EVIN O’REILLY (C) 9. CHRIS ALLEN 10. CIARAN LAWLER 11. CORMAC RYAN SUBSTITUTES Evin O’Reilly working overtime after the dismissal of teammate Chris Allen. Photo: Jessica Pakenham-Money DIT knew that a draw probably wouldn’t be enough to qualify for the knockout stages and they threw everything at Trinity in the final minutes of the game.

With five minutes left on the clock Trinity gave away a second, and highly questionable, penalty. It was cruel that Trinity’s best player on the day, Colin Hyland, was the one punished by the referee. The Trinity centre-back ran out to meet an onrushing DIT player and as the shot came in it ricocheted off his hand. It was most certainly a case of ball to hand but unfortunately for the college, the referee didn’t see it that way.

DIT changed their penalty taker and this time they made no mistake, Roche rifling the ball into the top right hand

UNSUNG HEROES: THE LADIES FIFTH XI

corner of O’Carroll’s goal. The drama still wasn’t finished and in stoppage time Trinity had a glorious chance to snatch a point and ensure qualification. John Lavelle picked up the ball in his own half and played a superb ball up the line for Cormac Ryan. The Trinity midfielder found himself in acres of space but his first touch let him down and he played the ball across the box just slightly behind the onrushing Hyland, attempting to atone for conceding the penalty. The lanky centre back somehow managed to get a foot on the ball but agonizingly for Trinity, the ball went inches wide.

Trinity’s players walked off the field in disbelief at the final whistle, trying to come to terms with a defeat in a gaem,

GLENNANE DULHC

3 1

By Conor James McKinney College Sport Editor

outfit was rewarded with two more scores courtesy of Mairead Marnane and the ever enthusiastic Eimear MacNamara. Unfortunately the half ended on a scrappy note with a soft goal conceded, much to the delight of the vocal Botanic supporters and their yapping dog.

Half time, and the Trinity girls retreated to nurse various injuries and to the musings of flip-flop clad coach Alan Bell. Within minutes of the start of the second half, Niamh Fox blasted the backboard from a well executed short corner, once again ousting Ciara from her spot at the top of the circle. Trinity dominated the remainder of the second half with the dejected opposition rarely causing any major problems for the Trinity defence.

Trinity scored two more goals from the sticks of Mari Ozaki and Hannah Lyons. This left the end result at an impressive 6-1. The fifths march on into the next round of the cup and, without a loss in the league, prospects are looking good for the season ahead.

(Lorna Ferguson)

MAN OF THE MATCH

COLIN HYLAND SENT OFF

CHRIS ALLEN

Cookstown the venue for latest ladies defeat SCORE

THE DULHC fifth’s unbeaten start to the season continued with an impressive cup performance in Santry on Saturday morning. The opposition was fellow northside team Botanic. As ever, it took this team a while to get going as a result of both graduation and Med Day celebrations on Friday night. Yet once the whistle blew Trinity’s determination to win this match came to the fore having being narrowly knocked out of last year’s cup by eventual winners Mullingar. The match began evenly as Trinity, led by captain Dani McCollum, got into their stride and allowed their freshers to continue to settle into the team. However, as the half wore on, Trinity’s superiority started to shine, eventually wearing down the opposition for Ciara Marnane to get the first goal of the game. Trinity worked well when switching the ball out wide and to unmarked players behind play. Trinity didn’t have it all their own way and were put under pressure in the circle, yet any threat was relieved through strong central defending. The Trinity

only ten minutes previously, had seemed certain to end in victory. The players waited anxiously to hear the result of the other game in the group, knowing that a draw or better for DCU would guarantee them qualification. Luck quite simply was not on Trinity’s side today however, and as news filtered through that Colaiste Ide had beaten the Glasnevin college 3-1, Trinity’s footballers had to accept elimination from a competition in which they had started so brightly.

DUAFC are still looking strong in their division in the Leinster Senior League, and if they continue to play with the drive and determination on show today, it won’t be too long before they get back to winning ways.

F. MULLINS O. MCMAHON L.KEOGH E. KEEGAN J. KENNEDY

YOUR CORRESPONDENT’S battered ego was rather soothed on Friday night in the Palace, when some young ladies recognised him as the Sports Editor of this fine publication. It was, admittedly, more in the context of amused contempt than admiration, but then that is not a wholly unfamiliar female reaction to some of us. The point is that the wildly inebriated girls in question may well have been members of the ladies hockey team, judging by the tired look of their performance on Saturday morning.

Even if this rather defamatory theory is inaccurate, the Ulyssean journey out to the lonely, windswept pitch glorified by the name of Glennane Park isn’t calculated to get a player’s head in the game. The warm-up shooting drill looked rusty, and it was with a hint of trepidation that the assembled spectators watched the still winless First XI get started.

Captain Claire Hearnden urged her charges to get in the opposition’s faces, and “make them worried all match”, but in truth it was the Trinity side that looked cagey in the opening period.

Glennane created some early chances, and it took a couple of decent stops from Jess Elliott and good defensive work

by Caroline Murphy to steady the ship.

The real problems came when Trinity gained possession – at the risk of being over-analytical, it’s worth pointing out that they just couldn’t hold onto the ball, at least with any degree of consistency.

Irene Gorman, leading the Trinity line, didn’t any service whatsoever until at least 20 minutes in.

Glennane, meanwhile, were sniffing around on both the left and right flanks, and a disturbing amount of balls sailed right through the Trinity defence. They mainly ran dead, but this couldn’t last.

After a collision between Murphy and Boyle in the circle almost allowed the home forwards to pounce, the next

Glennane sortie lead to a short corner.

A pass out to the right left the onrushing defence wrong-footed, and although Elliott got a foot to the intial shot, the following player had all the time in the world to bury the rebound deeper than a Mafia informer.

Maebh Horan sparked into life as Trinity went in search of an equaliser; a brace of dangerous runs left her in good positions, but the final ball went nowhere.

No-one else was offering much, it must be said, and the Glens came back with a vengence. Caoimhe Costigan – who had a generally assured afternoon – broke up one raid down the left hand side after her defensive colleagues went to sleep, but nobody was awake to the resulting sideline ball, which sailed merrily into the circle and was deftly turned in by the reverse stick of a Glennane forward to leave Trinity two goals to the bad.

It was rare that Trinity were able to move the ball out of defence with any conviction, with the midfield not making the necessary runs. Murphy and Buckley were forced to run the ball out on occasion – and to good effect – but it obviously wasn’t a tactic that could be relied upon to get regular ball to Gorman and Costigan, easily Trinity’s best players when they got a sniff of possession. With that outlet blocked, Glennane were able to turn the screw; a second short corner, awarded after prolonged period of pressure during which the Glennane forwards couldn’t decide which one of them would tuck the ball away, went in off Elliott to make it 3-0.

Whether that was enough for the Tallaght side, or whether Trinity finally decided to play, the line was drawn there. Horan reprised her role as chief creative officer with a wonderful ball in to Costigan, who played for the short corner, and got it. A powerful drive in took a weird and wonderful deflection, eventually trickling its way over the line.

Costigan herself has the most likely claim to be the scorer, but we stand open to correction on that front.

Somebody up there was looking favourably on Trinity, at least; Elliott saved the next Glens short corner, and there was a just a hint of added composure

on the ball. Enough, certainly, for Trinity win a short corner of their own. They made a horrible mess of it, granted, but as the teams separated for half time, the knowledge that a breakthrough was possible if they played their game must have been of some comfort to the students.

Hearnden came back on for Nadia Douglas after the break and led by example with a surging run in the opening seconds. This set the stage for a second act in which Trinity did all the performing, but were unable to set things to rights before the curtain fell.

Chances came and went: first Costigan went within inches of getting on the end of a ricocheting Rachel Scott free into the circle, then O’Byrne flashed a dangerous cross across the face of goal. Gorman started to come into the game, but even her pace wasn’t enough and the vital score proved elusive.

With Glennane starting to get rattled (“RELAX, GLENS!!”) and time ebbed away, Mandy Holloway hurled her bench at the foe. Lucy Small showed some nice touches, linking up well with the tireless Costigan, but was just unable to find Hearndon unmarked in the circle late on. A robust defence Glennane defence, aided by just a touch of rough play, were able to contain the threat and didn’t really deserve to concede. By the time the UCD men’s team arrived at pitchside to wait for the next sceduled game, the urgency had faded; Hearnden’s short corner miss from another Costigan burst at the death had a feeling of inevitabiltity about it.

Six games, six defeats. At least it didn’t rain.

THE TEAM J. Elliott, C. Costigan. C. Murphy, V. Buckley, C. Boyle, K. O’Byrne, C. Hearnden (c), R. Scott, M. Horan, I. Gorman, D. Costigan.

Subs: A. Coyle, C. Coakley, N. Douglas, L.Small.

IN PREVIEW: COLOURS CLASH

AN OLYMPIC GRADUATE

SPORT

Rower Gearoid Towey tells of his journey from Botany Bay to Beijing

TRINITY NEWS Tuesday, November 11, 2008

First XI clobbered at Clontarf

MATCH STATS

Injury-hit men’s hockey team left to rue missed opportunities in the second half as Division 2 rivals’ comfortable victory sees them move to the top of the league

MT. TEMPLE, CLONTARF

By Dermot Trellis RONAN PELOW’S robust injury list meant a barrage of new faces as DUHC resumed their league campaign against Clontarf last Saturday. Trinity have developed something of a mental block where this side is concerned, and were looking to shake off the memories of relatively disappointing Intervarsity and Irish League Trophy results over the past two weeks. The absence of Andy Gray and Brian Cleere wasn’t a help in this regard, while Johnny Orr was also benched and Aengus Stanley could only assist the back four by bellowing advice from touchline.

Cian O’Reilly and Chris Tyrrell looked intially lively, probing down both flanks, but were unable to provide the killer ball in. Stuart Cinnamond had the best chance of the opening period, set up

by Tyrrell, but couldn’t get a clean shot away. With Barry Glavey demonstrating his characteristic grace under pressure to extricate himself from various tight spots, Trinity gave as good as they got in the opening exchanges.

Clontarf, though, are as good as they come in Division Two hockey, and in the manner of Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction, soon turned the tables on their tormentors. It took a stern Ian Gorman challenge to stem the tide as Clontarf stormed through the centre, but neither he or Ben Hewitt could stop the ‘Tarf left winger the next time he weaved his way into the circle. A short corner was the result, but the only casualty was Hegarty’s

stick, broken clean in two in a impressively hardcore feat of goalkeeping. Provided with a replacement, he used it to keep things level when faced with a one-onone in open play a few minutes later, as the intensity rose and Glavey resumed his love-hate relationship with the Leinster Branch umpires.

Daire Coady, brandishing the captain’s armband, had abandoned all concern for his bodily integrity as he threw himself about the park in the effort to keep the Clontarf attack at bay. That said, some of his passing out of defence was wayward, and it was he who conceded the next short corner when the ball came off his left hoof. Several bodies blocked the first volley, but the rebound was somehow scrambled in for a demoralising 0-1.

A goal down, Trinity found it hard to maintain the patient hockey that had allowed them to put it up to Clontarf in the first twenty minutes. As passes failed to find their mark, “Calm it down” and “Take it easy” were the refrains of Pelow and Orr on the touchline. Before the students could settle, though, they were stung for another: Nick Odlum did well to block the initial chance and clear wide, but the cross came back at pace, and, after another goalmouth melee, the ball thumped into Hegarty’s backboard again.

Coady attempted to rally his troops; he was eventually able to find his range to pick out Cinnamond in the oppostion 25. The layoff to Hal Sutherland, steaming up in support, was judicious, but the substitute was unable to clear

SCORE

CLONTARF DUHC

4 1

DATE

8 NOVEMBER VENUE

TEAM

1. JACK HEGARTY 2. NICK ODLUM 3. IAN GORMAN 4. DAIRE COADY (C) 5. SCOTT MCKECHNIE 6. BEN HEWITT 7. BARRY GLAVEY 8. HENRY BUTLER 9. CIAN O’REILLY 10. STUART CINNAMOND 11. CHRIS TYRRELL SUBSTITUTES Ben Hewitt marshalls his opposite number during DUHC’s 4-1 loss to rivals Clontarf. Photo: Jessica Pakenham-Money the Clontarf goalie with his chip. With Glavey not getting enough ball, it was a simple matter for the northsiders to punish such impudence during their next attack: with Trinity defenders diving around recklessly, the short corner was inevitable; its conversion, routine. As the eerie tinkling of an ice-cream van echoed through the vicinity (by now it was raining; clearly there was something fishy going on there), half time came with Trinity three-nil down and chasing the game.

In a sign of Trinity’s confidence that they could recover the game, the “injured” Orr and Stanley were pitched into the fray, and made an immediate impact as Trinity reasserted themselves.

Their fellow substitute Beverland won a short corner after ‘Tarf were caught out by a dubious free against them. The score

that would have given them that crucial bit of momentum proved elusive, though, as Glavey sent the ball wide to the right.

With Stanley making inroads down the right flank, and the midfield looking that bit more settled, Trinity had plenty of possession but no clear-cut chances until Hewitt – much improved from a quiet first half performance - was hacked as he burst into the circle. Glavey, in no mood to be denied, sank his putt at the second attempt to make it 1-3.

There was just a few signs that the home side might crack under pressure.

A free in the Trinity 25 was reversed for backchat, and their captain was sinbinned for kicking the ball having just lost his stick in a collision. He was back in the blink of an eye, though, and all that Trinity could muster in his absence was another fruitless O’Reilly run.

Clontarf were too good to get really upset, and having taken 45 minutes to score one goal Trinity didn’t look to have the cutting edge to get two more. There was plenty of bark, but no bite.

Orr and the acrobatic Henry Butler looked busy but a touch ineffective in midfield, while O’Reilly and Beverland both missed decent chances. When another short corner opportunity was saved by the ‘Tarf goalkeeper, Alan Bell’s stats will record that only one out of three such efforts were converted. Had they all been, the game could at least have been tied.

Clontarf displayed no such profligacy; when their final shortie of the day arose, it was dispatched clinically, low and to the right of the diving Hegarty. They were good value for their 4-1 win, but DUHC will regret those key misses.

A.STANLEY H. SUTHERLAND J. ORR A. BEVERLAND MAN OF THE MATCH

NICK ODLUM Not a lot to choose from this week, admittedly, but given that Odlum was returning to the side after a prolonged spell out injured, he put in an assured performance. Looked comfortable throughout and couldn’t be faulted for any of the Clontarf goals.

ULTIMATE FRISBEE

Mixed fortunes for Trinity at Cork Open In their first competitive outing of the season, DUUFC put in some strong performances against top-class opposition, but were unable to clinch the tight games that determined the silverware

By Cian Quinn WITH A distinct lack of experienced handlers to call upon, and a new front-up marking system being trialled on defence, Trinity’s performances against UCD and UCC in the opening games of the Cork Open were decidedly disappointing. In spite of a late rally that gave the scoreline some respectibility, the team were all too aware that it had been a long time since a DUUFC line lost to a Cork team already tipped as possible Intervarsity rivals next spring.

The side’s hopes weren’t exactly high, then, going into their third game against FuF. Irish varsity sides are one thing, but the Belgians were widely acknowledged to be on a different level altogether.

Average age, around 27; finalists at Cork last year; decades of experience. On their arms, a simple slogan: “Respect is Due”.

As these continental giants bounded onto the field, curly locks shining in the sun like spun gold, it looked like a demoralised Trinity were in for a thrashing.

And yet, Trinity managed to conjure up the intensity and fluidity that had been so conspicuously lacking from the earlier games. A defence that had gifted UCC points like Halloween treats in the previous game suddenly switched on; Trinity capitalised on some basic FuF errors and forced them into even more.

With patience on offence, the scores came, and Trinity found themselves 4-1 up against one of Europe’s more formidable clubs. Most importantly, they had also rediscovered their pride.

Daragh Gleeson was at the heart of the Dublin side’s efforts. Arriving at pitchside in a state that could charitably be described as “bedraggled”, he shook off his hangover to deliver one of the best one-day performances ever seen in a DUUFC shirt, and then calmly returned to the team accommodation to slink into a high fever. The Belgians could no more cope with him than a German armoured division. He wasn’t short of willing accomplices, with Ian French running through the pain of a knee injury to pick up a brace and Sam Mehigan providing some divine distributive play from the back to set up scores for Gleeson and Stephen Mahon.

FuF, to their credit, regrouped; not for nothing were they finalists at Cork last year. At 4-4, their experience told, and despite another point from the hobbling French to keep Trinity in touch, they stuck to what they knew and used their pace to grab the vital scores.

It said a lot that Trinity were disappointed to lose the game just 5-7, especially having been deprived of the services of the best player in Irish varsity Ultimate, David Misstear, who was on the sidelines dispensing tactical advice with characteristic calm and humour. Captain

THE TEAM H. Barry, I. French (c), D. Gleeson (vc), S. Mahon, C. J. McKinney, S. Mehigan, K. Nagle, J. O’Connor, D. Perry, C. Quinn, R. Scanlon, F. Shannon (c), K. Timoney.

Most Valuable Player: Kevin Timoney A-Game: Stephen Mahon Most Sprited Player: Ian French French should probably have been with him, given the state of his left knee, but the Irish international dusted himself off to lead his side straight into their crossover game against Voladora. Owing to the peculiarities of the ranking system, Trinity could still proceed to the quarterfinals by beating the Italians.

And, after a slow start, they did just that. Gleeson was untouchable in midfield, and somehow had enough in the tank to turn Voladora over from the pull, gliding in between their handlers for an audacious steal. He scored five points, while Kevin Timoney supplied six scoring passes as Kevin Nagle, Heather Barry and Redmond Scanlon all chipped in.

The reward for this effort was a

Sunday morning fixture against the reigning champions, Johnny Chimpo. The orange-clad destroyers had reinforced their claim to be the best side in Irish Ultimate with a win over Broccoli in the group stages, and had taken Trinity to the cleaners during last year’s Open. All the more remarkable, then, that Trinity were able to hold their own. Timoney, a Chimpo man in his spare time, was again provider-in-chief, while Gleeson claimed another hat-trick, along with some crowd-pleasing defensive layouts.

Once again, though, the more experienced club side were able to hold their nerve and grind out the win. A hard-fought 6-10 defeat was further indication of the Trinity’s progress over the weekend; indeed, the same scoreline saw Chimpo defeating Broccoli for the second time of the weekend in the final.

All that remained, then, was to exact revenge over the hosts for Saturday’s humiliation. The second clash with potential Intervarsity rivals UCC was a much more accurate reflection of the two sides’ quality, and it took a Timoney score from Gleeson’s upside down pass at sudden death to seal victory for Trinity by the narrowest of margins, 7-6.

Unfortunately, there was no energy left

SCORES UCD 8 Trinity 6 UCC 9 Trinity 6 Fuf 9 Trinity 5 Trinity 10 Valadora 8 Johnny Chimpo 10 Trinity 6 Trinity 7 UCC 6 Vision 10 Trinity 4 Final ranking: 6th of 22. for the 5th/6th playoff with Vision, a group of experienced Liverpudlians – Trinity went down 4-10.

All things considered, Cork ‘08 was certainly a valuable learning experience for all at DUUFC. The second team, predominantly staffed by beginners, were lacking experience even more than their contemporaries due to the relatively recent commencement of Michaelmas Term. Despite gaining valuable match experience they were defeated in each game, finishing the weekend in last place.

Meanwhile, the first team’s 6th place finish was an improvement on last year’s 8th, and the fruits of the new defensive system will no doubt be reaped during the All-Ireland Colleges’ League.