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Hilary term, Week 8
Issue 9, Volume 54
Ronson, Vitalic to play Ball GEAROID O’ROURKE EDITOR Trinity News can reveal that top international producer and remix expert Mark Ronson will headline this year’s Trinity Ball. Ronson recently scooped “Best Male” in the Brit Awards. He will be supported by popular French dance act Vitalic. These are the first two acts to be revealed from this year’s line-up. The news came in an interview with a visibly excited Students’ Union Ents Officer Edward O’Riordan. “We really wanted to take things
Trinity Ball headliner Mark Ronson
Supporting act Vitalic, aka Pascal Arabez
Energy ripoff charges OPINION EDITOR Trinity students living in College accommodation are charged over twice as much for energy as students in other Irish universities, a Trinity News survey has shown. Residents of Trinity Hall pay a fixed charge of €600 a year in energy charges, while students living on campus in UCD pay just over half €300 for the same services. The charge covers electricity, heating, hot water, internet connection and cable television. Students at the University of Limerick have the best deal of all, paying as little as €240 a year for energy, although internet is not included. Residents of Botany Bay, the GMB and Goldsmith Hall pay a fixed
energy fee of €560 a year, while charges on other parts of campus are based on the amount of energy used. A total of 1,700 students live in College accommodation on campus and at Trinity Hall in Dartry and about 1,400 of these pay a fixed energy charge. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the €75 a month paid by Trinity residents is also far higher than the charges paid by students in private accommodation. The Students’ Union website advises students to budget just €45 a month for electricity and heat. When asked about the high energy fees, the Accommodation Officer, Anthony Dempsey, said that charges were “apportioned on the basis of calculations prepared by external consultations” and that “bulk meters
STAFF WRITER The recent Lisbon Treaty debate at the Phil was disrupted when one audiencemember alerted college security to the presence of “a suspicious bag”. This report resulted in a farsical bomb alert and two students being brought before the Junior Dean. Kenneth Doyle, a former Trinity
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will net almost €500,000. Earlier this year MCD signed a further three year contract to run Trinity Ball and O’Riordan sees the big name acts already released for this Ball as a sign of things to come. Niall Morris, former Entertainments Officer and now working with MCD says that they are “totally committed to bringing the best acts to Trinity for the Ball. Ronson and Vitalic are only the beginning for this year”. There will be five stages at this year’s Ball with an estimated 20 more acts to be announced. • More on Ronson and Vitalic page 5
TRINITY DECIDES
Will this be the lineup of next year’s Students’ Union sabbatical team? Our Opinion Poll results
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Bomb scare at debate KIERA HEALY
at the ceremony. He is best known for his collaborations with other leading artists. O’Riordan is not ruling out an appearance by one of Ronson’s famous callaborators at the Ball. “We can’t reveal any more of the acts at this point but it will be up to Ronson himself how he wants to perform. It is not unheard of for some of his celebrity friends to drop in on his gigs. Celebrities love coming to the Ball because of it’s chilled out atmosphere.” Capacity for this year’s Ball will be 6000 while a similar sales system to previous years will be in place. “We expect tickets to sell within two weeks of going on sale” says O’Riordan which
STUDENTS’ UNION ELECTION
Trinity students pay twice as much as counterparts in other universities JOHN LAVELLE
up a level this year. So we put our heads together with MCD and came up with Ronson. He is really hot property at the moment, especially after the Brits.” Ronson’s recent awards success makes him one of the most high profile acts to play the Ball in recent years. O’Riordan hopes that this will lead to another sell-out event. Last year the Ball sold out two weeks in advance of the event. Tickets were changing hands for up to three times their face value. Interestingly, Ronson is the first person to win a Brit who doesn’t actually sing themselves although he did perform an acclaimed six minute set
student and frequent attendee at evening debates, reported that the bag had been unattended for “at least twenty minutes”. The arrival of security staff – who entered the Chamber midway through guest speaker Mary Lou McDonald’s address – caused some concern among audience members. Phil Secretary Barry Devlin
CATRIONA GRAY & AOIFE GRIFFIN STAFF WRITERS The latest Trinity News opinion polls show the race for Student’s Union president is almost neck-and neck between the three high-profile candidates. The poll, compiled over the weekend, and which received 430 responses, shows Eoin Moore with the slightest lead of 31.7% to Robert Donohue’s 29.2% and Cathal Reilly’s 27.2% share. Given th emargin of error the narrow gap between the candidates means that any one of the three stands a good chance of becoming next year’s president.
The other highly contested race is for Ents Officer, where 10% seperates the three candidates. The work of Dave Byrne’s dedicated campaign team has pushed him slightly ahead of his competitors with 36% of the vote, however Cillian Gray and Nicholas Longworth stand on 26.6% and 25.6% respectively, which means that there is still a strong possiblility for any one of them to emerge the eventual winner. As well as revealing these close results for President and Ents, the poll also revealed some more conclusive results for the other three positions. While it is difficult to accurately predict the results of the upcoming elections based on this poll, the race for Deputy President saw Seamus Conboy achieve a majority, coming
out with 39.8% of the votes. Conor Smith came second out of the four candidates with 20.8%, while the two female candidates achieves a similar proportion of votes with Laura Buttigieg gaining 14.2% and Jessie Gurr 12.2% of the total votes cast. Meanwhile, Welfare, the other hotly contested position with three runners, saw Orlaith Foley achieving a significant majority at 50.5% she gained over half of the votes. Nick Beard came second, still in with an outside chance at 20.1%, while Chloe Kassis-Crowe got 14.7%. For this position there were over 14% of votes lost- 7.6% spoiled and 7% voted that the nominations should be reopened, so that there is still a strong possibility that the eventual
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tn New indie hipsters Foals and the Kinetiks interviewed • Home grown dramatic productions reviewed • Irvine Welsh talks about writing • Commons reviewed 3
IRVINE WE
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FOALS Hugh McC indie’s hott afferty interview s est new band