Irish Student Newspaper of the Year 2009
GLOBAL POST-PUB DELICACIES TRAVEL, P 20
CLIMATE CHANGE SPECIAL NEWS FEATURES, P8
Tuesday January 26 2009
TOP 10 SCIENCE DISCOVERIES SCIENCE, P17
www.trinitynews.ie
€50,000 application fee for student centre
Issue 7, Volume 56
FERGUSON AT THE PHIL
Trinity Ball sale date set
»» Third application adds another €16,714.80 in fees to the bill »» More information requested on new application Kate Palmer College News Editor DUBLIN CITY Council is requesting “additional information” after Trinity College lodged an additional application for the proposed student centre. This leaves College with a total bill of €54,781.80 in application fees alone for the Luce Hall development, excluding fees for design, architecture and administration. College have been undergoing plans for the student centre since submitting the initial design to the Council in 2003. The facility is set to include student accommodation, a library, seminar rooms and entertainment facilities with a licensed bar and gig venue. The Director of Buildings, Mr Paul Mangan, says the College has allocated €250k towards bringing the design to this stage. Despite previous applications being approved by DCC, College decided to lodge modified plans last November to the tune of €16,714.80. Additional proposals include the removal of the existing walls and railings along protected structures in Pearse Street, to the north of Luce Hall. College have previously sought permission to alter the buildings in Pearse Street, which date back to the nineteenth century. In a design submitted in 2006, permission was sought from DCC to demolish the terraced houses at numbers 183-187.
The plans were rejected bar minor refurbishments, despite an appeal to An Bord Pleanala, which upheld the Council’s decision. This set back a major element of the design proposal, which was to create a new entrance to College, ‘North Gate Square’. It is understood a number of Dublin City councillors are opposing the College’s renewed application to alter the buildings. After submitting the application last November, DCC have requested further details from College regarding the drainage system, including a professional flood risk assessment in collaboration with the Council’s Drainage Division. College is no stranger to planning rejections from DCC. Last August College were refused permission to convert a former Victorian banking hall in Foster Place into a large venue. The plans were rejected on the grounds of concerns for alcohol-related social problems. It received strong opposition from public businesses and associations, such as Gary Solan from Architectural Construction Technology, who claimed it would introduce “the more unsavoury aspects of late night revellers”. The National Trust for Ireland wrote to DCC in support of the student centre plans. Kevin Duff of the Dublin City Association Planning Committee says, “the proposal is an important one on account of the prominence of the site within Trinity College and the city”.
David Molloy Editor “The overall objective for the city is to create a dynamic, mixed use, visually attractive, world-class city able to compete with other cities on a global basis”, says Duff, quoting from the Dublin City Development Plan 20052011. The development will reconfigure Luce Hall to include a Students’ Union area and a redesign of the building’s frontage. The improved facilities will be added alongside the building’s current use as part of the Department of Botany. Students’ Union Entertainments Officer Mick Birmingham is an outspoken advocate of the development since his sabbatical campaign early last year. “It’s ridiculous that we don’t have our own venue to host gigs”, says Birmingham, “The last time the College tried to build a new student venue- Goldsmith Hallthey forgot to soundproof it, rendering it useless!” The plans for the 4,400sqm, sixstorey development also propose seminar rooms, as well as 8 retail units including a café. The College Board say the development will bring “significant benefits, not just to Trinity College and the city, but also to the immediate surrounding area”. “The variety of new and lively uses to the street frontage will assist in its day time and night time vitality”, say the College Board. Board members approved the quarter of a million Euro budget in July 2007.
THE FINALISED dates for this year’s Trinity Ball have been announced, with tickets due to go on on sale next month. The ball will be held on April 16, and tickets will go on sale on Wednesday February 24 at €78, the same price as last year’s event. The line-up for the event is still being kept a closely-guarded secret by Entertainments Officer Mick Bermingham, and will be released days before tickets go on sale. Bermingham did, however, say he is very happy with the lineup as it stands and that “we will be kicking off the decade with the biggest, best lineup the Trinity Ball has ever seen.” “With the success of the last few years the Trinity Ball is now an internationally renowned event and this has helped us secure talent that a few years ago we could only dream of,” he said. There will, according to Bermingham, be a few slight changes to organisation, with less leniency shown toward students arriving already intoxicated to the event, despite last year’s Ball being one of the safest on record. The event will also use Ticketmaster tickets to combat forgeries. The event, which was formerly the largest private party in Europe, is set to be eclipsed by the UCD Ball, which has been granted a license for 8,000 Sir Alex Ferguson during his appearance at the Phil last week; tabloid journalists were turned away at the event (page 2). Photo: Caroline O’Leary
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26,000 journals at Rescheduling of Schol exams comes under fi re risk of vanishing David Molloy Editor ACCESS TO over 26000 electronic journals is under threat following the expiry of funding agreements. The Irish Research eLibrary, which provides digital access to 18000 journals in the humanities and social sciences and 6000 in science, medicine and technology is funded jointly by the Higher Education Authority and Science Foundation Ireland. The funding agreements expired in December, with an expected cut of up to 75% announced. “The funding authorities indicated that continued funding for the service would be very significantly reduced, which would lead to greatly restricted access for researchers across all disciplines,” said Robin Adams, Trinity Librarian. “College officers and Fellows were briefed on the situation and there has been much activity within Trinity and in other universities, arising from the real concern at the negative impact of this on research activity, and also on teaching, as many of the resources provided are also used by students and in undergraduate and postgraduate coursework.” The library is not managed by Trinity, but by the Irish Universities Association Librarian’s Group. As such, the negotiation of any new agreement goes beyond any single university.
In an e-mail to postgraduate students and staff, Postgraduate Director of Teaching and Learning Stephen Connon said “if funds are not found for this (either from the university or the HEA) we will very much end up holding the short straw. Most of you are not here long enough to have been postgraduates before we had widespread access, but please take my assurances that not being able to access the literature the instant a paper appears is a very serious handicap in the modern, mostly electronic era.” The IReL initiative provides access to many of the most popular electronic resources in college, including JSTOR, LexisNexis, and the publications of the British Medical Journal group. Although there is still access to such resources from the library’s website, the IReL database lists these contracts as expired. It is unclear what the official status of this access is. There exists a list, circulated by the Librarian, which details the expected likelihood of cancellation for a number of resources. This list was not available to Trinity News when requested. Student’s Union Education Officer Ashley Cooke confirmed that he “had received a number of complaints from final year students and postgraduate research students, particularly in the natural and health sciences, that they could not access eJournals and in some cases had to purchase essential journals themselves.” At a meeting of the University Council
last Wednesday, the issue was raised by a number of academic staff. “Council were told that IUA were negotiating to get the service returned. Nothing was mentioned about the source of the funding to be provided for the return of the STM phase,” said Cooke. “No deal has been reached as of yet,” he confirmed. Adams is also optimistic about the impact of the cuts. “The HEA has indicated that there will be a significant amelioration to the funding reduction, which is very good news. The IUA Librarians’ Group is in regular contact with HEA on the precise situation, and awaits confirmation of the final budget.” There is, however, no provision from within Trinity for further funding in the event that IUA negotiations prove unsuccessful, according to Adams. “As the anticipated funding will not equate to the current investment and journal subscription rates continue to increase, there will inevitably be some cancellations of subscriptions and we are preparing to identify which titles will be involved.” The IReL scheme was originally set up with seed funding from SFI in 2004, to which the HEA added funding for the humanities in 2006. The expected shortfall is thought to number in the millions of euro, though no exact figures are available as negotiations continue.
»» Delays due to weather put numerous exams on the same day Claire Acton Staff Writer TRINITY HAS come under fire from students and staff after disruption to the Foundation Scholarship examinations. “Adverse weather conditions” meant the exams, which were meant to commence Monday 11 January last, were postponed until later that week. Students undertaking Schols were notified of the timetable change the day before exams were due to take place, despite previous notifications that exams would proceed as planned. Criticism over College’s decision lay with the timetabling of rescheduled exams, which left students with up to three exams in one day. The students themselves were notified of the change of plans on 10 January, less than 24 hours before the exams were due to commence. This contradicts a previous notification issued two days before, confirming that all exams would take place as scheduled. Dr Donal O’Donovan, Head of the Maths Department, has been outspoken on his views of the disruption. In an email to his students O’Donovan acknowledged that those taking the Mathematics Foundation Scholarship examinations faced a “difficult task” because of the timetable change. The revised exam dates meant Monday’s
exam was deferred to the Friday afternoon, even though they already had an exam on the Friday morning. This left prospective Mathematics scholars with two thirds of their overall examinations in one day. Professor Richard Timoney, Associate Professor in the Mathematics Department, objected strongly to the new timetable scheduling, but to no avail. Timoney says the reallocation of the exams was “unfortunate and not the best way it could have been done”. According to O’Donovan, Timony felt there was no need to alter the schedule. Timony says there was the obvious option of putting exams scheduled for the Monday on the following Saturday that week. Alternatively, he suggested Monday 18 January, which was implemented in other courses. When he raised the matter with the Examinations Office on the morning of Tuesday 12 January, he was told that the decision had already been made and his solutions were deemed “impossible”. “It is clear that College did not have proper contingency plans in place”, says O’Donovan, higlighting the lack of anticipatory action displayed by the College. In spite of O’Donovan’s objections, the Examinations Office maintain that there was a contingency plan in place. The rest of the examination schedule went ahead
as planned. O’Donovan notified his students that the “examiners will bear in mind the difficulties students faced” by the disruption. College claims the disruption was “in view of the deteriorating weather conditions and snowfall”. Furthermore, timetables for the rescheduled exams were posted on the Trinity website by the close of business on Monday January 11, which all prospective Scholars were notified of. The General Regulations of the College state that, “the College reserves the right to alter the published time and date of an examination in exceptional circumstances”, a clause which the College saw fit to utilise. The extreme weather conditions over the Christmas break affected Library opening hours, as well as the Schol exams. The library was forced to curtail opening hours in the days approaching the exams. On the Saturday before examinations all Library services shut at 1pm, and remained closed throughout Sunday. A Library representative says the staff experienced extreme difficulties in accessing the college due to the deteriorating weather condition, and that closure was an inevitability. Front Arch was also closed because of hazardous icy conditions on the cobblestones, for health and safety reasons.