Trinity News Vol. 64, Issue 1

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Volume 64, Issue 1

Features

SciTech

An investigation into the rise of substandard student accommodation

Does gender stereotyping cause differences in capabilities between the sexes?

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Tn2 this issue From the representation of LGBTQ+ in film and art to discussions about Game of Thrones and New York Fashion Week, Tn2 Magazine is back

TRINITY NEWS Trinity’s newspaper of record EST. 1953

Trinity rises to 117th place in THE World University Rankings This constitutes an increase of fourteen places from the previous year rankings for the past three years, from 61st in 2013/14 to 98th in 2016/17. Trinity scored an overall 74.30 out of a possible 100 points.

Niamh Lynch Deputy Editor

Seana Davis Deputy News Editor

T

RINITY HAS RISEN FOURTEEN PLACES to 117th in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings for the 2017/18 academic year. Trinity now remains the highest-placed Irish institution in the rankings.

The calm before the storm: A tranquil Front Square before Freshers’ Week begins

Photo: Joe McCallion/ Trinity News

Students given opportunity to cheat as mobile phones allowed by lecturer in Psychology summer exam The incident occurred in May when an examination in the Statistics module was moved from Áras an Phiarsaigh to the Chemistry Building Niamh Lynch Deputy Editor

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RINITY’S DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY allowed students to bring mobile phones into an examination in lieu of online scientific calculators following a change of venue due to Luas construction works. As a result, students were able to use the internet to find answers to the examination questions.

The incident in question occurred in May when an examination worth fifty per cent of the overall mark in the ten credit Statistics module was moved from Áras an Phiarsaigh to the Chemistry Building as the noise from the Luas construction works continued.

The examination venue in

Áras an Phiarsaigh had the computers necessary, while the Chemistry building did not. The computers had the scientific calculators as well as the SPSS statistics programme necessary to complete the exam. The department printed the outlet from the SPSS programme, but sent an email advising students to bring their mobile phone to use as a calculator.

The results the students received in this examination remain part of their module result, and were not altered to account for this incident.

Rising junior sophister Psychology student, Johnny Halligan, was one of those affected by the sudden changes. Speaking to Trinity News, Halligan said: “I just assumed bring a scientific calculator but he [module co-ordinator Michael Gormley] actually wrote at the end of the email

to bring your mobile phone in and I heard people afterwards saying ‘sure I’ll just go on Blackboard and you know Google the answers’. There was a few theoretical questions that constitute a fairly big chunk of the exam that was available to a few people.”

“Normally you wouldn’t have any mobile phone, the computers in the lab are monitored to see if you’re on the internet so you can’t do that so it’s tightly controlled for that.”

“I usually get a first in every statistics exam and this one I didn’t. I think the department should be held accountable because there was no proper measures, the person who’s overseeing the exam...didn’t go around the room to check to see are you on Blackboard or whatever.

It’s not fair, cause other people had access to the mate-

rial or potentially could have [access]. The very fact of the matter is that he [Gormley] can’t promise me that wasn’t the case cause he didn’t put any restrictions in place.”

In emails seen by Trinity News Dr. Michael Gormley, the module co-ordinator, informed Halligan that the exam was marked by a set standard, rather than a distribution. Gormley also noted that “the issue you raise about phones has some validity and was something that I was forced into because of the unexpected unavailability of our lab”.

that phones were allowed in lieu of calculators and we will endeavour to ensure that this does not happen again.”

Nixon also offered Halligan a meeting to discuss the incident with Gormley and Jean Quigley, who was acting in place of the Head of the Psychology School who was on leave at the time. However, this was not able to take place due to schedule constraints.

College did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Similarly, the Director of Teaching and Learning (Undergraduate) for the Psychology department, Elizabeth Nixon, said in a June 20 email: “It was a far from an ideal situation that the examination venue had to be changed at short notice and

The National University of Ireland (NUI), Galway and University College Dublin (UCD) also climbed up the rankings. UCD is now ranked at 168th place, up nine places, with NUI Galway rising six places to 243rd spot.

University College Cork (UCC) came in 283rd place followed by Dublin City University (DCU) in 391st place.

Last year, Trinity was temporarily removed from the THE rankings following the submission of incorrect data for 2016/17 and 2015/16.

They were later ranked at joint 131st and joint 101st for the respective years. Trinity also fell in these rankings in the four years previous to this year, except in 2015/16.

The rankings examine each university under five pillars: teaching, research, citations, industry income, and international outlook.

Trinity ranked highest for international outlook at 81.5%, and scored 50% for teaching.

College scored 47.5% for citations, 41.3% for research and 35% for industry income.

Trinity also ranked 81st in the THE rankings for Arts and Humanities subjects, constituting a rise of seven places from the previous year.

THE use the same methodology to rank arts and humanities as the world rankings and says that “the methodology has been recalibrated to suit the individual fields”.

Trinity also placed 88th in the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) world university ranking, an increase of ten places.

Prior to this year, Trinity had fallen consistently in the QS

Following this trend, Trinity ranks 48th in the global rankings for producing venture-backed entrepreneurs from its undergraduate programmes, according to Pitchbook’s recently published Universities Report.

Trinity is the only European university within the Top 50, making this the third year in a row that Trinity has been ranked first in Europe by the private equity and venturefocused research firm.

Dean of Research, Professor John Boland said in a press statement on the THE World University Rankings: “This has been a good year for Trinity in the rankings.

We have achieved this result despite so many challenging factors, including the rise of Asia-Pacific countries due to much greater investment, intense global competition, but also the continued chronic underfunding of higher education in Ireland.”

He also added: “In a postBrexit climate it is important that we maintain these high standards and build on this reputation for our students, for the further development of leading research, and for the overall development of the Irish economy. A world class university requires resourcing at internationally competitive levels and for Trinity to sustain its position and increase further worldwide requires adequate investment in the university sector.”

Trinity has made attempts to increase their position by way of an increased focus on internationalisation and the creation of a Ranking Steering Group. The latter is chaired by the Provost and focuses on areas such as citations, staff composition, outputs and funding levels.

Rents reach new all-time high while supply of accommodation continues to fall A quarterly report published by the property website Daft.ie found that rents increased by 12% in Dublin. has yet recorded.

Assistant News Editor

Currently, the average rent for a single-bed in Dublin city centre is €632, which is an 8% increase on last year, while a double-bed in the city centre has reached €724, an increase of 6.3%. By contrast, rent for a single-bed in Galway city centre is, on average, €348, with a double-bed at €407, for example.

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ENTS HAVE REACHED AN ALL-TIME HIGH while the supply of accommodation continues to drop, according to a quarterly report published by property website Daft.ie. The report found that across Ireland rental prices were at an alltime high for the fifth quarter in a row, while rents in Dublin continued to rise at a faster overall pace than elsewhere.

In Dublin, rents in the first half of the year rose by over 12%. Rents in the city are now 18% higher than its previous peak in 2008, the report found.

There were only 1,121 properties available to rent in Dublin on August 1st, a decrease of over 20% in the amount of properties available to rent compared with this time last year. There were only 3,000 properties available to rent across the country, the lowest the site

Meanwhile, a new report published by Union of Students in Ireland (USI) unearthed a number of unflattering figures concerning student accommodation. The report found that 1 in 5 students face unexpected rent increases during the the academic year and 36% of students do not receive a receipt for the deposits made on their lodgings. The average deposit for rented lodgings is approximately €400.

The findings follow the launch of a National Student Accommodation Strategy.

Unveiled in July, the basic aims of the strategy are to increase the level of supply of purpose built

student accommodation and increase take-up of digs accommodation. The strategy is the first of its kind and forms part of the government’s Rebuilding Ireland action plan for housing and homelessness, which was introduced last year.

Speaking at the launch of the National Student Accommodation Strategy, the Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton, stated by its plan the government was aiming to deliver “an additional 21,000 purpose built student accommodation bed spaces places by 2024”.

The strategy will also support the USI’s “Homes for Study” campaign, with the strategy committing €160,100 for the USI in 2017 and 2018.

This will fund a full-time student housing officer, the “Homes for Study” campaign, and training for student accommodation officers.

This new strategy will encourage higher education institutions to allocate

additional beds for student parents, lone parents and students with disabilities as additional on-site beds are delivered. Nomination agreements between private providers of student accommodation and higher education institutions will also be developed to increase the availability of good quality purpose built housing for students.

Trinity’s Student Union President, Kevin Keane, and University College Dublin Students’ Union President, Katie Ascough, warned that action needs to be taken to alleviate the student housing crisis immediately.

They expressed this in the introduction to the Daft.ie report, which they co-wrote.

The city has seen a number of purpose-built housing for student begin construction recently, but Keane and Ascough stated that this sort of housing won’t alleviate pressure for the majority, as “on average in Dublin, students are spending €1,500 more in this type of housing than the average spend for

what’s available in the general market”.

Speaking to this paper, Keane stated that relying on private development alone, “as the current government has essentially suggested we do” is a “fool’s errand”.

He continued: “We need an integrated, long term student focused plan to be put in place. Otherwise education in Dublin, and Trinity particularly, will become the reserve of Dublinborn students and the very wealthy”.

Keane and Ascough point to the rent-a-room scheme known as “digs” as a part of the solution, something they are promoting alongside Daft. ie. However, they say that if they don’t see a rise in takeup, then “many young people relieved after their Leaving Cert results are going to have their spirits crushed.

While available campus accommodation is generally allocated to incoming first years, it’s not adequate to house them all”.

TRINITY

Aisling Grace

Life

THIS ISSUE

A new supplement with everything you need to know about campus life inside.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

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What They Said

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“Talking honestly about what is fueling this era of serial disasters [...] isn’t disrespectful to the people on the front lines. In fact, it is the only way to truly honor their losses, and our last hope for preventing a future littered with countless more victims.”

Naomi Klein on the reporting of Storm Harvey, The Intercept.28/8/17

News

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“Are their profits enough to justify Ireland’s participation in massive tax avoidance and unregulated lending on a scale that could again threaten the stability of the global economy?”

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“It’s a proud moment for me personally as one of my main manifesto points was to oversee an upgrade of the SU shops. It is good to see that come to fruition.”

Kevin Keane on Offbeat Donuts coming to campus.

Andy Storey on Ireland’s Shadow Banking Sector, Dublin Inquirer. 12/9/17

Rise in first preference applications to Trinity 8,278 students placed Trinity at the top of their Central Applications Office (CAO) form.

Seana Davis Deputy News Editor

T

RINITY HAS CONTINUED TO EXPERIENCE an upward trend in first preference applications this year, with 8,278 students placing Trinity at the top of their Central Applications Office (CAO) form. A total of 18,624 students applied to Trinity, which is a fifth of all CAO applicants. 3,403 places are being offered to study at the university.

Points for Business and Law degrees have risen yet again this year, with Business, Economics and Social Studies (BESS), Trinity’s largest course, rising to 520 points.

Medicine at Trinity remained popular at 732 points. Points for Law and Management Science and Information System Studies (MSISS) have also increased from 535 to 542 and 565 to 578 points respectively.

Points for Psychology rose from 550 to 554, with Law and Business increasing from 585 to 589. Dental Science increased 4 points from 585 to 589.

Following a recent trend, points for Engineering and Science degrees have fallen.

Engineering decreased from 500 to 470 points with Science dipping from 505 to 499 points. Human Genetics dropped from 570 to 543 with Nanoscience, Physics and Chemistry of Advanced Materials (NPCAM) falling 53 points from 595 to 542 points.

Meanwhile, Midwifery rose from 455 to 456 points, and Chemistry and Molecular Modelling increased from 495 to 509 points. Computer science dropped from 480 to 467 points and Theoretical Physics saw an increase of 11 points from 555 to 566.

European Studies dropped 15 points from 535 to 520 with Earth Sciences also seeing a drop of 10 points from 490 to 480. Business

Studies and Spanish saw an increase of 14 points from 515 to 529 and Engineering with Management decreased by 16 points from 515 to 499.

964 Northern Irish students applied to Trinity and 262 offers have been made. 191 students have been offered a place through the Disability Access Route to Education (DARE) scheme and 154 offers have been made through the Higher Education Access Route (HEAR).

Trinity’s Vice Provost and Chief Academic Officer, Prof.

Chris Morash, congratulated all students entering third level: “As Vice-Provost at Trinity – and also as a parent this year of a Leaving Cert student – at a very personal level I recognise and applaud the heroic effort that goes into achieving these results, not just for the students, but for their families as well. You are now standing in a place where you can look ahead to the person you will become.

A third level education is

not just about assimilating facts, it is about challenging yourself, both in and beyond the classroom.”

A new grading system was introduced this year in order to minimise the occurrence of random selection in courses. The reduction of grade bands from 14 to 8 was made to reduce pressure on students to achieve marginal gains in points.

Speaking about the new points system, Prof. Morash said: “We welcome the impetus behind the new points system, and finding a better match between second and third level. This year we have seen a bigger pool of eligible applicants coming through the system. I see this as a first step to reforming education in Ireland, and look forward to continuing to find more effective ways for students to enter third level institutions in Ireland.”

News Editor

The report also highlights a gender imbalance in a number of fields of study.

Assistant News Editor

A

N IRISH MALE GRADUATE WILL EARN, on average, €80,000 more in this lifetime than a female graduate, an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report has found.

The report, which contains data on the state of education in countries around the world, also highlights a gender imbalance in a number of fields of study.

A gender imbalance is notable in aspects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

81% of information and communication technologies (ICT) third level entrants, as well as those starting courses in engineering, manufacturing and construction, are male.

The above comprises some, but not all, of what constitutes STEM subjects; natural sciences, mathematics and statistics are also categorised

as STEM subjects. The report showed that in 2015, 30% of third level entrants to STEM were women, which is on par with the OECD average.

Business, administration and law courses also see a gender imbalance, though to a lesser degree. In Ireland these courses, on average, are comprised of 53% men at third level.

According to the report, which compiles findings on the 35 OECD member countries and 11 partner countries, women make up a majority of entrants in all fields of study in Irish third level institutions, with some exceptions.

The areas in which women are in sizeable majority are health and welfare, which see women comprise a 79% share of graduates, and education, where 70% of graduates are female. Notably, Ireland produces more health and welfare graduates than any other OECD country, producing 5% above the OECD average.

The OECD gender pay gap findings support existing Irish data. A report published

by PwC in February found that Ireland had a 14.8% difference in median pay between men and women, while Eurostat, which defines the gender gap as the difference between male and female average hourly earnings as a percentage of male earnings, placed the gender gap at 14.4% in 2012 .

Speaking to Trinity News, Professor Eileen Drew, Director of the Trinity Centre for Gender Equality and Leadership (TCGEL), expressed her lack of surprise at the OECD findings. She stated that the gender pay gap is evident amongst all graduates within 6 months of graduation, for two main reasons.

The first reason is the “differential skill entry, whereby female graduates do not seek jobs at a level commensurate with their qualifications, as more men do”, while the second is that “it is acknowledged that women feel less comfortable about pay bargaining, not just at entry but thereafter in their careers”. A lower level entry and a lower pay at the recruitment stage “sow the seeds of cumulative

With a referendum likely to be held in 2018, TCDSU gears up for its campaign Sarah Meehan

Irish male graduates earn €80,000 more in their lifetime than female Aisling Grace

Student unions prepare for abortion referendum

disadvantage” that enlarges as graduate careers advance.

In addition, the gender pay gap is often attributed to the fact that sectors which see a higher proportion of women are often those with lower salaries, as well as women’s increased likelihood to work part-time, among other factors. The latter is often due to childcare constraints.

According to the National Women’s Council of Ireland, almost 70% of part-time workers are female.

Regarding the relative lack of women in some STEM courses as highlighted by the OECD figures, Prof.

Drew acknowledged that while women are well below “critical mass” in some fields of study, such as ICT and engineering, women are also “already well represented in some sciences, as they are in medicine and other professions”. She stated that this has taken “time and encouragement for young female school-leavers to feel that they have a place in this educational environment”.

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ith a referendum on the eighth amendment likely to be held in 2018, Students’ Unions have started to prepare for the national campaign. Mandated to call for repealment, Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) will start its campaign for the academic year during Freshers’ Week.

Repeal is expected to be a central part the agenda for Trinity’s first Empowerment Week.

An Empowerment Week was one of the President of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) Kevin Keane’s main manifesto points during last years sabbatical elections.

The week, which will be held during the first week of Michaelmas Term, aims to empower students to take part in campaigns and to give every student an opportunity to get involved in College.

At a meeting in early August, Union of Students in Ireland (USI) Vice President for Equality and Citizenship, Síona Cahill, decided to incorporate TCDSU’s “Repeal the Eighth” campaign model into the USI’s “Students4Choice” campaign for the upcoming year.

Speaking to Trinity News, Cahill noted that a main aim of the USI “Students4Choice” campaign will be “a massive voter registration drive leading to the National Voter Registration day in November this year”.

The USI will be delegating a campus ambassador and a committee to advocate a repeal of the eighth amendment. Each college will also have a committee of students to represent the repeal campaign in their own college. In Trinity, Kevin Keane, President of TCDSU, is Chair of the repeal committee and Úna Harty, TCDSU Communications and Marketing Officer, is the Deputy Chair.

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Varadkar pledged to take student concerns about the timing of referendum into account when setting a date for the vote The Equality Officer of the Junior Common Room (JCR) will also be a part of the committee. Following 63 applications made to the Trinity committee, 10 candidates have been chosen to be members of this year’s committee in Trinity.

needs to be as coordinated as possible to be successful.

The more pooling of ideas and cooperation between TCDSU, USI and any individual institution, the better.”

“We want this campaign to be one that works across groups from various student communities and organisations, as this is something that affects a huge proportion of our student population in Ireland as a human rights issue. We want to work collaboratively and creatively towards a successful repeal of the eighth amendment”, Cahill added.

One of the main campaign events of the year will be the sixth annual March for Choice, which will take place on September 30. The theme of this year’s march is “Time To Act”. The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance on Parnell Square from 1:30pm and then on to Dáil Eireann at 2pm.

On July 14, his first day as Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar announced that Minister for Health Simon Harris was to begin preparations for a referendum on repealing the eighth amendment. When concerns were raised that student turnout would be low during summer months at a Q&A session in Queen’s University Belfast, Varadkar pledged to take student concerns about the timing of referendum into account when setting a date for the vote.

Speaking to Trinity News about upcoming year, Keane said: “The repeal campaign

Additional reporting Aisling Grace

by

to meet potential future employers”.

employer-student connections and the graduate employment rate.

UCD is Ireland’s best university for getting a job University College Dublin ranks 75th and is followed by Trinity at 111-120.

Sarah Meehan News Editor

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HE QS GRADUATE EMPLOYABILITY RANKINGS were released over the summer and indicate that University College Dublin (UCD) is the strongest provider of highly employable graduates in Ireland. It ranks 75th and is followed by Trinity College at 111-120.

Each university is scored under several different categories, such as employer reputation and employer-stu-

dent relations, and UCD leads overall in the rankings, with stronger research relationships with employers than any other Irish university. It scores 82.2/100 for partnerships with employers.

When it comes to Irish universities place in the rankings, University of Limerick (UL) is third at 201-205, followed by University College Cork (UCC) which ranks fourth at 301-500, and Dublin City University (DCU) at fifth ranking at 301-500.

QS found that Trinity produce more successful graduates than any other Irish university. QS’s alumni outcomes

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The report shows that the United States is home to five of the world’s top 10 universities for student employment

indicator is based on analysis on the education profiles of 31,000 leaders in their respective fields, with Trinity scoring 77.1/100.

Stanford University is the world-leader, followed by the University of California, Los Angeles at second and Harvard University in third place. The report shows that the United States of America is home to five of the world’s top 10 universities for student employment.

Cambridge and Oxford rank sixth and eighth respectively with University College

London (UCL) at 17th .

Ben Sowter, Research Director at QS, said: “The ranking is designed to improve the conversation we are having about this important component of a university’s mission, and allow students to make informed global comparisons”.

Sowter continued: “These results indicate that universities cannot rely on reputation alone. They also need to ensure that they are committed to innovative teaching methods, proactively forge relationships with businesses, and provide numerous opportunities for students

QS use five metrics to calculate this ranking, employer reputation, alumni outcomes, partnerships with employers,

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

News

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“I don’t regret a word I said”: Steven Salaita speaks to Trinity conference Salaita was denied a professorship in University of Illinois due to his views on Israel and Palestine.

Sarah Meehan News Editor

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teven Salaita spoke at the “Freedom of Speech and Higher Education: The Case of the Academic Boycott of Israel” conference held in Trinity last Monday. The theme of his talk was “Freedom to Boycott - The Modern University”.

Salaita was denied a professorship in University of Illinois due to his views on Israel and Palestine. His offer of professorship was withdrawn after he wrote a series of controversial tweets following the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2014. Most notably, the series of tweets included: “If you’re defending #Israel right now you’re an awful human being.”

After facing heavy criticism for the tweets, Salaita defended himself, arguing that academics are social and political beings and should not be forced to keep quiet over their own personal views.

Drawing from his own personal experience and the current situation around academic freedom in the United States, Salaita gave an hour talk on why the time has come to stand up for freedom of speech for academics.

At the conference, Salaita said: “Academic freedom is not meant to cause trouble.

It exists to protect those who engage in controversy.

Academic freedom is there to protect controversial ideas. [...] Universities can not function without a strong system of academic freedom.”

“How can we advance, unless we encounter a moment of discomfort.

Without academic freedom we become mired in the sameness and then we don’t progress.”

Speaking about his experiences in American universities, Salaita said: “Universities can be hell holes of repression. [...] I’ve known a lot of clever of academics and they know which issues to talk about and which issues to avoid. The one issue is that smart professors will not talk about is Palestine. It is toxic.

People over and over again have been punished because of Palestine.”

Addressing the tweets that resulted in him losing his professorship, Salaita told the audience: “When I go back and I read the tweets and I think of the context, I still get stunned that they generated the outcry they did. Everyone kept asking about the tweets and not about what was actually happening in Israel.”

Salaita, however, does not regret the statements he made in the summer of 2014. “Those tweets have come to define me”, Salaita stated. “I don’t regret a word I said. I would condemn Israel as harshly today and I’d condemn Israel as harshly tomorrow.”

He closed his talk by saying: “My mind and heart are always with the people who have suffered the deprivation of the Israeli State.”

Photo by Sarah Meehan/ Trinity News

Dublin City Council considering Universities face funding regulation change to avoid “overcuts over gender gap concentration” of student accommodation The move comes as new figure reveal that women The council are proposing to increase the area restriction from 250m to 1km.

Aisling Grace Assistant News Editor

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UBLIN CITY COUNCIL (DCC) IS considering a proposal stating that developers must ensure there is not an “overconcentration” of student accommodation within a 1 km area, a step up from current regulations which state there should not be an over-concentration in a 250m space.

If put into effect, the proposal could provide basis for planning authorities to oppose future student accommodation developments in the city.

It is one of a number of proposed variations under consideration for the 2016-2020 Dublin City Development Plan. The proposed variation was based on a request by the Central Area Committee.

Speaking to Trinity News, a DCC spokesperson stated: “It is considered that the proposed variation will provide enhanced information during the planning application process for student housing developments being proposed in the City Council area.”

This follows similar sentiments by the Council in a publication consultation last month, in which the Council stated that while they would aim to prevent overpopulation of students in certain places, purposebuilt student accommodation would continue to gain approval in appropriate areas.

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If put into effect, the proposal could provide basis for planning authorities to oppose future student

Sarah Meehan

vention in this area”.

News Editor

The report detailed a striking difference between the number of women and men in senior posts between 2013 and 2015. Only 19% of professorships across the universities were filled by women compared to 81% filled by men.

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HIRD-LEVEL INSTITUTIONS WILL BE SUBJECt to mandatory gender quotas in order to combat the gender inequality at senior levels. The move comes as the Higher Education authority (HEA) released their review of gender equality in Irish higher education institutions.

Councillors will received a report written by planning officials and were to vote on the proposed change a council meeting on September 4, however the date of the vote was pushed forward at that meeting to Tuesday, September 19.

It is not clear what an “overconcentration” of student accommodation constitutes.

Irish Business and Employers’ Confederation (IBEC) has communicated their displeasure regarding the proposed changes in a submission to the local authority, saying that the new rule would undermine Dublin as an attractive city to live and study in.

IBEC’s Senior Policy Executive, Aidan Sweeney, stated that he wanted the proposal to be rejected, arguing that the proposal would dramatically reduce the number of areas available to develop student housing on, stating: “The result will be to push future student housing provision to the outskirts of Dublin and

“It is considered that this will help ensure that such developments are development in suitable locations and that there is not an over-concentration in certain areas”, they continued.

are underrepresented in senior positions.

beyond, impacting upon the quality of student life and on the future economic growth of the city.”

This development comes after Daft.ie’s annual rental report, which found accommodation in Dublin continues to be difficult to find. The report found that rents in the city had increased by 12% on last year, with a decrease of 20% on the amount of properties available to rent.

In February, the Planning and Property Development committee in DCC was told that between 16,000 and 18,000 beds would be needed to adequately accommodate the city’s 80,000 students.

However, of the 5,800 bed spaces in accommodation schemes specifically for students, 3,600 had not yet been constructed. The majority of these spaces got approval in the last two years.

New measures will see state funding linked to institutions’ performance in reducing gender inequality and have thus resulted in mandatory gender quotas based off the “cascade” model of recruitment. This model regulates gender proportions at a given grade by basing the quotas off the gender proportions in the grade immediately below.

Three of the largest Irish state research funding agencies, the Science Foundation Ireland, the Health Research Board and the Irish Research Council, are now all required to evaluate gender equality accreditation as prerequisites to receive funding.

The highest proportion of women employed by universities are in non-academic posts, compared with the highest proportion of men employed in universities in academic roles.

As of March 2016, there were only four female presidents in 14 institutions of technologies and one female president out of five in colleges. Since the establishment of the first university in Ireland, there has never been a female head of a univeristy.

The HEA also reported significant shortfalls in the gender distribution among management teams, governing bodies and academic councils in third level institutions.

According to the HEA report, women continue to be “vastly underrepresented in top positions within the higher education sector” as well as in “top academic decision- making positions’’ across Europe.

However Trinity had higher than average female representation in all of these areas.

Trinity had a 9% higher than the average rate for management teams, 19% higher than average rate for academic councils and 14% higher than average rate for executive management teams.

The report noted a slow progression in the past 20 years, with the proportion of women at professor level increasing from 6% in 1998 to only 19% now, signalling the need for “proactive policy inter-

The National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) has the least amount of women in senior position with only 12% of professors and just under a third of senior lectur-

ers women. By measuring the gender ratio of staff, the most balanced college reported was the University of Limerick (UL), with 30% of its professors women.

The report detailed a slight improvement in gender representation over the course of the last year with a 2% increase in the rate of female professors and senior lecturers.

It also found that only 20% of those earning above €106,000 a year were women in non-academic roles in Irish universities. The number dropped to 17% in institutes of technology.

The HEA also reported that only six of the 48 presidents of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) since its founding in 1959 have been women.

Between 2013 and 2016, there was a gender balance at presidential level, with two women and two men holding the position. The report did note that among undergraduate student unions sabbatical officers tend to be young, white and male.

The report did note that many institutions indicated an intention to begin measuring the gender pay gap in the coming year, with a minority already doing so. Preliminary investigations suggests that the gender pay gap favours those men among university academic staff.

The HEA’s report was based on the average data compiled over the three years between 2014 and 2016.

Trinity conference to focus on peacemaking in North Korea and Ireland Trinity’s Irish School of Ecumenics will host the major international conference this week Sarah Meehan News Editor

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RINITY’S SCHOOL OF ECUMENICS (IEC) will host a major international conference this week entitled Peace Processes and Borders in a Changing Geopolitical Context: Ireland, Korea and Beyond. The conference started yesterday on September 18 and continues today in the Ulster Museum, Belfast.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire and Korean and Irish politicians and policy experts will address the conference on various topics such as power sharing, conflict transformation, co-

operation and reconciliation.

According to event organisers, Dr. David Mitchell and Dr. Dongjin Kim, interest in the Northern Ireland peace process is growing in Korea.

The conference is taking place in partnership with the Institute of Trans-Division and Border Studies, Shinhan University in South Korea, and the Centre for Korean Studies, Waseda University, in Japan. The links between the IEC and Korea have been forged by Dongjin who is working in Korea on a major research project on KoreaIreland peace and conflict comparisons.

In a press release, Mitchell explained that the histories of both Ireland and Korea

have been shaped by a larger, more powerful neighbour.

Both countries have had troubled past and both have experienced peace processes, but both remain divided.

Mitchell told this paper that he hopes the conference will “facilitate mutual learning in peacemaking between Ireland and Korea” and “encourage interest in the Irish peace process in Korea”.

“This is very much an unprecedented gathering of experts from the two countries. We want to inform a proper understanding in Ireland of the complexity of the Korean situation, which is often covered in a superficial and sensationalist way in our media.”

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

News

4

Trinity to create 3D model of College using drone technology

Study finds HPAT does not accurately measure empathy

Hundreds of high resolution images and videos were taken of College earlier this month.

The study, which was published in the British Medical Journal Open, assessed empathy levels in 290 undergraduate medical students from UCC.

Jessica Howard

Aoife Ní Chadhain

Contributing Writer

T

RINITY IS TO CREATE BIRD-EYE view imagery and video of the college campus using drone technology. Hundreds of high resolution images and videos were taken of Trinity earlier this month for the project.

Trinity is aiming to use this imagery for a multitude of new projects, such as creating a 3D model of the college.

The data was gathered using a drone with a Myriad 2 vision processing unit (VPU) supplied by Intel. The volumetric accelerator format of this device allowed the images to be compressed once captured, enabling the drones to create a more detailed spatial map without consuming the same large amounts of data typically required to produce

Contributing Writer

a 3D map.

A

Professor Rozenn Dahyot of Trinity’s school of computer science and statistics, and Mary Bourke of the school of natural sciences are the academic sponsors of the initiative.

NEW STUDY HAS SHOWN THAT the Health Professions Admission Test (HPAT) does not accurately test empathetic or interpersonal skills.

Speaking of the project, Professor Dahyot stated: “Up to date 3D virtual environments mimicking our real world is not only essential for urban planning but also for training future artificial intelligence to understand and navigate safely in our world before being embedded into autonomous vehicles.”

The study, which was published in the British Medical Journal Open, assessed empathy levels in 290 undergraduate medical students from University College Cork (UCC). The students were asked to answer a questionnaire regarding their interpersonal skills. Their responses were then measured using the widely used Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy.

Professor Bourke and her research group use remote sensing and drone technology for landscape mapping and natural hazard management on Earth and Mars.

This new data “will permit

an assessment of issues such as natural stone decay in urban environments”, Bourke believes.

Bourke continued: “In addition, the availability of the

topographic models will facilitate training of our graduate and undergraduate students in analysis routines that can be deployed in natural environments.”

It was shown that there was no correlation between the students’ HPAT scores and how they scored in the ques-

tionnaires.

According to the study, “the current data suggests no clear link between scores on a selection test, the HPATIreland, which is designed to assess several skill domains including interpersonal skills and scores on a psychometric measure of empathy”.

The HPAT’s own website states that the exam tests students’ “ability to understand the thoughts, behaviour and/ or intentions of people”.

Both HPAT scores and scores on the Jefferson Scale did vary according to gender.

While men generally score better on the first and third sections of the HPAT (problem solving and non-verbal reasoning), women score better on the second section which tests interpersonal understanding. Women also scored higher overall on the Jefferson Scale than men did.

The HPAT was first intro-

duced in 2009 in order to identify students whose characteristics would make them ideal doctors and to broaden entry access into the study of medicine. However, the HPAT’s effectiveness has been disputed since its introduction, due to only one of the three sections assessing the student’s interpersonal skills.

According to Dr. Donnchadh O’Sullivan, one of the authors of the study, “communication skills and empathy” are among the most important qualities in aspiring doctors.

He has also suggested that an interview process or “situational judgement testing” would be a more appropriate method of judging whether or not a student is suited to study medicine.

The study did not show that empathy levels decline during a medical student’s time studying, which has been suggested by previous studies.

Graduates of Trinity’s Blackstone Launchpad make it through to New York Appetize is an app-based company that allows people take part in social dining Seana Davis Deputy News Editor

A

PPETIZE, A COMPANY FOUNDED

BY THREE Trinity alumni, has been selected as one of two Irish start-ups to attend the Blackstone Techstars Training Camp in New York next month.

The company is based around social dining and allows people to discover, host and partake in dinner parties and pop-up events. The appbased company will allow users to host their own events, meet new people and earn money.

Appetize was founded by Robin Fitzpatrick, former Chair of Digital Arts Society and MSISS graduate, Padraic Rowley, last year’s

Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) Ents Officer and computer science graduate, and Glen Byrne, last year’s SU Communications and Marketing Officer and law graduate. The team are currently attending the pre-accelerator course with the National Digital Research Center (NDRC). On October 16, they will fly to Blackstone Techstars in New York.

Blackstone is a global investment and advisory company, with bases in London, New York and Tokyo. Blackstone will partner with Techstars for the event where the selected businesses will receive mentoring and network opportunities.

Speaking to Trinity News on the experience, Fitzpatrick said: “To be honest it’s been a lot of work, I’m working full time, Glen is studying for

his law exams and Padraic is programming full time on the app. We pushed through and did a pitch for Launchpad in Trinity. I think the drive to get this business going really came through during the pitch which I think was what got us through.”

When discussing the future of Appetize, Fitzpatrick said: “We’ve a lot planned in the pipeline, some of it still to be confirmed. We’re doing a Freshers Ball pre-party in the GMB with the Food and Drink society, Trinity Ents and the Hist. We’ve loads of surprises for it. But the biggest one is a ‘Come Dine With Me’ style competition where we’ll be giving prizes to the best chefs in Trinity.”

TCDSU launch partnership with Offbeat Donuts

Wikipedia founder to speak in Trinity

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is to discuss issues such as “fake news” Offbeat Donuts will be selling donuts in the Students Un- as well as the recent launch of his news platform WikiTRIBUNE ion (SU) shop in House 6 from Monday of Freshers Week

Seana Davis Seana Davis Deputy News Editor

T

RINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN STUDENTS’ UNION (TCDSU) have launched a partnership with Offbeat Donuts which will see a donut stand in the SU shop in House Six from Monday of Freshers Week.

Speaking of the partnership, Communications and Marketing Officer Úna Harty said: “Donuts are what’s happening right now. A new shop pops up every day but we’re very glad to be partnering with Offbeat, a brand

which Trinity students know and love. We are looking to expand the partnership further so this is just the start of something great. One could say that we’ve struck a sweet deal.”

TCDSU President Kevin Keane said: “I’m really delighted to begin this partnership with Offbeat. Offbeat is without question the best donut in the city and it is going to be dangerous having them so close to my office! I really think that students are going to appreciate the value and quality that they offer.”

The introduction of the partnership links to manifesto points outlined in both Harty’s and Keane’s campaigns earlier this year. Harty aims to see a “modernisation”

of the SU, looking for sponsorship from businesses that students are interested in.

Discussing his manifesto point, Keane said: “It’s a proud moment for me personally as one of my main manifesto points was to oversee an upgrade of the SU shops. It is good to see that come to fruition.”

To mark the launch of the partnership, TCDSU will be running a “like and share” competition on Facebook where the winner will receive their height in donuts.

Students can also obtain a voucher for a free donut in Freshers’ Packs available at the TCDSU stand during Freshers’ Week.

Deputy News Editor

T

HE FOUNDER OF WIKIPEDIA, JIMMY WALES, is set to speak in Trinity on October 26 as part of Ireland’s Internet Day. Wales will discuss issues such as the phenomenon of fake news, threats to sharing information on online platforms, and the launch of his news website WikiTRIBUNE. The talk will be held in the MacNeill Theatre, where Wales will take questions from the audience at the end of the event as well as from Twitter.

“

It is the fifth most visited site in the world, with 1 billion unique visitors monthly.

Wales has previously been ranked as one of TIME Magazine’s most influential people. He founded Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, in 2001. It is the fifth most visited site in the world, with 1 billion unique visitors monthly.

WikiTRIBUNE, which launched in April, is an independent news platform run by journalists and volunteers through evidence-based journalism. The event is hosted by IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the company who manages Ireland’s internet domain.

According to Business Word, the chief executive of IEDR, David Curtin, said: “Alongside the founders of Google, Facebook and Twitter, Jimmy Wales has been one of the most important contributors to the modern internet age. Through Wikipedia, the sum of human

knowledge is available to us in hundreds of different languages from the convenience of our smartphones and computers, for free and in real time.”

Curtin continued, “Mr Wales’s vision of a more open internet, accessible to everyone, is something that aligns with IEDR’s objectives for the internet in Ireland and the overarching theme of Internet Day. We want to make the internet more accessible to individuals and to businesses the length and breadth of the country, be they in the centre of Dublin or rural Roscommon”.

Ireland’s Internet Day, coinciding with International Internet Day, is entering its third year and promotes awareness of how the internet affects society.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

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Features

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September An investigation into the rise of substandard student accommodation

6

page 8

Covers of songs Many of the beloved songs we hear daily are covers, even those we might not know are.

Suzanne Flynn

Social Media Manager

T

HE MOST COMMON PATH TO success in the music industry is to re-interpret, reinvent and recycle what has worked in the past. Covering songs has been an established tradition in the music world since the birth of music itself. A striking aspect of covers is that many artists take songs that may not have been previously successful, and make them into global hits, often decades after the original song was first released.

Many popular versions of songs we know today, are covers of original songs. Some of these include instantly recognisable classics, such as Sinead O'Connor's version of “Nothing Compares 2 U”.

Originally written and sang by the Family, a side project of the late artist Prince, O’Connor’s emotional delivery of the song, coupled with an outstandingly monochrome music video, turned the tune into one of the most notable hits of the 1990s. “Nothing Compares 2 U” is a prime example of a song that made its name by being covered, an increasingly common trend in the music industry.

Another well known hit, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” follows this pattern as it was sung and written originally by country artist, Dolly Parton. Parton’s original contrasted with Houston’s theatrical, romantic version as the original subject matter concerned a professional break up and not a romantic one. Houston’s version which gained enormous fame as a result of the release of the film “The Bodyguard”, is renowned for its emotional and relatable subject matter.

Perhaps the most famous example of a well known musician successfully choosing to cover material from their fellows is Johnny

Cash’s “Hurt”, originally by the band Nine Inch Nails. The cover by Cash won best music video at the 2004 Grammys, following his death in 2003.

The music video left a lasting impression as the hurt in Cash’s eyes and voice was as much evident as the sense of regret and sorrow in the track.

The lead singer of the Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor, gave high praise to Cash’s version of the song and even went as far to say “that song isn’t mine anymore.”

In an interview with Alternative Press in 2004, Reznor raved over Cash’s interpretation and spoke of how it impacted him as an artist and writer: “I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone.

Some-fucking-how that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning different, but every bit as pure. Things felt even stranger when he passed away.

The song's purpose shifted again. It's incredibly flattering as a writer to have your song chosen by someone who’s a great writer and a great artist.”

This echoes the general spirit of how covering songs has been construed as a gesture of admiration from artist to artist. Cover bands and artists attempt to replicate the charisma, and the effect on listeners, that the original artist had . However there are also those artists who exist to alter and develop the songs of the past to make them their own. This can be most notably seen in the vast recording catalogue of the Beatles.

Most of their hits have been performed repeatedly by wellestablished artists as well as aspiring recording artists on the karaoke stage.

“Yesterday” according to the Guinness World Records was covered 7 million times in the 20th century alone, making it the most covered song of all time. Paul McCartney, an enthusiast

of the reinterpretation of music, famously did a joint performance of “Yesterday” with Linkin Park and Jay Z during the 2006 Grammys, which fused contemporary and older styles of performing the song. Despite the worldwide fame of “Yesterday”, Ray Charles’ version of the song is the only cover version ever to reach a position in the US Top 40 charts.

“

In an interview with Alternative Press in 2004, Reznor raved over Cash’s interpretation and spoke of how it impacted him as an artist and writer.

Even the band’s solo efforts have not escaped the attention of cover artists.

Paul McCartney’s second solo album “Ram” was the project of artist Dave Depper, who in 2010 decided to record McCartney’s album in an attempt to see how close he could get to the original record. Depper explained to the Guardian newspaper: “I felt that if I found a way to do that, then I would somehow earn the entitlement to make my own record.”

Intriguingly, the Beatles themselves, could be classified

as cover artists as their 1963 hit “Twist and Shout” was initially a song named “Shake It Up Baby” by the lesser known band, the Top Notes.

Another popular classic that has been reworked numerous times is the late Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, perhaps most notably by Jeff Buckley in 1994. Some critics will argue that Buckley’s version is superior, the rawness of the track is amplified by the artist’s tragic death three years later. What is striking is rise in popularity of the acapella group Pentatonix’s cover in recent years. The group’s version of Hallelujah has more views on Youtube than Buckley’s and Cohen’s versions combined. Covering recent songs on Youtube is a very well- known feature of the site, as specific Youtube channels, such as Pentatonix, exist to broadcast versions of both popular and lesser known songs.

Album Covers The idea of covering an entire album is one that has been taken up by Grammy award-winning artist Beck, who started his Record Club in 2009. According to their website, Record Club “is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day, nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time.” The mission of the club is clear as they state they have no intention to “recreate the power of the original recording, only play music and document what happens”. Beck and his fellow cover enthusiasts have a clear understanding of the type of cover they want to produce. The Record Club’s appreciation of some of the music scene’s best and most beloved artists is humbling and inspiring.

This approach was imitated by artist Ryan Adams when he covered Taylor Swift’s “1989” album, releasing his cover of the album on iTunes and on Youtube. His rendition of “Out of The Woods” is subjectively far superior to Swift’s original number, which many felt was overproduced. The lyrics gain

Photo: Sam Cox/Trinity News more of a focus in this version and serve as a testament to Swift’s songwriting abilities and to Adam’s vision as an artist. This is not uncommon as many covers of songs exist to strip back an overly manufactured production and focus on lyrics and instrumentation, reclaiming, arguably, the purest form of music itself.

Television programmes such as the X Factor, the Voice and Britain’s Got Talent, celebrate the concept of covering a song. The competitions are truly about who can most successfully cover a song and turn it into a new unique melodic masterpiece.

Path to success One Direction’s breakout first performance, as a group on the X Factor, was a performance of “Torn”, a song

by Natalie Imbruglia which garnered mainstream fame for Natalie Imbruglia in the 2000s. “Torn” was, however, actually originally recorded

by LA rock band Ednaswap in the 90s. Ednaswap’s version trades the bubblegum pop of Imbruglia for a far more

sombre feel, with many critics commenting that the original is far more tasteful and meaningful.

The buskers of the streets also continue to inspire and disappoint, as the hustle and bustle of city street life either swallows up or simmers down to let the artists showcase their own versions of music hits. This illustrates a popular conundrum of covering songs: what people expect from covers varies from each person. Some wish for the cover to be as close as it can be to the original, while others wish for a completely different interpretation.

Ed Sheeran, who started out as a busker, made his fame by covering other artists, something he has never shied away from despite his success as an original artist.

BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge plays host to several slots of Sheeran performing covers, showcasing his immense dedication to the performing and modification of music.

Sheeran has covered a diverse range of song from pop hits such as Christina

Aguilera’s “Dirrty” and Little Mix’s “Touch”, to R&B and Soul, with his cover of Nina Simones’ “Be My Husband” and Bill Wither’s “Ain’t No Sunshine”.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, when asked if it they believed their audience would be permanently affected by their music, both said they believed this to be true. They went onto say how they themselves have been permanently affected by the music they listened to, with the scars to prove it.

The question is whether one feels betrayed to discover that much of the talented artists we see and hear in the music industry today, have in some ways, built their careers on the music of other artists who received very little recognition.

But we must remember that when we choose to cover a song as an artist ourselves, or simply listen to a cover of a song, we, either consciously or not, subject ourselves to the influence of what we hear and often the version that chooses to make its mark on us, is not

The Panopticon in the 21st century Caoimhe Gordon investigates how the concept of the panopticon can be seen in today’s society in the form of social media Caoimhe Gordon-

the example of a local makeup artist who has many followers but my friend comments that she feels it’s a bit strange that she is aware of where that woman is, especially when they are essentially strangers.

However, she praises the ability to turn on “ghost mode”: “I think it’s good to know that we can control the extent we use the map.”

Deputy Features Editor

I

N THE LATE 18TH CENTURY, an English philosopher by the name of Jeremy Bentham had a brainwave after visiting his brother in Russia. His brother Samuel, determined to reign over his unskilled workforce, placed himself in the centre of the factory to ensure that his employees were completing their designated tasks. This visit resulted in a sudden flash of inspiration for Bentham, who envisioned a building, a type of prison like none ever built before.

This imaginary institution had a lone watchtower in the middle of a courtyard, with the cells built in a circle surrounding the tower itself.

Bentham believed that this “panopticon” would leave the prisoners overwhelmed with a sense of paranoia, as they would not be aware of which cell would be watched at any given time from the watchtower. Therefore, this would create an omnipresent, haunting feeling for each and every prisoner that they were being constantly watched every minute of every day.

This would then surely have an undeniable impact on their behaviour while incarcerated, Bentham believed. In his own words, he described his quest to apply his newfound theory as “a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example”.

In the 20th century, after decades filled with a plethora of debate and criticism – and with few actual panopticons being built – another philosopher, Michel Foucault of France, brought the idea of the panopticon back into the public sphere by transforming the notorious concept into a compelling metaphor for modern societies. His

influential writings in the aptly titled Discipline and Punish revealed his musings about the related nature of the prison of fear, and the daily lives of citizens living in so-called freedom in modern society: “The Panopticon creates a consciousness of permanent visibility as a form of power, where no bars, chains and heavy locks are necessary for domination anymore.”

In the same century, George Orwell published his dystopian novel 1984 about a society fiercely regulated by the government, coining the infamous adage, “Big Brother is watching you.” Now we reach the 21st century. CCTV is common on every corner.

Body cameras are rife among law enforcement officials.

Webcams can be hacked and credit cards can be scammed.

And yet more innovations have been introduced that contribute to a creeping feeling of constant observation. More chillingly, unlike CCTV or the hacking of email accounts, they are all opted for willingly by the oversharers, the merely curious and just about every other citizen with internet access. Google have created glasses that record every nanosecond of their wearer’s day, every mundane interaction, every

casual gaze. There were over 2.01 million active Facebook users as of June 2017. Every second, around 6,000 tweets are released into the ether, joining the 500 million other short rambles published in total per day. And since this summer, Snapchat users have now the option to casually and anonymously track their friends’ locations on the Snapchat map.

“Oh, look his Bitmoji is holding a golf club. And this lad is in the airport, he’s holding a suitcase,” a friend announced one day, glancing down at her phone. The “permanent visibility” Foucault discussed in 1975 has been accepted by a record number of users online – in a “quantity hitherto without example” as imagined

by Bentham two hundred years ago. Discussions with friends are now filled with sentences that would have possessed little or no meaning only 365 days before, many accompanied by a brandished phone to illustrate the point.

Knowing exactly where your comrades are, or if they are listening to music, as conveyed by the little cartoon character that is supposed to resemble them, often feels strange, as does the ability to simply zoom into the exact streets to see where they currently stand.

“

Yet I remained fully unaware that such information pulled from my email account – seven years of emails – could be used against my will

for the world’s population.

Many may complain when they feel overexposed or detest the shameful awkwardness of having to feign surprise upon hearing news from a friend which has already been poured over online. Yet we continue to push the boundaries of oversharing, continue to zoom in on that random friend from the Gaeltacht on the Snapchat map to see where she is staying in Greece, and continue to consider the optimum time for posting important content. Does the overwhelming feeling that you are always being watched by so-called “friends” alter your natural behaviour, like the imaginary prisoners of Bentham? Running your social media accounts is now akin to running a marketing campaign, except the product on offer is the life you would like your followers to perceive as reality.

In the modern era, the panopticon – a symbol of unrelenting surveillance – continues to reign supreme.

Now, armed with a myriad of public weapons to keep the population in the knowledge that they are being watched – as well as the maudlin acceptance that privacy is no longer a reality – the panopticon creates a quagmire

I asked a close friend and avid Snapchatter about her opinion of recent developments, and she explained: “I guess with the Snapchat map, it’s not just the government or whatever that can invade our privacy but now everyone can. I don’t think there’s too much danger if you’re just sharing it with your mates but if people have loads of unknown followers, that’s a bit risky.” She offered

However, the startling fact that today’s citizens are choosing to offer up information online in order to voluntarily participate in the modern day panopticon does not disguise the fact that traditional eerie surveillance continues unabated, even without the knowledge of those being watched. Last week, I discovered a website, haveibeenpwned.com, that allows the user to find out whether their email has been compromised during a data breach, and eagerly filled in my two main email addresses. My college email remained unaffected, but my traditional gmail that has been with me since my youth did not escape so easily. In fact, not once but twice was this email account hacked and data released publicly. It was one of 593 million unique email accounts hacked from various systems in late 2016, and its bad luck continued just last month when malicious software exposed a large number of files containing private information. This time, 711 million accounts were affected. Yet I remained fully unaware that such information pulled from my email account – seven years of emails – could be used against my will. I change my password regularly and have up-todate security software on my laptop. Online security has never been more of a concern as cyberattacks grow more and more popular. This time, I quickly altered my password to something very complicated

full of numbers, letters and a few random symbols for extra safety. However, that is not enough against these powerful malware software programmes – a frightening concept.

Una, like many college students, has a part time job in a supermarket. The manager of this supermarket, however, was not like many others. He was more like Bentham, as he, without the knowledge of his many employees, installed video monitoring software throughout the branch. With the aid of a handy mobile app, it allowed him to monitor his workers wherever he was. Una recalls the time that they all believed that their manager was enjoying a break in sunny Spain when the phone rang. It was the all-seeing all-knowing manager calling from across the continent, angrily informing the staff that one particular employee by the name of Tom needed to stop chatting and should complete his tasks at a faster pace. This was shocking to the assembled cohort in SuperValu that fateful day. As Una recalls experiencing the panopticon in all its glory, she admits that “it was strange. He didn’t trust us to do our work.”

Henry David Thoreau once wrote: “Men have become the tools of their tools.” Although this was written in an era long before mobile phones, addictive apps and the various other devices deemed necessary nowadays, his words ring even more true today.

Although the undeniable truth of life today is that constant observation is unavoidable and the panopticon is real, releasing ourselves more and more from the invisible chains of social media will lend a sense of freedom and emancipate users from the constant pressure of the imagined expectations of others online.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Features

7

Taking good photos Capturing powerful images may seem only a click away, but

there’s more to the process than meets the eye.

Orlaith Holland Contributing writer

“S

o sorry I’m late,” he says. “This always happens.

I never know when a match is on and then I get caught in traffic – oh, I didn’t know they had an LGBT section in here!”

Jonathan Ho was five minutes late, at most. It didn’t matter. He could be an hour late, and it wouldn’t matter.

Even on your first meeting, it’s obvious that Ho isn’t the type of person to waste your time.

Far from it.

Ho is difficult to describe accurately without sounding like you’re exaggerating. It isn’t enough to describe him as a recently graduated, talented photographer. Ho isn’t nice, he’s lovely. He isn’t just bright, but brilliant. And with all of that, there is an underlying sense of decency. You may scoff at such descriptions, but I challenge you to have a single conversation with him; you’ll not only smile the entire time, but learn something new too.

Tell me a bit about studying photography.

Well, after Transition Year I thought that I might like to do photography. When I actually got it, it was very different from what I expected. I didn’t realise it was...disciplined.

I didn’t know what I was expecting. I had my portfolio done, then found out it was shite. But after the first year studying, it just opened my mind entirely. It blew my mind as to how disciplined something as seemingly simple as photography is.

That increased my passion for it, because I learned that there’s so much more to learn, and that there’s so much that people take for granted.

When preparing for this, I realised I felt better equipped to interpret words on a page

than an image, like one of your photographs. I’d put this down to my education; I’ve been taught to read words in a way I was never taught with images. Do you think this is a common thing, and would that be a challenge for you?

“

Definitely. That’s why in any sort of art exhibition, whether it be photography, sculptures, installations, or paintings, people will generally go to the text first. I’ve been trying to do it myself where I look at the piece before reading, try to understand what it’s about, then read the text and find out I’m wrong...There’s that famous quote by John Berger: “We’re taught how to look but not how to see.” We just look and want that clarification without thinking about it too much, almost like a laziness.

We instantly go to the text before trying to understand it visually.

Do you like your pieces to be accompanied by something like a textual explanation or to be viewed unmediated?

How important is it to choose the right words to accompany your work?

That’s another thing that I had a lot of trouble with when I was in college. I put a lot of symbolism in my pictures and I didn’t know how to explain that well. Text is kind of the shortfall when it comes to exhibitions, or even publishing stuff online. There’s a whole debate which is still ongoing about how relevant text is to images. Should images speak by themselves? Is the text relevant? Is the text taking away from the images?

Because you look more at the text than the image, and the text illustrates the images, when it should be the other way around.

Do you think, as an artist, you have a responsibility to engage with real-world issues?

That’s my process as an artist. For my graduation show, I was looking at national identity. This was all springing around the refugee crisis, and all of this questioning of identity. I think my work would look at real-world

issues. There’s...maybe not a knowingness, but a back-ofthe-head obligation for artists, that you can do what you want, but that the work that sticks with people the most are the ones that deal with real world issues. There are some projects that completely ignore that, and act as a pure form of entertainment, or as a distraction – Art for art’s sake.

Exactly – and it can be effective for people who really don’t care about real-world problems, or are just sick and tired of them. But it’s nice to see these issues explored in different artistic mediums, and how people interpret them. I think that’s the key aspect of art.

“

We just look and want that clarification without thinking about it too much, almost like a laziness. We instantly go to the text before trying to understand it visually.

Who are your influences?

That kind of changes depending on what I’m working on, but I think my main influences would be the classical photographers, like Stephen Shore, Ansel Adams, Daniel Arnold, Nan Goldin, and to a degree Robert Mapplethorpe. My style is very traditional, so I like to stick with the classical style of photography, a very straightforward, almost academic style.

Do you have a favourite piece, or even a few?

One work that has really stuck with me recently is a project by Bryan Schutmaat, called Grays The Mountain Sends. It’s a really beautifully shot project about...actually I don’t know what it’s about!

But I know that the images are lovely. The quality on them is unbelievable. He has these beautiful portraits of American workers, I think they’re coal miners, and landscapes as well. Another one would be Daniel Arnold who is only really famous through Instagram. He’s another New York street photographer, but he does a lot of crude, harsh photographs, like going up to people’s faces and snapping them right away. You’ve probably seen on Facebook a lot of photographers do that in New York, but it’s just the way he does it. It’s also in a really nice composed style, which is related to me; I like that style, so that’s something I keep on going back to and keep checking regularly.

That’s interesting, because you can have very crude literature – Roddy Doyle, for example. But I’d never

[Daniel Arnold is] another New York street photographer, but he does a lot of crude, harsh photographs, like going up to people’s faces and snapping them right away.

think about photography as having an equivalent. I didn’t know there was so much to photography.

Neither did I when I joined it! It’s mad because it has such huge sociological impacts, through how it’s disseminated, through its content. I suppose it’s interesting because so many people don’t recognise that, but are subconsciously subjected to it all the time.

That’s what I love about photography.

Would you ever have the photographer’s equivalent of writers’ block?

That happened to me most of my final year in college. But I think there’s a difference when it happens with photography. If you have writers’ block, it can be incredibly daunting just to look at the page and do anything.

But for photography, if you’re working on a particular body of work and you just happen to get blocked, you can easily just step aside and take pictures of anything, until you suddenly get a flow of creativity again. With writing I’d imagine it’s not as effective.

But it’s happened to me a few times where I’ve hit a wall in a project, just to go on a day trip to Sligo, take pictures of

landscapes, and then come back with a fresh mind. If you have photographers’ block, what you’re saying is that you don’t know how to look at the world anymore, and the world is challenging you to look at something differently.

You’ve probably seen with my Instagram, I like to take pictures of very mundane things. I like it, not because I want to make it beautiful, but because it makes me see it differently. I can use that as a way, if I am blocked, of getting myself out of that.

You’ve described your Instagram as a “journal for spontaneous visual encounters”. Can you tell me more about the role that Instagram serves for you?

Well, my own practice is mainly based on themes or projects: I’ll look at a concept and try to make photographs around it. But if I’m not in that mindset or I don’t have a specific project in mind, and I just have a burst of creativity and want to just snap spontaneous pictures, I allow myself that. I use Instagram for, like I say, a journal; it’s a medium where I can just leave them there without having any kind of correlation to anything I’ve been working on. I like the balance; I can focus on a specific project or concept, and then I can also just do random snapshots that I think are cool.

What motivates you?

That’s a tough question, because anything can motivate me, and that’s what I like. That’s partly the purpose of my Instagram – sometimes I just get random bursts of motivation, or a minute of creativity where I just know I have to take a photograph. It’s the idea of the Greek muse: you have a little spirit on your shoulder that tells you, “you’re creative now!” and “ n o w you’re not anymore!” That happens a lot.

So I guess there’s no one thing that motivates me.

And motivated he is. Not all serious, Ho regales with me tales of his first Pokémon camera, avant garde films, bad Tinder profiles and gender roles on TV. When we do eventually finish up, it’s only because he has another appointment.

With an exhibition in October lined up, as well as a collaboration with a New Zealand documentary photographer in the works, Ho clearly isn’t limited to his Instagram account, and his “never-stop” attitude explains this. It would be easy to think that taking photographs consists of clicking a button and throwing the result up on the web, but talking to Ho has shown me nothing could be further from the truth.

As much as any stroke in a painting, or line of text, he carefully constructs his work to reflect his reality and send a message. Making good art is always a deliberate crafting, no matter how instantaneous the medium. And Ho has shown he is a master of his craft.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Features

8

The Dark Web

Hugh McInerney investigates the hidden side of the internet.

Hugh McInerney Staff Writer

R

ESEARCHERS BELIEVE THAT ONLY 4% of the information on the internet is represented on Google’s index of roughly 35 trillion webpages.

This means that there are over 700 trillion webpages that are inaccessible through the world’s most popular search engine. This then leads to the question of how illicit and scandalous must these web pages be, if not even an internet giant like Google can tell us they exist?

Unfortunately, it’s not quite all high intrigue and priceless secrets. This figure comprises many pages not instantly accessible from your search bar.

Examples include a blog post about how your pet was your life that you might have uploaded when you were twelve, but one day found and immediately took down, hoping that “MrSnuffzlesNooz. com” wasn’t as popular as your young self had believed. It also includes password protected content, information stored behind subscriptions, as found on the websites of many newspapers. Companies such as RTE or TV3’s internal networks, or intranets, are other pages hidden from Google’s reach. Anything that search engines don’t present is said to be part of the “deep web”.

These sites aren’t necessarily nefarious. They are merely pages inaccessible via a hyperlink, the data reference method which Google and other search engines rely on when providing search results. However, the “deep web” and “dark web” are two distinct entities and it is the latter which is less innocent; even though the dark web is part of the deep web, the terms should not be confused.

While the terms dark web and Darknet are the two that can be used interchangeably, as they are essentially the same.

A Darknet is a network that can only be accessed with a specific software. If you want to access a Darknet, you can’t just fire up Internet explorer and log on. You need to download a browser that is specifi-

cally capable of accessing this hidden network. The most popular of these is the Onion Router (Tor), named because it uses onion encryption to secure information.

The data is encrypted in several layers. When the data is transmitted, it travels through a series of network nodes.

Once it arrives at the next node, a layer of encryption is “peeled” away, like the layers of an onion. This method of encryption is considered secure as each node only knows the location of the one immediately before and after it. So when information arrives at its destination and is finally decrypted, the destination can only know where the last node was, not the original source.

As such, Tor is considered relatively secure and data sent via it is usually unable to be tracked.

Tor browser With the Darknet accessed relatively easily, many people simply use Tor to browse the internet privately. Most websites use cookies, and this information is often stored by sites such as Google and Facebook to tailor their advertising content to the browser. For example, when an internet user views something they are interested in buying from Amazon but doesn't add it to their cart, the advertisement on the side of other websites will be from Amazon displaying the special price on offer for the good viewed. While some hate this invasion of privacy, some find it helpful that advertising is useful and tailored towards their specific wants. Many are simply indifferent or unaware.

While using Tor to securely browse the internet is one of its purposes, the secure network is very often used for the purchase of illegal items. Because of how hard it is to track users on the dark web, it became widely used for the sale of illegal goods The Silk Road website, shut down in 2013 by the FBI, was the most famous black market on the network.

Even though this website no longer exists many clones have popped up to fill the gap left by the marketplace’s demise However, using conventional bank accounts to buy illegal items on the dark web

negates the anonymity it provides, as these transactions could be traced. This is where bitcoin comes in. Bitcoin is a completely decentralised currency created someone under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamato. His supposed Japanese Japanese nationality is dubious and it may even have been a group that created the software. It is completely open-source, meaning anyone can examine the code. Bitcoin can be earned or “mined” by setting a computer to compute mathematical solutions to verify and record previous bitcoin transactions.

It first appeared in 2009, and was relatively unheard of for a number of years. Recently however, demand for bitcoin has surged. In July 2010, one bitcoin was worth $0.09. In January 2017, a single bitcoin was worth over a thousand dollars. In July 2017, one bitcoin will set you back over two and a half thousand dollars.

Because no one government or bank owns or distributes bitcoins, it means transactions cannot be traced, providing anonymity to anyone wishing to purchase things off the dark web.

“

“We were going to buy a Taser, but we never did,” Conor tells me, followed by a sad faced emoji that I had to presume meant he regretted not doing so.”

Fascinated by the potential these layers of protection offer, I spoke to a frequent user of bitcoin and the dark web I met online. Conor was happy to answer my questions about his experiences with the currency and buying items using Tor. When asked what he thought of the dark web, he gave an interesting insight: “It’s what you use to get anything you can’t get legally, from drugs to cheap lifetime Spotify subscriptions.” He explained the range of things you could get off a single website: “We were going to buy a Taser, but we never did,” Conor tells me, followed by a sad faced emoji that I had to presume meant he regretted not doing so.

As the Silk Road is no longer available, I asked him what website he now used to buy whatever he desired. He didn’t wish to give its name, but he said that him and a few of his friends did some research and chose the one that had the best reviews and highest buyer confidence. He told me that downloading and setting up Tor was easy. It was setting up bitcoin which was slightly harder, “We downloaded an application onto the laptop to purchase bitcoin, and solely bitcoin. You don’t usually buy a full bitcoin, only a percentage of one. You just buy however much you need.” He warned that it was far from a stable currency though, saying the cryptocurrency “fluctuates like fuck.”

Security It is possible for customers to buy a small amount, such as a hundred euro’s worth, without validating your account.

For any purchases made after the first however, you need to send a picture of yourself holding your ID to verify it is indeed you. This wasn’t a concern to Conor, as he told me the transactions made account can not be traced because they “are all unregulated code.”

Once he set up his account and bought the bitcoin, he received what was “basically an IBAN that we use to buy things with our bitcoins”.

With this, it is instantly possible to go onto the dark web marketplace and add which-

ever items into your cart.

The website that he and his friends often use is very similar to Amazon, with various categories of items and even customer reviews: “You can filter the origin country your product comes from, so if you wanted some weed in the next few days you would pick Ireland or England.” This came with the added caveat that this cannabis was often dearer and poorer quality than that bought from the continent.

There are also different ratings for each seller, with stealth being an important factor. “We were nervous about ordering our first package, so we chose a seller with a very high stealth rating,” Conor tells me. “When the envelope arrived, inside were some food coupons and a soup packet, but instead of soup the seller had packed our bud inside. The fact that it was vegetable soup was a nice touch.”

Conor added. Once they’d gotten over the initial jitters, they began ordering from sellers that had better quality ratings but slightly lower stealth ratings. I asked if he was ever worried about the guards seizing it and their getting caught.

“Not really,” he told me. “We always put fake delivery names, and get the package delivered to one of the lads who’s living in student accommodation. If the guards ever do cop on, he can just deny it was him as it wasn’t his name on the envelope”. He tells me that sometimes customs send you a notice saying your package was seized, and ask you to

come and collect it, but obviously you never do unless you want to experience being in the dock first hand.

Another feature of the marketplace that reassures Conor and his friends is the reviews other customers left on the website: “People would write entire paragraphs about not only how safe and efficient it was, but how good the product was too.”

Quality and price When I asked him why he would go to this extra bother as opposed to just finding a local dealer, he told me there were two main factors; quality and price. “Everything’s a lot cheaper on the dark web,” Conor explains. “If you buy locally, it’s usually 2.5 grams for fifty euro, and you have to trust your dealer that you’re getting good weed and not some parsley that might even be sprayed in cocaine to get you hooked.”

While that sounded like some sort of strange diet fad, he assured me that it does happen.

“On the dark web you can buy 10 grams for eighty euro, and it’s guaranteed to be top quality stuff.” By cutting out the middleman, they can ensure a higher product quality and lower prices for higher risk, though Conor doesn’t believe that it’s much higher than just meeting your dealer around the back of Tesco after dark: “The risk is worth the reward to us.”

When I asked him how long it usually took, he told me the their average wait was under a week, with a week and a half their longest. While buying

weed was all they used the dark web for, I asked him if he’d ever explored the more nefarious parts of the illegal online shop. “We always kept ours purely medicinal,” he said, “but there’s everything on there. Pills, snort, whatever you want. Obviously the risk gets a lot higher if you go for more hardcore stuff, but we never did. You can buy guns and even more horrible things on there, but we never explored that end of it.” When I asked him to elaborate, he seemed reticent: “The Taser was the most dangerous thing we ever considered, but there’s some scary, scary things for sale on there.”

Conor’s choice to use the Dark Web is for three simple reasons. “It was easy. It was cheap. And it was good shit.”

The dark web turns people who want to smoke some weed into market speculators and critics. It now appears that it is not just traditional industries losing out to international competition, but even local drug dealers are being undercut, meaning even more local and unexpected jobs lost to online shopping. However with more and more people showing interest in the dark web and bitcoin, these dark net marketplaces seem likely to keep growing in popularity, so long as customers believe they won’t get caught.

Mindfulness: analyzing an alternative to medication Is mindfulness truly a legitimate cure for mental strain or merely a convenient substitute to real treatment?

Sam Cox

Features editor

T

HE PAST TWO DECADES HAVE tseen much criticism of the psychiatric approach to mental disorder. Robert Whitaker (Anatomy of an Epidemic), Joanna Moncrief (The Bitterest Pills), Peter Goetzsche (Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial), and James Davies (Cracked) are just a few of the authors speaking out against the medicalisation of mental distress, criticising the current approach as a “onesize fits all” solution to mental illness and calling for a reduction in the use of medicine to treat it. While several leading psychiatrists have defended these modern practices, many others would like to see a reduction in drug-centred solutions and the use of a wider variety of therapies.

American depressive and the mindset central to Buddhist thought. Quoting a paper by Brown and Harris from 1978 describing depressive disorders, Sharf characterises depression as “thoughts about the hopelessness of one’s life in general. It is such generalization of hopelessness that we believe forms the central core of depressive disorder”. This sort of understanding, Sharf says, is a central aspect of

of easing the pain of existence.

Buddhist practice is reduced to meditation, and meditation, in turn, is reduced to mindfulness, which is touted as a therapeutic practice that leads to an emotionally fulfilling and rewarding life. Mindfulness is promoted as a cure-all for anxiety, affective disorders including post-traumatic stress, alcoholism, drug dependency, attention-deficit disorder, anti-social and criminal behav-

appropriation of mindfulness?

Even if its origins may not be founded in Eastern practice, as many would like to believe, does that damage the integrity of the practice? Surely the legitimacy of a treatment lies in its effectiveness, not in its origins.

One argument is that Eastern origins are simply used to generate interest in mindfulness as a solution to all forms

of aiming to improve quality of life, these schemes are made in an effort to reduce workplace costs by decreasing sick leave.

Corporate interest Jay Watts agrees that mindfulness in the workplace and corporate interest are become increasingly intertwined. As mindfulness is slowly co-opted under the umbrella of treatments known as Cognitive Be-

In his paper, “Is Mindfulness Buddhist”, Robert H. Sharf argues that the Western approach to mindfulness is far removed from its Buddhist origins. Perhaps most interestingly, Sharf discusses similarities between the

The first is a reaction to the process of self-exploration, and the emotions that this brings with it. While some experiences may be positive, this process naturally can bring about negative feelings as well. Repressed past traumas, buried emotions and unrealised self-perceptions are rarely easy to feel and should be tackled only with the awareness that the process may bring grief and distress with it.

“

Minfulness meditation One such practice that has swept the Western world is mindfulness meditation.

Preached as an ancient Eastern solution to a modern problem, it is cited as having roots in Buddhist tradition. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally”. When used in meditation, the practitioner aims to “centre themselves” on the present, and ignore the distractions from their past and future.

The amazing thing is: it works. Studies have shown that, as a treatment, mindfulness seems just as effective as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. So what, then, is the problem?

insidious, but researchers are becoming increasingly aware that, as with most treatments, mindfulness isn’t without its negative side effects. Kate Williams, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts, is quoted in the Guardian as describing two of these harmful effects.

Buddhism, which teaches that “to live is to suffer” and that “escape requires, among other things, abandoning hope that happiness in this world is possible.” He goes on to point out this is very much contrary to our Western understanding of Buddhism: “Yet today Buddhist insight is touted as the very antithesis of depression. Rather than cultivating a desire to abandon the world, Buddhism is seen as a science of happiness—a way

ior, and for the commonplace strain of modern urban life”.

Sharf’s paper doesn’t claim that mindfulness has no therapeutic value. Rather, it seeks to recognise the false claim that the practise is based in centuries of Buddhist tradition. In reality, Sharf asserts mindfulness is more like a modified “Protestant” version of Buddhism” that originated in the early twentieth century.

But is there any harm in our

of stress. This makes for a convenient corporate selling point as it is increasingly brought into the workplace.

Described by critics as “McMindfulness”, Professor Ron Pursur argues “Rather than applying mindfulness as a means to awaken individuals and organizations from the unwholesome roots of greed, ill will and delusion, it is usually being refashioned into a banal, therapeutic, self-help technique that can actually reinforce those roots.”. Instead

havioural Therapy (CBT), it is provided under the guise of helping the employee to deal with the stress of the modern world. This not only seeks to increase the productivity of the worker, but places the blame on the individual if they fail to improve. With such an effective treatment provided free-of-charge, it absolves the company of the responsibility of said person's discomfort in the workplace.

Not only are these motives

This sort of understanding, Sharf says, is a central aspect of Buddhism, which teaches that “to live is to suffer”

The second, however, lies more in feeling than in thoughts. “Experiences can be quite extreme, to the extent of inducing paranoia, delusions, confusion, mania or depression”, says Williams. Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm tackle this little known aspect in their book “The Buddha Pill” and have sought to explore all aspects of mindfulness as a treatment. In their blog post on The Conversation, they use the following analogy: “For some, penicillin is life saving; for others, it induces a harmful reaction. Just because your friend or family member responds to a pill a certain way, does not mean you will respond in the same way. The same is also true with mindfulness: for some it may be very effective or it may not work at all, for others, there may be harmful effects.”

In his criticism of the overabundant use of psychiatric drugs, James Davies concludes, “I believe that psychiatry is not the enemy; that the people I have disagreed with are not the enemy. No, I believe the only enemy is anything that actively tries to conceal the inconvenient facts”.

While Davies was campaigning for increasing alternative solutions such as mindfulness, his lens of scepticism must be applied to any and all treatments we consider using.

Citing false claims of Eastern tradition should not excuse mindfulness from the scrutiny of the medical community. Instead it is the responsibility of practitioners to find the treatment most suitable for themselves and their patients. Just as there is no “one-size fits all”medicine, an awareness of the limitations of mindfulness must accompany its addition to our repertoire of treatments.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Features

11

Carved in Stone

Ciaran Sunderland examines public statues and the political messages surrounding their construction and removal.

Illustration by Aoife Curtis

Ciaran Sunderland Staff Writer

A

STATUE CAN ASSUME GREAT symbolic meaning.

Static and carved from stone, the figure may remain physically unchanged for centuries.

The connotations of a statue, however, fluidly adjust alongside the interpretations and associations that society develops. As features of a nation’s cultural landscape, national stories can be illustrated by the monuments erected and removed. As Benedetto Croce said: “All history is contemporary history”.

Modern beliefs change opinions of past events. The debate surrounding monuments best demonstrates this, and poses the question: which statues should stand and which should fall?

In the USA, racial politics are at their most prevalent in years. Most recently, the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the attempted removal of the Confederate statue of Robert E. Lee have drawn attention to Confederate statues across the country and what the statues represent. Speaking to Trinity News Dr Daniel Geary, Mark Piggott Associate Professor in American History, discussed the meaning of Confederate statues and why some people want to remove them while other groups are rallying to stop them: White nationalism “These statues are seen as symbols of the history of white racism in the region, and which recent attention has been called to by Black Lives Matter and other groups of that kind, questioning whether people like Robert E. Lee or the Confederacy should really be celebrated.”

He goes on to explain why other groups argue to keep them: “Well, [Confederate statues] are symbols, symbols are always invested with the power people give to them, and for those who want to tear them down they are a symbol of white supremacy and the legacy of that, but those who want to keep it as a symbol of white nationalism, to keep it as a sort of regional pride, although I think that has a racial aspect to it as well”.

With all of the issues about

race percolating through American society brought into the open with the election of Donald Trump, Geary argues that emboldened white nationalist groups were searching for some sort of symbolic fight, and Charlottesville was their battleground of choice.

Ultimately, Geary believes that “symbols have the power people invest in them. If it didn’t happen with Robert E. Lee then it would have been another symbol”. These issues are “not so much about the past as they are about today”.

“

For the white nationalist groups, Geary says, “what matters to them is what kind of story is told about the US For the white nationalist groups, Geary says, “what matters to them is what kind of story is told about the US and their story is a white nationalist story, the story that the nation used to be great when the nation was for the ‘white man’”. Simplified and historically inaccurate, it nonetheless has powerful emotional associations. Geary explains that the need to restore the nation to its former status is a powerful motivation for these groups. He also explains why the Confederacy and the Civil War have been included in this: “The Civil War was fought on the issue of slavery, although many in the North did not necessarily want African Americans to become citizens...there is a kind of feeling that the Confederacy was on the right side from their perspective

because they were fighting to keep blacks in their place.”

Geary points out that one of the most interesting things about the Confederate statues is the date of their construction. “A lot of the statues were built in the 1960s, and in essence were a response in white localities to send a clear message of resistance to black civil rights.” Geary also mentions that before the Civil Rights movement these statues were mainly constructed between 1900 and 1920, “50–60 years after the Civil War, when the South was encouraging a new system of Jim Crow that was a different way of keeping black people in their place that was not slavery but in which black people were relegated to second-class citizenship”.

In a phone conversation with Trinity News, final-year TSM Russian Studies student Dylan Collins explains how statues become powerful symbols of ideology, and why statues of Lenin and Stalin across Russia and Eastern Europe are prominent examples. “The statues tie into a greater social project of the Soviet Union: to get man to strive for more, to become the perfect Soviet man.” Collins notes that “with regard to Lenin there was a ‘heroisation’ factor behind it, like remembering the great revolutionaries of the Soviet Union, and to a greater extent representing dominance, power and masculinity”.

Along with the importance of maintaining the glory of the revolution within the social and national conscience, periods of widespread national reflection also occurred, like de-Stalinisation and Perestroika, when the atrocities of Stalin in the 1930s became more widely known.

Stalin’s societal presence was reduced, although to nationalists he remained very important.

Historical conflict However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, former Soviet Republics and members of the Eastern Bloc are still attempting to decide what to do with these former monuments.

In Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, recent controversy was generated when Soviet monuments to Red Army victories and fallen soldiers were considered for removal. Collins describes one issue with removing

monuments in Eastern Bloc countries and elsewhere: “If you remove that statue, are you removing the global scope of memory [that comes] with that statue? Be that what the statue deliberately represents of the negative feelings associated with that statue or monument...is it then contributing to contemporary amnesia [about] the past?”

Ukraine is especially interesting in this regard as it was both a Soviet republic and a part of imperial Russia.

The recent removal of almost 1000 Lenin statues therefore carries a greater meaning, in Collins’ opinion.

After the Second World War, Ukrainian nationalists had seen an opportunity for selfdetermination. The presence of Lenin thus symbolised losing their autonomy and “just becoming part of a communist empire, if you will”.

The historical conflict involving monuments in Ireland revolves around republicanism and British imperialism. Speaking to Trinity News Dr. Brian Hanley, historian-inresidence at Dublin City Library, explains why republican and loyalist groups attacked certain statues, why the British erected imperial monuments in Ireland, and the commemorative efforts of the Free State and the Republic.

The presence of British imperial monuments to the monarchy and military figures in Ireland is explained quite simply by Hanley. “In the eyes of the British administration and the British government, [Ireland] was an integral part of the United Kingdom, and they saw nothing strange about putting up monuments to British monarchs and British military heroes in Irish towns...what the local population thought didn’t really matter. As far as they were concerned, it was British soil.”

Appropriate removal The Free State acted to remove monuments and statues it considered inappropriate, although according to Hanley it was cautious not to antagonise the British. One of the most prominent examples of this was the removal of Queen Victoria from the front of

it to Canada before placing it in storage. In 1986, it was transferred to Sydney.

“

The statue was beheaded, beginning a new conversation around Russell’s attempts to free Ireland from British rule.

the national parliament.

“As far as nationalists were concerned, Victoria was the monarch that ruled during the Famine. She was known ultimately as the Famine Queen. To have a statue of her in the national parliament was provocative.” Eventually, in 1948, the Republic was successful in removing the statue, and attempted to move

Nelson’s Pillar also proved problematic for many years, although no action was taken to remove it by the state. In 1966, a republican group found a simpler method than storage and shipping and blew up the monument, although the Irish army had to finish the job. On the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, Hanley says many republicans “were talking about the unfinished business of the Rising and bringing about a united Ireland”, and so Nelson’s Pillar was an obvious target for their ire.

The erection of statues, and more controversially their removal, prompts questions on how to remember the past while allowing for the problems that contemporary perspectives raise about historical figures and events.

To demolish every statue in the US, Geary says, would be futile, as he points out President Trump may have a point: where does one cease? Geary believes a better conversation about America’s racial history and the Confederacy would be possible by acknowledging the achievements of people of colour throughout history, like the election of John Mercer Langston, Virginia’s first congressman of colour.

Dylan Collins draws attention to the Fallen Monument Park in Moscow, where a number of deposed monuments to Soviet history are arranged.

From Soviet emblems to statues and busts of Stalin and former secret police director Felix Dzerzhinsky, important Soviet monuments are both preserved and provided with new context.

Ireland is not excluded from this. There are many iconic statues in Ireland that reflect the nationalists’ struggle for independence, as well as unionist attempts to preserve Ireland’s place within the Union. Some groups, loyalist and republican, have attempted to commemorate events and figures while also targeting their opponents’ monuments. The debate has also extended into left/ right politics, as in the case of the statue of IRA leader Sean Russell in Fairview Park in Dublin. There have been several politically motivated attacks on the monument

since its unveiling, from both left and right-wing groups.

Soon after its erection in 1951 the monument was vandalised with paint, and a year later its arm was cut off. Certain people believed the statue’s pose was communistic. The statue was repaired and unveiled for a second time in 1965. Most recently the statue was vandalised in 2005, this time by an anti-fascist group who claimed Russell had fascist sympathies due to his meetings in Nazi Germany.

The statue was beheaded, beginning a new conversation around Russell’s attempts to free Ireland from British rule.

Unlike Confederate and Soviet statues, the argument over the Sean Russell statue can be solved by basic research. The statue is the property of the National Graves Association (NGA), and its chairman, Sean Whelan, explains that the statue is actually to all of the fallen republicans of the 1930s and 1940s volunteer campaigns.

Criticism of Russell's militarism is fair, but Whelan disputes the fascist association argument.

“Everything we have recently found out and we know historically indicates Russell was anti-fascist.” Whelan recounts the NGA’s research into the National Archives of England & Wales following the recent declassification of documents, which found a statement amongst British intelligence that Russell “plainly did not regard himself as a German agent”, and that German Intelligence service Abwehr reported “the Nazi philosophy as an enigma” to Russell. According to Whelan, anti-fascist groups are making their argument based on Russell’s visits to Nazi Germany to acquire arms in the 1930s. However, Whelan says, by extension of that logic, Russell was also a communist, as he visited the Soviet Union in the 1920s for the same purposes.

Statues have been built from varied materials for many years, but what a statue can stand for far outweighs its composites of metal and stone.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Features

10

A terrible state of chassis An investigation into the rise of substandard student accommodation Stacy Wrenn

Assistant Features Editor

W

ITH DUBLIN’S TRADITIONAL COMMUTER TOWNS of Ashbourne and Greystones recently being declared as ‘pressure zones’ due to an increase in rents across the board, student accommodation is increasingly more difficult to find for students on a tight budget. The most affected are those who rely on the Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI) grant to cover their fees and maintenance, as even the highest amount available to them is no longer enough to cover digs in Dublin.

The standard highest rate considered by SUSI as ‘100% maintenance’ comes to €336.11 per month to cover rent, transport, food, and other necessary college expenditure such as textbooks and laptop repairs. There is a ‘special

rate of maintenance grant’ available to few students who qualify for it, but at €657.22 a month that still is not enough to survive if you come from outside of the commuter threshold.

Alden Mathieu, a Senior Freshman Mathematics student, recently spoke to Trinity News about his experience looking for student accommodation. After 2 years of searching online for somewhere near to Trinity that would accommodate him, his wife, and their two cats, he is living in the same place as last year with a two hour commute each way, not including the 15 minute journey to and from their nearest bus stop.

Rental websites are the main source of accommodation for students now, with adverts in papers few and far between. In a way this is an advantage to students as it is harder to hide flaws online when pictures are required for anyone to take a

letting seriously, but with the crisis getting worse every day some landlords have become feckless in hiding their poor standards.

Compact living?

At time of writing, the cheapest student accommodation on daft.ie that wasn’t a temporary or short term let of less than two months was a mattress (sans bedlinen) in a shared room with two other people in a two bed apartment in Smithfield.

The other bedroom was shared by a couple. The bathroom was not shown and there was no indication that there was more than one between the five occupants.

The rest of the apartment was the now staple ‘kitchen cum dining cum living room’. After all, why have three separate rooms with walking space when you can merge all three and call it compact living?

This set-up can often work in a large apartment, but if watching the microwave while someone empties out the bin isn’t your cup of tea, then you wouldn’t find the ‘living’ part very relaxing.

The cost is €325 a month utilities included but in an odd twist they specified that they were looking for male tenants only. This kind of blatant discrimination isn’t uncommon, in the same search on daft.ie there were ads that stipulated ‘no couples’, ‘female only’, and ‘no rent allowance accepted’ - which the Department of Justice outlawed with a fine attached in 2015.

Alden faced similar problems when looking for a new place to stay, with landlords refusing to entertain his visits. “It's difficult to get a call back from most landlords when they find out you're either a student, on social welfare, or not living singly, so we haven't viewed many places in Dublin. However, daft. ie is a wondrous playground of absolutely shocking rents

Photo: Daft.ie

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The bathroom was not shown and there was no indication that there was more than one between the five occupants. for places that wouldn't pass muster on Couchsurfing. The worst place I've seen on there is a tie between a small studio with a single mattress perched half-off a wardrobe, accessible via a folding stepladder, and a single inflatable mattress on the floor in a small bedroom, shared with a double bed.”

Trinity's accommodation How does Trinity’s dedicated student accommodation compare to these nightmarish properties? Not very well.

Trinity’s accommodation is some of the most expensive in Dublin. According to the Trinity College Dublin website, the cost of shared living in Goldsmith Hall for just

one term, including utilities is €722.48 a month, fitting the same criteria Pearse Street is €625.18 a month. On-campus accommodation in Front Square is the most expensive at €788.72 a month. There has been no apparent criticism of these prices by TCDSU. While SU president Kevin Keane has spoken about the high cost of renting in Dublin for students in general, he has failed to specifically mention the extortionate rates set by his own university - where he has the most power to effect change. The SU does provide an accommodation advisory service, and have boosted their efforts in convincing people to sublet rooms to students as digs, but that’s little help to the students who struggle to meet those costs.

The cheapest accommodation provided by college is in Trinity Hall in Dartry, Co. Dublin. A shared twin bedroom in a multitenant apartment, utilities included, is €578.26 a month from September to December, with the cost changing for Hilary Term. Considering the walk to Nassau St is 50 minutes, the aforementioned mattress in Smithfield for €250 cheaper and 37 minutes nearer starts to look appealing.

Why are rents in Dublin rising so rapidly and by so much? There are now parts of Dublin city centre that are more expensive than central London, a city with more facilities and more justification for high cost of living.

Alden argued that it was a blend of different causes that all come down to a serious flow in the running of Irish society.

“It’s partly an issue of supply and demand, not just from students but from international workers and the general trend of rural depopulation; other large cities in Ireland have high rents for some of the same

Illustration: Emer Ó Cearbhaill reasons. I think also a large problem is the outdated idea of how Irish families/housing works: most of the housing I'm aware of is large singlefamily houses on a plot of grass, I assume because the expectation or the ideal tenant is a nuclear family with several children. I think there's an expectation that families don't want to live in higher-density urban housing, like apartment blocks, or those who do/will are unattractively low-income.

I think there's also a historic, Catholic-flavored, outdated expectation that your average renter IS a nuclear family with children, a student looking for cheap academicyear digs so they can go back to Mammy and Daddy down the country every weekend, or a single yuppie professional working at some well-paid multinational -- everyone else is highly suspicious and an unattractive tenant.”

The narrative of cowboy builders and absentee developers still lingers in the minds of those who remember how quickly ‘luxury semi-

detached houses’ were given permission to build outside small villages, and how quickly those exterior walls collapsed in on themselves when the contractors declared bankruptcy: “Developers are inadequately incentivized to build affordable housing, and face absolutely no consequences from reneging on actually building the proportion of affordable housing they agree to.

Landlords are incentivized in a host of ways to avoid renting to lower-income people and students, and are able to screen out 'undesirable' tenants without actually violating anti-discrimination legislation by strategic use of coded language, etc.

There's no push back from the government, given that a huge proportion of them are landlords themselves, and they also don't fear being voted out, so there is no effective leverage or cudgel from the people who urgently need housing and can't get it.”

Students of the South An insight into the lives of students in an often overlooked country Enya O’Connell Trinity Life Assistant Editor

S

OUTH AFRICA. YOU’VE HEARD ABOUT IT on the news.

You watched that movie with Morgan Freeman in it.

Your aunt possibly even told you about her trip around some vineyards over there.

But what is it like to study in this country at the opposite end of the world? Having lived there for several years, I constantly find myself comparing and contrasting the South African student experience to mine in Ireland, each time finding something new and surprising. Somewhat limited by my outsider’s perspective, I asked four of my friends to give first-hand accounts of their college experiences. Despite the country’s population being eleven times that of Ireland’s, something that became apparent was that the key values of student life remain the same: drink, friends and sunshine.

South African universities are still recovering from the “Fees Must Fall” protests which erupted last year, when riots and tear gas swept through campuses as students protested rising fees against a background of inflation, racial tension and economic uncertainty. A prequel to this tension is the schooling system in South Africa, which is divided into government and private education. Private schools are fee-paying and students who attend are generally thought to receive an excellent quality of education. Due to apartheid there remains a wide gap in facilities, quality of teachers and educational standards between government-run and private schools.

To compensate, historically disadvantaged students from poorer backgrounds are let into courses through schemes similar to Affirmative Action.

However, placed in the same classes as privately-educated students, many are unprepared and overwhelmed, leading to a huge drop-out rate: only one in twenty black students graduate. South Africa has twelve official languages, and many struggle to speak

English, but as it is the lingua franca classes need to be taught in English.

Tuition fees continue to be raised year on year, and currently range from €1100 to €4600 in a country where many families live on less than €30 a month. Protests turned violent, and several universities saw classes interrupted, test papers ripped up and facilities burned and destroyed.

Total damages across the country amounted to €37 million. A key point of contention was the teaching of classes through Afrikaans in several universities. Afrikaans is the language spoken by the Dutch settlers who settled in South Africa. As the Apartheid-era government was largely made up of Afrikaaners, there is still a perceived political connotation to universities teaching classes through Afrikaans, especially given the legacy of the Soweto Uprising and of Hector Pieterson.

Frances, Stellenbosch University, Western Cape I am currently a secondyear Speech, Language and Hearing Therapy student. We have a ten-month year, starting in February and ending in November, with about two months of holiday in between.

Depending on how modern the accommodation is and what it includes, it can cost between €250 and €770 a month.

The majority of my friends do not stay at home unless they live in Stellenbosch or neighbouring towns. For fun, we usually go wine-tasting, out for lunch, to the beach, hiking or to Cape Town for the day, as well as quite a lot of clubbing.

I go out a fair amount, usually twice a week. It costs about €1.30 for a girl’s entrance fee yet it can sometimes be free (girls get special rates while boys must pay in full). I usually take no more than €6 out as drinks are very cheap in Stellenbosch. There’s also sokkie floors for sokking (a traditional Afrikaans ballroom dance not unlike the awkward waltzes seen in the film Brooklyn; the name comes from the Afrikaans word for sock, as many dance barefoot).

We were only marginally affected by the “Fees Must

Fall” protests. Good security and protection was provided for the students so we were able to carry on going to class.

Seeing as we are quite a small varsity the protests were fairly minor. However, there was one occasion when during a test protesters kicked down the door and ran up and down the hall ripping up our exam papers while wearing masks.

It was all quite bizarre.

“

Last year the university shut down lectures halfway through the semester, meaning we had to selfstudy with some online guidance.

Luckily we got to write exams and continue the year.

At Stellenbosch University, race is no longer becoming a major issue. It is much more accepting of all races and many of the classes are now in English, instead of them all being in Afrikaans.

Chelsey, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg I study Education. Exams are pretty chilled for me because we are mainly tested on our teaching experience.

There is student accommodation at Wits but I do not stay there. I know that it is quite expensive but you can get bursaries through the university or from the government, especially if you are doing teaching. I think it’s about a 50/50 split between people staying at res (accommodation) and people staying at home. I don’t go out too much, but when I do, it lands up being quite expensive. To be honest, I’m not too sure what people do for fun. I assume “fun” would involve parties and clubbing and all that good stuff.

“Fees Must Fall” was a massive thing at Wits and the Education campus this year. I had about two weeks where my lectures were cancelled because of protests and students interrupting lectures and tutorials. The tension between police, protesters and staff on campus was intense. At the beginning of the protests, people were trapped on campus and were not allowed to leave.

There were security guards everywhere, which only added to the tension because they made everyone on campus really uneasy. I was once in a lecture interrupted by protesters who were threatening to beat students and were being allround annoying.

My lectures were cancelled but I still had an afternoon session, so me and my friends had no idea what was going on. I decided to ask the course co-ordinator, but I ran into the wrong building and had to run to find my lecturer’s office. I was out of breath and red in the face, and she told me that students shouldn’t come to lectures if they feel unsafe, saying: “I can see that you looked very distressed

Illustration by Natalie Duda

and anxious from your previous lecture, you don’t have to come.” While this was nice of her, she thought I was having a panic attack when I was just really unfit!

Race does not seem to be quite a big thing at Education, but maybe I’m just ignorant of it all. All classes are taught through English and I know that there is dissonance between languages and cultures, but it never seems to cause any major problems.

Danielle, University of Johannesburg I am studying Industrial Design, which is a three-year degree with optional honours if you maintain an average of 70% and above. Student accommodation is available, with most of it not carrying academic requirements, i.e. having to maintain a certain grade to be allowed to stay.

Accommodation is only available during the semester and many people stay at home. I do not go out much because of the nature of my degree. For fun we go adventuring, hiking, and braai (barbeque).

“Fees Must Fall” did not significantly affect my university.

We only participated in peaceful protests for maybe a day or two.

Racewise...some Afrikaners seem to be stuck in their old ways. The ‘K’ slur (the African equivalent of the n-word) is used on the odd occasion and one girl believes that black and white people can’t have children together because they are different species.

Apart from this...everyone else gets along really well.

Emma, University of Pretoria (TUKS) I’m currently studying a BSc in Human Physiology, Genetics and Psychology. I am staying in one of the first non-traditional residences (“reses”). It follows none of the old traditions and focuses on diversity and transformation. The other reses are run by a Huis Kommitee which operates as a hierarchy, with first years on the bottom. Traditions include socials with other reses where they line up and find dates, “floor wars” where each floor in the res dresses up their corridor with a theme, and serrie, which is a big dance production where girls dance and serenade the boys and the boys do the same.

Some are horrible, like “if you don't pull enough girls in the first week you have to run naked around the res block”, or something.

As South Africa is reforming from the Apartheid era, racial equality is of high importance, leading to many debates. TUKS has the biggest residence capacity available in South Africa, about 14,000 people. Residence is assigned based on matric marks (the equivalent of the Leaving Cert) and awarded to top achievers. The university used to be in quite a jolling (party) area, but our clubs are slowly being shut down. It’s cheap place and everything is within walking distance.

We have been affected by the “Fees Must Fall” protest quite a bit. Lt The damage at TUKS has been very minor compared to other universities. Studying has been an enjoyable experience, despite it being an academic university, as the people make it fun.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

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Comment

Tolerance and resistance should not be mutually exclusive, argues Dr. Gavin Morrison.

page 17

I want to make the most of my time at Trinity We asked one of our writers to look ahead, and tell us what she wants to achieve this year Suzanne Flynn Social media manager

A

F T E R SUCCESSFULLY SURVIVING ONE YEAR of college, and spending four long summer months considering how I am going to approach this year differently, there is so much that I aspire to be in the next year.

Studying law and a language presented huge challenges for me, both academically and socially, in my first year.

I’m convinced that some of these hurdles will continue to block my path to success in the next few months.

This year, however, I aspire to make the most of my time at Trinity, before I head off on Erasmus next year, and with this in mind, I have a few thoughts on how I can approach this year, differently to the last. With that in mind, here is what I have come up with.

It is a common cliché to say that joining more groups, and making more friends, will lead to a better college social life, but these things are clichés because they’re true.

Clichés can be exhaustive and irrelevant to listen to, as our lives become littered with good karma phrases popping up on the walls of student spaces, and on our Instagram feeds, but cynicism aside, the reality is that most clichés are, in fact, the truth.

Getting involved in college life, whether through societies, charity work, or going out, are all genuine essential elements that everyone should take advantage of at some point.

For me, the realization that I didn’t enjoy getting messy on club dancefloors was something that I still struggle to accept, since a lot of the student population seem to live for the nightlife.

Outside of that scene, I want to get more involved with some societies. societies area good platform for making friends, and with nearly every hobby or interest represented by a group on campus, there’s no shortage of things to be involved in; from archery to alternative music, from photography to zoology.

There is ample opportunity to make new friends, discover new interests and nourish older ones.

On a different note, with the updated gym facilities, I really have very little excuse not to exercise a bit more. The gym, with its startlingly white entrance, and a spacious open floor housing new equipment, is a fantastic advantage we have as students on campus. I am planning to start attending some new classes and making use of that free gym membership that all Trinity students have and pay for, but few use.

“

It is a common cliché to say that joining more groups, and making more friends, will lead to a better college social life, but these things are clichés because they’re true.

number of attendees and an impressive standard and variety of acts. The night can be fantastic if you play cards right, but my goal for this year’s ball season is to make sure I go with a solid group of friends that will stay with me for the majority of the night, and not just for prinks. Spending several hours attempting to find the original gang I arrived with was not an ideal way to enjoy last year’s ball.

It’s always hugely tempting to get a wholesome burrito from Mama’s Revenge, or pop to Chopped for a box of surprisingly tasty lettuce and vegetables, but it leaves me with 75% of my weekly capital invested into food. Learning to bring in premade lunches from home is another thing I strongly aspire to do this year.

Relatedly, my discovery of the powers of caffeine last year subsequently drained that last quarter left in my bank account. It also left me wired with an elevated heart rate, which didn’t help the impending pre-existing anxiety surrounding exams and essays. My transition to Chai Lattes soothed the withdrawal in part, yet still left my purse a bit lighter on my way home each day. This year I want to make caffeine related drinks a treat for myself - nothing more - for the sake of my pocket and my health.

Still, I do recognize how coffee is a necessary social staple in some ways, and that purchasing it with a group

The Trinity Ball in April is one of the highlights of the academic year, with a huge

Art by Sinaoife Andrews

of friends or peer mentors is something of a mandatory activity. Aspiring to make new friends is a goal I’ve always had, but maintaining friendships from the past is something I should aim more to do. The progression to college is a time of loss in some ways, but it is important to keep those friends from

school. You never know when you might want to reminisce about when you didn’t have to deal with my.tcd.ie or look for accommodation.

For many of the students at home over the summer, the last few months have been spent waiting for September, for college to start again. I

think that as this year starts up again, my aspirations are healthy and motivating to keep in mind, as I, along with the rest of the student population, try my best to improve myself and my attitude to college in the coming year.

Where you come from is irrelevant here Don’t believe the dismal stories: give Trinity a chance and it will amaze you Étain Sweeney

course. I sit alongside heirs to great fortunes and heirs to nothing at all. There’s no denying we come from vastly different backgrounds. I have listened in awe to summer throwbacks to interrailing with private school chums and I have admitted to my summers spent painting fences with nothing but the sweet scent of WD40 on some old bike brakes in lieu of fresh French croissants.

Staff writer

I

WRITE FROM INSIDE MY EMPTY KITCHEN, overlooking the Halls courtyard, the night before 1000 first years descend on this miniature concrete rainforest, like I did: apprehensive. Tabloids and broadsheets alike herald Trinity as the sole relic of the class divide in Ireland, and this lie, so commonly told to our young people, often does more damage than it intends.

I wish I had the chance to tell them all in person how a lowly Leitrim girl like me could ever belong to a place like this, a place that the national media have elevated as a symbol of everything I am not.

I am a Senior Freshman Law and Political Science student. I come from a singleparent family in the depths of Leitrim, and I am on the full SUSI grant scheme. I live three hours away from home and have never spent a week skiing in Northern Italy. But since I stepped foot in this college I have never once felt out of place because of my background. Not for one moment.

Where I come from, thirdlevel education is not taken for granted. We never saw the extravagant heights of the Celtic Tiger, nor are we now seeing what inside the Pale has been lovingly deemed “the recovery”. West of the Shannon, public transport is minimal, the land is bad, and parish politics prevail.

And yet here we find ourselves – the royal “we” – in Trinity. Trinity College, Dublin: where public transport is only briefly scuppered by unions, affordable housing is scarce and the national politics reflects the ever-growing economy on the floodplains of the Liffey.

At first glance, the difference may seem vast, even irreconcilable. But the fact is that this difference, this gaping hole in the social tapestry that weaves through Trinity... it just isn’t relevant. Not to me, not to my friends, not to the people I pass nonchalantly on the Arts Block ramp.

Where I come from, who

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But no one has ever unfairly compared their summers to mine. They have only ever expressed the most sincere longing for a summer so carefree.

Few from my school have come to Trinity.

Few have even contemplated it. My friends have openly discussed not putting Trinity on their CAO because they felt it was a reach too far, a leap they were not willing to take. But I say: leap. Jump.

There is no denying that there's a sense back home that us "Trinners" are fast developing notions of ourselves.

I find myself telling people I go to college in Dublin, avoiding the backlash I expect should I name which one.

The more I think about it, the more the need to selfcorrect like this appears wholly unnecessary. What am

“ Photo by Joe McCallion my father is – it’s just quite simply irrelevant.

Fifty percent of my friends are on the SUSI grant scheme, and the ones that aren’t know exactly what it is. Of all the wonderful people I have been so fortunate to meet here, not one of them would ever attempt to dismiss any other student’s financial struggles.

The GMB, commonly viewed as the elitist stronghold within the college walls, a place of eloquence, opulence and sophistication, is not home to the elite and ignorant, but rather to the most understanding people I’ve met on either side of the Shannon, people who have made me feel so welcome and

at home miles away from my own homestead. They do not judge me. They know where I come from, they know the extent of my riches, they know me entirely, and for that I love them just the same; I love them entirely.

At lectures, class never dictates seating arrangements. I sit with everyone else on my

I know what it’s like to feel envy, and at times just pure frustration, at the fortunes of my friends. But to my counterparts back home: do not be frightened.

I afraid of? Withering stereotypes? Or the realisation of a hostile mismatch between my aspirations and my roots?

But while my feet pace over the worn cobblestones in Front Square, none of this matters. The stereotypes are wilted and gone, and with them any mismatch I thought existed. Few from my school have come to Trinity. Few have even contemplated it.

My friends have openly discussed not putting Trinity on their CAO because they felt it was a reach too far, a leap they were not willing to take.

But I say: leap. Jump. The worst that can happen is that you graze your knees. Then again, you might fly.

The thing about it is – and I want to make this very clear – in Trinity no one cares where you come from. I was compelled to write this because I know what it’s like to be on a full SUSI grant in Trinity.

I know what it’s like to feel envy, and at times just pure frustration, at the fortunes of my friends. But to my counterparts back home: do not be frightened. Trinity may seem big and lavish and grotesquely ignorant, but trust me, it’s not. I’m not writing SU propaganda, I’m not lowkey writing on behalf of the Department of Education.

I’m writing from experience.

I’m laying it all out for you.

This is the place where I have met some of the most beautiful, dazzling people in my life. The people here will not ask you what your parents earn. They will not question where you come from. The only thing that matters is you.

You on your own, as your own person, your own individual.

No elaborate backstories, no past skiing experience necessary. Please do not listen to the stereotypes that bounce around classrooms across the country. I’ve heard them, I know their sentiments. Trinity is just a college. Dublin is just a city. And almost everyone I have met here understands that all that matters is us, who we are as people – nothing more, nothing less.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Comment

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Should we grow up to commercialisation?

The commercialisation of our universities has many facets, and we should not treat it as a unitary phenomenon Daniel Gilligan Staff Writer

R

ECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN G R O W I N G concern over the ‘commercialisation’ of universities. For many, the integrity of our universities is threatened by a slavish devotion to corporate interests, and a toxic logic of which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. They feel that student welfare and the freedom of academic inquiry supposedly being bloodily sacrificed on neoliberalism’s altar.

Universities are changing the way they manage their finances to increase revenue and decrease costs. Around the world, governments struggle to provide adequate public funding for thirdlevel institutions, while the global student population has more than doubled in the last 20 years. In their efforts to continue providing a high quality service to students and society, universities are forced to radically change how they operate. For Trinity and many others, that has meant embracing commercialisation.

‘Commercialisation’ is something of a buzzword amongst both its supporters and detractors, making it difficult often to discern

what the term actually means. Broadly speaking, commercialisation can be broken down into three distinct mechanisms.

The first of these is that universities have attempted to attract non-governmental sources of revenue. The most obvious way to do this is to impose new costs on student, and while this has been the path taken in many instances, and aversion towards the injustice of such increases have prompted universities to become creative.

For Trinity, this summer provided a useful opportunity to generate revenue. The college held a series of concerts, facilitated the filming of a period drama on campus and offered businesses the use of empty rooms. There are proposals to auction off naming rights to various parts of the campus.

This has worked well in other places. For instance, UCD’s O’Brien Centre for Science was financed by a 300 million euro package made up of a combination of state funding, university funds and private philanthropy - most notably from businessman Denis O’Brien, who lent his name to the building.

The presence of these sorts of private interests in a university rarely has substantive impacts on the character of the service the university provides, aside from the clear benefit which accrues from the funding

increase in and of itself. These commercialisation strategies deserve our cautious support.

Second, universities are increasingly allied with the corporate sector.

This alliance can occur through knowledge-sharing: collaborating with businesses to draw out real-world impacts from research. Universitycorporate alliances can also lead to universities tailoring the character of their educational missions towards the interests of the corporate world. Trinity’s proposed new business school is an example of this.

This kind of commercialisation is perhaps the most often criticized, usually by people who imagine corporate interests as generally malevolent and counterproductive to society’s proper functioning.

But collaborating with corporations allows universities to translate their abstract outputs - knowledge and educated people - into concrete benefits for all of society. Even those incapable of attending universities in the first place benefit from this kind of collaboration, through better, cheaper products and workers with more relevant skills.

The third, and worst, strand of commercialisation is the creation of increasingly precarious employment conditions for staff. In the United States, 76.4 per cent

of academic faculty are employed on short-term contracts with no possibility of tenure. More than half of this group live below the poverty line.

Junior academics in Ireland complain of low wages, the use of temporary contracts, and the huge amount of their work which goes unpaid: class preparation, consultation with students, and so on. Trinity’s nonacademic staff have raised similar concerns in over short-term contracts. Of all the mechanisms of university commercialisation, the changing nature of employment is the most toxic.

While the trend within universities towards more precarious employment is part of a broader trend in the economy, it is particularly worrying in the academy.

Teachers who aren’t paid for preparation and consultation with students must work for free if they are to come close to providing an optimal learning experience for their students.

be less likely to disagree.

Rhetoric that condemns commercialisation as an irredeemably toxic and unitary phenomenon is misguided. It ignores the beneficial kinds of commercialisation, and makes its own criticism of the harmful kinds less incisive. Recognizing that commercialisation can happen in a healthy way allows us to point out that while universities might be constrained by circumstance, that constraint can be navigated and overcome in a way which upholds the integrity of third-level education.

It is too easy to romanticise the university as some sort of paragon of democratic virtue that should be wholly abstracted from economic reality. Introducing a little realism into the discussion might allow us to benefit from commercialisation where we should, and curb its worst excesses.

Academics whose employment can be terminated at any moment are less well able to think and write what they want for fear of the repercussions. The whole concept of tenure was invented to protect the free speech of academics: as more and more academics are at the mercy of others, they will

Photo by Joe McCallion

Joint authority is the next step for Northern Ireland Joint rule between Dublin and Westminster is the only way to break the current impasse Harry Downes Contributing Writer

T

HE IRISH F O R E I G N MINISTER, Simon Coveney, recently caused a stir at Westminster.

Speaking on Tuesday, Coveney demanded a voice for the Irish government in the administration of Northern Ireland, remarking that “there can be no Britishonly direct rule” in the province.

A framework for the involvement of Dublin in joint authority over Northern Ireland already exists. Strand III of the Belfast Agreement founded several institutions through which the Irish government remains in contact with the Northern Irish and British governments. The BritishIrish Council and the BritishIrish Intergovernmental Conference provide an adequate starting point for the immediate involvement of the Irish government in joint authority.

The next day in the House of Commons, Theresa May herself ruled out any sharing of authority with the Republic. It has become unusual to see a sitting British prime minister address the existence of Northern Ireland at all and extraordinary to see one defend its place in the United Kingdom. However, this spat between Coveney and May has raised the question of joint British-Irish authority over Northern Ireland.

The interest of key members of the Dublin government, like Coveney, in Northern affairs ensures that these institutions could quickly be reformed into centres of a joint BritishIrish administration. Neither Dublin’s nor London’s interest in Northern Ireland will wane in the next few years. The significance of the Irish border in Brexit talks means that any British or Irish government would sustain the level of attention and involvement necessary to joint authority.

Joint authority Under the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the UK and the Republic are expected to act as impartial co-guarantors of the peace process and devolved institutions in Northern Ireland. Today’s reality is that a return to devolution will not happen soon. Northern Ireland has not had a government since January and cross-party negotiations to restore it have repeatedly failed.

Right now, the Irish government will remain impartial. Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have ruled out a coalition with Sinn Féin, the only large party represented in politics both north and south of the border. As long as Sinn Féin remains in opposition in the Republic, the neutrality of the Irish government cannot be compromised as strongly as that of its counterpart in London.

Only a significant change in the attitudes of the major parties can end this impasse. Until the powersharing executive is restored, Northern Ireland is set for direct rule. The British government should share that responsibility with Dublin.

While the interests of the Northern Irish people would be best represented by a return to devolution, there is no realistic pathway to its restoration right now.

The two largest parties, Sinn Féin and the DUP, remain polarised on the key issues that caused the collapse of the power-sharing executive in the first place.

The joint authority of the British and Irish governments over direct rule is essential because the current British government is incapable of neutrally administering Northern Ireland. Theresa May’s minority government depends upon its confidenceand-supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) for its very survival. In effect, May cannot afford to oppose the DUP on Northern Irish issues.

This compromise in the impartiality of Westminster demands the involvement of a third party in direct rule. As the co-guarantor of the Belfast Agreement, the Irish government stands as the best option to jointly administer Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin wants official status for the Irish language and the exclusion of DUP leader Arlene Foster from government during an inquiry into a botched green energy scheme that she established. The DUP wants to legislate for the Irish and Ulster Scots languages on a like-for-like basis and to restore Foster’s position as First Minister. Both parties have staked so much political capital on these differences that any compromise would humiliate them. It seems unlikely that any deal to restore devolution will occur soon.

Another election?

The only fair alternative to joint authority is another

Assembly election. The last election in March left the unionist and nationalist camps uneasily balanced at forty members each.

It could be hoped that another election might tilt the Assembly towards one side or the other, providing a mandate on a sectarian basis that could break the deadlock. However, another election must be understood as the nuclear option for Northern Ireland.

“

In effect, May cannot afford to oppose the DUP on Northern Irish issues.

Including the EU membership referendum, voters in Northern Ireland have gone to the polls three times in the last eighteen months. Another election will suffer from voter fatigue.

Moderates in Northern Ireland, already tired of the polarised and sectarian politics at Stormont, will feel less inclined to vote for a government that is clearly unable to function. Thriving on the resurging divisions and fervency of politics in Northern Ireland, extremists on both sides would be set to dominate the debate and results of the election.

Another Assembly election would transform a democratic vote into a sectarian battle of endurance. It would not test the policies and personalities of each party, but only their ability to secure a higher turnout than the other side.

An election campaign would only escalate the rhetoric of suspicion, ignorance and hate that has led Northern Ireland to a situation wherein its political leaders cannot lead.

There is therefore no reason to expect that another Assembly election would force compromise from either side. Another sectarian headcount would only strengthen their mandates for intransigence and distrust while, at the same time, further polarising Northern Irish society. Joint authority will provide a modicum of the stability and certainty that Northern Ireland requires during critical negotiations

over Brexit and the Irish border.

A period of joint authority may also enable long-term talks on the fundamental issues that put strain on any devolved administration in Northern Ireland. Stalemate and direct rule are nothing new for the Assembly.

Negotiations meant to resolve disagreements on flags, parades and similar issues dominate its history, usually ending without results.

The devolved government’s record is a catalogue of failure. It has failed to deliver on the key challenges of the peace process. Eleven years after the Saint Andrew’s Agreement provision for an Irish Language Act, there remains no conclusive agreement on the Irish language. Only 7% of children attend integrated crosscommunity schools. Northern Ireland has no official flag, crest, anthem nor any symbol of a common identity. Society and politics remain as divided as ever between Protestants and Catholics. Devolution in its current form has failed.

Even if the major parties strike a compromise now and restore the devolved government, the same problems that brought about its collapse will resurface.

If Northern Ireland is ever to govern itself in a stable and lasting manner, it must resolve these issues. The terms of a parity of esteem between Protestant and Catholic traditions must be

agreed and implemented.

Independent investigations into legacy cases from the Troubles must occur.

Integrated educationt Finally, a serious effort to create an integrated education system must follow.

Non-sectarian schooling is the best way to overcome the sectarian divide that corrupts Northern Irish society and politics.

Joint authority will outsource day-to-day government to London and Dublin, encouraging the parties at Stormont to reach an agreement on these differences.

Nationalists should especially welcome joint authority. While Brexit and the coming Catholic majority in Northern Ireland may push the island towards unification, any transition to a united Ireland would be an extraordinarily complicated and difficult process. Nearly one hundred years of partition has utterly changed and divided Ireland. Its effect cannot be overcome with the mere legal absorption of Northern Ireland into the Republic.

Unification would require a concrete plan to amalgamate two entirely distinct jurisdictions into one. For nationalists, joint authority can stand as a logical step towards and test for unification. Dublin’s reception of some level of allisland power would serve as a valuable model for any future transition towards a united

Ireland.

Nevertheless, joint authority should not be considered a stepping stone towards Irish unity – it is an emergency measure brought about by the failure of the parliamentary process in Northern Ireland. Unionists will require reassurances and guarantees to ward off fears that joint authority today does not mean back-door unification tomorrow.

Ireland can and should only be united by the democratic process promised in the Belfast Agreement. Joint authority serves as the best available way to support the institutions of the Agreement and wider peace process.

Joint authority is not an ideal solution. External rule is an unfortunate fate for a province that once stood for the virtues of peace-making and consensus-building.

The people of Northern Ireland deserve a locally and democratically elected government. It is not their fault that their politicians cannot make a deal. However, the return of the Stormont executive is simply untenable until these politicians can act maturely. For the time being, direct rule by London and Dublin is necessary.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Comment

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Harvey and Irma are symptoms of our ever worsening climate Without action to prevent climate change, and preparation for the disasters that will occur, we can expect more disasters of the same scale as Harvey and Irma.

Illustration by Jenny Corcoran

Dominic Tscherny Contributing writer

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URRICANE IRMA IS C U R R E N T LY HAMMERING Florida and rewriting history books as the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, with winds reaching velocities as high as 298km/h. But with hurricanes, it isn’t only wind that we should be worrying about; it’s water.

Since the 1960s, 88% of deaths in the United States during tropical storms and hurricanes have been caused by water, while only 8% of deaths can be directly attributed to wind. Of all casualties, almost half are caused by storm surges.

Physically, storm surges act just like a tsunami.

They occur when winds protruding from the swirling arms of hurricanes blow water towards shore. During Katrina, those waves reached 8.5 metres in height, even though Katrina itself only made landfall as a Category 3 storm.

Images we remember of Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans aren’t of windswept homes and torn up trees; they’re of a city submerged under water.

In short bursts over four days this August, Harvey dropped an unprecedented 1.32 metres of rainfall outside Austin, Texas. In comparison, during one whole year at Trinity College, only 0.73m of rain precipitates. American cities are largely designed as concrete sprawls with few green spaces in sight,

meaning that water has little chance to seep into the ground.

In addition, due to its flat geography, flood waters will be slow to leave Austin. Cities being hit by Harvey and Irma just aren’t geographically equipped to deal with the massive amounts of rainfall and storm surges flooding the area.

Communities as far North as Georgia and South Carolina, where towns situated close to the tide level have far less experience in dealing with natural disasters than those in Texas and Louisiana, have this week been issued evacuation warnings ahead of predicted storm surges.

Ultimately, our own human habits of consumption and fossil fuel reliance are fuelling rapid climate change.

They may leave us too slow to adapt to the future scale of tropical storms. Due to human activity since the start of the industrial revolution, our Earth has already warmed over 1 degree Celsius.

This is irreversible, the effects of it are here to stay, and they are getting worse. 1 degree warming has happened., despite one of the 2015 Paris Accord’s goals being an effort to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

Because of the thermal inertia of the ocean, when we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, its effects are not felt immediately. Like water in a pan over a burning flame, it will take time to boil.

Scientists tell us it will take about 40 years for today’s emissions to take their effect on our climate and weather systems, a phenomenon

known as climate lag.

Crucially, this means that even if we were to stop emitting carbon tonight, the Earth will still warm a further 0.6°C. Human activity is already contributing to a catastrophic, heightened risk of storm surges, where the increased release of greenhouse gases has transported melted ice sheets to the literal doorsteps of many a coastal condo.

Tír gan teanga

According to NOAA, every area affected by Hurricane Harvey experienced more than eight inches of increased local sea levels between 1960 and 2015. Additionally, physics tells us that for every degree in temperature rise, the air can hold 7% more water.

dump it back down once the storms reach land. Until we can adequately deal with storm surges and rainwater floods in all kinds of human habitats, and not just those where hurricanes have always hit, we must learn to accept that events like those of the past weeks are here to stay.

This means that tropical storms are able to take up more of the ocean’s water than ever before, only to

As global temperatures continue to rise, damage from the seas and skies will

only become more severe.

Events of the past weeks have broken both records and homes, but the Earth has only warmed 1 degree thus far. A further 0.6 degrees are already locked in, and with it the inevitable peril brought by more powerful storms.

If the United Nations wishes to make good on its goal to limit global warming to under 2°C, the time to act is now. In order to reach this target by 2035, 20 years after

it was set, we must cut global emissions by 0.5% per month starting now.

If this cut started in 1995, 20 years before it was set, it would only have required a 0.1% per month decrease.

The longer we delay our independence from greenhouse gases, the greater the effort it will require when we finally act. The longer we wait, the more Harveys we will have, and the worse our

Has the HPAT really failed to measure empathy?

The controversy over Bank of Ireland’s Englishonly LATMs highlights deeper problems for the Results of the HPAT empathy Irish language Aoife Donnellan Contributing writer

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ANK OF IRELAND’S RECENT REMOVAL of the Irish language option in new LATMs has been popularly condemned by the Irish public. Bank of Ireland (BOI) discontinued the service as less than 1% of people were choosing to conduct their ATM business in Irish. With so few people opting to carry out transactions in Irish, it would be reasonable to ask why it is being labelled a disservice to the Irish people that the option was discontinued.

I heard the entire issue played out on the Luas recently. Two women, appalled by BOI’s decision, spoke at length of the disconnect between large corporations and the desires of the people they serve. They were horrified at not being afforded the opportunity to conduct business in their native language, lamenting that they could not withdraw a tenner as Gaeilge.

As the conversation ended, both women disclosed that they had actually never availed of the service for fear of accidentally withdrawing their entire savings account by mistake.

This small cross-section of Irish consumer behaviour does not signify a grá for Gaeilge, but a lust for Irish.

It’s a “friends-with-benefits” scenario. People like to see Irish occasionally, to try out something non-committal and different, but as soon as a decision as serious as interacting with an ATM is involved, the Irish public are back in bed with strong and stable English.

The bank’s introduction of LATMs means that customers can now avail of lodgement as well as withdrawal services.

The introduction of this upgrade began in 2010, which

simultaneously initiated the phasing out of the Irish language option.

Many people were instinctively outraged by this.

It felt unpatriotic not to be disgusted that a national bank bearing the name Bank of Ireland would readily denounce the sacred Gaeilge to save a few cents. And yet, most Irish people have exactly that relationship with our teanga dúchasach - one where they will abandon it to avoid having to invest even the slightest effort or cost.

Of course, BOI customers do not speak for the island of Ireland. It is among BOI ATM users that fewer than 1% of people opted for the Irish service. It does however seem likely that as one of the four traditionally major banks in Ireland, and the first bank to introduce an Irish language option in banking services, Bank of Ireland has a proportionate understanding of the wants of Irish consumers.

“

Irish seems like a thing on the side that one can always indulge in.

The new lack of Irish language representation in LATMs is the fault of the Irish public.

The uproar in response to

the decision is unjustified.

It could be a fundamental right to carry out all business in Irish, the nation’s second official language, but if the public implicitly scream they don’t want it, where is the incentive?

The dwindling number of people interacting in Irish is not for lack of proficiency in the language. According to the last census, 190,276 people speak Irish every week. In contrast, 48% of students opted for Higher Level Irish in the leaving cert this year, rising 3% from last year. Almost half of the next generation can speak Irish to the highest level asked by the state in secondary education.

Why, then, is there a mysterious disconnect between almost half of young people committing to a leaving cert in advanced Irish, and less than 1% of people choosing to use the language for simple transactions? The issue is not a lack of Irish speakers — it is people’s willingness to interact with the language as a living one.

Irish is dying, not because people can’t speak it, not because people don’t want it, but because it is easy to abuse. The road signs have Irish above them; everyone has a cúpla focail. Irish seems like a thing on the side that one can always indulge in.

A satisfying friend-withbenefits relationship: it presents itself for the taking but doesn’t require any interaction.

Irish is being left out to dry.

It is the Irish public’s lack of serious commitment to Irish that will result in the extinction of our native tongue. People are incensed when the option to interact in Irish is withheld, but are just as quick to choose the alternative when it is provided. It is not a malicious abandonment, but it is a continuing disregard that will result in extinction.

test do not correlate with scales we typically use to measure empathy. Is this a design flaw of the paper?

Kevin O'Rourke Staff writer

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STUDY FROM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK has recently been published investigating the link between medical students’ scores on HPAT Section 2 and a questionnaire called the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy.

The researchers’ conclusion was that “JSE [Jefferson Scale of Empathy] values did not correlate with HPAT-Ireland scores”. Is this something we should be concerned about?

Should we even expect to be able to measure empathy?

Google, Oxford, MerriamWebster, Wikipedia, Cambridge, and PsychologyToday broadly agree that “empathy” means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”.

According to the “About” section from the website of HPAT provider ACER, Section 2 assesses the ability to understand and think about people. Questions are based on a scenario, dialogue or other text representing specific interpersonal situations.

Most passages will have several questions. The questions assess your ability to identify, understand, and, where necessary, infer the thoughts, feelings, behaviour and/or intentions of the people represented in the situations. That fits the definition of empathy.

It could also be described as reading comprehension.

The ability to work out what

others are thinking is a fundamental part of human social cognition. Since it’s not possible to put thousands of Leaving Cert students in the middle of identical social situations and assess their understanding, we just have to do it on paper.

One’s ability to understand the feelings of others and then predict their behaviour does not make one a good person. It’s a basic prerequisite for survival in a social environment. Goodness or otherwise depends on actions.

If a military commander can put himself in the shoes of the enemy and figure out what they’re likely to do next, he has a good chance of trapping and defeating their army. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on context; empathy, as a personality trait on its own, is broadly morally neutral.

The Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy does not test anyone’s ability to do anything. It asks for opinions.

It is a 20-item questionnaire where respondents give each statement a score from 1–7, where 1 is “strongly agree” and 7 is “strongly disagree”.

For example: “For more effective treatment, physicians must be attentive to their patients’ personal experiences.”

I’d give that one a “strongly agree” and I imagine nearly everyone in the UCC School of Medicine did as well. How about another one? “The best way to take care of a patient is to think like a patient.” T ​ hat’s open to interpretation. Exactly how “like a patient” are we supposed to be thinking here?

If a patient is panicking, should we join in? It’s necessary to see where the patient is coming from if we want to explain things effectively but that’s a bit vague. How about I agree but not quite strongly agree, and give it a 3? ​According to the Jefferson Scale, someone who strongly agrees is just plain more empathetic in that regard than I am. So there.

In fairness, most of the items in the questionnaire are statements about the importance of paying attention to your patients which are wellsupported by evidence. They come up in lectures again and again.

If you see a statement like: “Patients feel better when their feelings are understood by their physicians,” and you fail to agree, either (a) you weren’t paying attention, (b) the lecturer wasn’t very convincing, or (c) you were still in bed. That’s not the HPAT’s fault. ​ The HPAT measures the student’s reading comprehension as a teenager. The JSE measures whether they turned up to lectures about the “softer” side of medicine.

It’s no surprise that when you measure two completely different things, the results don’t match. We just get thrown into a confused state by this word “empathy”. ​imply stating that your S questionnaire measures empathy doesn’t mean that it actually measures empathy.

It isn’t entirely clear whether “empathy” can be measured on its own. A 2007 systematic

review published in the journal BioMed Central Medical Education concluded that “no empathy measures were found with sufficient evidence of predictive validity for use as selection measures for medical school”.

Some studies have suggested that empathy is an undefined function of other personality traits, especially agreeableness and conscientiousness.

The authors of a 2016 study in Frontiers in Psychology add, “we didn’t observe differences in the prediction of cognitive versus affective empathy, indicating that both associate with the same personality dimension”.

That contradicts the definition of empathy given by the researchers who developed the Jefferson Scale. They specifically state in a 2003 follow-up paper, “we have proposed that empathy is predominantly a cognitive attribute, whereas sympathy is primarily an ‘affective’ personal quality”.

Considering how humans have remained roughly unchanged for the last 70,000 years, it seems a bit strange that the word “empathy” was itself only invented at the end of the 19th century. Had a core pillar of the human psyche simply gone unnoticed forever or were we just too vague with our language?

Thus, if we’re going to argue about the measurement of empathy using the HPAT, we will first have to decide what empathy actually means.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Comment

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George Hook and his comments have no place on the airwaves Rather than with Hook and his ilk, our sympathies should lie with those he has offended Rory O'Neill Leader writer

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T THE TIME OF WRITING, GEORGE Hook has been suspended from Newstalk with immediate effect following the furor surrounding his now infamous comments on rape earlier this month. Most will now be familiar with what he said.

The substance of Hook’s intervention was essentially to say that, while rape is an awful crime, surely some blame must be attributed to a woman who endangers themselves on a night out.

Most of the debate has centred around whether Hook should be allowed continue presenting his High Noon programme. Broadly speaking, we might categorise opinion into three main camps; those who feel Hook had a point, those who found his remarks rather unsavoury but feel he shouldn’t be silenced or driven off the airwaves, and those who consider his position untenable.

Among the most tired defences of Hook are that it’s unacceptable now to say anything “politically uncorrect” for fear offending the left-liberal-feminist-gender abolitionist lobby. Listeners of Today with Sean O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio 1 complained that the left were attempting to silence one of the few controversialists in the Irish media. It is important to recognise, however, that this is a carefully cultivated narrative.

Those who hold conservative or right-wing opinions are now painted as the victims, unable to speak their mind in a suffocating, liberal-dominated society.

It is easy, however, to recast this narrative with a much healthier dose of reality. In truth, feminists and those who feel rape and sexual assault are normalised to an unacceptable extent, have been silenced for decades. Opinions like Hook’s have formed the official common sense in a country where marital rape was legal or at least unprosecutable until 1990. In fact, as an article by Kitty Holland in the Irish Times from just over a year ago demonstrates,

marital rape is still “extremely difficult to prosecute” in Ireland. It is manifestly absurd to claim that, in a country where legal protection for rape victims has advanced at a snail’s pace and abortion laws are still considered inhumane by international bodies, that there is somehow a restrictive feminist consensus.

Rather, the backlash to Hook’s comments represents a frustrated and angry reaction against normalised sexism and sexual assault. It is communicating that women and men alike are no longer prepared to tolerate such callous attempts to divert blame onto victims. In this light, Hook appears much less of a combative journalist or refreshing controversialist voice, and more like a gargoyle in a media landscape that has obviously not been cleaned out thoroughly since the 1950s.

“

When it is acceptable to blame rape victims for their own experiences on national radio, the net result is to empower perpetrators rather than victims themselves.

Should Hook, then, lose his job? It would, on balance, seem like the fair result. A media landscape where a presenter loses his job for attempting to apportion blame for rape to victims would be one in which listeners and the wider public are not prepared to tolerate such opinions. Statements such as those made by Hook can only legitimate sexual assault and make excuses for perpetrators.

Crucially, it would not amount to a suppression of free speech. This is perhaps the most curious of arguments put forward by those who defend the rights of media commentators to express such vie These situations never have anything to do with free speech - no one is arguing that Hook doesn’t have a right to hold these opinions or to espouse them.

Rather the argument is and always has been that such views should not be given a platform on national radio, where they carry the air of legitimacy. When it is acceptable to blame rape victims for their own experiences on national radio, the net result is to empower perpetrators rather than victims themselves.

H o o k ’s e m p l o y m e n t , however, is not the decisive

which masquerades as antiestablishment, wherein the establishment is defined as fundamentally liberal and “politically correct”. The tyranny of political correctness is a clever narrative utilised to great effect by the alt-right in North America. This distorted reality is one in which racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia - in other words, the ideology that has legitimised oppressive state policy - are recast as the voice of the silent majority. A perfect case in point is provided by Hook himself. Writing in the Irish Independent in November 2015, he urges us not to be “coerced into being liberal”.

He, championing the ordinary punter who isn’t part of the elite liberal bubble, complains that he had been ostracised for having “the temerity to question Europe’s attitude to the refugee crisis”. One paragraph from that article should be sufficient to demonstrate the spirit of Hook’s views on migrants. For context, Hook is discussing the aftermath of the Bataclan attacks in Paris, organised by a second-generation Belgian citizen. He references the now iconic image of the corpse of three year old Alan Kurdi washed up on the shore: “Images of a child drowned in the surf have also pulled at people's heartstrings. Interestingly, Abaaoud [organiser of the Bataclan attacks], at aged 12, won a scholarship to an elite Catholic school. He was a model pupil before being radicalised.”

issue. The battle against misogyny and rape will not be won or lost on whether he continues in his current role. Rather the fact that he has made it this far and that someone with these views is a flagship presenter on one of Ireland’s most popular radio stations points to much deeper problems within Irish media.

His is a nefarious brand of right-wing, verbalised gruel

This paragraph could be presented without comment.

But since Hook’s supporters are now painting him as a brave contrarian who is being hounded out by a witch hunt, it is worth dissecting his actual contributions to public discourse. Here, Hook does really appear to be suggesting, implicitly at the very least, that the three year old Alan Kurdi who washed up dead on a Mediterranean beach could have easily grown up to be the orchestrator of an attack such as that in Paris in November 2015. Is this once again the “decent man” who “misspoke”? Or is it simply a right-wing ogre who resents what he sees as excessive levels of concern for women and foreigners? Even when pre-

sented with a dead three year old child, whose story elicited sympathy and grief from people all across Europe, George Hook could not see beyond a liberal consensus that had to be challenged. If Hook is a lone contrarian voice in Irish media, it is only insofar as there are few who are so comfortable in contradicting basic human values of solidarity and compassion when the subject is not white.

It is hard not to digress into why Hook should be expunged from public life altogether, but the most important point here is that these views are presented as antiestablishment and in defiance of political correctness.

Political correctness is, more and more, a uniquely negative label. There are few now who would lack the self-awareness to defend something as “politically correct” as if this was a straightforwardly positive value in and of itself. To label something as politically correct now is to paint it as divorced from the attitudes of ordinary people, an elitist liberal view that is being imposed on us. It is effectively to say that we are being told

how to think. We are all supposed to be feminists now, so the argument goes, we are all supposed to put foreigners ahead of “our own”.

Yet compare this to actual state policy. Hook may claim to be going against the grain, but try and apply his politics concretely. If someone rang into Hook’s programme and argued that we should abolish direct provision and replace it with a more humane asylum policy, what would he say? If someone argued for public sector pay restoration and the strengthening of trade union rights, what would he say? Hook’s form on these issues is well documented, and to ask these questions is to answer them. He and his ilk masquerade as antiestablishment figures, yet on concrete matters of state policy, they are Irish capitalism’s most useful mouthpieces. They reflect the pitfalls of a private media sector dominated by billionaires such as Denis O’Brien. Our airwaves are full of such people, spouting right-wing and anti-worker, anti-migrant, anti-women bigotry and yet play the victim when they

are held accountable for their views. The solution is not the dismissal of one individual but the construction of new, alternative media networks that speak to the interests of the oppressed rather than the oppressors.

This may, then, be the demise of George Hook. But his status as a mainstay on national radio speaks to a media landscape in which offending “political correctness”, i.e, minorities and the oppressed, is a virtue in itself. Hook is free to carry on the good fight against political correctness in his private time. Our sympathy is better saved for women and all those who fall victim to the system he defends.

Pushing the Public Services Card on you and me How the newly-empowered PSC is going to lead us into an “eGovernment” Jack Eustace News analyst

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OMETHING IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN in government administration that will alter how we access public services and where we stand in relation to our government. That is the state’s decision to make the Public Services Card (PSC) instrumental to the life of the average Irish person.

The card is designed to allow Irish citizens to access public services with an ease that is, supposedly, an improvement on previous systems. It involves a prior-authentication that eliminates the need for public services to attain your personal information; you simply present the card at any given point.

Your information is encoded directly onto the card and, consequently, is shared immediately with over 50 state bodies, including the health service and the Gardaí.

The card is currently required for many state services already. It was first issued in 2011 to for collecting social welfare payments. Since then, its use has expanded to include driving theory test applications, first-time adult passport applications, passport replacements, citizenship applications, and access to government services such as social welfare and taxation.

The card acts in conjunction with the MyGovID website, an online portal through which public services are accessed. The aim of the PSC is to centralise a person’s information in one place and, in doing so, improve ease of access to public services. The claimed benefits of the card’s widespread use include increased efficiency for people who need access to these services, and an improved ability for the government to identify and eliminate fraud.

Many existing services will

eventually require a card, including dental, aural and optical treatment benefits, all adult passport applications, applications for driving licenses, proof of age, studentgrant applications, and the government’s upcoming online health portal.

Following an increased adoption of the card by the end of next year, it can be expected that further public services will be linked with the card and concomitant possession of it.

Currently, 3 million people have the card and 50 government bodies have access to the information stored on each PSC. Abuse of this database has already become a real concern; in late July, a member of the Gardaí came under investigation for the illegal abuse of private information, having accessed personal data without permission on the Garda PULSE database.

The question of whether the government is acting beyond its powers has been raised by, among others, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald.

Strictly speaking, the introduction of the card as a component of various public services is not outside the realms of the constitution. However, McDonald has made the point that the card can legally only be introduced as an option, not as the sole avenue to access.

By redesigning public services to be accessed only by the card, the government is taking a step outside the scope of its powers. There is no existing law that requires possession of a identity card before one can acquire a passport or a driver’s licence: that is, there is no requirement in law that should force Irish people to possess this card.

These rules that will affect the lives of Irish citizens are a result of administrative reconfigurations, a result of the government sidestepping its

obligations to the constitution.

The PSC may be a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, specifically of Article 8 which states that a public authority may not violate the private life of an individual except in cases

“

The government is presenting the Irish people with a supposedly voluntary card that they cannot realistically avoid.

of “national security, public safety or the economic wellbeing of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”.

By making the PSC a necessity for anyone desiring to access equally necessary public services, the government is inevitably accessing private information of an individual.

An argument has to be made against the card being rolled out in a forced way at all. The government is arguing for increased efficiency, but is efficiency worth a colossal security risk when it comes to information that is so important to the individual? Logically speaking, if a citizen has a birth certificate, a passport, and a PPS number, should they need anything else?

A total upheaval of established systems and a large gap placed in the defence of our private lives are unnecessary. If the government wishes to introduce the PSC as an alternative option to access certain services, then that is the state’s prerogative.

However, depriving people of the choice to not get the card is wrong. Being strong-armed by the state to essentially surrender elements of our private lives falls into an uncomfortably shady realm.

On August 31, the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, stated that the PSC is not a national identity card and that the government has no plans to roll out a national ID card any time soon. On the surface, the PSC is less invasive than a national ID card. The latter can be asked for by police and army officials, requiring people to present it when asked to do so. The PSC does not empower state officials with this right.

However, the PSC is instrumental in the genesis of an “e-government” system that

forces Irish citizens to possess this card. Such systems already exist to a certain degree: they are the means by which state bodies use information-technologies to interact with themselves and outside parties. The problem is that these outside parties are numerous and are not restricted. By putting such an e-government system in such an important position directly handling an individual’s highly sensitive personal information and by making this something that we have no choice over, the state is creating a gap in our personal defences.

The government has organised these developments so that the changes being made to public services are technically constitutional. But because the very ability to even leave the country is impossible without the card with its possession soon required to apply for a new passport, it becomes a necessity.

When this same requirement involves linking an individual’s private information with an insecure network of various governmental bodies, the card becomes a form of national ID card in all but name.

that will both centralise and expose the personal information of thousands of Irish citizens? They are demanding that people give up their information to a vulnerable system.

In April, the Irish Independent published a report on the record-breaking number of data-privacy complaints that were made to the Data Protection Commissioner in the last two years.

The number of complaints has risen from 932 in 2015 to an all-time high of 1,479 this year. One of the chief causes of data violation according to the Data Protection Commissioner, Helen Dixon, is the leaking of various data from government bodies to private investigators. She described such instances of compromised data security as “ongoing”.

These life-changing series of plans are about to become a concrete reality. This change will completely alter the relationship between we, the people, and our government, when the extension Public Services Card starts to take effect.

If there are such prominent leaks in Irish data security, how can the government in any way justify a scheme

The government is presenting the Irish people with a supposedly voluntary card that they cannot realistically avoid. This will not be the sort of “big thing” that happens to other people. It is going to happen to you, and to me, and soon.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Comment

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In praise of cycling Instead of a hard border, there Life on two wheels can be chaotic, but cycling has many benefits Dominic Neau Staff writer

Cyclists are generally disliked by all other road users.

We tend to dismiss red lights and footpaths as inconveniences that hinder the way to our destination. We frustrate other road users with our lack of knowledge and reckless disregard for our own safety.

For many cyclists, helmets are optional, and indicating is occasional.

We weave through the traffic from left to right, scanning eagerly for a path through the engines and pedestrians. Unpredictable and impatient. Taxi drivers growl as we cut in front of them to turn right, or bypass them in their slow inner city crawl. At the right hours of the day, we trek through Dublins streets in packs, lining ourselves in threes or fours along the single cycling lane.

Deliveroo cyclists power up one way streets and pedestrians jump sheepishly out of our way as we climb onto the footpath to skip the traffic.

We can even be seen cutting through Temple Bar for a quick shortcut, breaking our teeth on the famous cobble stones and scaring tourists along our way.

Yet the sins of the few should not represent the many. Most cyclists follow the rules of the road. We are acutely aware of the horsepower that drives the double decker buses and taxis as they shoulder through the narrow streets pushing to meet their deadlines. We adhere to the rules in the hope they will keep us safe.

In fact, we are often the victims of a city that struggles to accommodate us. The daily battle with the elements and the city's notorious hills aside, the daily commute can be a dangerous sport for many that adopt two wheels.

We are vulnerable to the frus-

Brexit represents a historic crossroads for our island Étain Sweeney

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YCLING IN DUBLIN IS AN EXPERIENCE of itself. It is an eco friendly, healthy and efficient mode of transport in a city that with an evergrowing population. Yet it still remains a difficult and hazardous task to successfully navigate the city by bike.

Every day, cyclists face the challenges of a city that runs on engines, of unforgiving elements and of the infrastructure that cannot effectively incorporate them into the road community.

should be a united Ireland Staff writer

I trations of a driving community that waste their fuel in the city’s inner traffic.

As a regular cyclist for two years and a Deliveroo driver for one I have experienced my share of aggression. Personally I have been driven onto the footpath by impatient cars. Taxis have rolled down their windows beside me to scream profanities into my ear. Car doors have been opened into my face. Even pedestrians have stepped in front of me. Incidents like these are common, for even the most occasional of cyclists.

Moreso than the other road users, however, our problem is a serious lack of infrastructure. Dublins cycling systems are incomplete and at times dangerous. Cycle lanes are vulnerable places to be: cars use them as parking spaces, taxis as collection points.

Some cycle lanes suddenly merge with either the footpath or the road, forcing the unsuspecting to weave into oncoming pedestrians, or worse, traffic.

Yet the benefits of cycling are clear, which is why so many have taken it up. In the last three years the amount of cyclists on dublins streets has increased by five percent.

The Coca Cola bikes that line many of Dublin’s streets have the city by storm. Cycling frees up the other public transport systems that run through Dublin, improving the flow of everyone’s commutes.

It is also an answer for an environmentally conscious city seeking to reduce its environmental footprint. Residents benefit from the reduction in noise and air pollution that burdens Dublin’s atmosphere, and tourists appreciate a calmer, cleaner destination.

For a student, it is the cheapest and quickest way to travel.

With the advent of sites like done deal and gumtree, it is common practise to buy a decent bike for as little as fifty euro. No tests or lessons are necessary. Neither are servicing or petrol.

It is also an enjoyable way to travel. I still remember my first journey into the centre of Dublin - the thrill of freewheeling between the cars and buses on my first day of college, and watching the city as it emerged from the trees and houses that line Rathmines. The buildings grew taller, older before my eyes.

It was a defining moment for me as a student; one when I felt like I belonged here.

Things are improving for us cyclists, with several new cycling paths all around the city centre, and further plans to install over 200km of cycling lanes in the next couple of years. Even the Luas works have sought to incorporate cycling lanes into their development.

Yet progress remains fragmented and slow. Dublin is lagging behind its European counterparts. As it scrambles to modernise itself as quickly as its competitors, it faces decisions regarding its infrastructure that will define the city for years to come.

Us cyclists should not be forgotten in this age of mechanisation. Although the city rushes to build itself around an intricate public transport system it should not forget that sometimes the simplest solutions can make all the difference - that sometimes, a modest bike is all you need.

SIT IN THE HARSH LIGHT OF the television, watching the mounds of dried wooden pallets and defaced tricolours of the Twelfth on across my screen. It strikes me like a match against the hard edge of a matchbox: now, more than ever, the British government is playing with fire.

Calls for a frictionless, seamless border dividing Ireland echo from European governments. But, in the vacuum of political airs and graces, these calls do not translate to reality.

An exit from the customs union is still proposed for Britain and for Northern Ireland, another special status. But in reality, no matter how much we want it to, it will never work. The customs union allows goods, once they have met all requirements of the EU, to move freely between member states thereafter.

However, should Britain, in the aftermath of Brexit, establish trade deals with nonEU members, there is a fear that imported goods would start to seep into the EU via the border.

So there is then the potential for goods that have not been exposed to the same regulations entering the EU market. Even if there are rigorous checks imposed, even if there is some sort of online registration system implemented to avoid regular checks, something will always be required at the border for goods that have not been registered.

For businesses this means delays and more paperwork than it’s worth.

Furthermore, a border, be it hard or soft, means unemployment. It means that the places initially proposed for 385 cancer patients crossing it are no longer secure, that farms and homes are divided.

It means people who belng2 nowhere. For those who work on the other side, the delays of a daily crossing could make cross-border employment unfeasible.

The impact on agriculture would be catastrophic. Farms that span both sides of the border would be subject to both EU directives and British agricultural laws which are unlikely to be compatible.

According to BBC reporting

on local fears surrounding the prospect of a hard border, each week over 5000 sheep from Northern Ireland are sent to factories in the South.

The implications cross-border agribusiness would have for food safety would make farming and distribution so complex that it would have devastating effects on farmers’ livelihoods.

Moreover, if World Trade Organisation (WTO) tariffs were enforced at the harshest level, cross-border agribusiness would quickly become futile. For farmers who straddle the border and depend so much on the EU single farm payment, a border could leave them cut-off with broken trade links and no EU funding. Those who have only ever worked in agriculture and who lack the skills to work in any other industry would be forced to continue in an impossible environment. Farmers, in short, are forced into poverty.

A border spells disaster for those in the South, too. 40% of southern chicken is processed in Northern Ireland.

Southern wheat is also processed in the North. Even Guinness travels over the border to be packaged before being exported from the South.

The politicians that take to podiums once election time looms condemn the North as an economic burden. According to the British Treasury, the cost of maintaining Northern Ireland is £18.3 billion. But, time and time again, the analysis of what this figure consists of is overlooked.

As calculated by An Phoblacht, £2.9 billion (€3.30 bn) of it is spent on “Bank of England debt, defence, etc” and £1.1 billion (€1.25 bn) on the depreciation of British capital stock. Meanwhile, revenue generated in the North is estimated at £15.6 billion (€17.7 bn). This breaks the real cost down to approximately £2.7 billion and that excludes the multinationals that generate revenue in Northern Ireland but book their tax in London.

Furthermore, this figure excludes the economic benefits of trade in a United Ireland under a single currency, extended fishing rights, fewer administrative costs and more.

Apart from the economics, the Unionists in Northern Ireland remain the elephant

What does Trinity stand for?

The provost’s rankings-focused strategy is proving successful in some respects, but it has far-reaching implications for Trinity.

Rory O'Sullivan Comment editor

I

N THE NEXT WEEK, THOUSANDS of freshers will be going to orientation lectures. They’re going to be told, as you were, and as I was, that they’re lucky to be here - that they’re privileged to be going to the one of the great, internationally renowned universities.

In the last number of years, Trinity has gone through a great deal of confusion over the meaning of that expression. Any business or political expert will say that in order to succeed, an institution must have a clarity of purpose. It must know what it’s trying to be.

Our ambition is to be a “university of global consequence”, yet its impact is far below its aspirations. We’re somewhere around 100th according to the best available global measure. The Times and QS rankings get more criticism than they deserve; both balance reputation, citations and teaching - they do so imperfectly, but well.

They’re the best measure there is, and by no means a bad one.

And according to them both we’re circling 100th. Of global consequence we are not. Nor are we the university that offers the best or anything near the best student experience: I don’t know about you, but none of my friends and family in UCC have ever described anything close to my experiences with Trinity’s IT

network and Academic Registry. Anyone who’s still using TCDwifi and hasn’t borrowed the details for someone else’s eduroam account has no idea what it really means to live.

Wilde for no reason other than because it was the nearest place for men of Wilde’s class to get an education, and one of those men happened to be Oscar Wilde.

Our departments and student services are underfunded and constantly vulnerable.

A decade ago, an incoming JF English student could expect 12 tutorials per term per module; now it’s 7. Inhibiting those services is a sclerotic and heaving bureaucracy, through which bizarre staffing decisions and a general atmosphere of inertia prevent most things from getting done.

It’s in this sense that the story behind the rankings - the story of Patrick Prendergast’s new branding, his rankings committee, and the controversy that it has all generated - are actually about much more than Trinity’s strategy.

They represent an attempt to define it: to end the struggle for self-definition that Trinity has faced since the beginning of the Celtic Tiger. It’s no wonder that Op-Eds by the likes of David Norris and Seán Barrett on the rankingsrace and the commercialisation of Trinity are so frequent and impassioned. They’re part of a fight for Trinity’s soul.

We are, in short, a university with deep problems and a razor-thin sense of who we are. Our brand is our history: Oscar Wilde, the Book of Kells, the Long Room.

But without a sense of how we relate to those traditions, they mean nothing. The university of Oscar Wilde isn’t much more than a museum if it in no respect resembles the kind of university that could produce someone like Wilde.

But Trinity finding itself now in who it was before is impossible for deeper reasons. Who it was, was the university of the wealthy Protestant Ascendancy, who to many represented British male rule. As women were excluded, as war raged and people starved, Trinity’s Fellows drank port - and published very little in the way of research. It was, for example, less than 2 generations ago that the Hist finally allowed women into the society. The embarrassing fact is that Trinity most likely produced

“

Our entire ability to be whatever it is that Trinity would like to be is, whether we like it or not, a hostage to the rankings

It’s hard to know in the long run who will win out or is ultimately right, but the evidence of today’s rankings show that in spite of their annoying tendency to characterise every tiny victory as monumental, the strategy of the provost’s camp is working. There are no more panicked assertions that we could fall out of the top 200. The decline has been reversed, and Trinity is rising, and this without any meaningful intercession from the government in the 3rd level funding crisis. Though the number of CAO applications fell this year, the number of applications to Trinity increased.

The other point, which is inconvenient and often forgotten, but which any major SU figure will hammer home after only a few minutes of conversation, is that rankings matter. They matter whether we like it or not. They’re how governments and businesses measure returns on investment, and how students, particularly international students, particularly wealthy international students whose fees could pay for several impoverished students, decide where to go. They’re how academics, who bring up teaching and research standards, who bring interested colleagues and doctoral students with them, decide where to go. Our entire ability to be whatever it is that Trinity would like to be is, whether we like it or not, a hostage to the rankings system. For us to ignore it would be to bite that hand that feeds.

Photo by Joe McCallion

Art by Jenny Corcoran in the room, in 10 Downing Street, if you will. They must not be left behind. As it stands, many unionists in Northern Ireland are living in a state that is not representative of what they want. LGBT unionists are oppressed; unionists are being forced to cut ties with the EU, even though only one unionist party supported this action; and unionist farmers and businesses are seeing their industries plunged into economic chaos.

And yes, there are those unionists who don’t feel Northern Irish, but British in every sense. But there are also those in Ireland who feel Polish or Nigerian or American in every sense. A United Ireland does not mean the suppression of the cultures of the people it hosts. Rather, it means embracing the colourful and varied nature of this island.

By establishing a United Ireland we would be establishing a state that is inclusive of all its citizens, because as we stand now, divided, we are missing opportunities for our island to reach its full potential. Admittedly, it is a rocky road that lies ahead. It will take time and tolerance.

But, it will mean a united island; an island better for all its citizens, North and South.

Stormont is left idle. Northern Ireland balances on the edge of a snap election. And after? More talks. Talks that lead to elections, elections that lead to talks. And then one day, someone will say time is up. And it will be time to go back. They'll build small huts to house uniforms. British customs on one side, Irish on the other. Just like the good old days.

But we have the opportunity to stop ourselves falling back in time. We have the opportunity to take a step towards the future we dreamed of so many years ago. We cannot let ourselves be bought and sold. All change is frightening. But we cannot be frightened of what the people are voting for, of what people are working towards, of equality.

As a new wave of interest washes in, with its eyes on us and on the border, I dare you to disappoint the spectators. Don't give them a show; give them equality. Give them a state you're proud of. Give them a United Ireland.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Op-ed

17

Charlottesville: Tolerate or Editorial Condemn?

Freshers' week Tolerance and resistance should not be mutually F exclusive, argues Dr. Gavin Morrison.

Dr. Gavin Morrison Teaching fellow, TCD School of Political Science

T

HE IMAGES FROM CHARLOTTESVILLE THIS SUMMER were truly horrific. The actions of white supremacists and neoNazis in killing a counterprotester, making racist, anti-Semitic, and intolerant statements shocked the conscience of the United States. The dark underbelly of US society was uncovered for all to see. There is absolutely no questioning that what these violent fascistic individuals did was wholly and unquestionably wrong.

The only people equivocating about these have completely detached from any coherent understanding of right and wrong. I will not seek to go through all of the ways in which their actions were wrong. Instead I will discuss how we should respond to such vile actions.

The concept of tolerance is often considered to be central to any liberal society.

In a liberal society that respects individual autonomy it is necessary that we allow people to form their own opinions, pursue their own goals in life, think what they choose, and to express themselves in public. The rights to do these things are central to our understanding of what it means to be a liberal and open society. We must tolerate those who we disagree with. What happened at Charlottesville, however, stretches the concept of tolerance to its breaking point. Mary Robinson has described tolerance as “the first and necessary step in overcoming fear of the stranger” (The Furrow, 1996). This is what places tolerance at the heart of a liberal society – we are diverse, varied, different – tolerance is what allows us to live together and to thrive as a society. By tolerating each other we ensure that society is somewhere that everyone can be comfortable and themselves. They can pursue their own ends, live their own lives, and we all benefit.

Tolerance renders our society a diverse and lively place – we all reap the rewards of diversity.

Without tolerance society will lack diversity. This is what makes the challenge of Charlottesville so difficult – without tolerance we lose a big part of what is important in society. But the views and actions of the neo-Nazis and white supremacists at Charlottesville seek to undermine tolerance itself – so how do we protect our diverse and vibrant society from hate speech without ourselves undermining tolerance?

Hate speech, as seen at Charlottesville, is defined

by Jeremy Waldron as something that actively diminishes the dignity of its target audiences. The Charlottesville neo-Nazis actively sought to diminish the dignity of their targets – anyone who is not white – and to present American society as inhospitable for people of colour and ethnic minorities. This is what challenges toleration – as Robinson goes on “it [toleration] is not indefinitely self-sustaining. It provides immediate breathing time for both parties.”

When what we are being asked to tolerate is intolerance then this breathing time is not possible and the ultimate goal of tolerance – “recognition, acceptance and celebration of the stranger” – recedes from the realm of the possible. We may then think that the answer is to jettison tolerance – to not tolerate the intolerant. Unfortunately it is not always as simple as this.

Sacrificing our toleration of others by legally repressing their ability to express their views (even hateful and intolerant ones) is sacrificing part of what is valuable about our society and culture.

“

When we refuse to invite, or un-invite, a controversial speaker we do not violate their free speech, rather we exercise our right to resist hateful individuals.

In a 1981 article titled ‘A Right to Do Wrong’, Waldron argues that if we are committed to the importance of rights, then sometimes we have to accept that people have a right to do the wrong thing – to support the British National Party, to rudely rebuff someone on the street, or to protest the removal of the statue of a deceased violent slave-owner. We are committed to this – to allowing people to be and do wrong in our opinion. In Charlottesville neo-Nazis exercised their rights to be wrong. How should we respond to this? What is the correct response to someone

CARTOON

RESHERS’ WEEK IS AN EXCITING TIME but it also comes with its own stress: for those moving up to Dublin who are leaving their friends behind and living independently for the first time, starting college can be an anxious time.

who is so egregiously wrong?

Should we tolerate them?

The answer is yes. However, this does not mean that we should do nothing. To tolerate something is to firstly recognise that we believe it to be wrong. We cannot tolerate something with which we agree. We can, however, tolerate the individuals who are wrong whilst actively opposing and resisting what they say and stand for. A good example of this is the small German town of Wunsiedel which found an ingenious way to both tolerate Neo-Nazis whilst resisting everything they stand for. They sponsored the neo-Nazis who had organised a march so that the further they walked the more money was raised for a charity that specialised in helping people to escape neo-Nazi organisations. They tolerated the neo-Nazis – they were allowed, even encouraged, to march – but they also resisted everything that neo-Nazis stand for.

How can we put this into the Charlottesville context?

One of the most common arguments in favour of free speech comes originally from J.S. Mill – the incorrigibility of knowledge thesis – that any opinion might contain a kernel of truth. In the case of neo-Nazis this is clearly false – there is nothing true about their opinions. However, we still maintain a commitment to free speech. This is because being able to speak our minds without fear of persecution is an important component of showing respect for our individual dignity. A society that prevents people from being able to speak their minds is a society that does not respect individual dignity.

Similarly, neo-Nazis that engage in hate speech do not show respect for individual dignity. So we have a problem – how do we resist Nazi speech and ideology without showing a lack of respect for individual dignity? Simply put, tolerating Nazis does not mean that we cannot, or should not, speak out against them; counter-protest; write op-eds condemning them; and refuse to give them a platform on which to speak. This last option is somewhat controversial – de-platforming controversial speakers has been cited, particularly in a University context, as a violation of free speech. This is false.

A free speech violation is when someone is censored or gagged. When we refuse to invite, or un-invite, a controversial speaker we do not violate their free speech, rather we exercise our right to resist hateful individuals.

Refusing to give a platform to hate is not violating free speech, it is ensuring that society is a hospitable place for minorities and the downtrodden.

So, moving to a conclusion in the context of what happened this summer in Charlottesville, free speech and toleration are central planks of a liberal society.

If we jettison them then we jettison crucial components of what makes our society valuable. However, if we simply stand by and do nothing in the face of such horrifically misguided and hateful actions then we are allowing it to thrive. As Edmund Burke (somewhat apocryphally) is supposed to have said “all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.” We are committed to the right of free speech – so we are committed to the right to say things that are wrong. We are not committed to doing nothing.

So, the answer to the question I proposed in the title of this piece – to tolerate or condemn – is yes. We should tolerate and condemn. We should tolerate that which we believe to be wrong and we should condemn that which we believe to be wrong. To give up toleration is to give up part of the very heart of what makes our society valuable.

To refuse to condemn is to stand by and allow evil to succeed. We must use every weapon in our arsenal to resist the growing tide of populist fascism around the world – this arsenal does not include intolerance; it does include counter-protest, our own speech, and refusing to give a platform to hate. After everything that we have seen over the last few months, the revealing of the dark and racist underbelly of western culture, it is more important than ever that we maintain our ability to tolerate and to build our willingness to resist.

For the past few few years there has unfortunately been a further stress upon those moving up to Dublin. This stress is generated by the worsening accommodation crisis and the ridiculously heady figures those offering a solution to it are demanding.

What is more jarring for those looking for a somewhere to live, at a reasonable price tag, is the sheer amount of abandoned or unused buildings littered around the city.

Add the homelessness crisis to the mix and it’s clear that the word crisis may not be adequate to describe the accommodation issue in Dublin at the moment.

It is not as though buildings are not being constructed: cranes are scattered around the Dublin skyline; the ‘Silicon Docks’ area, the home of Google and Facebook, beneficiaries of our negligible rate of corporation tax , is swelling with large glass structures and luxury apartments.

The sad thing is that it needn’t be like this. Successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments have neglected the need to build social housing or plan for a spike in rental demand.

However, it is not merely incompetence which has brought about the crisis: nearly one in five TDs are landlords. While the crisis places an immense financial stress on incoming students, it also allows landlords to charge astronomical sums without any incentive to ensure the property is correctly maintained.

Enda Kenny wanted Ireland to be the best small country in which to do business; well Dublin is currently the best city in which to charge extortionate rents to those at the mercy of the cruel market forces.

What’s worse is the narrative that the fault lies with those who can’t afford a place to live. That they should simply pull up their bootstraps, or get up earlier in the morning.

This narrative should not become dominant for two reasons: it is classist and, more to the point, not rooted in fact.

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Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

SciTech

Ifeolutembi Fashina examines the value of alternative and complementary medical practises.

18

page .20

Boys wear blue and girls wear pink

Does gender stereotyping cause differences in capabilities between the sexes?

Maeve McCann Staff writer

T

HE EFFECTS OF NATURE AND NURTURE have been a constant debate throughout the history of biology. Are we born a certain way or are we shaped by our environment into who we are? Generally we find the answer is somewhere in the middle but when it comes to the brain things can be quite flexible. The buzz word associated with the science of the brain during the last few years has been plasticity. More and more research shows that, contrary to what researchers had previously thought, our brains change continuously over the course of our lives.

Our external environment and our patterns of behaviour have the ability to change its structure substantially. Having said that, it is still widely considered that when it comes to the brain, our formative learning and developmental years are during early childhood.

This brings us to the effects of gender stereotyping on the capabilities of the sexes.

Every person on this earth has different talents, yet quite often a distinct line is drawn between male and female in terms of understood capability.

For instance, the stereotypes that men are innately better at maths and technology, or that women are more suited to childcare or nursing are widely perpetuated even today. We should ask ourselves, is there truth to these stereotypes and if so why does it exist?

Men and women are born fundamentally different after all: perhaps this is also true for their minds. But what if the way in which we treat men and women is actually the primary influence on their capacity to perform?

A recent two-part BBC television documentary took

place in Lanesend Primary School on the Isle of Wight, where an experiment was carried out on a class of 7 year olds. It was conducted

by Dr Javid Abdelmoneim to find out more about how gender stereotyping affects children in terms of their school performance, communication, empathy and self-confidence. Initial tests before beginning the experiment showed startling results. These included the boys lacking the ability to describe emotions except for anger, the girls having a huge lack of self-belief, and both boys and girls stating very polarised stereotypes of men and women. Many of the girls said that boys were better or cleverer than girls and said that girls were good at being pretty. The boys were similar and thought that men were more successful (because they got to be president) and that girls want to get married and have children.

One of the experiments in the documentary involved two babies, Marnie and Edward who became Oliver and Sophie respectively. The babies were placed in a room full of different toys, and strangers were invited in to come and play with them. It might not be surprising to you that Sophie (actually a boy) was given typical girl toys such as dolls and soft toys, whereas Oliver (actually a girl) was given typical boy toys which were generally more mechanical. You also might expect this to be harmless but in fact when children are given games like Lego that require visuospatial skills to use, after only a short period of time this changes the structure of their brain. One study had a group of girls play tetris intensively for 3 months,with brain scans after this period indicated a thickening of their cortex. This leads us to make an association between those socially determined games children play and their brain development which later on may affect their life

and career. This may explain why a minority of scientists, mathematicians and engineers are women. Women are simply not exposed to the activities that develop certain brain centres throughout their childhood, and as a result are more likely to struggle with science and maths in school.

Influences in children’s lives may also lead to explicit statements like those Nanci in the documentary who said “Boys are cleverer because most mathematicians are boys.” A 7 year old holding this opinion is not likely to believe in her own abilities, and it may mean she is discouraged from trying in maths. It’s also no surprise that women are generally more involved in childcare and household roles because from an early age they are given dolls, tea sets, toy kitchens and toy cleaning kits to play with. In fact, according to the British Office of National Statistics, women do 40% more unpaid housework, including childcare, than men do.

Rippon informs viewers that the brain structure of a male and a female are not different, but rather brains are shaped by experiences. The brain is plastic and so the experience of playing lego could shape a boys brain to suit logic-based pursuits. The experience of making narratives for dolls could shape a girl’s brain to make her more competent verbally. It seems that these gender stereotypes may have been creating people who continue to fit them. Toys however are only one small factor. What about family members who advise on hobbies, who comend and criticise, who nurture children into adulthood?

What if their gender stereotypes, implicit or explicit lead to an imbalance in potential capabilities and roles in adulthood?

A study by economist Dr Seth Stephens‑Davidowitz

looked into our implicit bias towards our own children.

It used google search data to estimate how regularly parents search about their children. It turns out that parents are two and half times more likely to google “Is my son gifted?” than “Is my daughter gifted?” Even though in America, where the study was conducted, girls are 9% more likely to be in enrolled in gifted schools than boys.

Parents also more frequently search whether their son is stupid than their daughters too. More worryingly still, parents were twice as likely to google, “Is my daughter overweight?” than “Is my son overweight?”. This is despite the fact that more boys are overweight than girls. Parents are also one-and-a-half times more likely to ask whether their daughter is beautiful than whether their son is handsome.

The problems faced by men and women today differ. For example there is a sex divide in those committing suicide in Ireland: in 2015 365 men committed suicide compared with 76 women. This may be explained by the fact that from an early age, boys are lead to think that they must be strong and tough, which means not crying or talking about their emotions. If we put boys in t-shirts saying “trouble maker”, what are we really telling them? That they must bottle up their emotions except for anger?

Or, for example, the few female CEOs in the top 100 companies. There are more CEOs called John than there are women CEOs. So if girls are put in t-shirts saying “beautiful butterfly”, what are they being told? That they only serve to be pretty things in this world run by men.

Personally I hate that everyone is still constrained by the categories of their gender. It stops people either reaching their full potential, or simply being who they want

Art by Harriet Bruce

to be. Gender stereotyping affects every aspect of our lives, from our brain structure and mental health to our occupations as well as family roles and relationships. I hope

that soon we are all able to remove the constraints put in place by gender stereotyping. wI am also aware that there are more genders than just male and female. If you

identify as another gender I apologise for not exploring the minefield that gender stereotyping must cause for you. Yet I hope you would agree that if we release the

ed, resulting in different appearances depending on the time of year. This degeneration was evident in some of the bones that Angst and her team were looking at. The samples with evidence of moulting had a small layer of bone deposit over the LAGs, suggesting that they moulted soon after the summer months.

Much remains to be discov-

ered about the dodo. Angst and her team will be striving to trace more of the life cycle of the dodo and how it lived before human intervention, but the findings of Angst and her team represents the exciting potential of learning more about extinct animals by basing our understanding of them on the scientific investigation of physical evidence, rather

than sometimes dubious or confusing historical accounts, giving us a more realistic view of these extinct animals’ lives and exciting possibilities for future rediscovery of the past.

What did the dodo do?

Retracing the life-cycle of a luckless bird Peter Cox Contributing writer

T

HE DODO HAS LONG BEEN A symbol of human-caused extinction, to the point that this doomed bird has been elevated to the status of an icon and the subject of public and scientific interest alike. While the dodo was hunted by humans, it is believed that the introduction of invasive species such as rats, cats, deer and monkeys to the Mauritius, once the dodos home, were the actual cause of its extinction. The last dodo was seen in the wild in 1662, less than a hundred years after dodos were first discovered, and the ill-fated bird’s quick descent into oblivion gave 17th century naturalists insufficient time to record its ecology and better understand the life cycle of this fascinating animal.

Delphine Angst and her team of researchers in Cape Town University have set out to rectify this. Using histology, the examination of minute cells and tissues, the researchers have examined a set of 22 bones, all but one being from the hind legs of several dodos of different sexes and stages of development in order to uncover more about the dodo.

This was a rare and exciting opportunity as many of the dodo specimens had been lost or destroyed during the Victorian era.

Analysing Lines of arrested growth (LAGs) in the dodo bones, which are thought to be as a result of periods of food shortage, has allowed Angst and her team to read the bones in a similar way to how the rings in tree trunks are studied, using them to assign a yearly life-cycle for the dodos. In Mauritius, the months of November to March have a harsh climate with heavy winds and rains. As a result, food is scarce. Angst worked

“

Historical accounts of the dodo’s appearance have always been a source of contradiction and discrepancy

from the assumption that the LAGs in the bones’ tissue represent these months of sparse food. The researchers looked for signs of the periods that formed the dodo’s annual cycle in the bone built in between the yearly LAGs. Originally, it had been proposed that the ovulation period for the dodos occurred immediately after the summer months. This was due to a report from 1602 from Captain Van Westzanen describing the dodo’s meat as tasty. It was assumed that it being tasty was a result of the abundance of food and the dodos would have evolved to reproduce during these times.

However, Angst and her team have found differently, female dodos produced a type of bone tissue specifically used to make shells for their eggs. So, by looking at the female dodo bones, it was also possible to calculate in what period the dodos carried their young. The evidence suggests that dodo’s laid their eggs midway through the calmer months, around August. The eggs then hatched in September and grew rapidly to reach sexual maturity before the cyclone season started again in November to January. Although they reached their full mass within the first year their bones continued to mature over several years like many modern birds. This strategy was probably not a weakness due to the lack of predators on the island. The size of the female bones, distinguished by the bone tissue specifically used in ovulation, did not differ greatly from the male bones suggesting that the males and females did not differ physically either.

Historical accounts of the dodo’s appearance have always been a source of contradiction and discrepancy.

With sailors in the 16th and 17th century describing them as having grey or black plumage and others stating they

had only a few feathers. Dodos moulting would explain these discrepancies in the historical reports of sailors. Growing new feathers requires more calcium than usual and this calcium came from inside the bones; penguins of today use the same strategy when they moult. Angst and her team have reported that dodo bones show that, indeed, they moult-

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

SciTech

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A beginner’s guide to understanding the apocalypse In light of recent natural disasters across the globe, Peter Cox sets out to explore the harsh reality of climate change

Peter Cox Contributing Writer

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N RECENT WEEKS, WE HAVE SEEN catastrophic natural disasters worldwide with hurricanes Irma and Harvey leaving large areas devastated. The effects of climate change are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Yet the reasons for them are still being debated in the public forum. Just recently, Kirk Cameron claimed that the hurricanes were a “display of God’s immense power” and actress Jennifer Lawrence found it hard not to “feel Mother Nature’s rage and wrath”.

Neither of these people are experts in meteorology. Few of us are. Thus the public debate on climate change has been one that is poorly informed.

It has been my experience that the majority on either side of the discussion rely on faith arguments, with little understanding of the evidence. Climate change has the power to threaten our very existence on this planet and is immensely complex - so how can we begin to understand it?

The Apocalypse as a Political Issue Having a largely uninformed populace in relation to climate change allows it to be turned into a partisan issue. It is an issue derived from solid irrefutable reasoning, based entirely on evidence, and yet we see politicians in the USA and in the UK denying the human-caused acceleration of climate change. In the UK, 18 MPs in the previous parliament denounced human-caused climate change publicly - 16 of whom were Conservative. Part of the confusion may be that we are bombarded with what appear to be disconnected facts that mean little by themselves.

Without much explanation as to how conclusions were reached, it is easy to believe that facts are fabricated.

Sometimes information on climate change even seems to be contradictory. In addition, it is hard to see how we, in such a small country as Ireland, can make a difference or how we will be affected. However, a working knowledge and understanding of the science of climate change isn’t beyond anyone.

The Apocalypse as a Hot Earth Let’s start with increased temperature on land. On average, the temperatures on land have increased by 1˚C

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Climate change has the power to threaten our very existence on this planet and is immensely complex – so how can we begin to understand it?

globally from pre-industrial levels and 0.8˚C in Ireland.

Let’s be honest and admit it’s hard to know what exactly this means. Even if we were to guess about the effect, it sounds small. To introduce some context, the global mean temperature during the last Ice Age was about 5˚C lower than it is today, that Ice Age being about 11,700 years ago.

It took about 11,550 for this measurement to rise by 4˚C. Since then, in less than 150 years, that temperature has increased by a full 1˚C globally.

How do we know what the temperature was 11,700 years ago? It is calculated by looking at marine animal remains.

Foraminifera (a type of marine plankton) create their shells using oxygen. There are two types of oxygen that are important in this process; oxygen 16 and 18. Oxygen 16 evaporates more easily than 18. The ratio between the two types in the little plankton allows scientists to calculate the temperature of the time when they died, in the area where the remains were found.

So, how will it affect us?

Warmer weather in Ireland can’t be anything but a good thing, right? Not exactly.

The issue is not so much the temperature increase, but rather the speed at which this increase occurs. Ecosystems evolve over millennia and do not adapt quickly, meaning animals and plants being put under pressure by rapidly changing conditions will not be capable of surviving. All that pales when compared to the human devastation seen in the US, and so how will it affect us directly?

The Apocalypse as Floods

Rainfall. How does a warmer world change that? Warm air holds more water, thus prolonging the time before the rain falls, and increasing the volume when it does. This means an increase in flooding across the country. The recent devastating flood in the northwest is evidence for this. Michael Creed, Minister for Agriculture commented: “I think with climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events of this kind and it is questionable what any State and what this government can do.”

Significant changes to the timing of floods have also been measured across 38 countries, in a recent study collecting data from over 4000 hydrometric stations going back 70 years. The data suggests that the west coast of Ireland will flood later and the east will flood earlier. This will affect the farming yields, water supplies and infrastructure like hydroelectric dams. All this change from as little as an 0.8˚C increase in Irish land temperature.

The Apocalypse as Empty Oceans The Irish fishing industry is under threat from climate change too. CO2 is increasing

ocean acidity. The oceans are thought to mitigate the amount of carbon dioxide we produce - as they have stored about a third of the CO2 created by humans since the industrial revolution.

However we now know that CO2 has increased the acidity of the oceans by 30%, a hundred times faster than has been seen in millions of years. In these acidic conditions animals that use calcium cannot form shells as easily. These animals are an integral part of the food chain and they no longer live in the deeper areas where they used to. This is already affecting marine food chains. It is also important to point out that there is no known way to reduce the acidification of the oceans. It is a wound that will take millennia to heal and is getting worse.

The Apocalypse in Ireland Seemingly contradictory information can cause doubt as people either think they don’t understand the information, or that the information is wrong. Here is what we know in Ireland.

Ireland lies very far north – further than parts of Canada which suffer from extreme

cold. The reason why Ireland has a milder climate than some more southerly areas is largely due to the Gulf Stream.

It works as a cycle of warm water traveling at the top of the ocean towards the Arctic.

Cooled water travels back to the tropics underneath.

It is this cycle that powers the stream. If lighter fresh water is introduced to this system it rises to the top and breaks the pattern. An influx of freshwater from melting ice could be doing this. Alternatively, in some areas of the Gulf Stream the salinity has increased because evaporation has increased, and rainfall has decreased. Whichever the cause, the effects are obvious: since the 1950’s the Gulf stream has slowed markedly.

These complex systems are confusing, and can make you question if we know as much as we think we do. However, admitting what isn’t known does not diminish what is.

Is Ireland really adding to the problem? As of 2015, Ireland imported 85% of our energy, 97% of which was fossil fuels. The Irish government agreed to reduce our CO2 emissions by 20% under 2005 levels by 2020. The EPA has

stated that we are projected to reduce our emissions by 6-11%.

We are one of only four EU members that are set to break their commitments. This also affects us economically, as the punishment for not reaching the goals will mean 100’s of millions in fines.

It is easy to think that living in a mild climate, we are not going to be adversely affected by climate change. Or that there is room for doubt. It is something that can be seen as a problem for others to solve and that a small nation such as ours cannot make a difference. These assumptions are wrong. We are already seeing the effects of climate change and we are adding meaningfully to them. It can be easy to proclaim religion or some greater consciousness as responsible for the events happening, and it can also be comforting, but we must admit that there is only one conscious force behind these events. Our own.

Pills and potions Ifeolutembi Fashina examines the value of alternative and complementary medical practises Ifeolutembi Fashina Contributing Writer

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LTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICAL (A&CM) practices have experienced a surge in popularity as well as longstanding criticism. The recent decision of the British health service not to cover such treatments brings this issue to prominence. These practices are often accompanied by emotional guidance and are rooted in indigenous knowledge; beliefs, religions and cultures. What constitutes alternative medicine differs round the world. While regions apply this form of medicine at different rates, trends suggest that those in more rural areas and poor and middle-income countries tend to rely more heavily on A&CM due to indigenous beliefs, inability to access modern medicines and the longstanding existence of these forms of therapy.

The A&CM treatments for physical and mental ailments date back to ancient times, and in South East Asia, Africa, South America and the Caribbean were the main means of healthcare before globalization. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and independent researchers have established that many countries still practice alternative and complementary medicine at significant levels.

Usually, knowledgeable individuals in these societies

passed down knowledge of local herbs and other treatments and apply their know-how in community healthcare. This knowledge transfer still occurs, as recorded by scientists, in countries such as Benin Republic and Gabon where indigenes administer local herbs to treat children suffering from malaria, diarrhoea and respiratory illnesses. Several countries in Asia have opted to integrate traditional practices with modern medicine, with India especially providing formal education in the area.

People in North America and parts of Europe also utilise A&CM. This has been attributed to a lack of confidence in modern medicine and the fear of adverse effects of chemically derived drugs.

Common forms of complementary therapies adopted in the West include acupuncture, dietary supplements and homeopathy.

Opinions differ on whether the effects of treatments such as homeopathy and acupuncture are more than placebo effects. The scepticism of the scientists towards these forms of therapy is not due to spite, but rather stems from the lack of empirical information. To understand this, one must be aware of the process of modern drug development which involves clinical trials to examine drug efficacy. The quantities of therapeutic molecules required for treatment must be determined and also the

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Opinions differ on whether the effects of treatments such as homeopathy and acupuncture are more than placebo effects.

specific effect they have on the patient’s condition.

Many ancient herbal therapies formed the basis of present day medications, as pharmacists derive many basic drugs through extraction and isolation of molecules from herbs. For example, the painkiller paracetamol was developed from the acetylsalicylic acid present in willow bark used traditionally to treat pain. This process of isolation ensures that only the desired bioactive molecules are obtained and reduce the probability of side effects.

the physiological effects of acupuncture on the brain may be similar to those observed on admission of placebos to patients. Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) scans on the brain show that placebos stimulate neurotransmission paths similar to those taken by opioids and marijuana.

Therefore, the relief patients seemingly obtain from nonherbal treatments could be attributed to the placebo effect or a yet-to-be fully understood function of human physiology.

Treatments such as acupuncture rely on the degree of pain relief and mood upliftment reported by individuals, which are both subjective and difficult to quantify. The use of dietary supplements, homeopathy, and similar treatments have not yielded convincing results in terms of efficacy; however, people use them and report them to be effective.

Investigations into the efficiency of dietary supplements have also yielded contradictory results in studies. Finally, variation in individual drug metabolism due to genetic differences is not accounted for in traditional and complementary medicine, unlike in modern medicine.

This suggestion is not farfetched when considering studies carried out in the 2000s on Inflammatory bowel disorder (IBS) sufferers whereby patients received sham acupuncture. Better pain relief was reported by those given sham acupuncture in comparison to those who had no treatment at all. The placebo effect was also tested in a study on asthma patients, with placebo recipients (fake inhalers) reporting greater relief than their physical measures indicated.

This suggests that there is some human factor which plays a role in the not-fullyunderstood placebo effect and may explain some of the cures reported by users of complementary medicine.

Because complement treatments have not originated in scientifically verifiable processes, it is difficult to quantify their effects in large scale studies.

However, a series of recent studies have suggested that

Hence, the draw of these alternative medicines in Western countries could be the human factor or exhibition of compassion by the health personnel involved.

Countries where alternative medicines is more mainstream

could be continuing the process of knowledge production interrupted by the introduction of modern medication by older and new forms of globalization. The WHO, being attentive to the potential advantages of A&CM, has formulated policies that regulate alternative medicines and integrate them with mainstream healthcare

worldwide. However, the advantages of well-understood modern medical treatments should not be overlooked, and should be utilised fully by individuals suffering from serious conditions. As science is an ever-evolving field, the role of alternative medicine could be redefined, upon understanding more of its effects on the body.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

SciTech

20

The Hyperloop

Science fiction or the future of transport?

Daire Brady Contributing writer

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HE IDEA OF TRANSPORTING PEOPLE via sealed tubes has existed for over 150 years and is a concept often featured in science fiction, both past and present. Pneumatic trains were even tested in London’s Underground in the 1860’s for a while. They are perceived as a form of fast, efficient transport – everything our own Dublin Bus is not.

Indeed, as a sci-fi concept, it seems so outlandish an idea that engineers and scientists might be reluctant to take on such an advanced project.

However, a lot of things we have today would seem outlandish to a spectator from 1967. Did they imagine the internet, prosthetic limbs, GPS or the latest iPhone? It is more likely that people imagined a future with robot butlers, flying cars, chrome everything and computers weighing one tonne as opposed to 30 tonnes.

The point is, in our timeline it can be difficult not to project the present onto our imagination of the future. Back to the Future, for example, does just that in its 1989 sequel where the depiction of 2015 includes Jaws 19 showing in cinemas and fax machines in every room of the household.

It takes a particular type of person to take an outlandish idea and convince the world it will work. These people are usually scientists and engineers with the know-how, but also entrepreneurs and business people with the ability to turn eyes in places where it matters. Elon Musk is a name

associated with big companies like Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, and the Hyperloop transportation system. When asked whether he identified with Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla – the great rival inventors of the 19th century – he said he was “more of an Edison man”. In his words, “Edison brought his stuff to market and made those inventions accessible to the world, whereas Tesla didn’t really do that.” Musk’s ultimate goal is to reduce the “risk of human extinction” by “making life multi-planetary” – an outlandish claim.

Musk put forward the idea of the Hyperloop project with the publication of a paper in 2013. In it, the Hyperloop is envisioned as a low-pressure tube through which levitating pods containing approximately 30 passengers are propelled to speeds of over 1100 km/h using electromagnets. For the past 100 years there have been four modes of public transport: road, rail, boat and plane.

Together, they accommodated the increasing growth and connectivity of the global population throughout the 20th century and continue to improve today. However, Elon Musk aspired to the creation of a “fifth mode of transport” for the 21st century.

In the paper, Musk discusses the proposed Los Angeles to San Francisco high-speed rail, spanning 550 km. He expresses his contempt for the project, questioning why “Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world?”. The project, set for completion in 2029, would

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It takes a particular type of person to take an outlandish idea and convince the world it will work.

cost over 60 billion USD and bring the journey time between the two major cities to 2.5 hours, while a Hyperloop along the same route would cut journey times to 30 minutes and cost just six billion USD, being cheaper and faster for both state and passenger.

The hyperloop would also be self-sustaining in power, as the tube would be fitted with solar panels across the length of the journey, providing a surplus of electricity which can feed the grid.

Of course, a lot of questions come to mind in terms of safety. What if a capsule depressurizes? What if the tube repressurizes? What about earthquakes or on-board emergencies? These issues are addressed in the paper: emergency exits and repressurization zones would be located intermittently along the tube, and small wheels would be deployed to bring the capsule to them. The tubes would also be constructed on pylons which would accommodate length fluctuations caused by earthquakes. All capsules would be in contact with a station operator. Musk claims that these safeguards make the Hyperloop far safer than flying.

Musk is not working on the project himself but has tasked SpaceX with hosting pod design and testing competitions for student teams throughout the world. The most recent one was held on 27 August, in which one team designed a pod which reached 324 km/h in 1.2 km of evacuated tube. This was a remarkable achievement, given the same team achieved a top speed of only 93 km/h in the previous competition in January.

Following that, SpaceX announced the next Hyperloop

pod competition, for which Musk hopes to see entries reach speeds of 800 km/h to 950 km/h.

In the meantime, numerous Hyperloop startups have appeared and have already made proposals and feasibility studies on potential routes.

Hyperloop One is the biggest of these and have even developed and tested their own pod independently of SpaceX’s competition. Proposed routes include Glasgow to Cardiff via Edinburgh, Newcastle, Nottingham, Cambridge, London, Oxford and Bristol (1060 km in 89 minutes), a ring in Germany connecting Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, Nuremberg, Leipzig and Berlin (1991 km in 142 minutes), Helsinki to Stockholm (480 km in 28 minutes) and Dubai to Abu Dhabi (150 km in 12 minutes).

It’s easy to be cynical about projects like Hyperloop, which have so much to offer but can go wrong in so many ways.

We have been disappointed in the past with equally ambitious plans. In 2010, the Obama Administration aimed to return man to the moon by 2020, but budget cuts shelved that promise. Mars One, a private endeavour, aimed to send man to Mars by 2024, partially funded through broadcasting the mission as a reality show/ documentary. However, suspicions began to arise about the feasibility of the project, with some sources going so far as to call it a scam.

Hyperloop is an ambitious project that has never been done before and, up until recently, was considered science fiction. But like all new ideas, no one can know for

sure whether the project will be a success or not. While it’s amusing to look back at all the wacky, zany predictions from the past, we must realise that we too are confined to a bubble, only able to predict the future based off current projections. Will we have paper-thin smartphones with 12 gigapixel cameras by 2067? Ultra-fast 10G internet? Fifa ‘67 in flawless VR where your dexterity doesn’t quite compensate for your lack of spatial awareness?

Probably not. At least not in the same way we do today, because like the Hyperloop, it only takes one potential idea to completely alter the path of science and engineering. It was the same with the internet, the airplane, the steam turbine, farming, fire. If it’s not the Hyperloop, it will always be something else.

PROBE: Research uncovered Patrick McBean Contributing writer

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N FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 29, PROBE: Research Uncovered will kick off in Front Square.

PROBE is an annual, popup series of events in college that’s part of the hundreds of events which constitute European Researcher’s Night: a continent-wide assortment of talks, events, and research experiments.

These are organised to expose ordinary people to academic and professional research, and to encourage active participation in discoveries. PROBE is specifically designed to give the public a glimpse of the progress researchers at Trinity are making to solve the world’s biggest problems.

This will be the 12th year that European Researcher’s Night has run, and it has been extremely successful in the past. For the event’s 10th anniversary over a million citizens took part, along with 18,000 researchers in over 300 different cities. PROBE starts at 5pm and runs until 9pm.

This year a slew of events will be on offer, all over campus. Here are just a few of the many highlights.

Get Personal Tent - Front Square Sea Stories (5pm–9pm) Sea Stories focuses on the seas surrounding Barra island in Scotland. It functions as an interactive map which illustrates the diverse cultural heritage in the region. Action has been taken by the Scottish government to protect biodiversity in the area with the creation of a marine protected area. This, however, has resulted in conflict between local people and the government.

Where AI meets the Eye (5pm–9pm) Artificial intelligence (AI) is now being implemented in a range of technologies specific to computer vision applications, such as 3D reconstruction and automatic detection of objects, to colour transfer and 3D skin analysis. A selection of Trinity researchers will demonstrate some of these many areas of image processing currently being carried out in the university.

Communicating by Gesture (6pm–8pm) At this event you can discover what your own body exposes through gestures and

The annual pop-up series of events shall take place this Friday on campus as part of European Researcher’s Night. body language. The study of body language allows experts to detect secrets you have no intention of revealing.

Our body language may also communicate things unintentionally. For example, you may easily offend someone from a different culture by simply waving your hands - a gesture which may mean nothing in one culture but is hugely insulting in another.

Maker Space Tent - Front Square Roboslam (5pm–8pm) Roboslam is exactly what it says on the tin - that is building your very own robot, and battling against others.

There is also the opportunity to learn how to build classic arcade games.

Virtual Play: After Samuel Beckett (5pm–8pm) The limits of virtual reality (VR) are currently being explored not only by video game designers, but psychologists, match makers, and a wide range of entertainment industries. We rarely associate the clunky headsets with the fine arts, yet at PROBE there is an opportunity to use a VR headset to interact with a reimagined version of Play by Samuel Beckett.

Café Curie Tent - Front Square MSCA Fellows (6pm–8pm) The Café Curie provides warm coffee, buns, and short snappy lectures from researchers at various stages of their careers.

These talks are designed to give some insight into the blue sky thinking that motivates and drives researchers. This is a classic buzzword in research - “blue-sky” thinking - the sort of innovation that is not based on a desire to make money or solve issues but rather on pure curiosity. These are the big “What if?” questions.

Main Stage Tent - Front Square Research and Activism (6pm–8pm) What is the overlap between research and activism? This is what host Sinéad Burke shall be discussing. A PhD Researcher in Trinity, she has been a strong voice in calling for more inclusive design practices. She will be joined by Jessamyn Fairfield and Christina Meehan of Plan

International.

Institute

Bright Club (6.45pm–8pm) In a fun twist, a series of researchers take to the stand-up stage. This is, as the programme proclaims “smarter stand-up”. The short talks will witness researchers becoming comedians, allowing an opportunity for serious thought paired with uproarious laughter.

Cancer Research Frontiers (4pm- 6.30pm) Trinity College Dublin researchers will shed light on the latest developments in cancer research and potential outcomes for patients. The symposium is supported by AbbVie and Novartis and is part of Cancer Week Ireland.

Note that registration is necessary for this event.

Guided Walk: Trinity College Trees Exhibition (5.15pm) Join the grand opening event of the Trinity College Trees Exhibition. For this event, one of the project team will lead a guided walk around the campus to visit eight artworks installed in the trees of Trinity College Campus. The scientific and artistic inspirations behind the artworks will be discussed, as well as the details of the wonderful TCD trees. Note that registration is necessary for this event.

Stanley Quek Theatre Trinity Biomedical Sciences

Debating Chamber - GMB Ukelele Tuesday (6.15pm) Ukelele Tueday will be joining us to serenade and entertain you as the Thesis in Three judges deliberate. Ukulele Tuesday is a free play-along ukulele jam session, a chaotic mix of rock, pop and one-hit wonders, played out on the most cheerful instrument in the world.

Zoology Nicola Marples and illustrated by six incredible artefacts from the Natural History Museum at Trinity.

Trinity Long Room Hub - Arts and Humanities Research Institute News and Journalism in 2017 (8pm-9pm) How is the way we access news changing, and how are young people engaging with journalism? With the rise of fake news and the increasing importance of diversity and authenticity in journalism, we’ll explore the changing landscape of online news media. Join Elaine Burke, Dr Linda Kiernan and Tom Molloy, Director of Public Affairs and Communications at Trinity College Dublin, to discuss what these developments mean today.

Conversation Room - GMB

Sports Hall

A Brief History of Life (6pm–6.30pm) A journey through the history of life, as told by Professor of

Make a Bee Hotel (10am– 12pm) Bees and their pollination services are utterly vital for

our society - our food and clothes could not be produced without them. This event will serve as an introduction to the lives of bees, and the incredibly complex ways in which they communicate, as well as the incredible homes that they build for themselves.

The workshop will talk attendees through making their own bee hotel, and pass on some bee-friendly seeds to take away with them.

Jab Lab - Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute Debate on Mandatory Vaccination (7pm-8pm ) This is a controversial topic.

Recently many European countries (such as France and Italy) have made the decision to implement several compulsory vaccinations.

In some countries such as Australia, children are denied access to education unless they have a base level of vaccination. Recent times have also witnessed a worrying decline in vaccination rates in the Western world, as more families become wary

of vaccines. Will there come a time where Ireland has to make the decision to make vaccines compulsory? This important discussion will be chaired by Aoife McLysaght, who will be joined by clinician Clíona Ní Cheallaigh, researcher Kingston Mills and ethicist Louise Campbell.

Note that registration is necessary for this event.

Science Gallery Dublin Tent Front Square Meet the scientists (5pm– 9pm) Meet some of the scientists contributing to IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, a free exhibition opening at Science Gallery Dublin on October 13.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

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Research round-up materials science. In any case, Kevn Agnew Weisenfeldt and his team’s Deputy Sci-Tech Editor discovery has opened up a new Organic chemists discover a new method to selectively make cis carbon-fluorine bonds The primary concern of organic chemists is to make molecules of socio-economic benefit, such as polymers, medicines and agrochemicals.

To this end, many organic chemists interest themselves in being able to discover new ways of making chemical bonds to help them build these molecules. The carbonfluorine bond is one of unique interest among chemists, this bond is especially strong due to it combining factors of covalent (electron-sharing) and ionic (attraction between opposite charges) character into the union of the two atoms. Having access to these bonds allow chemists to build pharmaceutical compounds with extra strength and stability in their carbon framework and stronger, more durable polymers.

Mario P. Weisenfeldt and his team have discovered a new synthetic method that adds hydrogen atoms to the same face of cyclic molecules made up of carbon and fluorine bonds, which pushes all of the carbon-fluorine bonds to one side or face of the cyclic structure. This cis-fluorinated compound exhibits interesting electronic properties which could have applications in

method of synthesis that will make life easier for chemists to make vital compounds needed for everyday life.

The threat of deportation in America and how it impacts the development of children The fate of immigrants in America has been the subject of widespread media coverage and debate in recent months, with the current US administration rescinding the DACA policy. In a social experiment designed by Jens Hainmueller and researchers at Stanford University, the impact of the risk of deportation of mothers on their children’s mental health was investigated.

The study found that mothers who had birth dates just before the cutoff of the DACA policy and thus protected from deportation, had children with 50% fewer diagnoses of anxiety and stress-related disorders. On the other hand, mothers who were not protected from deportation under DACA had children who were more likely to suffer from these anxiety and adjustment disorders.

The results of this study underpin the negative impact that aggressive deportation policies can have on the development and future opportunities of children affected by such policies.

Crispr biology: the path to better understanding this

amazing new technology The discovery of the CRISPR-Cas gene in bacteria, has precipitated a furious maelstrom of scientific discovery and innovation in recent years. Originally used as a defence mechanism by bacteria against viruses, this DNA detecting and editing machine within bacteria allows them to snip off pieces of DNA from attacking viruses and integrate it within their own DNA sequence to allow them to detect and prevent future attacks from similar viruses.

Scientists have been able to re-engineer the bacterial proteins that carry out this process and re-direct them towards gene-editing so that we can permanently modify genes within organisms with the potential to make more efficient crops and fermenting bacteria for producing food and beverages, as well as treating diseases.

Researchers from the University of California Berkeley have recently conducted experiments to better elucidate the mechanism by which the bacterial CRISPR proteins execute this gene detection and editing process. By employing crystal structure analysis and cryo-electron microscopy, the researchers have discovered that the ‘snipping’ process is carried out by a bacterial protein called Integration Host Factor (IHF) that binds to the viral DNA and bends it sharply

Deputy Sci-Tech Editor Kevin Agnew takes a look at some of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of the last two weeks.

so that it comes into contact with another CRISPR protein called Cas-1. This process is thought to increase the specificity and efficiency of the integration process, and expanding our understanding of how the integration process works will allow scientists to better utilize this incredibly versatile technology along multiple lines, generating exciting prospects for future breakthroughs with CRISPR. The marriage of anthropology and genetics - tracing the pattern of human migration in Papua New Guinea Analysing and cross referencing the genetic codes of different peoples throughout the continents has allowed scientists to piece together the patterns of human migration over hundreds of thousands of years.

By comparing similar genetic sequences in peoples of different regions, scientists can ascertain whether there was a migration of a group from one region and subsequent settling in another. The genetic similarities among peoples in two regions can be seen as a sort of fingerprint of that group’s origin in another region prior to migration.

The first comprehensive genetic analysis of the peoples of Papua New Guinea was recently undertaken by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University of Oxford and Papua New Guinea Institute

of Medical Research. Their results reveal striking differences between the genetic codes of people in Papua New Guinea and peoples in Europe and Asia, indicating that the groups have remained genetically independent for at least 50,000 years with Papua New Guinea developing independently of Europe and Asia over that period. And that the peoples inhabiting the more isolated highland regions of Papua New Guinea have remained completely genetically independent.

What struck the researchers in particular was the surprising degree of genetic diversity among different groups living within Papua New Guinea that coincides with the vast diversity of language and culture among people in the region. The results suggest that there was a lack of mixing among peoples of different genetic character in Papua New Guinea as opposed to the considerable mixing that occurred in Europe and Asia. The researchers have proposed that historical processes such as the Iron and Bronze age that occurred in Europe and Asia but not in Papua New Guinea may have been responsible for the considerable genetic mixing in Europe and Asia, and that the genetic diversity of Papua New Guinea could give scientists insight into the genetic structure, cultural and linguistic diversity of the people of Europe and Asia prior to the Bronze and Iron Ages.

The cost of learning STEM

Sci-tech editors Jessie Dolliver and Kevin Agnew explore the ways in which the field of STEM could be made more accessible.

Jessie Dolliver Scit-tech Editor

Kevin Agnew

Deputy Sci-tech Editor

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CIENCE IS AN E X P E N S I V E ENDEAVOUR, there’s no getting around it.

Whether it’s conducting experiments to determine the elemental composition of a comet in space, or trial studies on treating infectious diseases using a whole host of model animals that must be bred and maintained, there is the cost of research. These come in many different forms and most of the high impact research being done in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) requires the use of the most high-tech equipment available to ensure reliable results.

But it’s not just research that incurs high costs. Educating the next generation of scientists can put a real strain on universities and schools, which must provide laboratories where budding scientists can make their first ventures into practical experimentation.

The cost of science can affect not only institutions, but also the individuals. Students face financial burdens at every level of their education. STEM subjects require expensive textbooks to supplement course material, many reissued in new editions each year. For students of natural sciences, field trips are required for a full understanding of ecology, botany, zoology, and geography. Most scientific conferences are hugely expensive to attend. The recent World Forum on Natural Capital, the first of its kind, required a £795 registration fee for the two day event. Attending academic conferences is a necessity for young scientists wishing to network and participate actively in their field.

These costs are prohibitively dear for early career scientists without disposable income. All the small expenses of studying compound this problem: the cost of lab coats, dissection kits, manuals, lab glasses, and accessing journal articles kept behind expensive pay-walls.

Taken together, these act as a deterrent to those from poor backgrounds pursuing a future in STEM. Science becomes an exploit for the rich rather than a way of thinking or exploring the world.

Services and technology are coming to make up more and

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The continued progress of STEM goes hand-in-hand with making it more accessible and is a necessity for Ireland’s future economic prosperity

more of the economy. These rely on STEM researchers with qualifications to expand.

This problem isn’t going away anytime soon. If Ireland and other wealthy countries wish to continue high economic growth, they must first find ways to remove many of these barriers towards the accessibility of science and other STEM fields. Doing so will allow more people to involve themselves in these fields and acquire the necessary skills and experience to practice science.

This must be done without burdening the institutions that teach these skills or the individuals themselves.

This editorial aims to outline some of these barriers to the accessibility of STEM and propose solutions to remove these.

The Cost of Learning STEM The cost of training the next generation of scientists can be as expensive as the scientific research itself: students pay tuition fees each year but on top of that, the materials required for their STEM course, usually textbooks, equipment and laboratory manuals can be a financial burden. Ireland would do well to mirror Germany, where a free third-level education is offered to all students and open up STEM courses for all students interested in them.

The problems of expensive textbooks and an unengaging science curriculum in schools would be improved through better use of online learning resources which have multiplied in recent years.

Many of these resources contain high quality, educational material that gives a solid introduction to subjects. The website Khan Academy provides a whole range of educational videos and tutorials on different topics and is particularly good for STEM subjects.

CoderDojo, an organisation of programming clubs, teaches school pupils how to code. These sites have seen great success when used in individual schools. The Irish government would see massive benefits from making use of resources such as these in a general system of online resources for science education. This would avoid the costs of buying textbooks by having an online repository of information for schools to use.

The high costs of accessing academic papers, about $30 for each paper, have lead to more pirating of papers.

Daniel Himmelstein, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, and his team have found that the

website Sci-Hub can provide access to more than twothirds of all scholarly articles.

Himmelstein argues that such a scale of pirating means the “beginning of the end” for paywalled research. Publishers have had issues with stopping pirating, as “the more protective the publishers are, the more difficult they make legitimate access”. It is, perhaps, inevitable that the subscription model of publishing is going to end and that more open models of publishing will replace it.

cut these costs: having the same glass pipette assigned to a particular reagent or having proper inventory databases in place for each lab to keep track of equipment, chemicals and materials. There are now laboratories which practice “green chemistry”, using minimal amounts of solvents or replacing environmentally

The Cost of Research in STEM One of the chief anxieties of any academic scientist is the competition for the grants and laboratories necessary for research. This problem requires greater commitment by government and technology industries to invest in research and support to institutions trying to expand their facilities. Many qualified and experienced scientists suffer from poor job security.

This is due to the instability of research funding and can cause large and inconvenient gaps in research.

“

The continued progress of STEM goes hand-inhand with making it more accessible Often, the cost of carrying out research in science is multiplied by the everyday equipment needed to conduct research. In a chemistry research group, one can witness countless latex gloves, glass pipettes and vials discarded each day.

These everyday instruments, although vital to doing research, end up multiplying the costs for an individual research laboratory and can eat through most of a research group’s grant. Even clock glasses, some of the smallest pieces of glassware, can cost about 80.

Granted many of these instruments are not reusable, and for good reason. Nobody wants to reuse a pair of gloves contaminated with a carcinogenic reagent.

However, implementing better recycling practices can

Photo by Joe McCallion

harmful solvents with water. If these practices were followed more widely, STEM would become more efficient and cost-effective.

The continued progress of STEM goes hand-inhand with making it more accessible and is a necessity for Ireland’s future economic

prosperity.

Researchers require firm commitment from the government through investment and support.

We, as researchers, must also engage in responsible practices to lower costs and reduce some of these financial barriers to scientific education, innovation and discovery.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

22

Sport Health and Wellbeing

Running Well Sam Cox reveals the joys and pains of becoming a jogger.

Sam Cox Features Editor

M

y faded runners make a distinctive “thwack” when they hit the pavement. Usually my iPod smothers the solitary noise but the summer dusk is too fragile to interrupt with the usual mix of OutKast and Gorillaz. Running has always been my way of exercising, and it offers a chance to think.

My passion, and poison, of choice.

Each thwack on the pavement brings the academic year a step closer, with the holidays fading away. Thwack, thwack. Another day crossed off the calendar, another day less to get back into shape.

Thwack. Soon surrounded by classmates in a cold lecture hall. Thwack. The first essays of the year. Thwack. Reading week comes and goes, without accomplishing half of what I’ve promised I’d do. Thwack.

Christmas. Thwack. Summer.

Thwack. A year... Thwack.

I’m getting ahead of myself, and I know it. I relax, breathe out and try to steady my pace. I started long distance running three years ago, having suffered a childhood terrified of sports and hating PE class. Running promised fitness, and demanded little in return. I could go at my own pace, needed no equipment and wouldn’t have teammates relying on me. All it asked was that I persist for my allotted time and committed myself to regular training. This seemed a reasonable swap for health and weight loss.

What’s more, I found it gave me the chance I needed to think. Rather than worrying about all I should be doing,

it was a bubble where I was occupied but mentally unchallenged. I was free to roam my own thoughts and concerns, but under no pressure to address them. I was committed to running my thirty minutes and, until then, I couldn’t revise or study.

Relationship problems didn’t exist. I was unable to worry.

Throughout my Leaving Cert and beyond, it offered an escape from the world and replaced it with the steady rhythm of my own footfalls.

Injury As time went on, however, they took on a different meaning. The need to run farther and faster added pressure to the pace. As it drove me harder, I first took this as a good thing and relished the shorter times.

“

In his essay on running, Haruki Murakami quotes Somerset Maugham explaining that “in each shave lies a philosophy”. The action matters less than the way we carry it out.

The escape had become a cage though and as my first 15K race drew nearer, I trained rigorously and obsessed over my performance. While I finished 4th, I also managed to fall and injure my knee.

Instead of letting it recover, I soon went back to training.

Gritting my teeth through the pain, I couldn’t fathom taking a break to heal. If I did, my worries would come back and they would be compounded by the fact that I had the additional concern of my declining fitness.

As the months grew colder and wetter, the pain in my knee went from an occasional twinge to constant irritation. I was faced with the reality that not only would I have to stop training, but would have to now look for physiotherapy to fix my almost constant limp.

Getting about on crutches for Christmas felt like the ultimate humiliation on top of my inability to run.

What had started as a way of releasing stress had transformed into a compulsive need to escape through improvement.

Hobbling around, I realised that my default reaction to stress had been running. Like an addict, I’d found a denial of reality.

With my temporary handicap, I was forced to learn other ways to address worry. To breathe and fix problems.

I was able to slowly return — with haste and eagerness setting me back more than a few weeks.

The Demon Remains And yet, running remained fetishized in my head. I dreamed of returning to training, of shedding those few extra pounds, and of “getting back into shape”. Constantly, I constructed a narrative of what would happen once I regained my mobility, once I became “fit” again, once I had the time, energy and ability to achieve. Eventually, with physiotherapy and patience,

Setting out again, each run felt like an insult. Every milestone reached reminded me of where I should have been without the fall. Most of all, it felt like I was racing against time to achieve. To reach the finish line, wherever that lay. I was constantly discontented with where I was and would run farther and faster to try and reach it sooner. Rather than dissipate my worries, running began to embody them. No longer

a form of catharsis, it would only bottle and release them, aggravated and discontented with the results they had been postponed for.

said? Worried about how big your lunch was? Here’s your answer. Each thwack of the pavement a slap on the wrist, a form of repentance.

What to do but run, though? What choice did I have and what choice do I have? Sometimes bounding, more often hobbling, into the present, I still indulge in the same behaviour. I recognise it as destructive and yet seems it healthier than alternatives. Like a sociallyencouraged form of self-harm, it promises a quick-fix for wrongdoings.

Embarrassed by that insensitive thing you

My relationship with running has always been a complicated one. In his essay on running, Haruki Murakami quotes Somerset Maugham explaining that “in each shave lies a philosophy”. The action matters less than the way we carry it out. It isn’t running that is the issue, but my way of approaching it.

There is nothing destructive in my footfalls, only in the thwack that rings in my

ears afterwards. I recognise that running isn’t an unhealthy action. I think it is a brilliant combination of cardiovascular exercise, a form of contemplation and a time to be alone. It is what you make of it and, as I steady my pace, and run on, I can only try wrest back the good bits and leave behind the falls of the past.

DU Fencing win medals in Trinity start Division 1A campaign opening tournament with a defeat to Terenure Trinity’s fencers win bronze and silver medals A lack of compusure cost Trinity in a match which was a lot closer than the scoreline suggests. at the National Club Championships.

Michael Foley Editor

Camille Hindsgaul

T

Contributing writer

RINITY STARTED THEIR DIVISION 1A RUGBY campaign with a frustrating 0-24 loss to Terenure today in a drizzly and overcast College Park.

O

N SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 10, 13 TRINITY fencers travelled to the National Sports Campus in Blanchardstown for the first tournament of the season: the National Club Championships for épée. DU Fencing fielded four teams, two for the men’s competition and two for the women’s.

After the initial poules, the men’s 1st (Albert Sanfeliu, Sam Mitchell, Ross Byrne) and 2nd (Achilleas Floudas, Filip Kuczera, Rory Greenan. Paul Begley) teams unfortunately drew each other in the quarter finals, with the former securing a place in the semifinals.

Despite a lot of great hits and consistent drive, DUFC 1 lost this match to Pembroke FC. However, the team kept up their spirit and focus and used these to beat the UCD team in the bronze medal match, thereby securing the season’s first medal for DUFC. DUFC 2 continued to fence for places, winning the first of two matches but unfortunately losing the other. They finished 6th.

The Club Captain, Sam Mitchell, commented on the men’s results that he was “very pleased” that the Club had been able to field two strong teams, elaborating that: “It is reassuring to see that we have a large pool of dedicated fencers who have trained all summer, who are ready and willing

Trinity also opened last year’s campaign with a match against Terenure, beating them 25-18 in the first game after promotion to Division 1A, showing that they could compete with the top teams. However, a failure to convert opportunities into points at critical moments cost Trinity today in what was a disappointing loss. to put in top quality performances ... I am confident that the results and effort put into the NCC are great indicators of the season to come”.

With only four teams entered the women’s event, all teams progressed to the semifinals after the poules. DUFC 1 (Camille Hindsgaul, Kayleigh McKinley, Dearbhaile Collins) fenced the women’s UCD team for the second time of the day and with a 45-40 victory secured a place in the final.

to settle with bringing home silver.

DUFC 2 (Andreea Nicoara, Shauna Caffrey, Eszti Lujber) drew the top-seeded Brian Boru FC team and unfortunately lost both this match and the subsequent bronze match, finishing 4th.

With two medals brought home, the season has started well for DU Fencing. This weekend (the September 23 and 24) will see the first individual competition of the year, the South of Ireland Open in Cork. It will be exciting to see if the Trinity fencers will continue to build on the ground work laid by the teams in Blanchardstown.

After a long, tough final in which clear improvements were seen from the earlier poule match against the team, DUFC 1 saw themselves beaten by Brian Boru FC and had

Commenting on her team’s achievements, Hindsgaul stated that: “What makes me particularly happy with this results is knowing that both of my team-mates only started fencing a year ago. This silver medal shows just how dedicated they have been all year, even over the summer, and also shows the Club’s dedication to developing beginner fencers”.

Things started badly for Trinity today with Sam Pim, returning from an erasmus year in Queensland, shown a yellow card for a high tackle in the opening minutes.

Despite this early setback, Trinity showed resilience with an excellent searching kick by fullback Jack Fitzpatrick giving Trinity a platform to put themselves in front early in the contest. But Terenure defended well, turned the ball over and marched up the pitch with little resistance.

They won a penalty and opted to kick for touch. This proved to be the right choice as it allowed their powerful maul to drive toward the Trinity tryline. Oisín Heffernan took the ball and carried it over the line for five points to Terenure.

Number 10, Mark O’Neill, converted putting the visitors in a strong position and five minutes later Terenure were over the line again for another try.

Their route to the try-line was

almost identical to their opening score with the Terenure maul driving into the opposite corner to score with Michael Melia touching the ball down.

However, O’Neill couldn’t make it two from two on the conversion and the score remained 12-0.

Trinity were eager to strike back and they began to press forward. In an impressive move, Billy O’Hora chased down his own grubber kick and raced down the sideline into the Terenure half, but Trinity couldn’t find a way to put points on the board.

This period of Trinity dominance was brief: just before half-time Terenure threatened to make it a three score game and — were it not for a try-saving tackle by number 7

Toby Boyd — they would have.

After more pressure from Terenure, Trinity were saved by the referee’s half-time whistle and went into the huddle at half-time to regroup and plan a comeback.

It was Terenure who started stronger after the restart though as they surged forward and began a siege on Trinity’s try-line. Stout defending from Trinity, along with a lack of composure by Terenure, allowed Trinity to weather the storm As the drizzle grew steadier, the conditions began to play a larger factor, with Trinity number 9 Angus Lloyd repeatedly asking for a dry ball. The rain made it difficult for both teams to pass the ball as they both began to rely on kicking

the ball to gain field position instead of risking an errant pass or a knock-on.

As the time began to run out, Trinity were forced to push up in the hope of clawing back Terenure’s lead. Given they were only 12 points down there was still hope of a comeback. However, these hopes were dashed as Terenure capitalised on Trinity’s weaker defence as they ran in two tries to finish the game with a 24-0 bonus point victory.

While the final scoreline didn’t flatter Trinity, especially given the decent share of possession they had, they must be disappointed knowing they are capable of playing better rugby.

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Sport

23 23

Sports clubs matrix The low-down on every sports club at Trinity, all in one place for your convenience.

Joel Coussins Sport Editor Photo by Aisling Crabbe

Archery Training Schedule: Contact Us:

See Club Noticeboard Facebook

Men’s Hockey Training Schedule: Tues & Thurs 19.30 - 22.00 Contact Us: Email hockey@tcd.ie

Belvedere College DU Archery Club

Men’s Football Training Schedule: Tuesday & Thursday 18.00 - 20.30 College Park (1st half term)

Tuesday 19.30 - 20.30 Sports Centre - Main Hall B Wednesday 18.00 - 19.30 Santry Contact Us: Facebook Dublin University AFC Women’s Football Training Schedule: Monday & Thursday 17.00 - 19.00 College Park, Sept-Oct & March-May

Monday 17.00 - 18.00 Clontarf Road, November - February

Thursday 17.00 - 19.00 Botany Bay Futsal Court, Nov - Feb Contact Us: Email duladiesafc@gmail.com Aikido Training Schedule: Wednesday 18.00 - 19.30

Friday 19.00 - 20.30 Contact Us: Email aikido@tcd.ie

Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B

American Football Training Schedule: Wednesday 17.00 - 18.00 Sports Centre - Main Hall B Saturday 11.00 - 14.00 Santry Contact Us:

Email

americanfootball@tcd.ie

Badminton Training Schedule: Monday 18.30 - 20.00 Sports Centre - Main Hall B

Tuesday 18.00 - 19.00 Sports Centre - Main Hall A

Wednesday 16.30 - 18.30 Sports Centre - Main Hall A Contact Us: Email dubadminton@gmail.com Basketball Training Schedule:

Monday Wednesday Thursday Friday

20.00 - 22.00 / 21.00 - 22.00 20.00 - 22.00 19.00 - 22.00 20.00 - 22.00

Contact Us:

Email

tcdbasketball@gmail.com

Men’s Boat Training Schedule:

Contact Us:

Tuesday & Thursday 18.00 - 20.00 Sports Centre - 4th Floor Balcony Wednesday 19.00 - 20.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall A Saturday & Sunday Early morning Islandbridge Boat House Email captain@duboatclub.com

Sports Centre - Main Hall B/A Sports Centre - Main Hall B Sports Centre - Main Hall B Sports Centre - Main Hall

Women’s Boat Training Schedule: Monday 18.00 - 20.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Monday & Wednesday 16.00 - 20.00 Sports Centre - 4th Floor Balcony Contact Us: Email jungmannmegan@gmail.com Boxing Training Schedule: Mon, Wed & Fri 17.00 - 20.00 Boxing Gym, Trinity Technology & Enterprise Campus - Unit 11 Contact Us: Facebook Dublin University Boxing Club (Trinity Boxing) Camogie Training Schedule: Contact Us:

Mon & Weds Facebook:

Climbing Training Schedule: Contact Us:

Tuesday & Thursday 19.00 - 22.00 Sports Centre Climbing Wall Email trinityclimbing@gmail.com

17.30 - 19.30 Santry (Oct - Feb) Trinity College Dublin G.A.A.

Santry

Women’s Hockey Training Schedule: Mon & Weds 18.00 - 22.00 Santry Friday 19.00 - 22.00 Santry Contact Us: Email trinityladieshockey@gmail.com Hurling Training Schedule:

Mon & Weds

18.00 - 21.00

Contact Us:

Email

gaadev@tcd.ie

Judo Training Schedule: Thursday Contact Us:

Monday 19.00 - 20.30 Facebook

18.00 - 20.00 Sport Centre Ancillary Hall A Sport Centre Ancillary Hall A Dublin University Judo Club

Karate Training Schedule: Weds & Fri 13.00 - 14.00

Tuesday 17.30 - 19.00

Thursday 17.00 - 19.00 Contact Us: Email karate@tcd.ie

Santry - October to February

Sport Centre Ancillary Sport Centre Ancillary Hall B Sport Centre Ancillary Hall B

Kayak Training Schedule: Tues & Thurs 20.00 - 21.00 Sports Centre - Swimming Pool Contact Us: Email trinity.kayak.club@gmail.com Tennis Training Schedule: Mon, Tues, 17.30 - 22.00 Tennis Courts - Botany Bay Weds & Thurs Friday 15.00 - 18.00 Tennis Courts - Botany Bay Saturday 14.00 - 16.00 Tennis Courts - Botany Bay Sunday 10.00 - 15.30 Tennis Courts - Botany Bay Contact Us: Email tcdtennis@gmail.com Netball Training Schedule: Tuesday 17.00 - 19.30 Sports Centre - Main Hall B Thursday 16.00 - 18.00 Sports Centre - Main Hall B Contact Us: Email Netball@tcd.ie Orienteering Training Schedule: Contact Us:

Sunday outings Facebook

See club noticeboard Dublin University Orienteers

Rifle Training Schedule: Weekdays 18.00 - 22.00 Contact Us: Email rifle@tcd.ie

Rifle Range

Sailing Training Schedule: Sat & Sun See club noticeboard Contact Us: Email info@trinitysailing.com

Snowsports Training Schedule: Wednesday 14.30 - 16.30 Sports Centre - Main Hall A Contact Us: Email dusnowsports@gmail.com Squash Training Schedule: Mon & Weds 17.00 - 19.00 - Competitive Teams Trinity Halls, Dartry Tues & Thurs 16.30 - 18.00 - Beginners Trinity Halls, Dartry Tues & Thurs 18.00 - 19.00 - Advanced Trinity Halls, Dartry Friday 19.00 - 21.00 - All Club Trinity Halls, Dartry Contact Us: Email squash@tcd.ie Sub-Aqua Training Schedule: Monday 20.30 - 22.00 (Until end of February) Contact Us: Email dusac.webmaster@gmail.com

Men’s Cricket Training Schedule: Friday 19.00 - 21.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall Contact Us: Email crickettrinity@gmail.com

Surfing Training Schedule: See Club Noticeboard Contact Us: Email Surf@tcd.ie

Women’s Cricket Training Schedule: Monday Thursday 16.00 - 17.00 Contact Us: Email

Swimming & Waterpolo Training Schedule: Swimming

Monday 19.00 - 20.30 Swimming Pool - Lanes 1, 2, 3 & 4

Wednesday 20.00 - 21.00 Swimming Pool - Full Pool

Thursday 21.00 - 22.00 Swimming Pool - Full Pool

Waterpolo Tuesday 21.00 - 22.00 Swimming Pool - Full Pool Wednesday 21.00 - 22.00 Swimming Pool - Full Pool Sunday 12.00 - 14.00 Swimming Pool - Full Pool Contact Us: Email duswim@tcd.ie

16.00 - 17.00

Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall tcdladiescricket@gmail.com

Croquet Training Schedule: Tues & Thurs 14.00 - 18.00 Twitter @TrinityCroquet

New Square

Cycling Training Schedule: Tuesday & Thursday 18.30 Sports Centre - Entrance Saturday & Sunday

09.00 Sports Centre - Entrance Contact Us: Email tcdcyclingclub@gmail.com Equestrian Training Schedule: Tuesday 19.00 Wednesday 19.00 - 20.00 Pool Contact Us: Email equest@tcd.ie

Brackenstown

Fencing Training Schedule: Monday 20.00 - 22.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Tuesday 20.00 - 22.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Wednesday 07.00 - 10.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Thursday 07.00 - 10.00 & 20.30 - 22.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Friday 14.00 - 16.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Contact Us: Email dufencing@gmail.com Men’s Rugby Training Schedule: Tuesday 18.00 - 19.30 (seniors & U20) Wednesday 18.00 - 20.00 (U20) College Park Thursday 18.00 - 19.30 (seniors) College Park Friday 18.00 - 19.30 (U20) College Park Contact Us: Email dufc@tcd.ie

College Park

Women’s Rugby Training Schedule: Contact Us:

Mon & Weds 18.00 - 19.30 College Park Email dufcwomensrugby@gmail.com

Men’s Gaelic Football Training Schedule: Contact Us:

Mon & Weds 18.00 - 21.00 Email gaadev@tcd.ie

Santry - October to February

Women’s Gaelic Football Training Schedule: Mon & Weds 18.00 - 21.00 Santry (October - February) Contact Us: Email trinityladiesgaelicfootball@gmail.com Men’s & Women’s Golf Training Schedule: Contact Us:

See Club Noticeboard Facebook

Portmarnock Golf Club Trinity College Dublin Golf Club

Handball Training Schedule: Wednesday Contact Us:

Monday 18.00 - 20.00 Facebook

19.00 - 21.00 Sports Centre - Main Hall A Sports Centre - Main Hall Trinity College Dublin G.A.A.

Harriers & Athletics Training Schedule: Wednesday Friday Contact Us:

Tuesday 18.00 - 19.00 12.00 - 14.00 Facebook

18.00 - 19.30 College Park (Until April) Sport Centre Ancillary Hall B Sport Centre Ancillary Hall B DUHAC - Dublin University Harriers and Athletic Club

Royal St George Club

Swimming Pool

Table Tennis Training Schedule: Monday 12.00 - 14.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall A Tuesday 17.00 - 18.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Wednesday 16.00 - 18.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Contact Us: Email tcdtabletennis@gmail.com Tae Kwon Do Training Schedule: Monday 20.00 - 22.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall A Wednesday 20.00 - 22.00 Sports Centre - Ancillary Hall B Contact Us: Email tcd.taekwondo@gmail.com Trampoline Training Schedule: Monday 17.00 - 19.00 Sports Centre - Main Hall A Wednesday 20.00 - 22.00 Sports Centre - Main Hall A Friday 17.00 - 19.00 Sports Centre - Main Hall A Contact Us: Email dutrampoline@gmail.com Ultimate Frisbee Training Schedule: Monday 16.00 - 17.30 Sports Centre - Main Hall B Tues & Thurs 16.00 - 18.00 Sports Centre - Main Hall A Wednesday 19.00 - 21.00 College Park Contact Us: Email trinityultimatesecretary@gmail.com Triathlon Training Schedule: : Mon, Weds & Fri 07.00 - 09.00 Sports Centre - Swimming Pool Thursday 07.00 - 08.00 Sports Centre - Fitness Friday 18.00 - 19.30 Sports Centre - Cycling Contact Us: Email dutriathlon@gmail.com Volleyball Training Schedule: Division I Female: Tuesdays 20:00 – 22:00 Thursdays 20:30 – 22:00* Student Female: Thursdays 19:00 – 20:30 Division I and Student Male: Tuesdays 20:00 – 22:00 Thursdays 20:30 – 22:00* Skill Sessions: Fridays 17:00 – 19:00 * every other week Contact Us: Email tcdvball@gmail.com Windsurfing Training Schedule: Contact Us:

Thursday 14.00 - 16.00 Wakedock Email duwindandkite@gmail.com

Trinity News | Tuesday 19th September

Sport

24

Sam Cox reveals the joys and pains of becoming a jogger. page .22

Doping of a different kind Rory O’Neill explores how the emergence of mega-rich owners has forever altered football’s financial landscape Rory O’Neill Leader Writer

A

RSENE WENGER DESCRIBED THE ECONOMIC imbalance in European football as “financial doping”. This imbalance operates on a number of levels.

There is and has been for a considerable time, a top tier of European clubs with financial spending power that reaches beyond the rest. The names are familiar - Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, Manchester United, Bayern Munich. Yet the composition of this elite group is both shrinking and changing. Bayern Munich can no longer compete financially with the very richest. This is a relatively recent development.

In Germany itself, Bayern have come in for scorn in recent years for strong-arming their Bundesliga rivals into selling their best players to them.

The strategy seems to be as much about weakening other teams as it is strengthening Bayern’s.

Since Borussia Dortmund reached the Champions League Final in 2013, the star players who have made the switch to Bayern include Robert Lewandowski, the since returned Mario Goetze and Mats Hummels.

The motivations for these transfers were certainly not purely financial but without Bayern’s financial dominance over the rest of the German league, this strategy would not have been possible. Yet the transfer landscape has altered dramatically in the past year. Bayern cannot or will not match the recordbreaking fees being paid out

by Barcelona and Paris SaintGermain. One of Europe’s great footballing predators is being priced out of the top of the food chain. Juventus have wisely re-invested the considerable transfer fees they have received in recent years to replenish their ranks, but neither they nor any Italian team can compete at the most expensive end of the transfer market.

Premier league On a continental

level,

the advent of the Premier League has created another level of imbalance between the top twenty clubs in England and the rest of Europe. The Premier League, a remodelling of the old First Division, was an attempt to maximise the commercial potential of English football.

The TV rights are famously lucrative and now stretch into billions of pounds worth in value. Each Premier League club receives a share, giving them an enormous advantage over clubs of similar stature elsewhere on the continent.

Promotion to the Premier League means that the likes of Huddersfield and Bournemouth can hope to compete financially with some of the most esteemed clubs in Europe.

Some great European clubs have simply fallen by the wayside altogether: Ajax of Amsterdam, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Deportivo la Coruna, Valencia, Olympique Lyonnais, Olympiakos, Benfica and countless others. These are all clubs who have made a wonderful contribution to European football but are now virtually irrelevant when it comes to the highest levels of competition.

The likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona, of course, have been laying the foundations for the current inflationary transfer fees for years. The Spanish giants have always competed for the very best in the world and have been able to pay for them. Real Madrid famously adopted the “Galacticos” policy in the 2000s, pursuing the very best and most marketable footballers no matter the price. In 2009, their transfer business temporarily ensured that, at that point, the three most expensive fees ever paid for a player were all by Real Madrid, and all dated within the last 8 years. Kaka’s €67 million transfer that summer was the second most expensive of all time behind only the €77 million they had paid for Zinedine Zidane in 2001. Mere weeks later, Kaka’s signing was overshadowed by the arrival of Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United for €94 million. Barcelona would then sink some €86 millioninto

the signing of Neymar from Brazilian club Santos in 2013.

Yet Real Madrid and Barcelona’s financial power had much to do with their status as Europe and Spain’s most prestigious and successful clubs. Decades of success and legendary players had built a brand that was marketable all across the world. Both boast massive stadiums which generate enormous match day gate receipts. In other words, although it may not have been fair, their money wasn’t coming from nowhere. It seemed somewhat organic, and if their financial dominance allowed their sporting success, there was at least some sense that their financial and sporting successes were somewhat interdependent.

“

The wealth of the people backing these clubs appears at times to be limitless.

If something doesn’t work, they will simply plow even more money into the project until it does.

New kids on the block The likes of Manchester City, Chelsea and Paris SaintGermain changed all of that.

Chelsea was arguably the first project of this kind where a club which had not enjoyed any great level of success in recent years received the backing of a super-wealthy owner. It was the most instantly successful as well. Within a year of purchasing the club, Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich had installed upcoming Portuguese coach José Mourinho and gave him the financial backing needed to build the team he wanted.

Chelsea won back-to-back Premier League titles under Mourinho in 2004/05 and 2005/06, breaking the record for the number of points attained in a Premier League season. Chelsea were regularly competing in the quarter and semi-finals of the Champions League. Chelsea proved that money could indeed buy you success, but in light of recent years, it also proved that that money had to be spent correctly. Chelsea, apart from a few notable failures such as Andriy Shevchenko and Fernando Torres, used their newfound wealth smartly.

It took longer for Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain to find their feet as European super clubs.

Many would argue that due to their failure to turn huge spending power into consistent Champions League performances, that is a status they have still yet to reach.

But crucially, for the likes of these clubs, backed by Middle Eastern oil money, there is a huge margin of error. The wealth of the people backing these clubs appears at times to be limitless. If something doesn’t work, they will simply plow even more money into the project until it does. For both, it finally seems to be working.

The valiant defence European clubs have put up against this onslaught of financial doping appears to be crumbling.

Paris Saint-Germain have, after committing to the two most expensive transfers in history in the course of one summer, finally assembled a front line that looks capable of beating any team in the world. Neymar’s absurd €222 million transfer fee more

than doubled the world record set by Manchester United in the signing of Paul Pogba last summer. Weeks later, they secured 18-yearold star Kylian Mbappe from French rivals Monaco for an estimated €145 million plus an additional €35 million in addons if certain performancerelated conditions are met.

Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates. And yet these huge sponsorship deals are recorded as legitimate revenue rather than investment from the owner.

No safeguards It would be trite to claim the Mbappe transfer as a “watershed moment”, for it seems this term is applied every time the world transfer fee is broken. In a transfer market characterised by ever spiralling inflation, each fee seems more absurd than the last. But the Mbappe transfer is revealing when we consider why there are no effective safeguards against “financial doping”. Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) introduced the Financial Fair Play regulations to try and ensure that clubs could not spend more than they raise in revenue and have their

enormous losses written off by a wealthy backer. How then, did PSG manage to break last summer’s world transfer record twice in a matter of weeks? The Mbappe transfer highlights how toothless Financial Fair Play is. Rather than the fee being paid this summer and therefore going onto PSG’s books, they agreed on a season-long loan deal with Monaco for Mbappe, with a commitment to buy next summer. In addition, while there are provisions to suspend teams from European competition, clubs such as PSG could feasibly be punished with no more than a fine. For owners with bottomless pockets, this is no great deterrent. Manchester City have also been accused of circumventing Financial Fair Play through artificial sponsorship deals.

City receive lucrative sponsorships from up to 4 companies owned by the United Arab Emirates government. City are, of course, owned by Sheikh Mansour, Deputy

includes the removal of the contact element of the game, so be it.

the game so as to safeguard against it could potentially ruin the sport beyond repair.

Barriers to change On the surface, it seems obvious why the league has resisted such wholesale change; the league’s revenue passed $13 billion (€11bn) last year, with the average team worth almost $2.5 billion (€2bn) and regular viewing figure of 16.5 million viewers per game. From a financial perspective, the one undoubtedly most important to those running the game, there must be a temptation to adhere to the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Brain injury, one might argue, is an accepted risk for those who make their fortune playing the game, and that to change

It would be churlish to suggest that such drastic changes to the rules of a sport could never affect its popularity; there is indeed a chance that such changes may significantly damage the global standing of the league. However, this is far from an inevitability. Take, for instance, Formula 1 racing.

When Ayrton Senna died after crashing at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, there was agreement that the longheld belief that such risks were simply part and parcel of the sport was no longer acceptable. There was, and continues to be, a concerted effort made to improve the

safety of the sport, even at the expense of those things considered to be part of the DNA of the sport, such as refuelling at pit stops or, even, from next year, the open cockpits said to be the defining feature of such racing. Yet, the 2016 F1 season drew 400m viewers worldwide, making motor sport once again being the most-watched sport on the planet. In fact, the NFL’s 16.5 million viewers per game in 2016 was an 8% decrease from the previous season, so perhaps the time has never been better for the powers that be to shake-up the game.

Either way, one thing is clear: the league owes it to the sportsmen of the future to act decisively to reduce the risk of brain injury.

As always with UEFA and football’s governing bodies, one suspects the problems go far beyond the solutions they are willing to contemplate.

Financial Fair Play has failed to level the playing field. It is at best a nuisance for elite clubs, it creates obstacles for them to navigate. But it has not held back the tide of inflationary spending.

Enormous expenditure is now required simply to stay afloat in the higher echelons of European competition. In a few years’ time, will we be contemplating any potential European champions other than Real Madrid, Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain?

Head to Head Why we need to talk about brain damage in American Football Joel Coussins Sport Editor

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UT AWAY YOUR S W I M M I N G COSTUMES, no need to worry about burning or freckling as autumn is well and truly here, if the rain hadn’t already tipped you off. With autumn — or should that be fall, in keeping with the American theme — begins a new American National Football League season, full of hope and endless questions and predictions. Will the Falcons avenge last season’s shock Superbowl loss? Will Odell Beckham Jr. break the 2000 yards receiving mark? However, perhaps the most important discussion topic on the table at the moment is that of how the sport deals with concussion or, more specifically, with CTE or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy? There is an undeniable link between concussion and CTE, which is a problem that must not be underplayed; the side effects suffered by those diagnosed with CTE include excessive rage, depression and advanced dementia. It is clear, then, that something must be done to drastically reduce the rates of concussion experienced by professional football players.

Persistent issue This issue is hardly a new one; take, for example, the case of the St. Louis Rams’ quarterback, Case Keenum, who sustained a head injury in a game against the Baltimore Ravens but was allowed to continue playing and was only diagnosed with a concussion after the game was finished, an injury that then ruled him

out for the following two games. In fact, the problem became so bad that the NFL introduced strict new rules before the start of the 2016/17 season with huge fines, as well as potential loss of draft picks, for those teams who failed to remove concussed players from the field, where previously there had been no sanctions. Coupled with radical new advancements in the testing and diagnosis of concussive incidents — a new method of diagnosis will be trialled in Premiership Rugby this year, using saliva samples from players suspected of sustaining head injuries, that will reveal the extent of such injuries instantaneously and with laboratory accuracy — and the sport seems to be on the path to truly tackle the issue.

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There seems to be only one conclusion: the game must be altered sufficiently to protect its players from life-changing brain damage.

Yet, last season, the first with such regulations in effect, saw no significant decline in concussion rates. There were 244 reported concussions in the league last season, and whilst this was a decrease of 31 on the previous season, it was an increase from the lowest numbers of recent years, 206 in 2014. What this means, in its simplest terms, is that in 2016 there was one concussion approximately every 1.5 games, undeniably an epidemic. However, one might argue that taking a sample solely from last season, the only season thus far to see these regulations in effect, is to take far too small a sample size. The simple fact is that last year saw a decrease in concussive incidents, albeit a modest one, and that once this season is out we will have a more representative sample size from which to draw conclusions.

Preventative measures This is true. It is probably too early to draw any meaningful conclusions on the effectiveness of the league’s concussion regulations, especially with potentially game-changing testing developments only in the trialling stage. However, intuitively, there isn’t any reason why the numbers should decrease significantly enough over the coming years for us to definitively conclude that the regulations have succeeded. This is for the simple reason that the regulations aren’t aimed at reducing the numbers of concussions but merely at more successfully identifying such cases and removing the affected players. If the franchise is serious about

eradicating CTE, then it is clear that what is needed is not just a more effective identification of concussion but a full-scale change in the tackling rules and perhaps the removal of the contact element of the sport entirely.

This may seem like an overreaction, but it’s not. Tackles that result in concussions are rare; with an average of just over 100 tackles per game and a concussion occurring every 1.5 games, that means about 1 in every 150 tackles results in a concussion. However, studies have emerged over the last 18 months that have linked CTE not just to such “big hits”, but also to more common, “sub-concussive” tackles. Such tackles also have a far wider scope: whereas concussive tackles are usually reserved for quarterbacks and wide receivers, almost every player throughout the course of the game will suffer subconcussive hits.

In the most recent and most comprehensive study of former league players, the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that 110 of the 111 players tested were found to have suffered from CTE. Moreover, unlike concussion, CTE cannot be diagnosed immediately: in fact, it can only be diagnosed posthumously, meaning that there is no way of assessing if a player is developing CTE and then sidelining him for an appropriate period.

Thus there seems to be only one conclusion: the game must be altered sufficiently to protect its players from lifechanging brain damage. If this