Trinity News, Vol. 64 Issue 8

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Sport

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TOP-LEVEL ATHLETES ARE IMPRESSIVE IN MANY WAYS, BUT NOT AS ROLE MODELS

Volume 64, Issue 8

trinitynews.ie

Comment p12

Features p6

MORE IS ON TRIAL THAN RUGBY PLAYERS

AUTHOR ANGELA NAGLE EXPLAINS THE ALT-RIGHT AND THE ORIGINS OF THE MOVEMENT

TRINITY NEWS TRINITY’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD |Est. 1953

Bank of Ireland to fund over €144 million worth of student accommodation The project is expected to create over 700 bed spaces in Dublin BANK OF IRELAND FUNDING IN NUMBERS

Aoife Ní Chadhain Senior Reporter

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ANK OF IRELAND WILL FUND over €144 million worth of student accommodation complexes, anticipated to be built over the next two years.

The project will focus on accommodation in Dublin and Cork, aiming to provide 600 student beds in Cork and over 700 in Dublin.

Joe McCallion/Trinity News

Hundreds show solidarity with sexual assault survivors following Belfast trial Files on two individuals accused of revealing the identity of the woman at the centre of the trial have been sent to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Northern Ireland.

Aisling Grace Deputy News Editor

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TUDENTS WERE AMONG THE several hundred who gathered in the city this week in solidarity with a woman who accused Ireland and Ulster rugby players of raping her in 2016, after four defendants involved were found not guilty of their charges.

Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were found not guilty of raping the then-19 year old student at a house party two years ago, while the players’ friend Blane

McIlroy was found not guilty of exposure. Another friend, Rory Harrison, was found not guilty of perverting the course of justice and withholding information.

The trial received extensive coverage from national media throughout its duration, and the ultimate acquittal of the accused sparked outrage among many. The hashtag #IBelieveHer trended on Twitter shortly after the news broke and within hours of the verdict, a rally had been scheduled for the following day.

On Thursday, hundreds took to the streets despite the rain, gathering around

the Spire and rendering O’Connell Street impassable.

Some held signs bearing the words “I Believe Her” while chanting those same words.

Two days later, another gathering occurred in the city centre in support of rape and sexual assault victims.

Georges Street and Dame Street filled with people, who chanted and held signs, and progressed through the city centre.

After the verdict, Paddy Jackson’s lawyers indicated he intends to take a libel action against Labour Party senator Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, after the senator questioned the verdict and

made reference to “smug well-connected middle-class boys”. This news lead to the hashtag #SueMePaddy trending on Twitter.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) released a statement following the verdict and the subsequent outpouring of public outrage, saying: “USI acknowledges the outcome of the trial, but we have serious concerns with the treatment of complainants within the court system when it comes to trials regarding sexual assault and rape either side of the border. We are concerned in particular about the impact recent events may have on students coming forward with the intention of seeking

justice for what has occured to them.”

USI also stated that they “reject the pervading culture across Ireland in which the disclosed stories of survivors are regularly trivialized, undermined, and ultimately, not believed”.

Files on two individuals accused of revealing the identity of the woman at the centre of the trial have been sent to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland’s attorney general will also consider an allegation against one of the jurors, who commented on the case on a website after the verdicts had been delivered.

College proposes replacing EU student places with non-EU places to increase revenue

To construct these accommodation complexes, Bank of Ireland is funding a joint venture between Harrison Street Real Estate Capital and Global Student Accommodation Group.

The bank is currently funding three projects in Dublin and two in Cork, and has previously funded accommodation projects that have been completed in both cities.

In Ireland, the market is severely undersupplied with only one in seven students in Dublin having access to student accommodation compared to one in three to four in London. Dublin has the lowest supply ratio in the country, with only 13.2% of its full time students living in student accommodation.

However, 4,600 beds either have planning or are in the planning process. 2,300 of these beds are estimated to be ready by 2019.

Even if all these plans come to fruition only 18% of students in Dublin will have access to purpose-built student accommodation. In Cork, approximately 10,000 of the 25,000 student require accommodation annually.

Currently, there are only 3,700 student beds in the city.

TRINITY

Students inside the Dining Hall during the TakeBackTrinity protests

ISSUE 8

700 The number of beds Bank Of Ireland will fund in Dublin

13.2% Percentage of full time students in Dublin living in student accommodation As part of Bank of Ireland’s venture, 190 beds are to be provided in the Western Road area of Cork city and 413 in the Brewery Quarter. A spokesperson for the Global Student Accommodation Group has said the Western Road and Brewery Quarter accommodation is to include laundry facilities, a gym, a cinema, and a games room. In Dublin, the focus is on the area near the new Grangegorman campus and Broadstone.

Life

THIS ISSUE

Other proposals include placing a capital levy on EU undergraduate students subject to government approval Ciaran Sunderland Investigations Editor

Niamh Lynch Deputy Editor

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RINITY’S CHIEF F I N A N C I A L OFFICER Ian Mathews has proposed the replacement of EU student places with nonEU places as part a range of income raising initiatives.

Other proposals include placing a capital levy on EU undergraduate students subject to government approval, and the sale of a College building.

Mathews’ presentation, entitled “Trinity Finances: Update March 2018,” was given at a meeting of Trinity’s Fellows and stated

that additional income of €40 million per annum is required for the College finances to be in a “steady state”. It continued to say that other than reducing budgets, the only solution is “to pursue further revenue growth and increased profitability of existing activities”.

The proposals include “increasing non-EU students from the current target of 18% to 25%,” in an attempt to increase income by €30 million per annum. Mathews noted in his presentation that this would result in a reduced number of student places for EU students, which would increase income by another €14 million.

The proposed introduction of a capital levy on EU students subject to government approval would aim to increase income by

€16.5 million.

Further fees increases are also being considered, with Mathews pointing to the 5% increase in tuition fees for postgraduate and nonEU undergraduate students from 2018/19 as an example.

The presentation noted that there have been no increase in undergraduate fees since 2009.

The final proposal of the presentation, “considered a last resort,” was the sale of a College building.

In a statement to Trinity News, Matthews said that he gave a presentation to the Fellows “on the topic of the University’s finances,” at the request of the Fellows.

He said that he “made reference to a number of possible income generating

options/concepts,” and continued: “Please note that they were only options/ concepts emanating from FSD [Financial Services Division] and not proposals for approval. They are not new and were previously presented to the Finance Committee and Board when they considered a paper from myself on the issue of financial sustainability.”

Within the statement Matthews also said College has been “very successful” in “growing and diversifying its revenue streams during the period of austerity”.

He said that College must “continue to explore options in the absence of the State’s commitment to higher education following the publication of the Cassells Report”.

His statement concluded:

“The alternative to growing income strategically is to reduce expenditure which may have a knock on impact on the quality of the student experience.”

Last year, College approved a 5% increase in fees for postgraduate and non-EU undergraduate students.

The increase will take effect in 2018/19 and applies to continuing students, as well as students starting their degree this year.

Mathews made the proposals before the College Board decided to scrap supplemental exam charges after several weeks of student protests. Members of the Take Back Trinity movement staged a three day occupation of the Dining Hall, as well as numerous shutdowns of Front Gate and the Book of Kells.

Top scenic walks in Dublin The birth of a Vegan society A closer look at TradSoc

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

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What They Said

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“Enough is enough. The actions of DCUSU will ring out across the country, as part of the broader movement to regain control of our own education. The students of this country stand untied in rejection of all unjust charges all regressive fees, and all policies that are detrimental to students.”

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TCDSU’s letter of solidarity for the DCU protests against rising accommodation costs.

“The vast majority of women who are raped or experience sexual assault, those women choose to continue with that pregnancy”

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John McGuirk, spokesperson for Save the 8th, on the group’s resolute stance against abortion.

News

“SU support on this issue will not come at a significant cost to the wider student body in terms of time or services, but will give the support, exposure and legitimacy necessary for the group to move forward and affect change on a national level.”

Neasa Candon on the TCDSU referendum for supporting Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) which passed Friday 22nd March with 64.5% of the vote.

Barry Murphy re-elected USI calls on government to as UCDSU President compensate student teachers on • Murphy took over after Katie Ascough’s impeachment • Amy Crean, the lead campaigner calling for Ascough’s work placement impeachment, also ran for the position of President.

• A USI report revealed that the average cost of work placement for student teachers amounts to €160 per week • 96% of current student teachers said their time on work placement was highly stressful Lauren Boland Assistant News Editor

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HE UNION OF STUDENTS IN IRELAND (USI) IS CALLING FOR student teachers to receive an hourly rate of pay to cover costs while on work placement.

USI released a report on Thursday detailing the financial expenses incurred by student teachers while working on placement. The report details that the average cost of work placement for student teachers amounts to €160 per week. Expenses include travel, classroom resources and materials, and food.

USI President Michael Kerrigan, speaking at the report’s launch, explained that “along with working part-time jobs, students are on placements lasting 30-35 hours a week with no support for travel, food, or materials”.

“It’s time our government valued student teachers,” said Kerrigan. “Otherwise, we’re

faced with a drought of talent with the shortage of teachers reaching crisis point.”

Costs also include mandatory two-week trips to the Gaeltacht, which student teachers must take twice during the course of their studies. Each trip costs approximately €750 for fees and accommodation.

According to the report, 89% of current students feel that the compulsory Gaeltacht fee is too high. Only those who already qualify for a student grant are entitled to financial support for these trips.

The Gaeltacht fee, which amounts to €1,500 across two trips, is the most frequently cited motivator by student teachers for working part-time alongside work placement. Over seven in ten current placement students engage in part-time work in addition to their work placement positions in schools.

In the survey of 3,000 prospective teachers, 96% of current student teachers said their time on work placement was “highly stressful,” with finance being the main source of this stress. 42% of student

teachers have considered dropping out of their college course because of financial pressures incurred through work placements.

The Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) President Joanne Irwin called this figure “alarming,” particularly given that there “is already a crisis in Irish education in terms of teacher recruitment and retention”.

The USI has proposed reinstating state support to cover the cost of Gaeltacht placements. Previously, a €637 grant was given towards the cost of what was then a threeweek Gaeltacht placement.

In 2014, the Department of Education estimated that the reinstatement of a grant would cost around €1 million.

The survey was conducted alongside trade unions the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), TUI, the Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland (ASTI) and the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO).

John Boyle, INTO President, said that “while school placement is an

integral part of initial teacher education, additional time spent in schools needs to be accompanied by support for student teachers to compensate for expenses such as transport, clothing, classroom resources and materials and loss of part time earnings while on placement”.

“Without government action on this there is a very real fear that success in school placement could become a factor of ability to pay rather than ability to teach,” continued Boyle.

In 2012, the length of teaching degrees courses was increased from three to four years. This was partly in order to facilitate additional work placements for student teachers in order to ensure newly-graduated teachers had sufficient experience working with primary school students.

Bachelor of Education students in St Patrick’s College, Dublin undertake thirty weeks of placement in schools during a four-year degree.

Aisling Grace Deputy News Editor

Ciaran Sunderland Investigations Editor

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ARRY MURPHY, THE FORMER UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN Students’ Union (UCDSU) Campaigns and Communications Officer who took over from Katie Ascough after her impeachment, was re-elected as UCDSU’s President on Friday.

Murphy won on the 6th count with 1,566 votes defeating Ryan Oakes who came second with 1,452 votes and Breifne O’Brien who came third with 1,112 votes.

In his manifesto, Murphy stated that he wants to continue the work he has completed with UCDSU this year and referenced his experience recruiting class reps and campaigning for environmental and disability issues. Murphy also referred to the constitutional review he has started and wants to trial online voting, believing this will increase voter turnout.

According to the University Observer, this year’s UCDSU Presidential race, with six candidates, is one of the largest UCDSU sabbatical elections in recent years with voting taking place across UCD campus last Wednesday and Thursday.

The elections follow a turbulent year for UCDSU. An impeachment campaign was launched following former UCDSU President Katie Ascough’s decision to retract information about abortion from the college’s Students’ Union handbook, with Murphy campaigning for her impeachment. She was later impeached with a high turnout of 6,572 and 69% votes in favour.

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We had an absolute disaster of a year...I’ve learned so much from my mistakes and others’ mistakes and I’ll use that going forward.

- UCDSU PRESIDENT BARRY MURPHY

Part-time officers elected at last SU Council of year

Murphy penned an open letter against Ascough, saying that her defence for her actions “consists of lies”.

He later said: “Voicing my support to the Yes vote was an incredibly difficult decision to make. I stood up for what I felt was right and I stand by that decision.” Murphy also clashed with Ascough over funding cuts for the UCD for Choice campaign, stating in his open letter that he had experienced “forceful manipulation” over this.

An election was held following Ascough’s impeachment, in which Murphy was opposed by Rebecca Hart, ultimately winning with 76.8% of the vote.

Speaking after his election on Friday, Murphy said: “We had an absolute disaster of a year...I’ve learned so much from my mistakes and others’ mistakes and I’ll use that going forward,” according to the University Observer.

Amy Crean, the lead campaigner calling for Ascough’s impeachment, also ran for the position of President, although she was eliminated on the first count along with the option to reopen nominations (RON).

Four other sabbatical officers were elected. Melissa Plunkett was elected Welfare Officer; Stephen Crosby was elected Education Officer; Niall Torris was elected as Graduate Officer and Thomas Monaghan won the election for Campaigns and Communications Officer.

Elections

• Part-time officers are full-time students who work alongside sabbatical officers on specific student issues.

• 28 positions were filled at the last TCDSU Council of the year • The part-time officers sit on Union Forum alongside the sabbatical officers Lauren Boland Assistant News Editor

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A R T - T I M E OFFICERS FOR THE 2018/19 ACADEMIC YEAR WERE elected last week during Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU)’s last Council of the academic year.

Part-time officers are fulltime students who work alongside sabbatical officers on specific student issues.

The part-time officers and sabbatical officers together form Union Forum, an executive committee of the Students’ Union.

AHSS Convenor Rory Codd and Edwyn Hitchcock ran for Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (AHSS) Faculty Convenor, with Council ultimately electing Codd.

He is a Senior Fresh English Studies student and was this year’s School Convenor and Vice Chair of the Academic Senate. He also served as Secretary of the Education Committee.

Health Sciences Convenor Nayeema Hussaini was elected as Health Sciences (HS) Faculty Convenor.

Hussaini acted as a class rep during her current Senior Fresh year. Hussaini identified issues which are “widespread” across Health Sciences courses, such as timetabling problems. Ida Lis also ran for the role.

Oifigeach na Gaeilge Cúnla Morris, a Junior Fresh Modern Irish and History student, was elected as Oifigeach na Gaeilge (Irish Officer). Morris has been active in An Cumann Gaelach and sat on the Éigse committee this year, as well as acting as Public Relations Officer (PRO) for the Trinity Literary Society (Lit Soc).

Merriman. Merriman was elected as Mature Students Officer in Hilary term of this year and sought to continue in this capacity in order to further her initiatives, such as running town hall meetings.

She emphasised the importance of representation and inclusion. The position was contested by Kenneth Kelly.

EMS Convenor Sally Anne McCarthy will be next year’s Engineering, Mathematics, and Science (EMS) Convenor.

She studies Astrophysics and was Science Convener this year.

McCarthy stated that she can “speak the language that the academics use” and promised to increase representation of EMS students in College.

William O’Sullivan also ran for the role.

Gender Equality Officer Aoife Grimes, a Senior Fresh Law student, was elected Gender Equality Officer. Grimes was the Welfare Officer in the Junior Common Room (JCR) this year and organised consent classes in Halls. She wants to put a clear policy in place regarding assault cases on campus, and be more inclusive towards non-binary and transgender students.

Student Parents Officer Leah Freeman, a Junior Fresh Social Studies student, was elected as the Student Parents Officer.

Freeman holds a degree in Communications and Media and drew on her experience as a mother of two in explaining her suitability for the role. She was uncontested for the role.

LGBT Rights Officer Aaron Donnelly was elected as LGBT Rights Officer.

Donnelly, a Senior Fresh Human Health and Disease student, has acted as a class rep and was the Junior Fresh representative on the Welfare Committee last year. Donnelly hopes to work on events for LGBT+ people in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and introducing gender-neutral changing facilities.

Ethnic Minorities Officer The role of Ethnic Minorities Officer will be held by Navika Mehta, an international student entering Senior Sophister Politics and Economics.

Mehta hopes to establish a subcommittee to coordinate with students and cultural societies across campus.

Mature Students’ Officer The Mature Students’ Officer will be Rachel

Citizenship Officer Niamh McCay was elected as the Citizenship Officer. McCay, a Senior Fresh Political Science and Geography student, has served as the Junior Common Room (JCR) Music Officer and Chair/Treasurer of the Harmony Project. McCay wants to “take the power and pass it on to those refugees”.

The role was contested by Conor Reddy and Maia Mathieu.

Disabilities Officer Laura Beston was re-elected as Officer for Students with Disabilities. Beston, a Junior Sophister English and Film Studies student, Beston has held this role for the 2017/18 academic year and hopes to expand Disability Day to a week-long duration, among other plans.

Sports Officer Roisin Harbison was elected Sports Officer.

Harbison is the Vice-Chair of Dublin University Central Athletic Club (DUCAC) and promises to “ensure that sports continues to grow in Trinity”.

International Students Officer Molly McCrory was elected as the International Students’ Officer. McCrory, an international student, is entering final year of Physics and served as class rep this year. McCrory hopes to ease international students’ experience in College.

Access Officer Daire Hennessy was elected as Access Officer. Hennessy is a Business, Economics, and Social Studies (BESS) student. Hennessy has been a Trinity Access Programme (TAP) ambassador and class rep.

Volunteer Forum Coordinator The Volunteer Forum Coordinator will be Clio Chatterton Dickson.

Chatterton Dickson, a Junior Sophister English and Art History student, was Chair of SUAS this year.

Community Liaison Officer Cal Hennessy was elected as Community Liaison Officer. Hennessy is a third year Business and Spanish student, who has previously been involved in Trinity Ents and AIESEC. Undergraduate Studies Committee Representative Misha Fitzgibbon, a Junior Fresh Drama and Film student, was elected as the Undergraduate Studies Committee Representative, defeating fellow candidate Kevin Llanera. Fitzgibbon spoke of her desire to “help people” and passion for education.

TSM Programme Convenor Kate Nolan was elected as TSM Programme Convenor, while Hannah Keating was elected Joint Courses Programme Convenor.

Nolan and Keating were both uncontested.

Chair of Council Junior Sophister Political

Science and Geography student and this year’s Citizenship Officer, Stephen Sheil, was elected as Chair of Council. The Chair of Council also serves as Chair of the Electoral Commission.

Secretary of Council The role of Secretary to Council will be held by Leah Keogh. Keogh has been the incumbent Secretary for the 2017/18 year. The Secretary to Council is also Chair of the Oversight Commission.

Electoral Commission Two ordinary members of the Electoral Commission were also elected. The two elected members are Cian Walsh and Ellen McGrath.

Alden Mathieu and Sadhbh Brennan were elected as biennial (two-year) members of the Electoral Commission.

Four annual (one-year) members were elected to the Electoral Commission.

These were Ruby Barrett, Úna Harty, Nollaig Butler and Jack Shields. The Electoral Commission runs SU Councils, elections and referendums.

Additional reporting by: Aisling Grace, Ciarán Sunderland, Peter Kelly and Michael Gilna

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

News

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Two years on, where is the decision on higher education funding?

Analysis

The government’s delayed response to the findings of the 2016 Cassells Report is a cause for serious concern • Two years later, the government has yet to create a concrete plan for higher education funding • The report urges that whichever option is chosen, the government act urgently, because the current funding system fails to recognise the pressures facing higher education institutions Niamh Keating Higher Education Correspondent

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N 2016, THE REPORT OF THE EXPERT GROUP ON FUTURE FUNDING FOR Higher Education was released, commonly known as the Cassells Report. The group, chaired by Peter Cassells, was created to examine future higher education funding and to present options for a sustainable higher education system. The report presented three options for how higher education in Ireland may be funded in the future. Two years later, the government has yet to create a concrete plan for higher education funding.

The first option presented in the Cassells report is to implement a predominantly state-funded system. Under this scheme, the state would contribute the majority of funding required, while students would attend higher education institutions without cost or with a “nominal charge”. Current student fees would be abolished. The state would increase its core grant to institutions and student supports would be increased.

The additional cost to the state of this programme is estimated to be €1.3 billion a year by 2030. Thus, the first option would mean that higher education would be “free at the point of entry”.

The second option of the Cassells report is to increase state funding while

continuing student fees.

In effect, this would be a continuation of the current model. EU students would continue to pay €3,000 a year and the government would be required to fund the necessary revenue remaining. The additional cost to the state, according to the Cassells Report, would be €1 billion by 2030.

The final option presented in the report would involve increased state-funding with deferred payment of fees through student loans.

Currently, students are required to pay fees up front.

This option suggests that students should be able to defer these fees until after graduation. The expert group favours an income-contingent loan, which means that students would begin to pay once their income reaches or rises above a certain threshold. The report also recommended that student fees be increased so that additional costs needed be balanced between the student and the state. However, the expert group stated they think these increases should be of a “moderate” nature.

In order to fund this option, state investment would need to include a direct core grant of between €1.307 billion and €1.557 billion in addition to an indirect cost of between €150 million and €190 million per year by 2030.

The key difference in these three options is the role and nature of student contributions, and thus, how much the state will have to contribute. While all three options would see state investment to the sector increase, a predominantly state-funded system would

see the state contribution at about 80%. In comparison, a loan system would rely on the state for 55%-60% of its funding. Additionally, an income-contingent loan scheme would result in an accumulated debt of over €20,000 for an average student.

After its publication, the Cassells Report was then referred to the Oireachtas Committee for Education and Skills for discussion, at which point the government assured a funding model for higher education would be announced by late 2017.

However, two years later the Action Plan for Education 2018 does not include a concrete motion on how higher education should or will be funded. The plan makes brief reference to the Cassells Report in part 10.8.9, which states: “Following the publication of the Expert Group report on the Future Funding of the Higher Education Sector, we will propose that the relevant cross party Oireachtas Committee review its recommendations and outline a proposed funding plan for this sector.”

In a Dáil debate on February 27, 2018, Minister for Education and Skills Richard Bruton said that the report was referred to the Education Committee as part of the decisionmaking process regarding how higher education will be funded. Bruton reported that the committee requested the Department of Education undertake an additional economic evaluation of the options proffered in the Cassells Report. “ My Department is currently

DCU to become first Irish university to go plastic-free • No more plastic coffee cups will be provided on any of the university’s campuses.

• The college has also been recognised as the world’s first autism-friendly university Michael Kelly Staff Writer

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UBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY (DCU) HAS ANNOUNCED ITS intention to become the first Irish university to go completely plastic-free.

The announcement was made following actions taken by the university to reduce the amount of plastics used on all its campuses. The action is a joint effort of the university and the DCU Students’ Union (DCUSU).

No more plastic coffee cups will be provided on any of the university’s campuses.

It is intended that by September of this year, all takeaway coffee cups, single-use plastic containers, takeaway cutlery, straws and single use bags will have been completely phased out by the university. By 2020, plastic water and soft drinks bottles will also have been eliminated from use.

Minister for Communications, Climate Action and the Environment Denis Naughten joined with the president and DCUSU to launch the drive. During the launch, Naughten said he commends DCU for their “leadership” on the initiative.

“As a society we discard an incredible 80% of what we

produce after a single use,” said Naughten. “We have a global and a national plastics crisis and our young people are central to solving it through leading by example and helping to change collective behaviour.”

“I congratulate DCU on playing its part on tackling our plastics problem head on,” Naughten continued.

DCU President Dr. Brian MacCraith said that sustainability was a priority for the university and that the initiative “reflects DCU’s commitment to address a very real challenge, both at local and global levels”. “[The] announcement is the start of a journey which will help set best practice for our students, staff and society around us,” MacCraith said.

In addition, DCU was recognised as the first autism-friendly university in the world last Thursday.

The designation was made by AsIAm, an autism advocacy charity.

In an announcement attended by President Michael D. Higgins, DCU pledged to introduce a series of supports and initiatives in order to help reduce difficulties for students and staff with autism. In addition, autism-specific training and awareness will be introduced for academic and support staff across the university.

Speaking at the event, Dr. MacCraith noted the university’s desire to “provide the blueprint for others to follow” and for autismfriendly spaces to “ become a global movement”.

DCU undertook an 18-month project in order to examine the experience of students with autism in college. The results showed that students with autism often experience greater levels of difficulty with regards to settling in and adapting to life at college.

considering the Committee’s request and will revert shortly,” Bruton told the Dáil.

This cycle of referral and deferral highlights the issue the government inability to commit to concrete action for change thus far. According to the report, the nature of this indecisiveness is detrimental to higher education on the grounds that currently “the funding system is simply not fit for purpose”. The report urges that whichever option is chosen, the government should act urgently, because the current funding system fails to recognise the pressures facing higher education institutions as well as students’ high living costs.

These pressures, the report says, “are now seriously threatening quality within the system”.

Without clear action by the government regarding funds for the higher education sector, third level institutions have been forced find funding from other sources.

For example, Trinity’s Chief Financial Officer Ian Mathews has proposed the replacement of EU student places with non-EU places as part a range of income raising initiatives, which include the sale of College buildings. In 2017, University College Dublin (UCD) President Andrew Deeks warned that the College may be forced to limit the number of places available to Irish students due to lack of funding. Additionally, the outgoing National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG) President, Dr Jim Browne, has said students at Irish universities should pay tuition fees of up to €6,000.

However, these plans create a

short-term solution to a longterm problem. Moreover, they place the burden of solution upon the student. Under these recommendations, the student is implicated as the necessary source of resolution, rather than seeking support from the state or other avenues of revenue.

Consequently, students have repeatedly mobilised to demonstrate that they will not support any fee increases. Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) has been mandated to campaign for a publiclyfunded system of higher education, as opposed to a loan-based system. The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) are also supporting this option and have campaigned for more funding for Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI).

In 2017, 5,000 students took part in the March for Education, which protested against the loan system suggested by the report.

The march called for the government and the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills to deliver a timeframe for increasing investment in higher education. Despite a decrease from the 12,000 who attended the #EducationIs March in 2016, the March for Education demonstrated students’ continued discontent with the government’s delayed response.

Student fervour and anger is once again on the rise. The Take Back Trinity movement, initiated in response to a proposed €450 flat fee for supplemental exams in Trinity, has highlighted that students will not stand for fee increases. Dublin City

University (DCU) students are protesting rental increases for purpose-built student accommodation in the Glasnevin area. Trinity students joined the protest, showing that the student movement is unified against fees. The chants heard at this protest included “housing is a human right,” “we’re not cash cows” and “stop pricing students out of college,” which resembled those heard around College during direct actions by the Take Back Trinity movement.

Irish students are currently paying the second-highest fees for third level education in Europe, according to a report published by the European Commission.

Students from the United Kingdom pay the highest rates. The third option presented in the Cassells report, which would involve deferred payment through student loans, is modelled on the UK system. The UK system involves an income contingent loan, which means students’ repayments are postponed until after graduation.

In Ireland, the average debt students would have upon graduation would be €20,000. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar stated that students should not expect a system based on the UK. Yet, a motion calling for the government to oppose a loan scheme to fund higher education was defeated in the Seanad by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, suggesting that this may still be an option.

We must note that, for students, fees are not the only cost. Approximately 40% of students acquire some kind of higher education grant, with those who qualify for

the full maintenance grant from SUSI receiving €336.11 per month. This figure does not mirror the cost of living for a student, particularly in Dublin. For example, the cost of living in Botany Bay for just one semester comes in at €3,000. This highlights that tuition fees are not the sole cost that students must bear and that any increase can potentially result in those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds being cut off from higher education.

The delayed response from the government is not unprecedented. Ruairí Quinn, then-Minister for Education and Skills, dismissed the findings of a 2012 report that he commissioned which recommended the introduction of a higher student fee and loan system.

The most recent Budget 2018, which announced a €47.5 million increase in funding for higher education funding, suggests that the government will continue to kick the can down the road.

The Action Plan for Education 2018 has the overall aim of making Ireland’s education and training system the best in Europe by 2026, which contains actions such as creating a national access programme to boost the number of mature students and those from families without a history of attending third-level institutions.

Unfortunately, without tangible action from the government regarding the future of higher education funding, this aim seems increasingly distant.

8th Referendum

Eighth Amendment referendum set for May 25th Simon Harris stated that the result will likely be “very close” Aisling Grace

opposed to change were in denial about the hypocrisy of Irish law.

Assistant News Editor

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HE REFERENDUM ON THE REPEAL OF THE EIGHTH AMENDMENT OF the Constitution will be held on May 25, the government announced last week.

The announcement follows the passing of the referendum bill in both houses of the Oireachtas by Thursday evening. Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Minister for Health Simon Harris said the campaign will be “very close”.

Principal Investigator Dr. Mary Rose Sweeney of the DCU School of Nursing and Human Sciences stated that “this whole of university initiative, which provides additional supports to students with autism and increases knowledge and awareness of autism amongst academics, support staff, and the general student body, will enhance the experiences of students with autism while at DCU and help them to transition successfully to employment or further studies”.

He urged voters to show up to polling stations on May 25, saying: “It is really important that people do not sit at home and presume somebody else will make the decision for you. If you feel as strongly as we do that there needs to be change in this area, you need to come out and vote.”

“It’s only kicking off; I think for many people they’re just beginning to think about the issues and these are deeply personal, private issues and I would imagine you’ll have conversations around kitchen tables and in the privacy of sitting rooms.”

Several issues were raised as a result of the findings, including difficulties with deadlines, discomfort in noisy environments, challenges with group work, and unease in new social situations.

The electorate, standing at around 3.2 million will be able to vote between 7am and 10pm. A postal vote will close on April 28.

Trinity senator Ivana Bacik predicted an “intense campaign,” saying those

“

We are on the right side of history, and we’re bringing hundreds of thousands of students along with us.

- USI PRESIDENT MICHAEL KERRIGAN

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) welcomed the announcement of a May referendum. They have been pressuring the government to ensure the referendum bill was passed in time for a May referendum date, to ensure as many students as possible are in the country for the referendum.

Following the passing of the referendum bill, USI President Michael Kerrigan said: “Student activists of all political views and all positions on the subject of the referendum will be happy that their voices will be heard on this defining issue of our time. There was certainly a push to prevent students being able to express their strongly held views on the Eighth Amendment.”

“Every campus in the country which has asked its students by way of referendum has had overwhelming responses to call for a repeal of this amendment. The student movement has historically led the discussion on reproductive rights and healthcare in this country, and we will ensure student voices are at ballot boxes on May 25,” he said.

Speaking in support of repealing the Eighth Amendment, Kerrigan said: “We are on the right side of history, and we’re bringing hundreds of thousands of students along with us.”

Others expressed some doubt. Fianna Fáil Senator Diarmuid Wilson said: “We are told twelve weeks at present, this could be increased to six months, seven months, eight months. There is nothing to prevent that happening if we take the provision that is in Article 40.3.3 out [of the Constitution].”

Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, stated that he has changed his position on the Eighth Amendment and will now campaign for its repeal.

His change in position to support abortion up to 12 weeks was “conditional on getting a whole series of reassurances” in the proposed legislation.

He stated that the repeal of the amendment would be a “huge improvement” to the current situation in which abortions are occurring “unregulated, illegal, in the privacy of people’s bedrooms on the basis of pills that have been purchased online”.

Coveney has suggested that following following the referendum and legalisation of abortion up to 12 weeks, any subsequent change to abortion legislation should require a two-thirds majority of parliament, however, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said such provisions would be unconstitutional “and could not be included in this legislation”.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

News

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DCU students protest 27% increase in student accommodation rent The protests follow the Take Back Trinity victory Aisling Grace Deputy News Editor

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UBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY (DCU) students protested rental increases of purpose-built student accommodation in Glasnevin last week, gathering at the Shanowen Square accommodation complex and expressing their outrage online.

Shanowen Square, adjacent to the DCU Glasnevin campus, has increased their rent for next year by 27%.

Students can stay in the accommodation complex for eight months, from September 10 to May 25, meaning the cost of rent for the full academic year will increase by €1,850, to €8,695.

Shanowen Halls have also increased their rental price, by just over 23.5%. Both accommodation complexes also require a €400 nonrefundable deposit.

Led by Dublin City University Students’ Union (DCUSU) President Niall Behan, students protested at Shanowen Square on Friday.

Some brought sleeping bags, while others held signs and banners stating, “housing is a human right,” “we’re not cash cows” and “stop pricing students out of college”.

In a statement on their Facebook page, DCUSU said: “The administration

has failed completely to engage with students on this issue. That is completely unacceptable.”

Several Trinity students were among the protesters at Shanowen Square. Gus Culbertson, a Take Back Trinity campaigner and attendee of the protest, said that he was there to “show solidarity with the students at DCU”.

“We fought hard in Trinity and have shown that students united have the power to change the policies and the world,” he said. “I went along to DCU in the hopes that as they rise up and succeed against the commercialisation of universities around Ireland that eventually we can make serious change at the national level. It starts here in Dublin with Trinity, UCD, DCU, soon the rest of Ireland at the very least.”

Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) lent its “solidarity and support” to the DCU students in a letter, saying: “Accommodation is a basic human right. Safe, comfortable, affordable housing is an absolute necessity for all. Students across the country have been taken advantage of for too long by massive corporate housing companies, propped up by our universities and our government.”

“We have been seen as a soft target, as a group that will

roll over and pay whatever is asked of us. Enough is enough. The actions of DCUSU will ring out across the country, as part of a larger movement to regain control of our educations.

The students of Trinity stand united in rejection of all unjust charges, all regressive fees, and all policies that are detrimental to students,” the letter continues.

Over 15,000 people have signed a petition against the rental increases. The petition states that “year after year students are exploited by landlords with overpriced, substandard accommodation,” arguing that renters are “taking advantage of the current state of the rental market, preying on students and their parents who are desperate to secure accommodation for the upcoming year”.

The petition calls on Minister of Education and Skills Richard Bruton and Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy “to work with universities and their Unions to create more sustainable, affordable accommodation and to stop landlords from exploiting legal loopholes, allowing them to charge whatever they wish to students”.

Students have been expressing their outrage at the rental increases online under the hashtag #ShanowenShakedown. Over the last few days, DCUSU and tenants of Shanowen

Photo Credit: DCUSU student accommodation have published unflattering images and descriptions of the accommodation complex, highlighting issues with ant infestations and grime.

Trinity decides to scrap supplemental exam fees

Dublin City Councillor Paul McAuliffe urged Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy to include student accommodation in the government’s Rent

Pressure Zone Regulations, in the wake of the news of the increase. McAuliffe has also called on the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) to extend its protections to all students who are in rental

accomodation. The RTB maintains a database of private residential tenancies in Ireland and also provides dispute resolution services for tenants and landlords.

DIT staff and students to vote on name of first Irish technological university

IT Blanchardstown and IT Tallaght staff and • The decision by the College Board follows several weeks of student students will also vote campaigning against the introduction of supplemental exam fees • Prendergast had met with TCDSU President Kevin Keane and Graduate Shane Hughes Students’ Union (GSU) President Shane Collins twice last week to discuss Assistant News Editor the fees HE STAFF AND Ciaran Sunderland Investigations Editor Aisling Grace Deputy News Editor

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HE COLLEGE BOARD HAS decided to reverse their decision on the implementation of supplemental exam fees, Provost Patrick Prendergast announced the news on Twitter Following a meeting of Board on March 28.

Prendergast wrote that “the Board has accepted the students’ proposals on

modular billing and fees for supplemental repeat examinations, as well as new proposals for PG/Non-EU” followed by the Take Back Trinity hashtag.

The official Trinity Twitter account also tweeted the news, adding that a committee of students and staff will now examine alternatives and report back.

Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) President Keavin Keane wrote in the Take Back Trinity campaign group following the meeting: “Victory. This is because of every single one of you. I’m extremely emotional. Thank you. Onwards!”

The decision by the College Board follows several weeks of student campaigning against the introduction of supplemental exam fees.

This afternoon a group of protesters from the Take Back Trinity campaign protested outside House 1 ahead of the Board’s decision.

Speakers included Solidarity TD Paul Murphy and People Before Profit TD Brid Smith.

Following a wave of protests against the introduction of the fees, that were covered substantially by national media, Prendergast announced two weeks ago that he would “seriously consider” the fee proposal and later asked for patience

from students in an email.

Prendergast had met with TCDSU President Kevin Keane and Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) President Shane Collins twice last week to discuss the fees as well as the a freeze on price hikes of non-EU and postgraduate fees and oncampus accommodation.

The Board’s decision follows a Fellows meeting where Trinity News learned that Chief Financial Officer Ian Mathews proposed reducing the number of EU student places available at Trinity College in order to offer more places to non-EU students in an attempt to raise more income.

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STUDENTS OF DUBLIN Institute of Technology (DIT), IT Blanchardstown and IT Tallaght will be given the opportunity to vote in the naming process of what will soon become Ireland’s first technological university.

The three colleges, which together formed a consortium in 2012, operating under the name TU4Dublin, are now planning to merge together in the creation of an official technological university.

According to the Irish Times, plans are now in place for the three colleges to submit a formal application to the Higher Education Authority (HEA).

This application, if approved, will

see each of the ITs concerned granted university status.

A spokesperson for the consortium said they will be inviting staff, students and members of the governing bodies to submit a maximum of three suggestions per individual on what will become the official name of the university.

The submissions will be narrowed down to a shortlist, which will then be examined to ensure the name is both suitable and available for use.

The submissions will also need to be suited for adoption into both Irish and English.

Following a HEA panel decision, their recommendations will likely be passed on to Minister for Education and Skills Richard Bruton for approval. A final decision is expected to be made by Autumn 2018.

The Minister of State for Higher Education

TRINITY NEWS Hiring

Trinity News is Ireland’s oldest and most successful student newspaper.

The following positions are open for applications: Deputy Editor Managing Editor Online Editor Visit trinitynews.ie/applications for more details. The deadline is April 4.

Applications for other positions will open soon.

Mary Mitchell O’Connor, speaking last week after the formal enactment of the technological universities legislation, discussed how it will “radically change the higher education landscape”.

“The creation of technological universities provides the opportunity to drive regional development and provide more opportunities for individuals, enterprise and the community.

These institutions will have significant impact and influence regionally, nationally and internationally,” she said.

As of 2018, the TU4Dublin conglomerate aren’t the only ITs looking for university status. 10 of the 14 ITs in Ireland are working together, forming four separate groups in Dublin, Connacht-Ulster, Munster and the Southeast, each bidding to become technological universities.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

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Features

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

St. Vincent de Paul society set to launch online database of soup run page 8

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Interview

In conversation with Angela Nagle

▼ Angela Nagle speaking at Transmediale festival : Photo Credit: Transmediale

Conall Monaghan Staff Writer

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OR HER WORK ON THE ALT-RIGHT, Angela Nagle, visiting lecturer in Trinity for Michaelmas term, has received mentions in the Washington Post and the New York Times. She sits down with Trinity News to speak about topics covered in her recent book Kill All Normies, such as what exactly is the alt-right, transgressive politics and online shaming, as well as more recent events such as Charlottesville and CopOnComrades.

How did you come to research online subcultures?

I started studied online anti-feminist subcultures and forums years ago for my Ph.D. Over the course of my thesis the culture went through different phases, For example it started off being preoccupied with pick up artists but as time went on a lot of things we now recognize as alt-right came to the fore, such as IQ, eugenics, and discussions of birth rates.

By the time I finish it, it had changed in the significant way and I became more interested in new movements that were cross pollinating with these anti-feminist subcultures.

The main online subculture I was looking at would have been Reddit, specifically the “Red Pill” and a couple of pick-up forums, as well as the massively influential 4chan, and later came the exclusively alt-right focused sites like radix counter currents.

There has been some ambiguity in what ‘Alt-Right’ means, could you clarify?

What exactly the altright represents is kind of blurred. If you use the strict definition than you are using the definition that the farright want you to use, therein associating the alt-right with the far-right. A lot of people however use the term differently. For example, when my dad uses it, he means the likes of Steve Bannon.

He’s not entirely wrong.

There is a new populist right that is not particularly connected with the neoconservative ethos of the Reagans and Thatchers.

Instead they are motivated by different political and philosophical principles. Yet in the strict sense the alt-right is an identitarian nationalist movement. The alt-right is the name those that claim the traditional meaning use to refer to those that are a watered down versions of themselves, such as Milo Yiannopoulos.

I think there's also legitimacy in making those distinctions. Even though we know that the people of both groups were in contact for years, I think the altlight are essentially kind of fundamentally philosophically different to the alt right. They are essentially a form of Civic nationalism, somewhat liberal, in a sense. A lot of them come from libertarian backgrounds.

They're retain the antiimmigration stuff, but the idea is essentially the identity politics of the right and the left are both a problem. The alt-right, on the other-hand, explicitly advocate identity politics.

Progressive media has a

“

However class is different because it is ultimately only economic transformation that can address class.

You cannot solve the issue of class by saying let's have less microaggressions against people who were tracksuits or something.

It's not about identity, it's about an economic relationship.

tendency to lump everything on the right in together but these are important distinctions worth discussing.

When I was looking at all this stuff on places like 4chan, if any church-going conservative were to stumble upon these forums they would be absolutely horrified. These subcultures are not socially and morally conservative.

In the book I suggest their philosophy is rooted in the Marquis de Sade style of antiRousseau libertine misogyny.

Don't mistake this for a conservative movement. It's a radical movement.

In the book you have some interesting thoughts about transgression being used as a political tool. Could you speak a little about that? How does it relate to the alt-right?

There has been this very foggy notion notion around for 100 years or so, which is basically that transgression is a style of the left. To break down tradition and existing institutions, to always overturn, is necessarily progressive and good. Even if you look at the way people write about the cultural arts. If they use the word transgressive you know it's suggests a positive attribute. By transgression we are pursuing something worthwhile.

This just struck me as a very interesting phenomenon.

Because the alt-right show that the idea of transgression can be politically malleable.

The reason this is important is because it links to bigger issues.

For example, I think there's something wrong with the left preoccupation with transgression and wish to be seen as a counter culture, as what it suggest is that you don't actually want to be part of the mainstream. It suggests that you don't actually want to take power. It suggests that that you are happy to be forever happy to be in the margins retaining your purity; more interested in breaking

down institutions than building them. You cannot always adopt the position of just being against what is and overly romanticised transgression, if you are a sincere socialist, because ultimately you want to be hegemonic at some point.

You make a distinction between the alt-right and the tumblr left. What is the Tumblr left?

I used 4chan as a kind of broad broad marker of the styles of the alt-right and I used Tumblr as a broad marker of the styles of what the right call ‘social justice warrior’ left. Like 4chan with the right, Tumblr is known as being the style maker of what we now call social justice Warriors. Everything from the fashion sensibility to the language like trigger warnings and sensitivity and microaggressions formed in that kind of world Tumblr cultivates.

I thought it was interesting how these constituted two different versions of the internet. On the right, you had one that was based entirely on being non-virtuous concerned with being as offensive and gross as horrible. On the left internet, you had exactly the opposite which was an obsession with virtue and purity.

On the tumblr left, people who did not live up to the standards of that purity had to be purged. Online left wing culture has been defined by these purges for the last 4 years. People who said the wrong thing, people who didn't apologise correctly or not, or said one thing that could be considerably interpreted as racist are sex with or homophobic or transphobic or whatever, were purged.

It just seems as if there was this kind of Mania on the tumblr-left. In the book, I use the use phrase the economy of virtue. If virtue is the currency of the internet you have to make sure it is in short supply

because if everybody has it it's no good. They therefore had to restrict it so it wouldn’t become meaningless, so the currency would not be devalued. So they had to constantly purge people, and the individuals involved in these attacks really delighted in them.

There was nonetheless a symbiotic relationship between these two online subcultures. On the one side, the right, you have an online culture that believes Western civilization is in a state of collapse. It has become decadent, where nobody is procreating and everybody is a degenerate. The Tumblr left, which is their worst nightmare.

It's almost like a cartoon of what they imagine Western civilization to be. Then on the other side, you have the Tumblr-left people that believe everyone is secretly a Nazi, every man is misogynist, every white person is racist , and everything in the outside world is kind of sinister. They look at the alt right and see everything they said as true.

The alt-right hate women, they're Nazis, they are all the things that we’re saying white men.

How influential are these groups?

On the inside, both groups feel very big, but if you step outside the online world, you are unlikely to meet anyone of either camp. Their actual membership is quite small. Nonetheless because of mainstream media’s love and fetishisation of counterculture, because it’s constantly chasing online subcultures as a way of seeing where culture is going as it did with Punk and other movement, they inflate these groups significance. But then it begins to become selffulfilling as through the media attention these groups do end up becoming significant.

In a more recent article ‘Goodbye Pepe’ you speak about the negative effect of Charlottesville on the altright’s public image. Could you elaborate?

Charlottesville was a moment where the alt-right came into its own. On the first day, they did this very powerful display of uniformity of purpose and confidence in which they were wearing matching clothes, with a procession consisting of a large number of members.

Then the next day it all got very violent and chaotic. There were violent clashes between them and antifa and a woman protesting on the counter protest side two cops. This incredibly confident display transitioned to total disaster in the course of a day. Then there was a huge response by the media. People realised the seriousness of the issue.

They realised this can have a life outside of the internet.

There were militiamen. It was no longer seen as just it geeky teenage kids on 4chan. It was seen to be the alt-right It sounds like your description of purging has certain parallels with the Frankie Gaffney and CopOnComrades scenario last summer. Do you have any thoughts on the incident? it's worth going back and reading Frankie Gaffney news article, because it was pretty mild and says things that the vast majority of people would just take for granted. Basically if someone has no economic privilege and if you live in a country which is something like 95% white, the idea that we would just be adopting this American style of an identitypolitics speak and everyone should have to denounce themselves as a white person is sort of ridiculous.

Now I accept, of course, that racism and sexism exist and they insert themselves in culture in frustratingly subtle ways, which make them difficult to change. However I think that ultimately you can go to any major international and multinational corporation talk about the virtues of feminism and anti racism and anti-homophobia or whatever. You can demand that massively powerful

institution in the world do certain tokenistic gestures to signal that they approve of your cultural politics.

However class is different because it is ultimately only economic transformation that can address class. You cannot solve the issue of class by saying let's have less microaggressions against people who were tracksuits or something. It's not about identity, it's about an economic relationship. therefore class is the only really dangerous one because it threatens where power is and therefore actually threatens capital.

Capital is very happy to give you culture. This is why consumer culture is always co-opting counter culture it’s not threatened by it. Any company would be happy to have more people of colour or more women on their boards, it's not going to fundamentally challenge them in anyway So I'm suspicious of the fact that if you go into a university or the Irish Media or wherever and say that I'm a feminist, I want more women on boards, I want more women on panels, I want more women on TV, you will be met no opposition, no substantial opposition anyway. I know this because I've existed in that world. If anything you'll possibly even be celebrated for your politics.

However if you say what Frankie did you get a very extreme response. In the case of Gaffney, hundreds of women, the most influential women in the country, basically, signed that letter.

If Frankie wants to speak at an event now even if it has nothing to do with politics the organisers will get hate mail telling them they can't have hison their panel, even if he is speaking about Dracula, which he was recently. If Gaffney had written that we need to have more women on panels or whatever. he'd probably have a job in the Irish Times.

He would probably have a job in academia There's a reason why cultural inequalities are not meeting the same opposition.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Features

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Ethical Fashion on the Rise Caoimhe Gordon investigates the rise of an ecofriendly mindset in the fashion industry Caoimhe Gordon Deputy Features Editor

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VERYBODY’S BUYING FAR TOO MANY CLOTHES.” So announced eccentric British fashion designer, Vivienne Westwood in 2013.

Urging consumers to opt for quality over quantity, Westwood was not attempting to cajole the general public to scrap together their pennies to purchase an item from her new collection. Instead, five years later, Westwood’s comments praising conscious consumerism cemented her place in the emerging revolution in the world of fashion. As Westwood eschewed the simple act of “buying for the sake of it”, no one could imagine that an era of sustainable fashion was about to reign supreme.

Fast fashion retailers- such as H&M or the parent company of Zara and Bershka, Inditexhave come under increasing fire due to the questionable methods of their exceptionally fast production rates in reacting to current market trends. However, as more and more people worldwide have become ensorcelled with the creation of a sustainable mindset, this increased ecological acumen has led consumers to seek ethical fashion options.

Sophie Slater and Sarah Beckett are the founders of “Birdsong”, a London based fashion label. Having met during their post graduate degree based around the concept of social change, they quickly realised they shared an interest in fashion. Sophie explains, “We were excited and inspired by fashion, but knew that sweatshops, and the way that fashion is marketed to women has devastating impacts.” A common link between Birdsong and many other ethical labels is the focus placed on the suppliers of the garments. The central mission of the brand is to generate income for the suppliers, while simultaneously raising awareness.

This is echoed in the brand ethos of London brand, Know the Origin, founded by Charlotte Instone. The founding of KTO aims to fully embrace the industry buzzword “brand transparency” in order to ensure it becomes the norm. Instone reports that 61% of other brands are

unaware where their clothing is made while 93% remain clueless regarding the origin of the fabrics that are used throughout the production process. The ethos of ethical brands is clear- they strive to improve the lives of their suppliers through fair pay, respect and assisting the businesses in their aim to be kept in operation.

KTO achieves this through a wide network of suppliers in India, while Birdsong promotes 14 suppliers in 12 countries, including a London knitting circle that was set up in collaboration with Age UK. The ethos of Birdsong is simple- “no sweatshops, no Photoshop.” The founders maintain that they want to eradicate poverty as well as the unrealistic ideals of beauty that pervade the fashion industry at present. 50-85% of Birdsong’s revenue returns to women’s organisations that make the clothes. Instone’s aim is to achieve a universal acknowledgement of the importance of ethical practices in the fashion industry. With fashion being the second most environmentally polluting industry in the world, achieving a new normal in the industry will be no mean feat. But young women like Instone, Slater and Beckett continue to promote stylish items at affordable prices that were produced ethically.

As Slater notes, embracing ethical fashion does not automatically equate to expensive pieces or hemp sacks.

The ethical movement has firmly woven into the fabric of the Irish fashion scene. From luxury brand We are Islanders to Galway-based fashion label The Tweed Project, strides towards eco-friendly fashion are being made across the nation- even within the gates of our hallowed educational institution.

The Nu Wardrobe is a self-described “sustainable fashionable community”.

Struck by the devastating conditions experienced during volunteering with SUAS in India, Aisling Byrne returned home enraged.

Although she was fully aware that humans are consuming 400% more fashion than we did just 20 years ago, gaining an insight into the fast-fashion industry filled her with an overwhelming desire for change. “Seeing the polluted rivers and hazardous working conditions I had this overwhelming feeling of anger. I thought …. ‘Why am

I a part of this?’” she recalls.

Beginning with a monthly swap shop in collaboration with a like-minded pal, it soon developed with help of accelerator programme Launchbox into the online hub it is today.

Byrne’s passion for changing mindsets is evident: “Ethical fashion is fashion created in a system that is morally right and morally acceptable.

This stands for all parts of the process from design to sourcing to manufacturing.

Before a garment appears on the shop floor it has already impacted many people and the environment. It is paramount that all the people and resources involved in this process are treated with respect. It is paramount that farmers and garment workers are given a fair and living wage, that they work in safe conditions, and that their human rights are not compromised.”

Equally strong however is

her disdain for the fast-fashion industry and its corrosive effects on the environment.

She credits the rise of globalisation for contributing to awareness, citing the global outrage expressed in the wake of the collapse of Rana Plaza, a garment factory in Bangladesh which killed 1,134 people: “There was a magnifying glass placed on the fashion industry’s deliberately opaque supply chain and it has become something that can no longer be ignored.”

This revolution has led consumers to truly consider the repercussions of their latest purchase, a growing awareness which to Byrne likens to the growth of responsible waste management in the years previous: “A few years back people wouldn’t be too bothered about recycling at all, but now if you see someone who doesn’t recycle….it’s a bit shameful, because we are all so aware of the consequences of not recycling. I think

we’ll find the expression ‘€5, Penny’s’ losing its confidence as people realise the human and environmental cost behind a piece costing only €5.”

Byrne sums up the conundrum of fast-fashion in one simple sentence: “I walk past shop windows with jumpers saying ‘Girl Power sewn by women who have no power whatsoever.”

Her wealth of knowledge on the global impact of fast fashion is accompanied with a whole host of statistics that are undeniably shocking: “T-shirts are sold for €60 that cost €4 to make and use 2,700 litres of water and lbs of CO2 in the production process and are designed to fall apart after 7 washes…. but people will probably never notice because clothing is rarely worn over 7 times.” She dismisses these chains as little more than a business venture: “Fastfashion no longer changes as a mirror of society and art,

it’s just a myriad of trends that don’t seem to be rooted in anything other than an algorithm of what is most likely to sell.”

However, Byrne remains wholly optimistic about the future of the fashion industry, envisioning a future predicted

by Stella McCartney and Ellen MacArthur, where citizens are more likely to rent their clothing instead of purchasing.

Developing 3D printing technology promises more diversity and individualism of products. Byrne remarks: “I think this presents one of the most exciting times in fashion. Traditional industries across every sector are being completely disrupted and I think fashion has left itself particularly vulnerable, but it is also the industry that I feel will shine when disrupted owing to its endless creativity.”

The mission of the Nu Wardrobe remains equally exuberant, with Byrne

envisioning the community filling the void of fast-fashion worldwide: “We want to empower young women to make sustainable fashion choices regardless of their budget and we want to do this without compromising on style. In order to achieve this, we need to be focused on changing people’s habits from ‘buy-wear one-dispose’ to ‘buy-wear- share-rewear’.

When we share clothes as a community we extend the lifecycle of the garment, save our own money, and significantly reduce waste. We hope that this will decrease the buying of fast-fashion and eventually slow down the industry.”

Byrne also plans expansion across campuses and workplaces across Ireland and the UK to increase the ethical consumption of fashion.

Byrne doesn’t mince her words when considering the future of her burgeoning business: “Yeah, so we basically want to save the world.”

KeepAppy: An app’s journey to improving mental wellness If you don’t make time to look after your mental health, you will probably have to make time to be ill Ella Mulcahy Staff Writer

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CCORDING TO THE WORLD HEALTH O R G A N I S AT I O N, one in every four people in the world will suffer with a mental health disorder in their lifetime - that’s 1.9 billion people. Students in Ireland are no different, with Trinity College Dublin reporting a 46% increase in incoming students with a mental health condition for the academic year 2016/17. With mental illness being one of the leading causes of ill health worldwide, it can seem difficult to know how to begin tackling this issue.

Mental wellness is one way to combat these issues at a personal and local level.

Mental wellness focuses on a balanced lifestyle that incorporates many aspects of life, such as nutrition and stress, It aims to create an environment that can help prevent mental illnesses.

In recent times, a range of technology has sprung up to aid with this idea. Within Trinity, an app that aims to improve a person’s mental wellness by providing personalised content and empowering people to use the tools provided for self improvement. KeepAppy has been through a transformation over the last few months and hopes to touch the lives of many students.

KeepAppy started in 2014, with a bright idea to change the way we think about our mental health. In its early stages, the app aimed to aid counselling services and complement the user’s own initiatives to improve their mental health. The app then moved in the direction of mental fitness as an Enactus project, and was part of the team that placed second at the Enactus Ireland competition in 2017.

This past year, KeepAppy has been overhauled again, with a move towards mental wellness. The company is

still part of Enactus and will be competing again this year. It has also been part of the Trinity Entrepreneurial Society this year. As this app has been through so many changes and has been around for almost 4 years, you may be left wondering why now is KeepAppy’s moment?

The simple answer to that question is the team behind the app. KeepAppy is student built and has a special place in the hearts of all those who work on it. The team this year has expanded and changed drastically. The diversity of the team and the commitment required to launch KeepAppy is a testament to the belief harboured by the team in the cause - improving student’s mental health.

The team includes students from a range of disciplines psychology, computer science, law, business and medicine to name a few. Mental health is a global issue, that by virtue brings together students from all walks of life.

So what does KeepAppy

actually do? It measures 8 vitals : mood, stress, productivity, food, exercise, water consumption, sleep and social time. It takes less than a minute per day to simply swipe across a few scales!

Based on users’ responses, it provides tailored content that is intended to empower the user to improve their own mental wellness. It also uses goal setting & tracking to help users to build healthier habits.

The diary for daily journaling allows users to record their thoughts and feelings, so that their self awareness may be increased.

The team wants people to take care of their mental health as they do with their physical health: by empowering them to develop the awareness and the knowledge to solve their issues, they want to prevent people from facing serious mental health problems.

KeepAppy is the only tool that offers personalized tips and content to users to improve their mental wellness, while remaining free to download. We are working

to destigmatize mental health and help create better working and learning environments.

KeepAppy is available to download on both Android and IOS app stores.

KeepAppy is just one the many student initiatives

aiming to tackle the global mental health issue. Students are a vital part of innovation and are key players in driving society forwards to that we can improve as a collective.

KeepAppy has come a long way, and is still fighting for improved mental health

worldwide - starting with Trinity.

Ella is a senior freshman psychology student who became involved with the KeepAppy team in November.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Features

8

St. Vincent de Paul society set to launch online database of soup runs Incoming president Jack Natin explains that the new database is just one of the many ways VDP is taking social justice to another level

▼ Soup run on Grafton Street

T Jessie Dolliver SciTech Editor

RINITY’S OWN ST. VINCENT DE Paul society, or VDP, is the biggest society on campus. According to the Central Societies Committee it is also the best, having won this years awards for both Best Large Society and Best Overall Society. The size and scope of VDP means that everyone knows someone involved whether it be volunteering in soup runs, participating in the pantomime, or organizing after school kids clubs. VDP is well known for being packed full of members with astounding altruism and charity, to the point of making you wonder how in the hell people get this nice. My flatmate Mide is very involved in VDP - she leaves the apartment at 6 in the morning to work as an occupational therapist, runs a kids club immediately afterwards, cycles all the way home, and finds me deep into my fourth hour of eating biscuits at the kitchen table. I don’t know how she is so nice - I joke that one day she will snap, buy a shitty sports car, and move to Las Vegas in a haze of disillusionment with the world. She laughs at this but I don’t know if she actually thinks it is funny. Being in VDP means you laugh at all jokes, especially the unfunny ones. Because you are so nice.

VDP are now taking things to a new level. This weekend they are set to launch an online database of the soup runs all around Dublin city, to allow charities to coordinate their efforts. Very often people who work in homelessness charities say you won’t starve on the streets of Dublin. This isn’t as controversial as you might think. When out on a soup run, it is common to offer someone a sandwich and some soup, and for them to politely decline, telling you that they’ve already been asked 7 or 8 times that night. There are a plethora of soup runs in Dublin city, with parish action groups and rural charities travelling into the city armed with hi-vis vests, soup, and the best of intentions. This is a testament to the strong charity culture in Ireland, but time and sandwiches go to waste in the crossfire. VDP hope that the new database will increase the efficiency of groups and individuals doing outreach and soup runs by preventing overlap of days and times.

The database is being launched by the Social Justice Committee of VDP. This committee was established late last year to look further into the social injustices of things like homelessness, identify the root causes of the injustice, and propose viable solutions and actions that Ireland as a nation could take to rectify the injustice. Jack Natin, the incoming President of VDP, and outgoing member of the Social Justice Committee, explains that the motivation of this work is to bring about larger, structural change - as the society has held soup runs and addressed social injustices immediately, but have not had the opportunity to analyze social issue more closely.

“There was no push for long term change, which should be what our society does,” Jack describes, “We should be pushing for our society not to need to exist.”

The committee focuses on one topic per year, and the topic of this year was homelessness, as it is an

area that the society and its members already have a great amount of experience in. Along with Jack, Andy McLoughlin and Hugh Fitzgibbon headed up the committee, with three different goals of education, awareness, and push for change. Andy McLoughlin took charge of the education section, having spent last summer compiling resources on the homelessness crisis, and using this information to hold weekly discussions.

Jack explains that “Every week someone new goes away with a question that we want answered. Andy spent his summer finding different sources from which people could answer these questions - Irish Times articles, papers published by various NGOs, government papers, speeches from the Dail.” These resources were collected in a Google Drive, and used throughout the year. In the next meeting, the person who had been tasked with research question returned and presented their answer to the question as best they could.

This may be more easily said than done, as a question might be something like why did the housing crisis start.

On the surface this seems to be easily answered, but the questions inevitably lead to complex discussions. Having these complicated questions is important however, maintains Jack, as “We couldn’t really defend a stance on a given topic or have a particularly good impact on a topic if we didn’t know about it ourselves.”

Then there was awareness, which was the next step in the year’s campaign, run by Hugh Fitzgibbon. Awarenessraising involved hosting events centred around the topic of homelessness, such as panel discussions. Jack clarifies the aim of this: “Well I suppose there is no point in us just knowing. Once we’ve educated ourselves, we then try to find out the best way to make other people aware of the problem, and how to solve it.” The committee has also run a digital campaign to raise awareness called Ask Why. “Its on Facebook and Instagram, about the housing crisis,” says Jack, “It quizzes people on particular statistics to do with the housing crisis… how many houses that are vacant, how many children that are homeless, and the rates at which thats been increasing.

Those rates [that] are very high haven’t been seen before in this country, certainly not in modern times.”

The last part of the project is where the soup run database comes in - push for change.

The committee is determined that they “don’t just want to talk about it, we don’t just want other people to talk about it. We want something to actually happen.” This is the stage that VDP members are most involved in, in terms of putting away hours to the project. After a period of data collection, done online, through phone calls, and by sending out teams to find and talk to soup runs in the city, the database is ready to be launched online. This took enormous effort on the part of the volunteers, with between 8 and 16 volunteers out collecting data every day of a week.

Niall Molloy, a third year computer science student contacted his department to organize the database and

website building projects. In Trinity, second and third year computer science students do a module where they build some software or a website for an outside organization.

VDP managed to be included in this module, making the most of the great resources and varied skills students have within the college. A team of second years worked on the project to compile the data, and Niall managed the website construction.

T

HE WORK THAT THE COMMITTEE has done shows the value of well informed discussions and critical analysis of our society at large. Many of the conversations held in the social justice committee return to governmental policies, plans, and structures, such as the Rebuilding Ireland plan, and policies implemented in the recession. The key cause of homelessness is the current housing crisis - housing prices are so high people can’t afford their rent anymore. Many of the tools and regulations designed to control rent prices, such as rent caps in high pressure zones,aren’t functioning as well as intended and failing in their intention.

The social justice committee is interesting in that no one political party seems to dominate the group. Partisan politics are rarely discussed in the meetings, and are never the centre points in debates.

However, they are not slow to criticize the government at large. Jack points to very simple actions that could be taken: “We need more houses or we need the government to put vacant properties back on the market. A lot people are just holding on to properties because they know that prices will just keep on rising, and they can put it on the private rental market. Properties owned by NAMA are going to waste. There needs to be some sort of penalty on people holding on to vacant properties. The government's plan is to build more social housing and that's a good plan, but they haven’t been building anywhere near to where they promised. They’ve built about a third of what they had promised to reach at this stage. “ The committee also had some interesting findings

on Ireland’s response to homelessness. One of the reasons that soup runs, and other responses to homelessness, are so disparate is that many of them are run by different church groups or separate parishes. Jack describes the landscape of the charity community in Ireland: “Almost every charity in Ireland was set up by some religious organization.

Even the big ones to do with homelessness: Simon, St. Vincent de Pauls, Father Peter McVerry... A lot of them are religious in their foundations.

This may be the reason why there are so many as opposed to one central system. Even with the soup runs, so many of them are related to a particular church group.”

Ireland is interesting, in that many of the basic provisioning and public services necessary for the most vulnerable people in society are provided by private groups of citizens, or by the charity sector. Why is this? “Certainly in recent times, you could point to the fact that we have had so much austerity since the recession.

The only people who could, or were willing to, provide for people made homeless were charities,” explains Jack. He elaborates that “Single-parent benefits were cut during the recession for example, and that resulted in a lot of singleparent families becoming homeless. They represent a huge proportion of the people who have recently become homeless. In the US its similar, in terms of charities having to do a lot, where the government isn’t doing enough.”

Jack hopes that the tool of the database will make a big difference in “freeing up those human resources so that they might possibly be used in other services.” He explains that “Loads of people want to help solve homelessness but the only way they see of doing this is the soup runs.” There are other ways to help that the committee are interested in, which include both political lobbying and an in-depth outreach which will allow homeless people to build up lasting relationships with volunteers.

Jack seems to have thought a lot about the issue of political engagement and volunteering.

“A lot of people want to give

of their time, as opposed to getting really politically active.” he clarifies. The things that need to be lobbied on are actually very simple, he says: “There aren’t enough houses being built, and a part of that is because construction materials in Ireland are more expensive than they would be in other countries. That money has to come from somewhere, and that means increasing some sort of taxes.

There has to be some lobbying there from someone for those taxes, which is going to make some people angry and unhappy.” And Irish people, being as non-confrontational as we tend to be, would rather not make people angry and unhappy. Jack impression is that this is “why it is way easier for people to volunteer on the street than getting politically active. Because you see immediate effects, and that’s satisfying, so that is what people want to do.”

Building up lasting relationships was a key point that the committee hit upon this year, and has given them some ideas to move forward with. “One of the best things you can do for someone who is homeless is building relationships. One of the biggest reasons for people becoming homeless is relationship breakdowns, and conversely one of the big reasons for people coming out of homelessness is that they build lasting relationships,” says Jack. He is eager to find ways to facilitate the building of these relationships. “When you are homeless,” Jack describes, “there’s so much chaos in your life, so much change constantly. Thats why housing is so important in peoples’ lives - to get some sort of permanence and then to look closer at all the other interactions. We changed our name from the soup run to the street outreach because that is what is important - letting people know that someone cares about them and how they are doing.” One idea the committee had for building a community was to establish a regular day sports centre where homeless people could spend time, exercise, and shower, and hopefully build up some lasting relationships, as opposed to a soup run where that “can happen, but possibly isn’t facilitated as much.”

It all seems to come back to community and connectivity, something that we may be losing as a society, as a result of an increased atmosphere of competition and individualization. “One of the ladies who talked to us who was homeless said that the biggest things that got her out of homelessness was that she made a friend. That friend encouraged her that there was hope and that there would be some way out,” recalls Jack. “If everyone could just take some time and start to ask anyone, or people, how they are and how they’re getting on. If everyone cared just a little bit more... It might be a local man who sleeps outside your SuperValu or something, just build a friendship with them.

It might only be half an hour of your week but it could be huge for them. We are trying to find more ways to facilitate people doing that - thinking about this day centre idea.”

Members of VDP have also been regularly volunteering in hostels in order to build these relationships, and to build a sense of community.

“Certainly in homelessness it’s just one of these things that is key and crucial. In terms of successfully housing someone, and making sure that they don’t become homeless again,” Jack continues. “People need a reason to feel like they are at home, at that this belongs to them. You can’t just have someone in a house and expect them to be fine. You have to look after them and make sure that they are at home.”

Members of the outgoing VDP executive are excited about the database, along with the other work completed by the Social Justice Committee.

Kevin O’Leary, the outgoing Vice President of Fundraising, is enthusiastic about the direction that the project is going in: “ I think it’s very important. I also think, as a part of the Saint Vincent de Paul society, social justice is a core part of everything we do.

If we are not running our own campaigns and programmes to actually fight for better social justice worldwide it kind of makes us hypocrites in our other society activities.” Tom O’Malley, outgoing President of VDP said of the committee “They are so so great. They are going to do amazing work next year as well.“

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Features

9

A second chance

▼ Illustration by Jenny Corcoran

Central to rehabilitation over retribution, education offers a chance for personal development to those in Ireland’s prison system Alice Forbes Staff Writer

N

ELSON MANDELA WISELY SAID: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Over 2000 years earlier, Confucius wrote: “Education breeds confidence.

Confidence breeds hope.

Hope breeds peace.” Perhaps most relevant are the words of Victor Hugo: “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”

These great thinkers of time past draw us to the same conclusion: the aspect of education in the Irish Prison system is an incredibly significant one.

Current statistics, however, argue that the reality is overtly different. The Irish Prison service’s education budget is being cut year after year, starting from €1.27 million in 2012, down to €1.065 million in 2017. This drop in funding is combined with the all too widespread public opinion that educating prisoners is not a societal priority.

Furthermore, specifically in relation to higher education, many regard the spending of taxpayers’ money on giving prisoners access to third level degrees as an almost laughable concept.

An article recently published by the Daily Mirror ran with the headline, “Pampered Prisoners: State pays €130,000 to fund college courses for Irish inmates,” while comments on a similar article read, “If you said to me ‘prison education or Crumlin Hospital’, I know who I’d give my money to.” While the socially critical, ironic tone of both of these articles calls for greater spending on public services, what this sort of outlook fails to recognise is the underlying fact that prisons make up part of our local and national communities and that their principal aim, therefore, must not be retribution, but rehabilitation, as whether we like it or not, today’s prisoner will potentially become tomorrow’s neighbour.

In Ireland, while 30-40% of persons in custody do avail of some sort of prison education services each week, ranging from life skills and personal development to basic education in literacy and numeracy, the numbers participating in third level programmes only represents about 1% of the prison population.

One might ask, this statistic being so minute and public opinion so against the general concept, what encourages or acts as a motivator to somebody living in such a restrictive environment to place their dedication, faith, and energy into higher education?

Uncovering the truth In an effort to delve deeper, I spoke to psychologist and Open University Liaison at Mountjoy Prison, Claire O’Connell. She gives her personal view on the issue, explaining: “In my experience there are a number of factors involved here; a common one would relate to finding a constructive way to pass the time being served. Alleviating boredom and finding a way to escape from the usual prison talk relating to crime and drugs is mentioned very often by those undertaking third level courses. Selfdevelopment is often a big factor also, both in terms of obtaining a qualification that may enhance employment opportunities on release, as well as building general selfconfidence. A sense of pride and achievement is definitely part of it too, as is the desire for redemption, in some manner, and to make family members proud.”

In relation to the options available to those wishing to proceed in third level education during their period of sentence, there are two possibilities. The first, and most common, is to avail of Open University courses, of which there were 47 prisoners availing in 2016/17.

Unlike other universities, with the OU there are no entry requirements to study

most of its undergraduate qualifications, and it is not necessary for potential students to sit exams in order to gain entry, as they believe that anyone who is determined to succeed should be given every chance to do so.

However, in saying this, there is a need for prisoners to satisfy the prison authority that they are prepared to undertake the amount of study necessary to eventually obtain a degree.

Students undertaking OU courses are supported by the head teachers and staff of the Prison Education Service, with a teacher nominated as an OU Liaison in each prison who supports students, assists with accessing course materials and forwarding assignments, identifies suitable courses, and then forwards the application forms to the IPS Education section in IPS headquarters.

The second option is open to a very small number of prisoners, who may be permitted to obtain temporary release to attend a further education college, IT, or university while still serving their sentence. However, this is subject to strict security assessment and usually applies to persons in an open prison or progression unit who are coming towards the end of their sentence.

No easy task In relation to the undertaking of OU courses in prisons, O’Connell acknowledged that many difficulties, due to a lack of funding and resources, often arise for both staff and students in the process: “Challenges certainly exist.

The main problems we face tend to be logistical. Prison officer staff shortages can often lead to cancellation of classes, and this disruption can make it hard for students to complete courses. Also, students can be transferred at short notice to other prisons.

Security arrangements mean that technology is greatly restricted, so in many cases, students are not allowed access to phones, tablets, laptops, etc.”

Prison is certainly not what

one would consider an ideal educational atmosphere, and it becomes clear the extent to which extreme dedication (drastically more so than the average third level student) on the part of the individual is a huge factor in successfully completing a degree as O’Connell continues: “At times the prisoners do struggle, as there are restrictions on the access they have to online material, if any at all. Hard copies of the material are sent out to the prisons, but there can be delays in receiving this, which is particularly stressful when assignment deadlines are looming. It can also be a challenge for the students to manage their time around other prison commitments that they often have, such as work or training.

For those starting off on first year modules, it can be quite stressful as they get to grips with academic writing and time management.”

Speaking of her own personal role, O’Connell goes on to inform: “We don't hold Open University classes as

such. As OU Liaison for the those studying OU courses with the Education Centre in Mountjoy Prison, I provide study support and guidance sessions 2-3 times per week.

While the students are supported when they come to these sessions, the bulk of their assignment work is done alone in the evenings.

On top of this, contact with the course tutor is limited. We arrange for the students to have phone tutorials via the Education Centre with their assigned OU course tutor, but these only occur about 4 times a year.”

The power of persistence On the subject of drop-out rates, O’Connell is adamant that despite situational difficulties, prison education staff work tirelessly with students to support and maintain their dedication to the courses they embark on: “The majority of students complete the courses they undertake. A couple every year defer but then take it up again at a different time.

It is unusual, but it does

happen occasionally, where a student drops out of the Open University course, but they are then encouraged to actively engage with the Education Centre to continue with education and possibly engage with another course.”

O’Connell concluded by speaking briefly of the beneficial and positive outcomes that she has had the opportunity of witnessing: “Overall, I believe that third level education provides prisoners with a distraction to life behind bars while offering them a sense of direction and ambition. There are a number of cases where students have completed OU Degrees, particularly in the area of Social Science, Maths, Exercise, and Business, (which are the most popular courses) and have gone on to engage in further postgraduate study upon release. This has lead in time to secure employment and a complete disassociation from criminal activity.”

It is an aspect of reality in Ireland that crime has its roots in disadvantaged

communities, in those with a history of little access to adequate education.

Therefore, education in prisons is essential in the process of rehabilitating acquitted criminals, and third level education is, furthermore, an even greater implement to provide students with the necessary tools to break the cycle of poverty and social exclusion upon their release. The option of third level education does exist today for prisoners, as do stories of those who have succeeded in completing their chosen courses and embarking on stimulating careers post-release. In spite of this, it is evident that a lack of funding and resources, combined with cynical public opinion, complicates this process for many who would benefit greatly from its outcomes. The patience and commitment required on the part of prison education staff and, more importantly, prisoners’ own determination are therefore certainly deserving of admiration.

The not-so-secret life of bees Jessica Gorman discusses what it takes to look after our favorite pollinator Jessica Gorman Staff Writer

H

ONEY. IT'S GOLDEN AND DELICIOUS; drizzled on toast, poured over porridge or even spooned into green tea, but where does it come from?

Bees of course! We've all known this since we were very small, but how often do we think about the fascinating creatures and processes that bring bright, sweet, golden honey into our kitchens?

Honeybees, or Apis mellifera, are incredible insects, native to Europe, Asia and Africa, and lives in a complex, threecaste society composed of thousands of individuals.

These little machine-like creatures are the world's best workaholics and have an incredible environmental impact, creating a rewarding hobby for over 3500 members of The Federation of Irish Beekeepers Association and accounting for the production of over 5% of our nation's food supplies in the form of pollinated Irish fruits and

vegetables.

Unfortunately, wild bees now only make up 20% of the total Irish population due to threats like predation and disease that bees are ill-equipped to deal with in the wild. Due to this, the majority of our bee population live in hobbyist hives all around the country, with commercial profit-driven beekeeping operations rare in Ireland and frowned upon by many keepers due to the health, sanitation and welfare of the bees dropping as the amount of hive to any one keeper grows.

While beekeeping can be a profitable hobby with just a handful of healthy hives producing pounds of honey to use, gift to friends and neighbours, or sell at the local farmers market, it can also be precarious with many not making it through their first year. This is because of a wide array of diseases and threats, which include factors such as the distance needed to travel to find plants. Bees that travel 3 miles or more live significantly shorter lives due to pressure from flying and predation.

However, for keepers who do

make it through the critical first season, the organised, mechanical nature of the bees offers a deeply technical hobby that requires the involvement of both the FIBKA and other beekeeping locals. As a result, a profitable and environmentally friendly and socially stimulating hobby is created.

Experts recommend starting with just one hive, which with equipment can cost t200€400. If all goes well, this one hive can expand to two in the second year of cultivation.

Beekeepers must ensure a nearby source of bee-friendly plants such as lavender, white clover and heather as well as a sufficient natural or artificial source of water. This is because honeybees use large amounts of water to regulate temperature and moisture levels within in their hives.

A good time to begin to order both bees and other equipment is winter, ready to set up come spring.

Beginning as a beekeeper can be intimidating, according to a Mayo hobbyist who I had the pleasure to interview,

as the colony will require lots of protection, especially from parasite, predators, the aforementioned disease and even pesticides.

Unlike their large domineering yellow cousins, who spend their summers destroying your picnic, honeybees are relatively harmless when they're not defending the hive. However, for keepers in close proximity everyday, getting stung is an occupational hazard. For you or I, bee sting is a painful thing often immediately followed by itching and swelling. Fortunately, during peak season, many beekeepers often build up a resistance to the normal reaction following a sting. This causes the beekeepers to suffer little of the expected symptoms of a bee-sting. In spite of this resistance, keepers still do everything in their power to prevent stings. This includes the correct use of smokers used to sedate the bees. It also goes without saying that each beekeeper must always wear their gear correctly.

This, coupled with gentle actions and light colours, help

minimise the risk of getting stung.

In Ireland, the main authority for beekeepers is the Federation of Irish Beekeepers Association, who offer many supports to beekeepers both new and experienced. This includes summer trainings courses held annually in Gormanstown, local courses over the winter, a comprehensive monthly insurance pack, monthly magazine An Beachaire and so much more. The Federation protects keepers, allows the distribution of pure Irish honey and does a lot of good work to help protect the Irish environment that is so critical for these tiny pollinators.

Yet, beekeeping is not just important as a hobby, or as a way to make honey. It also plays a vital role in our ecosystem and food supply chain. Bees are essential for our survival, and this explains that passion that beekeepers often have for the hobby. Bees are responsible for pollinating about onesixth of the flowering plant species worldwide, and

approximately 400 different agricultural types of plant, helping to produce roughly $19 billion worth of crops in the US in 2010. To say they are important to sustain the agricultural industry would be a vast understatement! As bees tend to focus their attention on one species of plant at a time they make amazingly accurate cross-pollinators, successfully transferring pollen from one plant to another of the same species, allowing for pollination of a much higher quality. Without bees, at least a third of our staples would no longer be available. Aside

from this, bees also facilitate the pollination of flowers providing us with beautiful blooms. While this may be the least economically important effect, there is no arguing that it is the most aesthetically pleasing. This, coupled with the $150 million industry that comes from honey, I could safely say we would be pretty lost without these buzzy little bugs. So, the next time you swat at an irritating little bee or smear honey on a teacake, maybe think of all the hard work this little guy does with help from his friendly keepers.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Features

10

Breaking the story Pursuing the truth is a daunting task, but journalists through the ages have shown results for their grit and persistence. ▼ Richard Nixon who attempted to silence the New York Times after they published papers on the Vietnam war

Danielle Olavario Podcast Editor

T

HE FIRST D A M N I N G A R T I C L E APPEARED on the New York Times on June 13, 1971. The headline read, “Vietnam Archive: Pentagon Study Traces Three Decades of Growing US Involvement.”

It revealed that The New York Times is in possession of pages upon pages of papers detailing the history of U.S.Vietnam relations, exposing the lies of the government under four presidents fed to the American nation in the six years that the U.S. has been involved in the Vietnam War. Upon the release of the papers, Richard Nixon attempted to silence the New York Times by claiming that it had violated the Espionage Act, saying that the papers would cause “irreparable injury to the defense interests of the United States.” When the Times ceased the publishing of the papers, the Post took over, and the U.S. Attorney General, on the same day, demanded that they ceased publication. They refused, and the case eventually reached the Supreme Court under the name “New York Times Co. v. United States.” But in 1971, the world was on the side of the press. Both the Times and the Post won, and they were able to keep publishing the Papers without fear of censorship or punishment. It was a landmark decision, with the then-Associate Justice saying that “The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.”

The story of the ruling is now an Oscar-nominated film that stars Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, and its release is as timely as ever. The film shows journalism at perhaps its finest moment, when the newsroom was filled with the sound of hundreds of typewriters and the only place anybody remained informed was through newspapers

delivered on their doorstep each morning. The movie stands as a reminder of the journalist’s purpose at a time when the press is under constant pressure, whether it be from the ever-changing landscape of media and how we consume it, or cynics claiming “Fake News” at every turn.

But The Post isn’t the first of its kind. In 2015, Spotlight, a movie directed by Tom McCarthy, won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. The movie followed the true story of a group of investigative journalists working for the Boston Globe as they unveiled one of the most shocking cover-up cases in recent history: systemic child molestation within the Catholic Church. What the team thought was a local phenomenon turned out to be worldwide, and following the Boston Globe publication, many similar events followed in almost every country in the world.

The aftershock was felt in Ireland, too, with cases surfacing in Wexford, Dublin, Cavan, Donegal, Galway, and Cork. Five of the priests who molested children in the Boston area were convicted and sentenced to prison, and in 2003, the Spotlight team won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its reporting which “pierced secrecy, stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church." The movie is very much a reflection of the journalists’ courage. Writer Josh Singer clarified that “this story isn’t about exposing the Catholic Church. We were not on some mission to rattle people’s faith… The motive was to tell the story accurately while showing the power of the newsroom – something that’s largely disappeared today. This story is important.

Journalism is important, and there is a deeper message in the story."

Perhaps even closer to home and more in tune with the times that we live in today is the Guardian and the Post’s reporting on NSA Surveillance. In 2013, both papers almost simultaneously broke the story of a U.S. government secret the likes of which the world has not seen since the Watergate scandal

in the 1970s. They revealed the surveillance being done by the National Security Agency in the U.S. on its citizens and foreign officials. The reports were based on whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s leaks, which exposed the agency’s collection of phone records.

Not only that, but the reports have revealed secret treaties that were signed by the UKUSA Community in an effort to implement global surveillance, with agencies from countries such as Germany, Sweden, Italy, France and the UK exchanging data of its citizens with the NSA. Snowden was charged with espionage and theft of government property, while then-prime minister David Cameron warned the Guardian against publishing any more of the documents.

The case is ongoing, and the revelations has raised questions surrounding national security and information privacy that we still struggle to solve today.

The Panama Papers that came to light in 2016 is a testament to this conflict.

The whistleblower, known only as “John Doe,” leaked the information to German journalist Bastian Obermayer in an effort to, according to him, fight corruption and income inequality. As a result, 2.6 terabytes of leaked data that reported financial and attorney-client information of thousands of offshore entities were analysed by reporters from 107 news media outlets in 26 languages. It was a journalism effort quite unlike any we had seen before, and for many, it marked a milestone in data journalism and mobile collaboration, two tools that are being used more and more by the media in the 21st century.

As the technological and political landscape continue to shift, the importance of journalism as a watchdog of the public sphere remains as crucial as ever. From Nixon to the NSA, subjecting information to public opinion and helping achieve the transparency that is too often denied by those in power is a daunting but essential task.

While films like Spotlight and The Post glorify what is, in reality, a case of long hours, gritty persistence and frequent disappointment, so too do they highlight the power of the pen.

A Brief History and Analysis of the Practice of Circumcision ▼ Art by Jenny Corcoran

Bridget Maloney Contributing Writer

F

EW CULTURAL PRACTICES ARE QUITE as bizarre and unnerving as circumcision. Circumcision, the removal of the foreskin from the penis, has been practiced for thousands of years in various parts of the world. The word comes from the Latin circumcidere, which means “to cut around.”

It is most common in Jewish and Muslim males, as the practice is of religious significance. Circumcision is most commonly performed on very young infants, and most of the world’s major health organisations hold that the practice does not have any major health benefits when performed on babies.

An elective surgery that does not have any confirmed benefits when performed on an infant, who has no possible way of consenting to the procedure, raises interesting ethical questions of bodily autonomy. The practice is so widely practiced throughout the world that it is generally accepted as normal, but upon further examination, the issue is much more complex. While female genital mutilation (FGM) is condemned worldwide (and rightfully so), male circumcision still remains largely unquestioned and a matter of little concern to many. FGM is, without a doubt, leagues worse than male circumcision, as it seeks to deprive a woman of ever being able to experience sexual pleasure. It is a

misogynist act of violence that is absolutely reprehensible.

For purposes of this article, the focus will be on male circumcision, as it is pretty much accepted worldwide as a relatively normal practice, unlike FGM.

The origins of male circumcision are uncertain.

It is one of the oldest surgical procedures in existence, dating back over 4,000 years. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Circumcision is a religious or cultural ritual for many Jewish and Islamic families, as well as certain aboriginal tribes in Africa and Australia. Circumcision can also be a matter of family tradition, personal hygiene, or preventative health care.”

There are various theories that attempt to explain its origins: religious sacrifice, a rite of passage into adulthood, the belief that it would lessen sexual desire, a means of discouraging masturbation, and supposed hygiene benefits, just to name a few.

The list goes on and on.

Perhaps the most famed, concrete early mention of circumcision is found in the Bible, in Genesis 17:9-11: “Then God said to Abraham, ‘As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.’” In keeping with the covenant, circumcision is still a highly ritualistic practice in Judaism.

The brit milah is the Jewish circumcision ceremony. The

procedure is performed on the eighth day of a male infant’s life by a mohel, a Jew who is trained in the area of circumcision. The brit milah is traditionally held in a synagogue but can be held at home. Although circumcision is not mentioned in the Qu’ran itself, it is mentioned in a hadith and the sunnah of Muhammad, making it pretty much a universal practice in Islam.

According to the World Health Organisation, circumcision is most commonly practiced in the Arab world, Africa, and the islands of Southeast Asia.

Interestingly, it is extremely common in South Korea but is uncommon in its neighbouring countries. It is uncommon in South America and most of Europe, but it is common in the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Excluding the regions where Judaism and Islam are prevalent, circumcision is practiced in the other regions not for religious reasons, but rather for social and cultural reasons.

The prevalence of circumcision in the United States is peculiar and complex.

It is more prevalent in the US than any other western nation with a Christian history. It is a practice that has been deeply embedded in US cultural norms and practices. While the practice of circumcision has been largely or entirely abandoned by pretty much every other western country, the US still carries on. During the First World War, US soldiers were circumcised,

believing that it would prevent the spread of venereal diseases. The practice became widespread in post-World War II America, with the medicalisation of childbirth on the rise. Circumcision became an incredibly common procedure, and is still often done without much thought or questioning on the part of the parents. The most common indicator for whether or not a baby boy will be circumcised is whether or not his own father was circumcised. According to a 2012 article for BBC News

by Cordelia Hebblethwaite: “While Europe increasingly questions the practice of circumcising boys, US paediatricians are about to say that the medical case for it is getting stronger. Most US adult men are circumcised, but the number of newborns having the operation is now falling, and is now below 50% in some states – intensifying the dilemma for parents…

Unlike in Europe, where rates are low, and circumcision is mostly confined to the Jewish and Muslim communities – circumcision is one of the most common operations in the US. Three-quarters of American adult men are circumcised…

Having your baby boy circumcised was, for many years, the ‘default position,’ says Dr Douglas Diekema, professor of paediatrics at the University of Washington.”

There is evidence that there can be benefits to circumcision, though these claimed benefits are debated and nothing has been concretely confirmed. The Mayo Clinic website lists the benefits of circumcision:

easier hygiene, decreased risk of urinary tract infections, decreased risk of sexually transmitted infections, prevention of penile problems, and decreased risk of penile cancer. However, the choice of wording struck me as interesting: “Circumcision might have various health benefits.” Might. The removal of any part of the body, in the case where nothing is wrong in the first place, on the basis of perceived “benefits” that only might be true, seems largely unnecessary. The foreskin is loaded with thousands of nerve endings that can make sex more pleasurable. During sex, the foreskin also moves, which reduces friction. The foreskin is there for a reason, and to remove it seems largely unnecessary and even

detrimental.

The modern debate on the ethics of circumcision centres on bodily autonomy.

“Bodily autonomy” is a term often heard in the ongoing debates surrounding abortion rights, but it definitely applies to circumcision as well. For the uninitiated, bodily autonomy refers to the idea that no person has the right to control someone else’s body. From what I can understand, the circumcision of an infant is a direct violation of bodily autonomy.

The right to one’s own body is a basic human right, and infant circumcision violates this principle. In the case where nothing is medically wrong with the foreskin, to remove it from an infant

child without his consent is morally questionable. In 2012, a district court in Cologne, Germany, effectively banned circumcision.

According to an article by Stephen Evans for the BBC, “A ban on circumcision in Germany has shocked the nation’s Jews and Muslims… The ruling by the district court of Cologne says circumcision ‘for the purpose of religious upbringing constitutes a violation of physical integrity.’

The judgment added: ‘The child’s body is permanently and irreparably changed by circumcision. This change conflicts with the child’s interest of later being able to make his own decision on his religious affiliation.’”

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

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TCDSU must convince students it is worthwhile

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What I’m really thinking - a student who has had an abortion The human side of this debate needs to be heard brought on by pink ‘love both’ badges, graphic 6-foot anti-choice banners, and online ‘baby killer’ comments causing you to relive sweating and shaking in Manchester airport, your clammy face pressed against the cold metal café table, fingers clasping its sides in pain, so tightly that the grooves of the metal remained imprinted on your skin for hours – and yet your top priority is that you have your cover story straight, sending the all-important 7pm text that the spa was great, you’re getting ready with the girls now, and are all heading out for dinner at 8.

Anonymous

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N THE 28TH OF MAY, 2015 I travelled from Dublin to Manchester for a surgical abortion.

For me, the decision to have an abortion was not a particularly difficult or distressing one. It is the stigma surrounding abortion that has affected me the most. Having to travel in secret, continuing to hide it from my family, and battling through this referendum have placed an incredible toll on my mental and physical health. But I do not regret my abortion; for me, it was the right choice.

The final weeks of one of the most vicious referendums this country has faced will run parallel to both the exact dates of my pregnancy, and my thesis submission and final year exams. While this is difficult, what is worse is not being allowed to just forget.

I am reminded daily of the frustration I feel about my parents holding the views they do, deepening a rift they do not even realise exists.

This time three years ago I realised I might be pregnant.

Afraid of being found out, I smuggled two tests to the McDonald’s on Grafton, where my fears were confirmed. My heart raced, vision blurred, and the walls of the already tiny cubicle seemed to close in. Twenty minutes and a few deep breaths later, I was back, sitting in a revision lecture, trying to fake the right balance between calm and excited as I discussed Trinity Ball outfits with a friend.

And Yet I so often end up frustrated at myself for simultaneously wanting to be angry with them and understanding where they are coming from. Mam works with children with physical and mental disabilities. She, and some of the parents she has worked with, feel this campaign is a direct attack on their families. They see it as devaluing the life of a child born with a life-limiting condition.

I was days away from essay deadlines, and weeks from exams. Although my family are not particularly religious or conservative, a pregnancy, never mind the decision to have an abortion, would not have been well received, and I could not think of a reason my parents would believe for suddenly going away on an overnight trip so close to the end of term.

So I decided to wait the two months between the positive test and my boyfriend finishing exams, so that we could travel together. While the IFPA (Irish Family Planning Association) crisis pregnancy counsellors were incredibly helpful, the College doctor was completely bewildered, and had no idea what to tell me. A few months ago, when I considered deferring the year, I tried to engage with the student counselling service.

Two different counsellors gave me their view on the referendum, and said I should just stop following the news. I felt worse coming out than I did going in.

Over the 8 weeks I waited, I wrote essays, sat exams, turned 20, attended birthdays, pretended everything was normal. We delayed travel by another few days so we could vote for marriage equality.

I don’t know whether to be hurt or relieved that no one suspected anything.

Unable to completely control my situation, I tried to control my body in other ways, becoming obsessed with my eating habits. In May, the morning sickness started.

Even when I wanted to eat, the stubborn knot of anxiety that tightened as I lied to my family day after day made it incredibly difficult. This caused me to lose over a stone in weight within a few weeks.

When the time finally came and we arrived in Manchester a taxi driver collected us from the airport and brought us to the clinic, a free service for exiles. Outside the large redbrick building we saw an elderly woman wearing a long purple coat, standing slightly hunched and clutching what we later realised were rosary beads. Our driver informed us that nuns took shifts outside the clinic each day, maintaining a constant vigil.

Ironically, as our driver said this, his manager radioed in to give his permission for the driver to go on a break and answer the call to prayer. It struck me that, while Islam is so often depicted as a highly conservative, sexist and strict religion, bound up with stories of female submissiveness and harsh penalties for female ‘sexual crimes’ such as adultery, here we were, guided to an abortion clinic by a friendly, supportive, and non-

People in our family have experienced miscarriages, stillbirths, and have borne children that have only survived for a few hours. For many, to allow for pregnancies to be ended is to belittle their loss. While this is a misrepresentation of repeal, their fears are as real, and need to be acknowledged and engaged with beyond protests and polarising statements so that this referendum can be carried.

▲Illustration by Megan Luddy judgemental Muslim man, and tutted at by a conservative, prejudicial Christian woman.

Of the 15 of us in waiting the room, I was one of the youngest, apart from an underage girl with her mother. We were black, white, brown, tanned, cream. Some wore work clothes, others tracksuits, others abayas. No one cried, no one looked upset, no one even looked pregnant.

There is no one story, there is no ‘type’ of person who gets an abortion. There is only circumstance and necessity.

Having again discussed the procedure and risks, things took a confusing turn when I met with a second nurse, who, on performing an ultrasound, asked how many weeks along I was. I said ten; she frowned a little and noted ‘size: 6 weeks’ on my form. On consulting another nurse, and then another, she concluded that I was miscarrying. Abortion or not, lying on a paper-covered bed in a foreign country with your pelvis lathered in lubricant, vulnerable and alone, is not the way to find out that your 20-year-old body, in its reproductive prime, has failed on its first pregnancy.

I was not sad that the pregnancy was not viable, as I had never envisioned it developing into anything more. Rather, I was afraid for my future, for the children I had planned to have in ten years’ time. Was I sick?

Did I have an undiagnosed condition? A tumour maybe?

Did this mean I was infertile?

The nurses were so incredibly kind, fast tracking my file so that I could see the doctor as quickly as possible. With an underlying

condition, I was classed as ‘at risk’, because my body could complete the miscarriage at any time. They feared haemorrhaging or infection, which, untreated, could have resulted in sepsis.

I later asked the doctor whether I could have been treated at home. As there were still some signs of viability, he informed me that, under Irish law, doctors could not act until I had actually miscarried. He said although flying was a risk, I had in fact taken the safer option.

I could not believe that, had I been intending to continue with the pregnancy, I would have ended up in Manchester regardless. I still cannot believe that the state will not allow our doctors to give unbiased advice on the safest course of action when faced with a problematic pregnancy or miscarriage, and that, had I not been able to travel, I would have had to go about my daily life, knowing I could begin to haemorrhage at an point, knowing that if the miscarriage completed in my sleep, I may not have noticed the blood until it was too late.

Knowing that I could not be treated in Ireland until my life was on the line. That I quite literally could have died sometime over the last three weeks.

That thought haunted me as we waited 9 hours in the airport for our flight home.

Most of the time was spent sprawled out on a café table, clutching my abdomen and squirming at the waves of cramps. Every 40 minutes I’d spring from the table and run towards the bathroom with my hand clamped over my

mouth, sure that it was more than just nausea this time.

I bled and bled and bled while sitting on the cold steel seats. All I wanted was to be at home on the sofa, with a hot water bottle against my tummy, the old reliable basin by my side, and a large Penny’s blanket swaddling me, safe and secure like the times when I had been sent home sick from school as a child years before.

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NCE LANDED, AND IN TOO much pain to go home, we booked into an airport hotel.

Entering our twentieth hour of travel, my boyfriend passed out almost immediately. I didn’t sleep at all for fear of accidentally soiling the pure white hotel sheets.

I returned home the following day, ‘back from a weekend away with the girls’.

No-one else knew. With an issue as controversial as this, it’s hard to know who you can trust, and how people will react.Day two was worse than the first, and the pain got so bad that I blacked out twice.

Once in bed, and once on the bathroom floor of my family home at 4am. Thankfully, I came around before anyone found me.

The bleeding was heavy and clotted, but I did not have enough credit to ring the UK number I had been given. I should have gone to the hospital, but I had no cover story. In retrospect, my decision to stay at home was ridiculous, but at the time I was paralysed by fear of causing a rift in my family.

At least that was my only fear.

Had I self-induced, without

being able to prove that the abortion had taken place outside of Ireland, seeking medical attention would have risked arrest, exposure, and/or a jail sentence of up to 14 years.

Soon after I had the abortion, I spent some time abroad.

While looking through my things to send on insurance details, my sister came across my referral letter from the IFPA. We’d never really talked about abortion; she assumed that I’d told my friends when it happened, but not her. She thought I’d kept it from her in fear of being judged.

While we are very close, this thought hurt her so much that she barely spoke to me while I was away. She never mentioned it, but I finally worked it out. She is pro-choice, but has a health condition that will likely cause complications in pregnancy.

While she supports me, it is understandably difficult to watch someone give up a chance you may never have.

She was worried that, given the stigma and silence, I hadn’t had the chance to fully talk through my decision. She asked whether I realised this might be the only time I’d fall pregnant. I did. We both cried when I told her I’d miscarried anyway, and was too afraid to go to the GP to find out why.

The past few months have been like torture. Breaking up with my boyfriend meant cutting myself off from the one person who completely understood, who had listened to me vent time and time again, who had always been there. While leaving a longterm relationship is never easy, choosing to walk away from your entire support structure made it all the more

difficult.

Although he was amazing while I made my decision, when I spoke to him recently about sharing our experience to help break the stigma, he shut down. There are people in both of our lives who are vehemently anti-abortion, and I felt it was only fair to consult him before outing both of us.

He said I was strong, and that he really had no role in the story; that it would be better for both of us if I changed the dates and said it was a one night stand. I had walked away from the relationship, he said, and as it was something we’d gone through as a couple he would have stood by me if we were together, but now that it’s over, he didn’t see the point in getting “dragged down” with me.

I can understand his reaction, of not feeling regret but still feeling shame, because I feel it, too. Every time I’ve left the library to cry, every time I’ve hidden under the covers because I can’t face going to class, every time the tutting starts at a family event, every time I hear the words ‘personal responsibility’. While I know our culture wrongly vilifies women* female sexuality in all its forms, especially those who enjoy sex for the sake of pleasure and not reproduction, I can’t help but feel that I deserve at least some of this, because I put myself in this situation.

I’ve seriously considered deferring and repeating the year in September 2018.

There comes a point when it is all just too difficult. There are only so many times you can put up with the flashbacks

I know that some people will twist what I have written, and argue that the stress caused by the stigma and silence surrounding abortion is actually evidence of how the procedure itself is damaging to women’s* mental health. Time and again, this argument has been disproven.

But say it is true. What does keeping the 8th really do?

People still travel. People still self-induce illegally. I can tell you from personal experience that making people wait an extra few weeks, making them put ‘more effort’ into getting an abortion, doesn’t give you time to reconsider.

You’re isolated and alone, you shut yourself off because sometimes it’s just too exhausting to smile through it. You shut down because one person can only feel so much.

Repeal allows pregnant people to feel safe and supported in their decision making. Comprehensive sex education, freely available contraceptives, and better supports for parents, from state-funded childcare to extensive parental leave, are all changes necessary independent of whether or not abortion is legalised. But parenthood should always be a choice.

While it is acceptable to oppose abortion on a personal level, taking a political stance against abortion serves only to reinforce stigma and fear, to make rocky the road of those able to travel, and trap the ones who cannot, to restrict information and services so that we risk being exploited and misinformed, to isolate pregnant people, to shut down conversations around the various aspects of reproductive healthcare, and to impose personal beliefs on others, restricting the right to self-determination.

Abortion is a reality. We are a reality. We are more than the faceless twelve-a-day statistic.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

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TCDSU must convince students it is worthwhile Despite the defeat of the Student Union Opt-Out Movement, TCDSU struggles to convince most students of its merits valid votes were in favour of optional membership, and that came barely a week after the events of the Dining Hall occupation. Where does this cynicism come from?

Cian Mac Lochlainn Staff Writer

T

HIRD-LEVEL S T U D E N T ACTIVISM IS alive and kicking in Trinity.

One must applaud the initiative taken by students in the Take Back Trinity campaign, in galvanising student support to take a stand against further financial difficulties imposed upon them by College. The movement has been a success for the Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) as well as its President, Kevin Keane, after a mediocre performance during his tenure up until the launch of the campaign.

That being said, the fact that the Students’ Union OptOut Movement gained the required number of signatures to trigger a referendum, and then only narrowly lost (51.2% against versus 48.8% for) is also telling. This is without mentioning the low turnout for the referendum, with 2,040 students, or 17.41% of the entire undergraduate population, casting ballots.

Despite the success of the Take Back Trinity campaign, which spread like wildfire across social media and even caught the attention of RTÉ’s Six One News, the OptOut movement still gained support. Close to half of all

The answer may lie in the result of the other referendum that was held on the very same day, which called for TCDSU to take a boycott, divestment and sanctions stance against the state of Israel for their deplorable treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Despite voting against this stance, I am still proud of the fact that there are students in Trinity with strong principles, and are not only aware of the struggles faced by others who live under oppression, but are also active in supporting them in any way they can. Winning nearly 65% of the vote is no accident, and if the wider student body was against it, they would have turned out to vote against the stance.

What concerns me as a student is that although these principled stands are admirable in their intentions, there is no escaping the fact that the plight of Palestinians is not an issue for the average Trinity student. This is more than likely the main source of the Opt-Out Campaign’s support; the general politicisation of TCDSU, as well as TCDSU’s adopting of political stances. Many people were happy to write off those who bemoaned the Union’s stance on political issues as bitter pro-lifers not getting their own way - people who want to leave TCDSU because it supports the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

Unfortunately that is not the case; even if the Eighth Amendment is repealed - in

other words, even when the stance of TCDSU on the issue of abortion becomes irrelevant - I doubt this backlash against TCDSU will dissipate.

Even during the sabbatical officer elections, the four presidential candidates all spoke at length about bridging the gap between TCDSU and students who felt bitter towards it. President-elect, Shane De Rís, has stressed the issue of higher education funding, a stance that can be classified as “political” but that does affect the entire student body, and perhaps a stance that will be welcomed by those who voted for optional membership to TCDSU. However, De Rís’s open support for the BDS campaign on the final day of polling is less encouraging. If he wishes to increase engagement from the student body with the Union, then he is off to a very poor start. He must do much more if he wishes to increase the confidence of the student body, not just in him as President, but in the union as a whole.

Regardless of TCDSU’s political stances, an active Union with strong student engagement brings about greater collective bargaining power for the Union which will prove beneficial in the long term when it petitions student concerns to College.

We have seen in only the past two weeks how TCDSU can improve the welfare of students with the withdrawal of the €450 charge. Successes like these are only possible when TCDSU is united, this is why cynicism towards TCDSU could prove to be a serious impediment to its success in future, unless it is addressed now.

▲ Students at a march against fees

Photo Credit Joe McCallion/ Trinity News

More is on trial than rugby players “The law reflects the norms of society and is up for debate. It is my right and yours to express disgust with how it is carried out.” ▼ Photo Credit: Joe McCallion Anonymous

T

he media circus that has taken place during and after the trial of the now infamous Northern Irish rugby stars has been costly.

Though it was the rugby players that were officially on trial, the young woman at the heart of the case has suffered a trial of her own.

Something which will never leave my imagination is the idea that her bloodied underwear was passed around the courtroom for all to see.

The implication being that she was promiscuous, but had also lied about the source of the blood - she must have just been on her period.

The trial has been public.

Most people in my life have their two cents on events. I don’t think just because we weren’t there means we can’t understand what occurred, most of the evidence has been made public, and was heavily reported on. We are not the jury but we are entitled to our own response.

We can certainly discern the misogynists who came out of the woodwork on Twitter and in our newsfeeds to gloat as soon as the “not guilty” verdict was released. Whatever your belief about the guilt of the defendants, making rape jokes isn’t edgy.

One point that people seem to be missing is that not guilty is not the same as innocent not even close. The amount of evidence needed to convict in a rape trial is staggering and is simply not likely to be there because of the circumstances of rape. In this case she followed the steps we are told - get forensic evidence, report it, tell the police, then you will be safe. But there is not always safety in the law.

The law is not some ideal that can determine who is wrong and right. It is not flawless in its process or delivery of justice. It is a deeply normative, conceptual framework that has historically done more to oppress women than it has to help them. The law, and the jurors not guilty verdict, should not and does not end the conversation. The law reflects the norms of society and is up for debate. It is my right and yours to express disgust with how it is carried out. Northern Ireland is quite possibly one of the worst places to have a rape trial. As reported by the Irish Times, there were queues out the door for seats in the large courtroom. She was interrogated on the stand for eight days. She was accused of being attracted to celebrities (does that mean you want to get raped by them?), and of simply regretting an embarrassing event (why would you ever bring it to such a public trial?).

The woman was to remain anonymous but the reality of her being shown on camera in the courtroom means she will not remain so. Her name has been shared on social media in recent days. The #IBelieveHer movement is a response to so much more than one case. The rallying women on O’Connell Street and Dame Street have long felt disbelieved.

Ireland has a long, long history of punishing women. We locked them away for having sex and now we abandon them at the departure gates awaiting a flight to England. The conviction rate for rape cases is damningly low but the rate of those who experience such crimes is terrifyingly high.

The interest in the trial is a reflection of the new discourses available to women to fight events like these. The recent salience of

issues like consent and sexual harassment have started a conversation, and it’s a conversation where women and all who suffer sexual violence are listened to and believed, even if sometimes only by each other. The plot of Louise O’Neills book, Asking For It, seems to have eerily come to life in this trial.

Before this book came out, or these movements started, I had little to articulate my own experiences with. There is a huge power in simply having a vocabulary which includes

slut shaming. It’s a power I didn't have and that many still lack.

I wish that I believed at the time that someone would believe me. I still wish I believed that. When I was raped, I did not report it because I believed I was at fault and I didnt want any trouble, despite the fact that I had passed out and had lost any capacity to give consent early on in the night.

I carried the weight of this shame inside me with stark

consequences for my mental and physical health for a number of years. It was not the first or last incident of “sexual misconduct” I experienced.

Sharing these burdens is hard to do and it is important that we respect those around us who choose to do so but also those who don’t. I don't have to see my perpetrator in day to day life but I do have to see people everyday who I know actively not believe the woman at the centre of this trial to the point where

they would rather believe she is an attention-seeking slut.

The deeply embedded victim blaming culture in Irish society is shown in the desire to protect any losses in the men’s lives at all.

A friend recently shared something which expressed the need to “pass the mic” in these situations. If we can pass the mic in the coming weeks to people around us it will help in acknowledging the gravity of what this verdict means to people in Ireland, and Irish

society as a whole. We need to pass the mic to the wide range of people who may experience sexual discrimination and/or violence, and that includes transgender people and women of colour who probably wouldn’t experience the wave of support this woman has had.

We need a shift in how we respond to sexual violence as a society, both north and south of the border. We don’t need Paddy Jackson suing those who dissent.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

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So many people in Trinity have stories like mine "I challenge the incoming sabbatical officers: do something about it"

I Anonymous

come from a place where sexual assault is prevalent, but where justice for its victims isn’t uncommon either.

Coming to Trinity shocked me, because when I came here and realised that there was no discourse going on, I thought it must have been because there just wasn’t a sexual assault problem in Ireland.

My best guess was that people were just more polite - in clubs, when I declined to dance with a guy, he’d walk away, whereas in my hometown the guy was more likely to get aggressive, trying to touch me or invade my personal space further.

I never saw anything in the news about cases of sexual assault.

The silence led me to believe that sexual assault just plain didn’t happen here, or at least that it didn’t happen in Trinity. The huge presence of feminism and other human rights campaigns on campus, combined with the absence of any talk on consent, led me to believe that it was an issue that didn’t require any action or discourse.

I never heard so much as a whisper that it was a problem, and that was a huge reason for my decision not to report what happened to me. There was no reference for what would happen if I did, and the silence made me think I must have been the odd woman out. I was terrified that if I reported it, my friend group would see me stirring up trouble where there had previously been none.

The person who assaulted me was my class rep. He was my friend’s boyfriend.

He told me that he had the right to grab me wherever he wanted. He told me that I was being dramatic, that I had no right to be upset, that I was making him and others look bad by being upset over his unacceptable behaviour.

All these things and more reinforced the notion in my head that I was at fault, and that I was the problem.

My sexual assault was like a time bomb. It lodged itself somewhere in my chest and stuck there for months before it exploded out of me and into the world, leaving an aching,

gaping hole that I couldn’t ignore anymore. In the days immediately following the assault, I quietly built a wall of denial around the problem, each brick in the wall an affirmation of the terrible thoughts I couldn’t escape. I was drunk, so it was my fault.

If I reported it, my friends would hate me. If I reported it, nobody would believe me.

If they did believe me, they’d say it didn’t matter because it wasn’t rape, because he was gay, because I was drunk, because it’s just banter, because we were joking around earlier on the night, because, because, because. I had a thousand reasons in my head why I was the problem, namely because my assailant told me as much.

The night I was assaulted, I was tipsy. I’d had a couple glasses of wine at my friend’s birthday party, and as we were outside waiting for the bus to take us to the club, he walked up to me and started groping me. I shouted at him to get off me, and he had the audacity to shush me and say “it’s fine, i’m not sexually attracted to you.”

I knocked his hands away and started crying, and one of my friends stepped up and told him to get away from me. He continued to defend himself, saying that since he wasn’t attracted to me, it was totally fine.

According to him, I was overreacting, making a scene and embarrassing myself. He said as much to a different friend of mine a few days later on a night out - “Yeah, it was unbelievable, she made such a scene, even [my friend] agreed with me that she was embarrassing herself.

She almost ruined [friend’s] birthday party.”

That night, I sobbed as I called my boyfriend over and over and over, desperate for reassurance and absolution.

He didn’t pick up. I fell into a disoriented and panicked sleep on my best friend’s sofa, alone and afraid. in the days that followed, I moved as if I was in a fog, until that wall around the night in my head was well-built and fortified to the point that I could pretend I was fine - never mind the

fact that seeing him in lectures made my heart pound in my ears. Never mind that hearing his voice made me want to run in the other direction.

Three months later, he stopped me outside the library during exams and asked if we could talk. I said yes, because I wondered if he would apologise, and because like so many women, I’ve been conditioned to be polite and friendly even when I feel unsafe.

He told me he had been drunk, and he told me that I ‘didn’t know him well enough’ at the time to understand his humour, or to understand that he wasn’t usually like that. I nodded and went back into the library, and then the time bomb inside my heart exploded.

All those feelings I had stifled, all those fears of rejection and condemnation, and that very basic fear that so many women and men feel of unwanted touch, of being overpowered by someone stronger - it all came rushing back at once. I couldn’t escape him, I couldn’t ignore him, and worst of all, he still thought

that what he did was excusable by his state of inebriation and his sense of humour. I cracked, and this outpouring of emotion is probably a large part of why I failed 4 exams last year. I simply couldn’t focus on college when I felt so unsafe and unable to come forward.

I started writing this article a month ago when I read a similar article in The University Times that came out last month. The woman wrote anonymously, and she talked about how alone she felt. She talked about how she was afraid to come forward, how she was afraid to make a scene, and most vitally to me, she said this: "My situation does not fit in the current, though most common, box of sexual assault. It is not in examples on consent flyers or what automatically comes to people’s minds when I say I am a victim of sexual assault."

To see a story so similar to mine published for everyone to see made me feel recognised for the first time in over a year.

I wasn’t alone anymore. It broke my heart to know there

were other women to whom this had happened, but it also felt like I had a small talisman against the ever-present shame and guilt: it wasn’t just me.

All I could think was that if I’d read something like that a year ago, I wouldn’t have spent nearly a month suicidal during exams. The immediate rushing relief of solidarity was a salve to the open wound in my heart.

My next thought after that was - how many other girls like us are there? How many other terrified women and men have been abused by people they trusted, and how can I help them? At first I was afraid to publish this, and I put it off, but the lack of conversation around the issue in Trinity, and the results of the recent court case in Belfast, have shown me that I can’t stay silent anymore. I can’t remain complicit in the silencing of victims, and in order to do that I had to start with myself.

Now that I’ve had time to heal and avail of college’s counselling services I feel like I have a responsibility to speak out about what happened to

me because today I learned that i’m not the only one - and I’m damn sure there’s more than two of us.

According to RNCI, 92% of assault victims know their assailant. There’s something rotten at the core of society that makes victims feel like they’re the ones in the wrong for being assaulted. If Trinity is so bound and determined to be at the forefront of social change by divesting from fossil fuels and boycotting Israel, why is sexual assault something we’re comfortable remaining silent on?

I challenge the incoming sabbatical officers: do something about it. Lip service isn’t enough anymore.

Consent classes in Halls aren’t enough anymore. Handing out condoms and lube and FRIES posters isn’t enough anymore.

It is high time we tear down the walls around sexual assault and throw everything into the light. It is time we stop forcing women to hide the sins of the men who think they own our bodies. The era of silence and shame is over - it’s time to get loud, and it’s time to get furious.

Trinity TEDx should not be peddling pseudoscience The conference became a platform for damaging stereotypes about mental health issues Luke Fehily Contributing Writer Maria Pachowicz Contributing Writer

F

RIDAY, MARCH 9TH, SAW THE SECOND annual TEDxTrinity conference hosted by our own TEDx society. Themed “Portals of Discovery”, the event sought to discuss “ideas worth sharing” and featured talks as diverse as the speakers who presented them. Among these was Dr. Ian Hughes – a scientist with a PhD in atomic physics, whose speech was entitled “How Dangerous Personality Disorders are Destroying Democracy”.

We believe that none of his ideas were “worth spreading”, as his speech served only to spread misinformation about mental disorders, further contributing to the already rampant and highly problematic vilification of those who suffer from them.

His “ideas” reflected his lack of any formal education in psychology or psychiatry.

His personal website states only that he has “trained in psychoanalysis”; no credentials are given. This unfortunate fact was not clarified before his speech.

Hughes began by providing definitions of Psychopathic, Narcissistic, and Paranoid Personality Disorder, which he grouped together as “dangerous personality disorders”. His descriptions were completely at odds with those found in the DSM-V and ICD-10 – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and International Classification of Disorders,

respectively - the standard taxonomic and diagnostic tools used globally in the diagnosis of mental illnesses.

For example, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is characterized by a very high yet fragile self-esteem and a difficulty with empathy.

Hughes stated that those with NPD are incapable of emotion, remorse, or genuine human connection.

Building on these misconceptions, Hughes used inconsistent logic to arrive at incorrect and damaging conclusions. He asserted that those with personality disorders have been instrumental in “the repeating cycle” of cataclysms such as the Holocaust, thereby mischaracterizing the almost 10% of the population which suffer from one or more of these disorders. It is simply not correct to equate the perpetrators of mass genocide, brutal regimes, and corruption with ordinary suffers.

By retrospectively diagnosing Hitler, Mao, and Stalin with NPD and paranoia, Dr. Ian Hughes tried to justify his calls to “deal with” and “remove” the ordinary, decent people with these disorders.

These calls could only be understood as threatening and malicious, inciting hatred and violence against people with mental illness.

Hughes’ concluding, summative slide was composed of the following statements: “People with dangerous personalities cause violence and suffering.

We can reinterpret history as repeated occurrences of pathological control of

societies by dangerously disordered leaders.

Democracy is our primary defence.”

There are many reasons that Hughes’ rhetoric is damaging, and dangerous, and a cause for concern. Broadly speaking misinformation of any kind, especially in regards to mental health and personality disorders, breeds misconceptions. If the image that the general public have of something is undisputedly negative then it is marginalised and threatened by social stigma and state policy. In

the past such misconceptions propagated the apartheid regime of South Africa, where a fundamental lack of understanding facilitated the segregation of society and the degradation of a minority. In Hughes’ speech we see this too - an innocent minority group being labelled by a supposedly legitimate expert source, with the result that people with mental disorders are vilified.

Quite obviously, this is a bad. We know that those with mental health issues are not Maos or Stalins, or Hitlers,

but if that is the generally held view then no supports are put in place for these people. If Hughes’ views become the norm among policy makers expect slashes in support networks and counselling services - this in a public health sector already chronically underfunded. If Hughes achieves his ideal society there won’t even be a need for these services, not once people with NPD, paranoia, or psychosis have been “removed”.

to contact the TEDx TCD committee and express our profound disappointment at their platforming of such blatantly untrue, spiteful, and malignant ideas. The least we hoped for was an apology.

Angered and shocked by Hughes’ speech, we decided

We are not trying to attack the TEDx committee.

Instead, we received a twosentence response, expressing their hopes that we “enjoyed the event otherwise” and assuring us that they will “take this feedback into consideration for our future conferences”.

However, at best they were unaware of the content of Hughes’ speech. Given that the conference was preceded by rehearsals we know this is unfortunately not the case. At worst the TEDx committee knew of the damage Hughes could cause and hosted him anyway.

Granting a non-expert a platform to expose such damaging untruths is morally reprehensible, while – hopefully unintentionally – failing to clarify Hughes’ lack of expertise is careless at best.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Comment

14

How China is becoming a world leader in environmentalism China has been reducing pollution at record speed - America should follow suit Guy Walker Staff Writer

“C

RAZY BAD” WAS THE P H R A S E used by the US Embassy to describe air pollution on January 11 2013 in Beijing. They noted an Air Quality Index (AQI) reading of 755. The top of the AQI scale? 500.

While people took to Twitter noting the “apocalyptic” scenes that were occurring in Beijing as a thick smog descended upon the city, the Chinese government refused to comment. Such occurrences are hardly rare in China and its many major urban centres.

For the past several decades, the West has been pushing a green agenda, while China has always seemed to remain disinterested.

Reform is long overdue and China is currently in the midst of an environmental crisis.

In 2015, the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that over one million Chinese residents a year are killed by air pollution. Meanwhile the country leads the world in CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide emissions, as well as just about every other pollution measure available.

Equally concerning has been China’s history of rejecting treaties, NGO advice and proposals from other governments on tackling environmental issues. This most noticeably culminated in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord (COP15).

While the conference aimed to be a potential solution to the global issue of climate change, Copenhagen proved to be far from it. Even a freshfaced Barack Obama, on the back of 2008 electoral success, combined with the UN’s “Hopenhagen” campaign, was

no match for the stubborn objections of Chinese politicians. Xie Zhenhua, head of China's delegation, exclaimed “for the Chinese, this was our sovereignty and our national interest” at stake.

◄ Smog amongst the skyline in China

However, 2014 marked the beginning of a new era in China’s approach to the environment. The Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, famously declared: “We will resolutely declare war against pollution as we declared war against poverty.” Such declarations were, at the time, largely seen as an irrelevant gesture, to quiet the environmental community, yet they have proven to be far from it.

What President Xi and Premier Li Keqiang have done, quite unlike any nation in the world, is make the tackling of climate change a national and patriotic cause. It’s for the betterment of the state, and an issue Chinese people are aware of and concerned about. Over twice as many Chinese people think climate change is a threat to the world compared to their American counterparts.

Yet one must be aware that China’s system of government better facilitates implementing these changes. While Xi can drive through environmental reform, the United States’ democratic nature has caused environmentalism to be politicised, and progress on the issue to be gridlocked.

Trump’s election has also had a considerable effect on the attitude of the US towards tackling environmental issues. While the US is cutting its Environmental Protection Agency budget, China is increasing theirs.

President Xi recently said that environmental reform is a central part of his vision as leader. In his speech at last year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, he declared:

"It is important to protect the environment while pursuing economic and social progress – to achieve harmony between man and nature.”

While most remain sceptical on the Chinese commitment to the environment, the results are positive. A study last month by the University of Chicago concluded, 'We don't

have a historical example of a country achieving such rapid reductions in air pollution. It's remarkable’. The University of Chicago study showed a reduction of a common air pollution particle by an average of 32% over the last 4 years To aid this progress, the mayor of Beijing, Cai Qi,

Katie Ascough’s cynical worldview

announced the creation of an environmental police force in order to better punish those responsible for environmental misconduct.

Alongside this, China’s pollution reporting sources have doubled since 2010; it has also restructured its environmental ministry, and has set increasingly ambitious

environmental targets, which it’s determined to meet.4 For too long, America has used China as a scapegoat for its environmental failures.

Its excuse to withdraw from international environmental treaties, such as Kyoto in 1998, and Paris in 2017? China.

The United States’ excuse for poor domestic environmental

standards? China.

Yet China is winning its “war” on pollution. No doubt it will be a long, costly war, but they’ve shown America the solution: political will.

It’s time for the United States to follow suit.

▼ Pro-life march on Parnell Street, Dublin

The pro-life movement in Ireland are using campus censorship as an excuse for losing the argument

Rory O'Sullivan Comment Editor

I

T’S HARD TO BE A PRO-LIFE student in Ireland, so they say. It’s hard to be right-wing, because most people won’t like you, and some will try to stop you from saying things in public. Ascough has been speaking in public a lot in the last few months; she casts herself as a bucker of trends and taboos, the leader of a small group of people who are brave enough to go up against a censorious majority.

The tropes that Ascough uses will be familiar to anyone who has been inside a university in the last few years - everyone has heard people use them in all kinds of contexts. It wouldn’t be exactly true to say that Ascough speaks about the referendum as if it’s happening on a US college campus, but it wouldn’t be far off the mark. There are a small group of militant prochoice students at “the top” who shout the loudest, and the majority beneath who feel pressured, for all kinds of reasons, into following them.

This is a convenient worldview for Ascough, but in her case it’s simply untrue. I’m sure that, as she has said, there were people who were looking for a reason to get rid of her

from Day 1, but most people in high-profile jobs have people looking for reasons to get rid of them. Ascough’s problem was that she gave them a good reason - good enough that the turnout in her impeachment referendum was massive, in student-political terms. A small group of militant people can do many things, but they can’t force people to turn up and vote, anonymously and democratically, in the way that they want.

Now, that she is wrong, or at least thoroughly simplistic, in her characterisation of Irish universities goes without saying to anyone with knowledge of them: that’s not the interesting bit.

The interesting bit is where Ascough adjusts the tropes.

To her, students are under pressure to follow whatever is “cool,” and avoid what’s “not cool”; she shows no awareness that she’s using the vocabulary and frame of reference of a middle-aged teacher trying to connect with the kids. “It is very hard to go against what is perceived to be the ‘cool thing’ on campus,” she tells the Independent. Again, same interview: “What kind of society are we living in that a right to life is seen as anticultural and uncool?”

This, to me, is clear proof that Ascough, if indeed she has ever actually spoken to a pro-choice, pro-impeach UCD student, never once actually listened to them and tried to work out where they were coming from. Her idea of how normal students think, and the pressures and other forces that shape them, is bizarre. I’ve never marched for anything, but I know plenty of people who marched for choice, and plenty of people involved in

student politics and debating, and I’ve heard the word “cool” a handful of times in my life.

As she imagines it, there’s one group of students, and everyone is looking to fit in with the group, and also watching out for people who don’t fit. There’s no evidence that she’s thought about how the nature of college, with its separate societies and courses, is such that people tend instead to separate into smaller groups based on their interests: there is no coolest student in school, because there are too many different groups of people. In college, people don’t need to be around people who are pressuring them to be somebody else.

And they usually don’t want to either: by the time they’re close to 20, most people have at least a loose sense of who they are and what they’re willing to put up with.

Ascough is wrong, but in this case she has a reason. The belief that there are a few bad people whipping the majority into line enables Ascough to explain away the two facts that most UCD students are good people who want the best for everyone, and that most UCD students are pro-choice and were pro-impeachment.

I’m not at all saying that this convenience is proof that Ascough is twisting the truth or saying things that she doesn’t fully believe. Rather, it’s proof that Ascough has done something depressingly common. She’s chosen what is, in her case, the easiest thing to believe. We all, in our lives, come up against the uncomfortable fact that good people will think about an issue and come to a different conclusion to us; the stronger

we feel about the issue, the harder this is to accept.

Everyone who disagrees with me, the thinking goes, must be either a bad person or else doesn’t fully understand the issue. Most people would be pro-life if they really understood the issue, so the reason that they’re pro-choice must be that they haven’t listened to the arguments because of peer pressure from a few bad eggs, and free speech issues on campus.

As we’re coming closer to the referendum, the two sides are more and more showing that they are unable to accept that people are simply going to disagree with them; it’s often and rightly said that many pro-choicers lazily believe that most pro-lifers are just bad or misogynistic people.

But the mainstream pro-life movement have avoided a lot of scrutiny in this respect, because they’ve instead chosen to believe that most pro-choicers simply haven’t had a chance to hear both arguments equally. That way, if they lose the referendum, they will have lost because of censorship and oppression rather than because most people preferred the other argument.

All of this is the explanation for the strangest thing about Katie Ascough’s interview, which is her reference to a supposed censorship of prolifers at a panel discussion on the Eighth Amendment held at the Philosophical Society (Philosoph) in UCC - you won’t be able to read her reference now, because the Independent has removed it, but it was in the original article.

The

dispute

occurred

because the Philosoph and I should say, by way of disclosure, that I have several friends and a brother in the Philosoph - invited more prochoice than pro-life speakers for the panel, because, in essence, the event’s organiser seems to have heard the words “status-quo bias” in a political science lecture, and decided that this was a problem that needed fixing. There was an exchange of long bulletpointed Facebook posts and comments, and in the end, the pro-life speakers pulled out.

This “censorship” has led to countless tweets and one-star reviews of the Philosoph’s Facebook page by pro-lifers. John McGuirk, one of the leaders of the prolife movement tweeted about it multiple times, and the Iona Institute have a lengthy blog post about it. The UCC Philosoph’s panel discussion on the Eighth Amendment has been a big concern of some of the major figures in the pro-life movement.

Here’s a Facebook post by Students for Life Cork about the event: “YOU won't believe what UCC Philosophical Society says is a FAIR debate on abortion - a panel where they INSIST on having SIX pro-repeal the 8th speakers against just THREE prolife speakers. They say (read their statement below) that

they won't 'pander' to notions of a 'fair' and 'equal' debate, and that their decision is final. They even say they are turning off comments on their decision. THIS is not a debate, it is a farce. What are they afraid of?”

And yet the discussion was totally insignificant. After all of that publicity, about 50 people showed up, which is about four or five times the average attendance at a Philosoph event, including committee members. They’re a tiny student society. It reminds me of a Marxist academic I once heard speak on the corporatisation of universities, “and the debating societies are sponsored by corporations - a joke,” he exclaimed, as if this had some sort of impact on the character of university debating societies. Here's the beginning of the Iona Institute’s blog post about the Philosoph’s event: ““Justice is the advantage of the stronger” said Thrasymachus to Socrates, who disagreed. In our own culture, tolerance is increasingly merely an intermediary strategy used by the strong who still lacks power in certain areas.”

The writer is supposed to be Socrates, you see. They’re part of a battle which has raged for all of humankind’s

existence between force and justice. Thrasymachus is “the tiny elite group of staff and students at UCC”. The debate is not actually about abortion, but whether pro-lifers are being attacked instead of getting a fair hearing. They had every reason to pull out of this panel discussion: pull out, and you’ve lost because you were censored and stood on principle; stay in, and you might lose because you’ve lost the argument.

People find it easy to recognise the dirty tactics and double-thinks of others, but will often resort to any false belief or conspiracy theory rather than accept that good people who understand an issue as well as they do disagree. Ascough and the pro-life movement seem to see no irony in the fact that as important as the freedom to speak is the duty to listen.

Listening might not win the argument, and it might not make it easier for Ascough and others to go out on the open-top bus, but it will make it easier for us all to live with each other after the referendum is finished. If the pro-life and pro-choice movements decide to shout each other down instead of listening, we’re all going to be in for a very long and damaging few months.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Comment

15

How I used dance-lessons to make a difference If I can turn my interests into something with a positive impact, so can you Navika Mehta Staff Writer

A

BOUT FIVE YEARS AGO, Kasturi, a domestic help, worked in my home in India. Kasturi is among the millions of rural people who migrate to urban centres in search of better economic prospects. A few days later, I saw her two daughters working instead of her, and I inquired about their age. They were younger than me; at 13 and 15 they were working to earn a living instead of going to school.

It turned out that Kasturi had found work elsewhere in order to earn more for the family of seven. I alerted my mother of this situation, she counselled Kasturi, and the girls were admitted to a local government school.

The incident got me thinking about the millions of children; victims of child labour, unable to escape the vicious circle of poverty, due to a lack of education or resources.

Even though this wasn’t an extreme form of child labour, it was unacceptable nevertheless and I could no longer be a mute spectator.

Most children do go to school but end up with low-paying jobs because of a lack of quality education, and because they have to support their families.

Most girls face discouragement from society, and even their parents would often say, “padh likhke kya karoge?” - “What’s the use of studying?” In other words, when your ultimate fate is marriage and becoming a modern-day slave to your husband and his family, why

should we invest in you? I was deeply affected by this. I knew that people commonly employed children in India but had never personally encountered this situation.

Now at this point in my life I was in high school, and had decided to study economics and politics. I felt the need to talk about this injustice and decided to write letters to ministers and the media and complain. I soon realised that doing all this and complaining about it would only get me so far, and how little difference would it make to the lives of these girls. It was not the law that was faulty, it was society. And if after 70 years of independence that guaranteed equality of all citizens regardless of gender and sex, we haven’t changed, no matter how many women have proved themselves, we still won’t unless people take initiative.

I started conducting dance classes for these children.

Once a week, the backyard of my home would fill up with excited students eager to learn something new. And since they were nearly my age, it gave me an opportunity to connect with them better and understand their way of life.

Now, you may ask, why dance? I have been trained in Kathak, an Indian classical dance form, for almost all my life. I had reached a level where I could teach it. It has been a major part of my life and has taught me the meaning of discipline, of hard work, of failure and most importantly, it raised my self-esteem and confidence. I thought it was naturally the best thing that I could give to these girls.

Moreover, it was also a matter of getting them to come every

week. These are children after all, if I had said I’m teaching English or Mathematics, they would never have showed up.

But dance attracted them and through it, I talked to them about a lot of important issues that they don’t normally get any exposure to, including things as simple as personal hygiene.

I talked to them in English because although they learn it in school, they have no one to practice it with. We discussed politics: these are children whose parents are paid 500 rupees, about €7, by various parties to go and vote before every election. I talked to them about consent and so much more during the dance classes. Dance has no age limit; at one point I had about 40 students from ages 5 to 20.

Kathak is also something they would otherwise never have the opportunity to learn.

My new friends got the opportunity to showcase their talent in front of an audience of about four hundred people twice! Even though there was a huge crowd watching them perform, I knew that each one of them was performing for their parents. I realised that I wasn’t the only one hoping for them to never be underestimated again. When on stage, they were not just dancing; they were showing the world their worth.

After the show, the excitement grew tenfold and nervousness was replaced by a new wave of self-esteem.

Seeing their parents beaming with pride gave me a sense of accomplishment. These are girls whose self-esteem takes a hit every hour of the day, when someone tells them they’re not worth anything.

Seeing them transform on

stage and in life as confident young girls is something I can never forget.

while their “employers” enjoy dinner at restaurants or go shopping.

To influence change, you have to be a part of it. It’s not enough to give money to charity or toss a coin to the homeless. In the long term, these things don’t make any difference. It’s important to actively engage with the problem, find a possible solution and then implement it. Even today in Delhi you can spot 11 and 12-year-old girls looking after infants,

These are girls who have been brainwashed into believing that there’s only one future for them. They face challenges every day, from being pressured into getting married to having to work long hours and being constantly reminded that they can’t sustain themselves. All I did was open their eyes to new possibilities and give them exposure to different options

that are within their reach - the only thing standing in between was society. Many of my students are studying to be engineers, pilots or working in skilled jobs today because they took initiative to make it happen.

I was just 16 when I organised the lessons. I was not some kind of activist, I didn’t even know much outside of my textbooks.

All I understood was that something happening in my surroundings that was not

acceptable to me. I wanted to change that. In that situation, it was important for me to get personally involved and influence these girls; motivate and encourage them. I was way out of my comfort zone, but using dance helped immensely. So, ask yourself, what do I love doing? And how can I use it to change things that bother me?

The point is, if I can do it so can you. All you need to do is take the initiative, and step out of your comfort zone.

Expulsion of Russian diplomat from Ireland - a prudent move?

▼ Russian president Vladimir Putin with the World. Russia is set to host the tournament this summer.

Róisín Ryan Contributing Writer

L

AST TUESDAY, THE DECISION WAS taken by the government to expel one of the seventeen Russian diplomats currently stationed in Ireland. This move follows a wave of similar expulsions across the Western world in response to the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. Both were in a critical condition after the attack in Salisbury in March. .

The case for this decision is easy to make. As an attempt on the life of a British citizen, in the course of which other British citizens were carelessly put in harm’s way, the attack was a blatant violation of Britain’s sovereignty. Russia’s reckless use of a militarygrade nerve agent is also a cause for serious concern.

This attack can be seen as part of the pattern of worryingly aggressive behaviour that has come to characterise the international presence of Putin’s Russia.

The UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats on March 20 in retaliation. Last Tuesday, Ireland has joined the twentyplus countries that have similarly expelled Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain.

Britain is our next door neighbour and arguably one of our closest allies. That we would offer this show of solidarity seems like the obvious and right choice to make. However, one does wonder if it was the most prudent decision.

There is a degree of impotence in the expulsion of diplomats as a response. Russia certainly won’t be too upset about the West righteously throwing out its diplomats.

Their response looks likely to consist of tit-for-tat retaliation

“

It is a futile action that achieves little more than a sense of moral superiority for the West, at the cost of driving us further into the dire straits that Russia has steered us into. against countries who took action against them.

So the West will get rid of some Russian diplomats, Russia will get rid of some Western diplomats and all that will be achieved is poor communication and an even more tense Russo-Western relationship - a relationship

that is feeling steadily more chilly, if as of yet a while away from a full-blown Cold War. To let as aggressive an action as the Salisbury poisoning slide was never an option for Britain - whether there are other, more effective punishments they could have inflicted on Russia is another matter. There has been some noise about expelled diplomats being involved in Russian intelligence gathering, but seeing as Ireland has expelled only one diplomat, it seems to be more of a symbolic gesture than a move to break up covert Russian spy rings.

The expulsion of a Russian diplomat is rather to show solidarity with Britain, or if you want to be cynical about it, to ensure we keep up with rest of the EU pack. In terms of reinforcing bonds of friendship with our Western allies, participating in the throwing out of Russians certainly makes sense.

Showing solidarity with our neighbour seems like the most appropriate option. However, is expelling a diplomat the best way to do this?

Expelling a diplomat clearly nails Ireland’s flag to the post.

It links us to the hegemonic military alliances in Europe.

There was never, of course, any doubt about where Ireland’s political sympathies lay, but this measure exists somewhat uneasily alongside our official neutrality. Ireland is a member of the EU, but the EU is a political union, not a military one. We are not a member of NATO. We are not a member of any military alliance and there is nothing wrong with this.

Neutrality makes a lot of sense for a small country like Ireland. We are never going to be able to wield any huge influence on the grand stage of international affairs. In many ways, it is better if we keep our noses out of where they don’t need to be and let the heavyweights slug it out amongst themselves.

Of course what Russia did is wrong, but we have not been silent on their attack. It has been reported that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar joined forces with French President Emmanuel Macron to push for a toughening of the EU’s language in response to the incident. As part of the EU,

our disapproval will also be voiced through the recalling of the EU ambassador from Moscow.

However, the government felt the need to act on a national level too and thus a diplomat will be expelled. We could have used our neutrality as an excuse to keep one

more line of communication with Russia open. Instead, we find ourselves firmly allied with the Western European hegemons in what is the diplomatic equivalent of “I’m not talking to you anymore!” as Russia skulks around the outskirts of the playground.

It is a futile action that

achieves little more than a sense of moral superiority for the West, at the cost of driving us further into the dire straits that Russia has steered us into. It must be reiterated that we cannot stand by and let Russia do as it pleases with no consequences. But surely there is a better way of dealing with them than this.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Op-ed

16

It’s time to bring Take Back Trinity a step further Take Back Trinity is a response to many deeper issues in Irish universities, which remain unsolved Oisin Vince Coulter GSU President-elect

T

HE LAST MONTH HAS BEEN A turning point in Trinity, and perhaps student politics nationally. Undergraduate, international, and postgraduate students united to undertake the most radical student action in over a decade, successfully winning on all our demands. After years of debate and lobbying, Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) has adopted a position in favour of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.

Although close, a referendum on whether students should be able to opt out of TCDSU failed. These three matters cannot be divorced from one another, as they point to a deeper politicisation of the student body.

For the last two decades, if not more, it’s been a truism to describe students as politically apathetic. This characterisation stood in stark contrast to the earlier stereotype of the student radical, widespread from the 1960s to the 1980s but falling into decline after that. Since then there has been endless student newspaper editorials and opinion pieces lamenting the lack of engagement among students, that in the face of increasing fees and privatisation, resistance was generally scattered and lacklustre.

Partnerships

“T

HE STUDENTS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED” was the most frequently heard chant during the Dining Hall occupation. The chant is a translated, and slightly modified, version of the Chilean song: “The people united will never be defeated”. We should take a hint from the original version on how to coordinate our next action when College attempt to do something similar to the introduction of supplemental fees.

In order for protests to be successful there is always a critical mass of support needed. Students made up the overwhelming majority of the Take Back Trinity movement but other groups and individuals with similar interests helped. Trade union representatives, TDs and senators are all welcome figures adding political capital to the movement. We, as students, have certain material interests and it’s important that we are not isolated but we reach out in solidarity to others who have the same interests.

This movement doesn’t end here, something illustrated by a conversation I had with a member of the movement who noted with bemusement that a month ago they had never taken part in anything political before at all. Now, they’ve actively organised and taken part in demonstrations and an occupation. An entire layer of students have experienced direct action and seen that it can deliver real results.

This means supporting workers in college when they vote for industrial action or supporting TAs who are overpaid and underworked. In the US, most of the, admittedly few, graduate students worker unions are affiliated with local auto worker unions. Not only does each group march together whenever there is a dispute but they share a recognition of common interests. They are, by nature of their affiliation, more cognisant of the specific economic pressures each group is under.

More concretely, the question is – what next? Of course, as a democratic and grassroots movement it will be up to the movement itself to set the direction going forward. But suggestions for the future have already started to be discussed.

Foremost amongst these is the question of structure.

Large, open assemblies are ideal for giving everyone in a large movement like Take Back Trinity the ability to contribute and make decisions together, but over the longer term they can understandably start to diminish in size as people choose other time commitments.

Perhaps even more important a question than its structure is that of its purpose and goals. Take Back Trinity has successfully seen off supplemental exam fees, ensured fee certainty for postgraduate and nonEU students and seems to have killed a proposed accommodation increase.

Editorial

More importantly, when groups are united by a shared material interest, they form a political union with a shared understanding of who has the power to dictate the conditions of their employment or their fees.

College knows it needs students to accept its measures, if begrudgingly, for the university to function. They have involved students and the SU to a certain extent in the the decision-making progress for this exact reason: For example, College has attempted to partner with students in initiatives such as the Trinity Education Project and Vice-Provost Chris Morash came to SU ostensibly to answer questions and hear the concerns of students. They know it is important to make us feel at least slightly involved in the general direction of Trinity.

However, by ignoring the results of the preferendum, College have shown how much value they actually place on student input when it clashes with their bottom line. It is important to remember that Morash initially defended the fees in a much derided email to students. It was only when the protests grew to a PR disaster that College backed down.

We should remain skeptical of these partnerships, including the new modular billing working group, and we should look to form ones with those whose interests align more closely with ours.

▲ Photo credit: Joe McCallion/ Trinity News

their decisions.

But since the financial crisis a decade ago, there have been green shoots that hint at a new wave of student activism that could place our issues on the national political agenda.

Starting with Free Education for Everyone (FEE) in the late 2000s, and followed on by campaigns for marriage equality, Repeal, BDS and against direct provision, student activism has grown substantially in strength.

But Trinity hasn’t been “taken back” - there is nothing stopping the College administration from coming back with further fee increases next year. This university, indeed almost all universities, functions in a profoundly anti-democratic fashion. Students and staff have very little say in an institution at the centre of their lives for years or decades.

Of course, the problems faced by our College community go further than purely fee increases.

As was seen during the Dining Hall occupation, our non-academic staff have faced growing outsourcing to private companies in everything from security to cleaning. College has avoided a pitched battle on this issue by allowing retirements to reduce numbers, and replacing those retired staff with outsourced ones.

Take Back Trinity was built on the back of these developments, as students who had cut their teeth on a variety of campaigns came together with people who’d never been involved before as a large, grassroots movement.

It was this combination of activists, students’ union full and part-time officers and people new to political action that brought College to the negotiating table and won in the space of four weeks.

I believe that we need root and branch reform of our governance structures to ensure that students, academic staff, and nonacademic staff all have a say in how Trinity runs, to avoid situations like this happening again, and move our community forward in partnership. This should start with the removal of the agency of the Finance Committee, which would allow the Board to overrule

This race to the bottom approach, to promote precarious employment, extends to academic staff and postgraduate workers.

It now regularly takes years for academics to have any kind of job security, kept on temporary contracts and lacking tenure. At the same time, cash-strapped departments rely on PhD students to maintain teaching.

These postgraduate workers face extremely variable pay

and conditions and lack collective bargaining power.

In most western European countries, postgraduate workers are recognised as workers with fair pay and benefits.

Of course, most of these problems have their roots in the continued starvation of higher-level institutions of public funding, a situation that has existed for years.

This is despite the Cassells Report on third-level funding having been finished years ago, with two governments sitting on it and avoiding making a decision. The clear, best option for students and staff is funding option one of the Cassell’s Report: no loans, no fees, and guaranteed income from tax.

Forcing the government to finally make a decision and adopt this will require a national campaign, drawing in grassroots student movements, students’ unions, staff unions, and universities themselves. A tall order, but

Editorial Staff

given our successes in the past month, an achievable goal.

As GSU President, I plan to pursue recognition by College of postgraduate workers as workers, and work towards the association of the Graduate Students’ Union with a national trade union. I also hope to help Take Back Trinity host a summer school to facilitate both discussions of ongoing goals and to bring in veteran activists to share their experiences.

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We cannot underestimate how far we have come in such a short period of time. Going into next year, there is a healthier student movement in Trinity than at any point in the last decade. We cannot afford to lose this opportunity.

We must take the campaign national, broaden our appeal, and continue on fighting for a democratic education, open to all, regardless of their background.

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Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

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Being an International Student in STEM page .19

They’ve finally cracked it- how our knuckles can make so much noise

Research News

Researchers employ mathematical modelling to confirm how the cracking of our joints makes so much noise

◄ Photo Credit: Golan Levin/ Flickr

Maeve McCann Biology Correspondent

T

HE MYSTERY OF CRACKING JOINTS has long been a fascination of both daydreamers and scientists alike. The most famous experiment regarding knuckle cracking was carried out by Donald Unger, who in a bid to test the supposed link between arthritis and joint cracking spent 50 years cracking his left hand twice daily and not his right.

The results? No difference in joint health. Although this particular experiment doesn’t have much statistical significance, other studies were conducted in old people which confirmed no difference in arthritis levels in joint crackers and noncrackers.

Alas not everyone seems to have heard the result of these experiments, as I remember teachers in school telling people off for cracking their joints. Perhaps they were actually annoyed at the noise disturbance which regularly accompanies joint release.

Many people (no matter how many times they have heard a joint crack) will still squirm when they hear an ankle click or a collective finger snap.

Amidst the ensuing reaction of cringing or discomfort we might omit to stop and think how on earth such a loud noise can emanate from such a small movement. Believe it or not the answer to this question has been engaging scientists for decades without any confirmation until now.

Scientists at Stanford University, California and École Polytechnique in Paiseau

France have combined the results of previous research into their mathematical model of joint cracking. Previous research in 1971 had suggested the controversial theory that the noise was caused by bubbles in joint (synovial) fluid collapsing when the joint is pulled. Another study in 2015 appeared to disprove this theory through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

which showed that after joints were cracked there were still bubbles persistent in the fluid.

Researchers Chandran Suja and Barakat decided to bring together over 60 years of inconclusive experimental findings into a mathematical model representing the events leading up to the generation of noise from a joint. Their model proves that

bubble collapse in joint fluid is capable of producing the sound observed when joints are cracked. Interestingly they also showed that incomplete bubble collapse can also produce sufficient sound explaining the findings of the 2015 MRI study where there were bubbles even after a joint had been cracked. The bubble noise theory which was first presented in 1971, and has

now been supported by this mathematical model, also explains why once you have cracked a knuckle it can take up to 20 minutes for you to be able to do it again. I takes time for the bubbles to reappear!

Mathematical models such as this can be extremely useful in helping to rule out certain hypotheses. In this case there were many years

of recorded phenomenon relating to the cracking of knuckles, but insufficient evidence to convincingly prove the cause of the noise.

Many imaging techniques such as MRI have too low resolution to really be able to capture what occurs when a joint is cracked. However the numerical and theoretical approach employed by these researchers was able to

account for all possible routes to the observed outcome and were able to prove that indeed it is bubbles collapsing in joint fluid that make such a racket.

So next time your granny tells you off for cracking your fingers you can tell her that no, it won’t give you arthritis and that all the noise is created by tiny bubbles collapsing inside your joint!

▼ Illustration by Lucie Rondeau Du Noyer

The atoms of kratom How the small Asian tree kratom is being used to treat heroin and morphine addictions Simon Benson Staff Writer

K

R A T O M (MITRAGYNA SPECIOSA) IS A small southeast Asian tree with red, green, or white leaf veins that stand out against a strikingly viridescent leaf blade. This unassuming plant contains 27 different alkaloids, the most common of which, and the one of most interest, is called Mitragynine. Alkaloids are a class of nitrogenous organic compounds found in plants, which often have very strong physiological effects on humans. Mitragynine accounts for approximately 60% of the alkaloids in kratom. The second alkaloid of interest is 7 hydroxymitragynine, which accounts for approximately 2% of the alkaloid content, although plants will naturally vary somewhat in total and relative alkaloid content.

Kratom seems to have been long used in traditional medicine, in particular to treat musculoskeletal pains and to increase energy levels. This makes it particularly popular

with manual labourers, who occasionally chew the leaves as they work, in a similar way coca leaves may be chewed in South America. This traditional use has become somewhat uncommon nowadays, as Thailand and Malaysia, which are two of the countries where kratom grows naturally have made it illegal to possess, and even plant.

This is due in part to kratom’s activity on the Mu, Delta, and Kappa opioid receptor, making it an opioid by strict definition. Opioids produce the same effects of elation and bliss that morphine and heroin are known for. This isn’t obvious in the small doses of kratom usually consumed, where stimulant effects are common, but as dose increases more opioidlike effects are observed.

Curiously though, respiratory failure is not common, even in high doses of kratom.

Respiratory depression and a lack of oxygen is often the cause of death for those taking other opioids such as heroin and fentanyl.

There have been reports since the early 20th century, of people using kratom to help treat their addiction to other opioids such as morphine and

opium. Kratom is thus often viewed on an equal harm level as strong opiates by much of society. While side effects such as nausea and vomiting do exist, it is unlikely that a lethal dose would be accidentally consumed. Chronic use has been associated with dryness of mouth, darkening of the skin, as well as constipation.

There are also some liver toxicity concerns, but these have not been studied too extensively as of yet. However, even high doses of kratom seem relatively safe for healthy humans.

There have been deaths associated with kratom, but these cases are usually associated with polydrug use, which should be avoided as a general rule when consuming drugs. Even alcohol and caffeine should ideally not be consumed in tandem (drop that espresso martini), due to the opposing depressant and stimulant effects. It is important to note that many of kratom’s alkaloids have not yet been studied extensively, and there is evidence for agonism and antagonism for a variety of receptors. As well as this, there is evidence that kratom can inhibit some cytochrome P450 liver enzymes, making drug interactions likely.

Kratom is illegal in Ireland, and is being cracked down on across the globe as its use has spread. This is somewhat problematic due to many using it to treat chronic pain, addiction withdrawal effects, and as a substitute for opioids with higher risk profiles (such as Fentanyl and Oxycodone).

This may leave medicinal users vulnerable to moving to more risky prescription opioids, or even higher risk illegal opioids. This is counterproductive in terms of user welfare and harm reduction, and slows or even

halts research on kratom to elicit any medical uses, or any harms its use may cause. It also drives the market for kratom underground, which further harms users. Unregulated trade of kratom will reduce the quality of the product and increase potentially harmful contaminants, as has been seen with so many other drugs.

Like many drugs with low risk profile such as cannabis, kratom has unduly been stigmatised and regulated in a “business as usual" manner, while drugs such as alcohol and tobacco remain legal and

have a huge negative impact on individual consumers, as well as society at large. In 2012 alone, the World Health Organisation estimates 3.3 million deaths globally were attributable to alcohol consumption (5.9% of global deaths). Tobacco is potentially even more problematic, with the CDC estimating global deaths at 5 million every year, and this number is continually rising. The hypocrisy is blindingly obvious once one looks at the facts about drugs, rather than falling into the heuristic of “illegal=bad, legal=good".

It seems to me that kratom is yet another drug that may have promising use that will be scheduled away into oblivion.

Whatever about your views on whether drugs should be illegal, or legal, the measure we use should be consistent and put user welfare at the forefront. By scheduling away drugs with a lower risk profile than our socially accepted drugs, we open ourselves up to problematic ethics and end up further hurting those who may have serious medical issues. In essence, our drug laws need to start making sense, and should be evidence and compassion-based.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

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Bettery and the future of lithiumoxygen battery technology Daire Brady recounts his final year project at LEME in Italy and uncovers more about an exciting new startup which has emerged from it Daire Brady Staff Writer

L

AST SEMESTER I DID MY ERASMUS research project in the Laboratory of Electrochemistry of Materials for Energetics (LEME) in the University of Bologna, Italy. Bologna is a small town contained mostly within it’s medieval peripheral walls.

It has plenty of narrow, winding streets, as well as long, colonnaded boulevards for contrast. The university itself is credited as the oldest, established in 1088 A.D., and it is home to over 60,000 students. Being immersed in a town with such a highly preserved medieval core, it wasn’t hard to forget about the cutting-edge research going on within the brick walls.

My research project was focused on lithium-sulfur batteries, but LEME was also home to the research of lithium-ion and lithium-air batteries. Between the two principal investigators Catia Arbizzani and Francesca Soavi, a host of papers have been released outlining significant improvements in these technologies.

Beyond the academics, members of LEME have pursued business ventures in experimental battery technology.

Principal Investigator Francesca Soavi and Post-Doctorate Francesca De Giorgio came up with the idea of creating the startup “Bettery”. Bettery is a startup based on the experimental lithium-oxygen battery, from which a patent has been drawn outlining a technology that can be recharged quickly by replacing the catholyte (negative electrode in liquid form). Lithiumoxygen batteries work by extracting energy from the electrochemical reaction between lithium and oxygen, which forms lithium peroxide.

One interesting feature of the technology is that it obtains this oxygen from the atmosphere – no cathode material has to be stored inside the battery, as it is obtained externally as needed.

This “breathing” allows for higher energy densities up to five times greater than lithium-ion batteries, which translates into longer runs between charging. As with most experimental batteries, applications are in the large scale - storage of renewable energy, and in electric vehicles.

Lithium-ion batteries have served us well on the scale of consumer electronics, however in recent years we have experienced lithiumion technology struggle to accommodate for larger scale applications.

Oftentimes they are the reason that these applications are costly or limited. For this reason, battery research is a hot topic in academia, and any success in this field is highly lauded.

One example of this; Li-O2 batteries, could potentially lead to a range of 800 km in EVs, compared to under 400 km with conventional lithiumion batteries.

Soavi and De Giorgio have had a number of successes with the startup. They reached the final stages of their first competition “Emerging Technologies” in 2016, and won the National Prize last year. As well as boosting their

outreach and setting them on the right track, it has been a learning curve for them.

Before leaving the lab in December, I decided to find out more about Bettery. In my interview with Soavi and De Giorgio, I asked about how their battery technology worked and the doors it could open, as well as the technical challenges that have to be overcome. In particular, I was curious to know how Soavi and De Giorgio had been doing with the non-academic aspect of the startup – the business and marketing end. Science communication emphasizes the tediously technical details of the research, proof of its legitimacy and how this can be developed further, using vocab that is adequately descriptive, but serves only to present the idea without equivocation.

Getting your audience engaged, interested and excited is optional so long as the details are in place.

However, if your audience is business-oriented rather than scientifically-orientated, this flips. Your audience has a different skillset and perspective to you, and because you’re doing the selling, you have to align with this perspective. In this case, the minute details may not be important, even detrimental if you’re not getting to the punchline fast enough.

Having nearly completed my undergraduate degree in a scientific field, I can see the difficulty in communicating science to those of different disciplines. Coming from an academic background themselves, it is something that Soavi and De Giorgio had to learn from scratch.

Daire (D): What are lithiumoxygen batteries and how can you explain the technology from a non-academic perspective?

De Giorgio (DG): Li-oxygen batteries operate by taking in oxygen from the atmosphere.

Oxygen passes through a membrane that is permeable only to oxygen and not to the other elements in the air.

Soavi (S): The reason why Lithium-oxygen is studied so intensely is due to the fact that oxygen can improve the specific energy of the batteries by a factor of 5, compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries. It’s a very disruptive technology which may solve the problems related to driving range in EVs, that is currently limited by the energy density of the lithium-ion.

D: We see a lot of interesting new technologies coming of age now, but they’re still limited by current battery technology.

Some good examples of these are electric vehicles and renewable energy storage. So will lithium-oxygen be specifically designed for these large scale technologies, or do you think that they can replace lithium-ion batteries in all consumer technologies?

So you know, from your large scale to your small scale like phones, laptops and tablets.

S: Theoretically they can be scaled down for portable devices, however the existing battery technology is already pretty good at this size.

Perhaps they can be viable in a niche market for specific small-scale applications that require large autonomy, like remote devices. In that case they can be used, but I believe

the target technology for such light and high energy densities are mobile technologies like EVs. DG: I definitely agree.

D: Would you say that that is because the lithium-oxygen technology requires a larger volume?

S: No, it is also related to the cost of the technology. Like any new technology, costs are higher than the standard technology at the beginning, so if you are to invest you must do it for a very good reason.

D: So why has it so far been difficult to take that technology beyond the lab and into the consumer market?

S: There are some technical issues that are being addressed.

The main issues are the higher voltage of recharge and the cycle life of the battery, which is one order of magnitude lower than the lithium-ion battery. The current rate of lithium-oxygen is also low, because it is limited by the transport of oxygen through the membrane.

DG: Also I would say that there’s a lot of research dedicated to designing new anodes to replace lithium metal, and also to improve the cycling stability of cells from this end.

D: Is there a danger to having a lithium anode in lithium-oxygen batteries?

Does it react in a way that could cause firing or anything like that?

S: As with any other system that uses lithium metal, oxygen crossover to the anode side can be a critical aspect.

However, given that lithiumsulfur batteries are said to be next to the market, and that they also use lithium metal, any improvements that are made there can be applied to the lithium-oxygen battery, and can accelerate development of this technology.

D: From my experience as an undergraduate science student. I feel that there’s a lot of emphasis put on academics – the research and development of ideas and technologies – but not so much on the entrepreneurial side, like selling ideas and getting them out there. How did you gather the resources and the knowledge to start the company and encourage growth, given your academic background?

S: It’s a pretty long path that started over 1 year ago, and it started thanks to the first competition I decided to attend, just to learn how to do it. We first competed in the Emerging Technology Competition organised by the Royal Society of Chemistry in London in June 2016. It was then that I understood this environment was different to the scientific one. Then we decided to participate in an acceleration program called Unibo LaunchPad here in the University of Bologna.

D: I’ve heard of that in Trinity, I think we have something like that too.

DG: They launched this programme to give support and help to researchers who want to approach entrepreneurship S: There are many people young, and not so young, from

different backgrounds who try to get value from this knowledge.

DG: Just to transfer the technology from the academic lab to the outside, there’s a big vacuum in between and it’s very difficult to jump from the lab to the business world.

And it was a really great opportunity for us because we started to change our mindset from a researcher’s point of view to that of an entrepreneur.

S: We won first prize in this program, and Francesa went to Silicon Valley to a programme over there. When she came back we applied for other programmes. The last one was the National Prize.

DG: It’s very hard for us, because we know everything well in detail about the technology and from the electrochemical point of view, but we know nothing about the business model or business plan so it’s very hard for us to write a business model, because the language is completely different from ours.

D: Its something I suppose they don’t really prepare you for in a science degree as much in that sense. So what are the challenges that you face with Bettery, and in what ways have you overcome difficult situations in the past?

S: The challenge that we faced with Bettery was starting off from the entrepreneurial aspect. It’s not so much the technical content of the project, but the rest of creating a startup.

Like the management of the intellectual property rights, how to manage it now and in the future, what are the best exchanges with universities and other industries. It’s not so clear because we want to give value to the university, and we want to give value to our company, so we have to balance things really well.

However, now I feel that our visibility in the region where we live in Italy and even outside of it is growing.

We are pretty well known in academia at an international level, but I realise that we are not so well known to businesses, even in Bologna.

And now we’ve opened a channel so they that can know that our startup exists but also that the university is open to such collaboration. So we are overcoming this issue DG: And in Italy there’s a lot of strong expertise in the battery field. People generally know about Tesla and Panasonic, but it’s also important to go beyond that, and to be aware that in Italy there’s a lot of expertise from the academic end.

D: What have you done to promote yourself, and do you find yourselves travelling much with this experience?

DG: Yes we are travelling a lot, participating in startup competitions here in Italy and also meeting one to one with investors and businesses.

I went to Silicon Valley for 3 weeks last July to attend the Technology Venture Launch Programme there, where I met lots of venture capitalists and business angels. They gave me very important feedback for the idea, and gave me advice on how to better identify our business model and plan. It

used was a great opportunity.

FS: Now we are travelling more in Italy at this time. For scientific reasons I’m travelling abroad, but for this program we prefer to travel in Italy because this is where we would like to start. It’s easier to have connections with industries and enterprises that are close to home.

DG: In Silicon Valley they told me that when an entrepreneur wants to start their company, it’s better to start from their own country, and then go beyond. It’s easier to start that way.

D: We have seen a lot of new and exciting battery technologies emerge in the past decade. Looking ahead at the next 10 to 20 years, do you see any new technologies appearing that we don’t currently use?

S: For sure, I think that lithium-ion batteries are expected to show improvements in cost reduction and energy density by a margin of maybe 20%, but it may not be enough for certain applications if you want to make a big step. So, if you want large autonomy, and you want to secure a larger amount of energy from renewables - things that impact the cost and autonomy of the system - we are to use new battery chemistry. There are many strategies that have been considered. Changing the chemistry of solid state

batteries is one direction. Then there’s lithium-sulfur batteries which are expected to have double the energy density of lithium ion. Lithiumoxygen will go even higher.

There are also redox flow batteries. These batteries are currently too heavy to be considered for cars, but they feature a power and energy that are not coupled. In a flow battery, power is related to the size of the plates, and energy is related to the tank that contains the liquid. But for batteries in general, you can change the dimensions, but the power/energy ratio always remains constant. So an emerging technology is the development of these high specific energy redox flow batteries. And these I think will be very competitive in the next ten years.

D: So in terms of the technologies that will benefit from the battery, do you think there are any trends emerging now that will become mainstream in ten years as a result?

S: I feel that one application that could take great advantage of the development of long lasting light batteries is electric aircraft.

D: So we don’t have that technology right now to power these?

S: I think lithium-ion are

ex p e r i m e n t a l l y but not in regular production, and only for small aircraft, but the range is not enough.

DG: So if you wanted to travel from Europe to the other side of the world, there is nothing available at the moment D: So would you suspect that battery-powered airplanes will carry passengers in the near future?

DG: I don’t know if in the next ten years, maybe it will take a longer time.

S: Other applications are in space, to increase autonomy of satellites or anything that cannot be recharged from the grid. All the activities that planned for the long-term will take advantage of these batteries Since doing this interview, Soavi and De Giorgio have gone on to establish their company “Bettery S.R.L” as of January 30th, 2018. As with any emerging technology, there are a lot of unknowns concerning the path this new technology will take, or the level of success it will attain. But in itself, this uncertainty is somewhat exciting. It does not rule out the possibility of the ultimate success, a breakthrough that disrupts the technological, even societal landscape - a contribution with a global impact.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

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Being an International Student in STEM New International Representative for the Students’ Union, Molly McCrory considers her experience as an international student

S

Molly McCrory Staff Writer

CIENCE IS SOMETHING OF A universal discipline.

Math (or maths, as the case may be) is the same in every country, and gravity works the same whether you’re in Ecuador, Finland, or Australia.

Water is still made out of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom no matter what country you’re in, and everyone has DNA. You would think that studying a STEM subject internationally would be no big deal, especially if you, like me, came from one English-speaking country (USA) to another. There are some noticeable differences, however. Nothing too stark or miserably confusing, but certainly enough to make me take a step back and ask the person next to me, “Wait, what the heck is going on?”

For one thing, you guys call it “maths”. My entire life, it has been called “math”, and that took some getting used to. Now it means that I go home, and my friends and family look at me in confusion, wondering where my word-specific lisp came from. There are lots of little words that are pronounced differently than I’m used to, and that has a spectrum of difficulty to deal with based on how often I used the word before coming to this lovely little green island. Capillary, for example, is one I quickly got used to (CA-pill-ar-y), but I will say H-R Diagram like an Irish person only under pain of death. Why do you say the letter “R” like the word “or”?

I have recently learned the exact nature of uniform in the Irish secondary level education system, and oh boy was that a shock.

Compared to America, where I went to something called a “charter school”, this is a lot of structure. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, a charter school is “a tax-

supported school established by a charter between a granting body and an outside group which operates the school without most local and state educational regulations so as to achieve set goals”. This basically means that I didn’t pay tuition but my school was allowed to experiment with my education in a way that public schools are not.

So if you were to ask me, “Molly, what are American high schools like?” I would not have an adequate answer for you. My school didn’t allow cheerleaders but we did have a biannual nightlong continuous reading of The Iliad. My education was vastly different from those of my fellow American students.

Heck, my education was vastly different than that of my sisters. We all came in with something slightly different, but we, hopefully, each got an education that worked for us.

I came in to first year as one of 3 people who had done matrices in high school, and my understanding of integrals, while on par with my classmates now, started out a cut above the rest, just because of what I learned in school. On the other hand, my chemistry education was woefully lacking, and I regret taking that course with at least 60% of the fibres of my being. I came in to everyone else saying relevant words and phrases seemingly in unison while I was mostly sure what a mole was but not quite sure why it was important. It was certainly disconcerting coming to college with not just a certain amount of assumed knowledge, but with very specific things I was expected to know. Looking back, that is one of the reasons I was so lost in first year: I couldn’t be completely sure where the gaps in my knowledge were, so I didn’t know how to catch

Science and the pursuit of knowledge

► Photo Credit: Joe McCallion/ Trinity News

up.

On top of content, it was a strange experience adjusting to the style of education in Ireland. Memorization was never something I was particularly good at, yet so much of my success in school now depends on my ability to memorize things.

All of the “write an essay in a night” or “derive the equation from a basic understanding of where it starts” skills I developed in high school pale in comparison to “reignite a

glowing splint” or whatever it is you learned in school.

It definitely took some adjustment, but if it’s so horrible, why am I still here?

Well, for one thing, I haven’t taken any general education classes while I’m here, so I would probably spend two or three extra years at an American college just to make up for that, and I don’t have that kind of time. Also, being an international student is actually pretty great. I’ve met

so many people I otherwise never would have, and I have grown so much as a person and a student over the past three years. Living in a foreign country is hard, but I love Ireland, and living here is one of the great experiences of my life (other than going to Disney World; I love Disney World).

Learning all of these weird ways you have of doing things has not only taught me to look at problems in a different way

(even if that ultimately leads to me knocking my head against a book in frustration) - it has also given me valuable skills in communication. I have had to learn physics surrounded by people, and from people, who have had a different education than I had. Luckily we can still talk about physics with no problem (other than the occasional teasing about my accent). All in all, being an international student in STEM is difficult. But I wouldn’t give it up for the world.

▼Photo Credit: Joe McCallion/ Trinity News

Why we should consider studying the ‘less employable’ sciences.

W Ciarán Ó Cuív Contributing writer

HAT HAS BEEN PIVOTAL IN both the arts and the sciences even before they were formally instituted as separate branches of study has been the underlying curiosity of human beings, who like you and me, had the innate desire to further understand the world around them. Within the sciences, appreciation for this core principle has been undermined and the consequences are clear.

Within our own undergraduate science community here at Trinity it is no secret that one of the key factors influencing moderatorship choice is the prospect of steady employment and the likelihood of earning a good salary. I cannot blame anyone for making their decision based on these two factors.

In a world where a steady job and a good financial situation are necessary to make a living it is only natural that when faced with this choice, students may end up choosing moderatorships that provide them with greater certainty for their future. Where such students do indeed prefer a different subject choice, but are discouraged by the uncertainty of being able to make a living from it I do indeed see a cause for concern.

The subjects which suffer the most from this are often the natural sciences; Zoology, Botany and Environmental Science. Those that gain tend to be the other biological sciences; Neuroscience, Genetics, Immunology and Microbiology among others -

subjects which I want to make clear I consider to be equally worthy of study as any of the natural sciences. What each the latter subjects have in common are that they are all relatively new and growing fields of biology with obvious practical and economic applications in our everyday lives. They have all undergone enormous growth in the last century facilitated by the rapid advance of technology.

Indeed, it is the novelty and the pace at which technology in these fields is advancing which makes them extremely important economically. As a result, the potential for each continues to grow and with it the opportunities for wellpaid employment. While these fields have expanded into the industrial and services sectors, the natural sciences have largely remained confined to academia and teaching, financed mostly by public funding.

Science benefits most when those working in each branch are enthusiastic about their own subject. The pursuit of knowledge has been at the core of scientific advancement for centuries, and pioneers, such as Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie all shared the desire to further their understanding of the various branches of science.

This desire in turn led to each making the discoveries which radicalised our perception of biology, medicine and physics respectively. Science is founded upon observation and empirical evidence but above all it requires an inquisitive and open mind.

“

Science benefits most when those working in each branch are enthusiastic about their own subject

Darwin was conscious of the dynamic relationship between living organisms and their abiotic environment and it was his knowledge of both geology and biology allowed him to do so. Based on my own experience, science at Trinity is taught with an integrative approach, providing us with a good foundation with which we will then be able to work in any area of interest. However, this does not change the fact that even for those who do study natural sciences there is no guarantee of employment within their chosen field and many graduates end up leaving the field entirely.

Discoveries continue to be made by those working in the natural sciences and current research often takes into consideration ecosystem-wide approaches relevant to conservation and sustainability, both of which have economic and social implications for society. Even

in these cases it is hard to put an economic value on the discoveries which in turn makes it difficult to convince the general public of the importance of investing in such research when money could instead be spent on research targeted at directly improving our lives. At the core of academic research institutions should be the value of the pursuit of knowledge wherever that may be. Furthering our understanding of how our world works is both worthy and worthwhile irrespective of the economic benefits or even practical benefits it may bring.

As I am second-year science student, this article has focused on aspects of research in the various scientific disciplines but ultimately my argument applies to the arts just as much as it does in any of the science fields.

Science

has

allowed

us

to live far easier lives than those of our ancestors.

From modern agriculture to electricity, scientific advances have driven the progress of human civilisation, but science is also far more than that. Science is a path to knowledge, something which has attracted me along with many others to study it in the first place. It is through science that we learn how exactly it is that the world around us works, and it also through the scientific lens that we seek answers to questions thus far unanswered. To me this is exactly what science is about - The Pursuit of Knowledge - and, to fully appreciate the extent of science we needn’t look further than any quality documentary on animals or the likes produced by organisations such as the BBC, each of which is built on years of scientific research without which they simply would not be possible

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

SciTech

20

A chemical history of the world Four times chemistry changed the world Kevin Agnew Deputy SciTech Editor

W

HEN WE SPEAK OF HISTORY, we often discuss it in terms of people and important events, marking the beginning and ending of significant epochs. Whether it be Julius Caesar and the Ides of March, the crusades, the reformation, the French revolution, or Hitler and the Holocaust, these are all perfectly viable ways of interpreting history and how the world around us has changed. However, history can also be viewed through an entirely different prism, that of chemistry.

The science of matter and how we humans have interacted with it from our earliest origins has shaped dynasties, changed the way we look at the world and brought about immense progress, over the last two centuries especially. In the following historical anecdotes, I hope to convince you that chemistry can have just as much impact on history and the world as does vast social forces, here is four times chemistry changed the world.

Bonapartes buttons: Was the chemistry of Tin responsible for the emperors downfall?

The date was September 7th 1812, the bloody battle of Borodino had just been fought (it was the largest battle in history up to that point).

Emperor Napoleon’s Grande Armee had just smashed the Russian forces of Tsar Alexander I, and Bonaparte’s army was primed to capture Moscow, the Russian empire’s cultural capital. But rather than let the French take the city, the Russians burnt it to the ground (the blaze from the fire was said to be so bright, that Napoleon did not require a lamp for his night-time reading).

Without a base of operations from which to campaign, Napoleon decided to turn his 600,000 strong army around and march back home. And so began the disastrous retreat during the Russian winter where over 500,000 men in his army were said to have perished. What was

it that caused this horrific decimation of the once unstoppable French army?

As the urban legend goes, it was because of chemistry. It is known that the buttons used in the trousers, greatcoats and shirts of Napoleon’s army officers and soldiers at that time were made of tin.

◄

A silkworm moth.

The catipillar of the moth is used in silk production. In 1939 scientists found a chemical substitute for silk - nylon.

Little did the French emperor know, but at subzero temperatures, solid tin (known chemically as betatin) changes its structure to a more brittle form of tin known as alpha-tin.

This may have caused the buttons of the french soldiers to simply fall off, giving them no protection from the harsh elements, leaving many of the French soldiers to die from exposure. Once the master of Europe, the destruction wrought on Napoleon’s armies by the Russia winter was catastrophic, irreversible, and ultimately lead to the destruction of his empire.

Nylon for silk Long regarded as the image of luxury, silk was such a coveted commodity over the centuries that it opened up the vast ‘silk road’ trade routes between China in the east and Europe in the west.

The molecule responsible for meeting this vast demand from the lords and ladies of European courts was a protein molecule produced by the larvae of the silkmoth, Bombyx mori, ubiquitous in China.

The inherent problem with this from a commercial perspective was that the silkworms needed to be bred, and the silk protein they produced extracted so that it could then be processed and sold on the market.

These inconveniences naturally prompted an endeavour by humans to make synthetic silk and cut out the middleman - or worm - as it were. In 1939, chemists at DuPont chemical corporation designed the first synthetic substitute for silk, a polymer known as Nylon.

It had many of the desirable properties of silk but was far less expensive, making it accessible not just to the affluent but to people of modest means. This breakthrough generated a

revolution in womens fashion with a whole range of womens hosiery available across the social divide. Incidentally, World War II had just broken out, so the U.S. government imposed strict rationing of nylon for use in soldiers’ parachutes. In any case, when nylon re-entered the market for women’s clothing in 1945, it prompted large scale disturbances in clothing stores across America, now known as the Nylon riots.

Nitro compounds explode onto the scene During Napoleon Bonaparte’s time and many centuries prior, military ordinance was limited to the use of gunpowder, a mixture of sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter.

Enter Alfred Nobel, who had the dynamite idea of making a reactive aromatic nitro compound, that would later be known as trinitrotoluene (or TNT).

Many

more

“

In China, some even tried administering Mercury as a form of contraception

chemists

throughout the 19th century devoted their careers (and often sacrificed a copious amount of fingers and limbs) to developing these - chemically more sophisticated - forms of explosive ordinance.

With this came the development of the likes of nitroglycerin and ammonium nitrate too. This new form of explosive revolutionised mankind’s capacity for making war and directly contributed to the horrendous casualties suffered by both sides during World War I, which all but eclipsed past wars in terms of bloodshed.

The vast majority of these deaths came from artillery fire provisioned with the aforementioned compounds.

While the legacy of Alfred Nobel and many of his contemporaries may be bleak for those reasons, one cannot deny the vast utility that his inventions have afforded mankind as well.

Take, for example, the construction of the Frejus railway tunnel under the French alps, or the construction of the panama canal linking the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific.

Explosives have seen their fair share of beneficial uses too.

The Pill In historical times, women had endeavoured through a variety of means to prevent conception.

The early forms of oral contraception involved taking substances as wide ranging as poplar, willow, myrtle and the bark of hawthorn, which often only succeeded in that they made the woman so sick that she was probably incapable of conceiving.

In China, some even tried administering Mercury as a form of contraception - that is, of course, if the individual even survived long enough.

Thus, the primary form of

contraception from the 18th century and prior, was often what contemporaries termed ‘coitus interruptus’. Then came the invention of the condom, which led to a sexual revolution in its own right. Far more significant to women however, was the invention of the pill.

In the 1960s, a group of chemists in the Chicago-based pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle developed the molecule known as Norethindrone, a polycyclic molecule borne out of earlier research into steroids and their synthesis.

The emergence of what came to be known simply as ‘the pill’ produced a sexual revolution for women and has been credited with or blamed for (depending on your point of view) a rise in feminism, the breakdown of the nuclear family, and the creation of more career opportunities for women with the benefit of family planning that the pill affords.

The science student’s summer To intern, or not to intern, that is the question Maxime Deckers Contributing Writer

S

U M M E R INTERNSHIPS. IF YOU'RE in the third year of your bachelor's you have probably heard this daunting word thrown around a lot. It starts off with the few top achievers in your year mentioning that they have gotten a place at Oxford, ESA or the like. You don't think much of it and continue to make plans with your friends to go drink on beaches or put plastic bags around your shoes at wet UK festivals.

Then as the spring approaches you start hearing people talk about Deloitte, PWC, EY and KPMG (you know the, "The big four", although realistically none of us really know what they do). Yes, those people that joined you in calling the reps for those

firms "brainwashed fools" have now become the very ones polishing up their CV with their transferable skills.

Now that rant is over I will admit that an internship is incredibly beneficial for your future. Of course it looks good when you are applying to jobs or master/PhD positions, but even more importantly it might help you decide in what direction you might want to steer your life. Even if you are considering pursuing a career in academia, a business orientated internship can help you find that confidence you need for PhD applications.

So, a couple of things that might help a future applicant out. Firstly, start putting yourself out there early. This will help you get used to the process. You'll start getting

better at writing cover letters and might panic less near the deadlines. Secondly, there are a lot of programmes out there that will provide you with excellent experiences and might even include some compensation for your hard work, which is particularly appealing.

It is important to realise that these types of internships are highly competitive and students from all over the world will be applying.

So prepare yourself for

rejections, a lot of them. At first this might be very offputting but you cannot let it drag you down. Consider every rejection as a lesson and use it as a motivation to apply to 5 more.

Finally, a lot of people miss out on internships because they only apply to the advertised ones. You can contact research departments, post docs or PhD students personally. The chance of getting paid for these types of positions is significantly lower,

but consider it an investment in your future.

You can negotiate to work for 6 weeks and then find a paid job the rest of summer to pay for your 600 euro Harry Potter-esque cupboard in Phibsborough.

When writing emails to people directly, make sure you know what their research is about and portray this in your communications. A lot of students are panicking, so research departments will be

receiving a lot of emails of interest. You want to stand out.

You don't have to be an expert in their area of research since they will understand that you are just an undergraduate.

Nonetheless you can show motivation and drive by doing a bit of independent research. Try to be flexible as the opportunities abroad are bountiful.

Whatever you decide to do, remember that the way you spend your summer when

you're 21 will not make or break the rest of your life. It is easy to get intimidated in such a competitive field like science, but we are really only just starting off, and there will be plenty of opportunities arising if you just keep trying.

Even if everyone around you seems as if they know what they are doing, I assure you, the majority are equally as affected by the "impostersyndrome" as you. Good luck to us all!

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

SciTech

21

Domestication and its genetic consequences A closer look at the science behind domesticating animals

Peter Lebrocquy Cox Senior Reporter

W

E LIVE A M O N G S T THE MANY ANIMALS we have domesticated. From the food many of us eat to the pets that we keep, humans have manipulated species to suit our needs for millennia.

Despite this, if you were to ask most people for a definition of what a domesticated animal is they would be puzzled.

Even amongst biologists there is disagreement, with what started out as a seemingly simple idea becoming complex very quickly the more you look into it.

One of the confusions that arises is the difference between tamed and domesticated. It is possible to tame an individual bear but having domesticated bears is a bit of a stretch. Think of wolves and dogs, or cows and bison, and you begin to see that there is a difference.

Domesticated animals have been bred for certain traits that benefit humans, whereas tamed animals have been trained to perform certain actions.

The distinction may seem moot, but it is important. For example, a horse must be broken, or trained, to allow it to be ridden. However, the horses we have today have been domesticated to make that process far easier. This

can be seen with zebras, as they are tameable but not domesticated. Their grumpy behaviour, possibly not an unreasonable response to someone trying to ride you, and lack of a familial structure within their herds, make them exceedingly difficult to train and even more difficult to domesticate.

The theory of natural selection essentially states that a trait which is beneficial to an individual animal’s ability to procreate will have a higher likelihood to be passed on to further generations because its offspring will carry the genes that produced that trait. Using this concept before fully understanding it, humans have turned fearsome wolves into pugs, mighty aurochs into cattle and wild horses into ponies. You could be forgiven for thinking that the wild and free animals did not fare so well in this deal, but it really depends on how you measure success.

Dr John Rochford, an associate professor of Zoology in Trinity, when discussing this topic posited the question as to what is the most successful animal? He remembers a colleague of his responding with “sheep’.

Although they are kept and killed by people, and the species is highly dependent on human interference (in a world with less humans sheep populations would likely crash) if you were to measure it purely on the number of genes passed down they are extremely successful. To take it a step further, the bananas that most of us eat, Cavendish bananas, are from a single individual cloned countless times. This would make the Cavendish banana the most successful multicellular organism alive as it passes one hundred percent of its genes on with every tree

planted. However, take it out of cultivation and the seedless banana would become extinct within a generation due to its inability to reproduce naturally. So, as Dr. Rochford asks, “do we measure success by the passing on of genes or living past a certain age in natural environments?”

It is genes that have allowed us to manipulate the traits of the species we’ve domesticated.

Researchers looked at the most well-known of the domesticated animals and their wild counterparts, dogs and wolves. A particular stretch of DNA in both species, if changed, has been correlated with more sociable behaviour. Unsurprisingly, the changed versions of the gene are more common in dogs than wolves. This has also been shown in mice. Perhaps most surprisingly there is a syndrome that affects humans called the Williams-Beuren syndrome, which affects the same stretch of DNA, and results in people affected having elfin features and hyper social behaviour.

This could lead you to question whether it would be possible for humans to be domesticated and there may be some evidence of this. No, it wasn’t by aliens that used us for food or fun, but rather by ourselves. This goes back to one of the most groundbreaking experiments on domestication by Dmitry Belyaev. He bred what were wild foxes to be more domesticated. Over the course of 10 generations he began to see the characteristics which he had been looking for.

He had noticed that many domesticated animals showed similar characteristics such as patches of white fur, smaller brains, floppy ears and generally a more feminine look than their wild counterparts.

These traits have been named the domestication syndrome and one of the notable species which show many of these traits are, you guessed it, humans.

humans we were choosing those with smaller adrenal glands, and consequently a less active neural crest. This in turn led to traits seen in the domestication syndrome.

This in and of itself is not proof of our domestication, merely a correlation. However, later research showed that the areas affected by the domestication syndrome are actually connected by a small group of stem cells in developing embryos.

This group of cells is called the neural crest and they also play a significant role in the forming of the adrenal gland.

The theory is, that in choosing those animals which were less fearful or aggressive towards

This may come as a surprise, but it is important to remember that in most cases those species which have been domesticated have not been domesticated intentionally.

We breed dogs into ridiculous shapes, but that was after they were initially bred for friendlier behaviour, which was likely an unconscious process. So it may not be as outlandish a theory as you may think - this idea that humans self-selected for those humans that were less aggressive

because they did better in communities. Perhaps after a while, the most docile human was the most common human.

Even today, it is possible that researchers are inadvertently domesticating lab rats. Male and female lab rats are kept separate until there is a need for more because otherwise there would be no control over the numbers of rats that the lab had.

So, breeding is highly controlled by humans. There is also, in many studies, a desire for genetically similar individuals as it reduces variation and makes it easier to ascertain causality. When an order comes in, the person

working in the lab picks up a male rat and drops him in with the females. Of course, a person is going to be more inclined to pick up a less aggressive rat and as such pass on his genes.

Domestication is something that most of us would consider a basic concept, but it is considerably more complex than it first appears. As with most things in science the more you look into something the more there is to find.

It is this unfolding world of knowledge that has kept many a doctoral candidate and researcher employed, but more importantly it keeps science the fascinating ever expanding discipline it is.

Too much of Curiosity’s a good thing 2000th Day on Mars Potentially life-supporting exoplanets are too soggy for biology to exist Alex Hackett Contributing writer

L

AST YEAR, THE TRAPPIST-1 Star System was discovered.

The system is comprised of seven planets, all terrestrial - that is to say rocky. Of these planets, three - TRAPPIST-1 e, f and g - all orbit inside the habitable zone of the parent star TRAPPIST-1.

TRAPPIST-1 is also sometimes known as 2MASS J23062928-0502285 because astrophysicists always have the snappiest and most accessible names for things.

TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracold, M8 dwarf star, about the size of Jupiter, and about 84 times more massive. It’s an old star, around seven and a half billion years old, compared to our own Sun’s four and a half billion. It’s also very cold (in stellar terms), with a surface temperature of around 2200 °C, compared to the Sun’s 5500 °C. All of this means that the habitable, or ‘Goldilocks’

Zone, the region around the star where temperatures would be right for liquid water to exist, is very close to the star itself.

All the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system actually orbit their star closer than Mercury orbits the Sun, an incredibly snug set-up. Being in the Goldilocks Zone is great and all, but for an exoplanet to be a viable life-supporting planet, there needs to be liquid water actually present down on the surface. Much attention has been focussed on these planets, and there was understandably more than a little bit of a stir, when efforts to model the planets showed surprising results. Computer models, assisted by data from the European Southern Observatory’s SPECULOOS telescope, suggested that planets b, d, f, g, and h were all likely very rich in water.

Unfortunately, while liquid water is absolutely a requirement for life as we know it, according to recent modelling, the water content of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets

is enormous, ranging from 10% all the way up to 50% of the planets’ total masses.

This figure dwarfs the Earth’s relatively puny 0.2% water content, and such an absurd amount of water probably suggests that there’s unlikely to be any exposed land.

This means that the geochemical processes required to support a lifeconducive atmosphere just aren’t able to happen. Usually exoplanets are ruled out as life-supporting as they just don’t have enough water - in this case it is too much of a good thing. Additionally, the sort of high pressure, low temperature environment that such a water rich exoplanet would contain suggests that the most water rich planets of the Trappist-1 system may just be giant snowballs of Ice. Ice VII to be specific - a cubic, crystal form of ice that generally only forms at very high pressures (>30k atmospheres) and at low temperatures (around room temperature) all the way down to their inner mantles.

Alex Hackett

would be vital knowledge for a manned mission.

Contributing writer

The rover itself is about the size and weight of an SUV. Fun fact - each one of Curiosity’s six wheels has a pattern on it, which is left behind as an imprint on the Martian surface. The pattern is ·--- ·--· ·-··, Morse code for ‘JPL’, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Graffiti on an interplanetary scale.

Y

OU MIGHT REMEMBER BACK IN February, when Opportunity, the little rover that could, completed its 5000th Martian day. Well, as of March 23rd, NASA’s Curiosity rover, which touched down via skycrane in August 2016, has spent 2000 Sols, or Martian days, on Mars (Around 2056 Earth Days).

Curiosity is part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL), a long term mission with eight ambitious goals, ranging from identifying possible biomarkers, assessing the evolution of the now thin and depleted Martian atmosphere over the last couple billion years, to investigating and characterizing the radiation at the surface of Mars, which

▼ TRAPPIST-1 System ► NASA's Curiosity rover which has spent over 2056 Earth Days on Mars

After having its 2 year mission extended indefinitely in December 2012, Curiosity has been busying itself with finding evidence of a longgone freshwater environment at the base of Mount Sharp.

The rover then took to a bit of mountaineering, and has been climbing the large mound, that, based on observations from orbit, is believed to contain clays, since 2014.

Curiosity’s team have also been hard at work overcoming a major fault with the rover’s

drill. During testing in 2011, a short circuit in the test drill threatened to fry the test rover’s motor controllers. If that happened on Mars, the rover would be permanently immobilised, a disaster. A hacked-together fix, the ‘battle short’ was implemented on the real rover before launch.

This would route most of the drill’s current to ground if it short circuited while on Mars, saving the motor controllers.

On Sol 911, during a drilling operation, the ‘battle short’ was triggered. Since then, the drill has been used more cautiously, and less often, although shorts still occasionally occurred. The team developed a way of drilling without using the percussion part of the drill, the suspected cause of the shorts, known as ‘rotary only drilling’. On Sol 1536, during the first attempt to perform a rotary only drilling, the drill feed, the mechanism that was to push the drill bit forward

into the rock stalled.

The leading theory? A piece of debris fouled up the movable brake plate in the mechanism, leaving the drill trapped. On Sol 1780, after three weeks of holding the drill upright, along with lots of low level manipulation of Curiosity’s hardware, the drill feed succeeded at extending to its full length.

A new type of drilling FED (feed extended drilling) was developed.

This allowed Curiosity to drill into rock without bracing the drill arm against it first, putting much greater tension on the drill arm than it was ever designed to deal with.

After months of testing and modelling, the MSL team will soon attempt FED, and hopefully, get Curiosity back to full scientific capacity. After 2000 Sols on Mars, Curiosity seems soon to get a second wind!

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Sport

22 Trinity defeat Louth to kick-start season

p24 ▼ Firestaff performance in Front Square

Strictly come juggling Glenn Stevenson, the PRO for the Trinity Juggling Society, gives the low-down on the first ever circus skills intervarsity

Glenn Stevenson Contributing Writer

A

S A COMPETITIVE PERSON in my teen years, juggling or circus skills as a whole never crossed my mind as a pastime that I would find fulfilling. My physical and emotional outlet was Wado Ryu Karate which I practiced for over ten years at a competitive level. The immense satisfaction from victory and improvement came with a large amount of pressure - the prospect of losing a fight publicly filled me with dread and, on the occasions it came to pass, a huge feeling of vulnerability.

But martial arts training wasn’t just about physicality. It came with a culture of respect and discipline, and your dojo is a community where all involved are striving to better themselves and others. The similarity between my old strict, regimented stomping crowd and the community I was taking my first steps into was lost on me as I entered Goldsmith Hall on a fateful Tuesday evening. Rather than serious or pressurised, the mood in this room was

calm and friendly. Rather than stone faced fighters, before me were colourfully dressed bohemians laughing and joking while showing mind-bending skill. However, anyone who has seen someone wielding a Chinese Rope Dart, the weapon of choice of the deranged Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill, or a contact firestaff like Darth Maul will instantly see the martial arts parallels. The best performers required years of practice to do what they do, like any martial artist.

This would be intimidating, but the community is so incredibly welcoming that within minutes of entering the hall I had been handed a pair of poi by a friendly performer and half an hour later I was competently doing my own three-beat weave.

Trinity Juggling Society is an exceptionally well funded and equipped juggling society amongst others of its kind, which has positioned it right at the center of the Dublin circus skills scene. Students and performers from all over the city join us at our sessions to use props that their own societies lack and to learn from the talented folks that gravitate towards our society.

This year, in addition to

taking advantage of the reams of talent at our disposal, the society wanted to throw an event that would allow us to help less fortunate circus societies. And so, “Strictly Come Juggling” was conceived - the first ever Dublin intervarsity juggling & circus skills competition. A panel of six committee members from various college juggling societies - Trinity, UCD, DIT, DKIT, Maynooth and DCU - would judge entrants’ performances with musical backing in front of an audience in Goldsmith Hall, the top ranked performers winning expensive new equipment for their respective society. Third prize was a PolyPro Hula Hoop, second place would win a Phantom Fire staff and the overall winner would take a pair of LED Pod Poi back to their college. In addition, food and drink would be served and workshops from some of the most talented performers in Dublin would be hosted at half time while the judges determined who would make the final rankings.

In such a competition in martial arts, though respectful, the air between entrants would be tense. But despite the rankings, in circus

skill performing, there are no losers. Your performance is every bit as likely to entertain the other competitors as it is the judges, and performers are only too happy to teach you a trick or prop with which they excel - the very fact that you asked them to do so being a compliment to their skill.

Indeed, the judges seemed far more competitive than the entrants themselves, each one dead set on winning their society the pod poi (with the exception of Trinity as we already owned all the types of equipment up for grabs).

The event was the largest that Trinity Juggling Society has ever run and was a success by every measure. Though one

of our own performers - the mesmerising Simon Benson - ranked amongst the final three was somewhat contrary to the goal of giving the equipment to other societies, the performances were loved by all and we elected to donate the poly pro hoop we won to Maynooth’s fledgling juggling society during the prize-giving ceremony. One of Trinity Juggling Society’s constitutional aims is to bring circus skills performance to a wider audience and inspire others to take up a performance of their own.

Along with our periodic fire shows in Front Square, Strictly Come Juggling was our most ambitious attempt

of bringing this kind of performance to the College community’s attention. I can wholeheartedly say that taking up this kind of performance was one of the most fulfilling decisions I have ever made.

When I spin staff, my body achieves a thoughtless feeling of flow - everything else disappears but the feeling of how my body moves like water.

It combines exercise with an almost meditative quality.

Performing with a firestaff only heightens this feeling, the danger evoking a hyperawareness of the sensations in my muscles.

Entertaining crowds is simply a cherry on top of all of

this. It was our ambition from the get-go to make Strictly Come Juggling an annual event, and going forward I would like to see it become even bigger so as to inspire more people who’ve never considered circus skills as their thing to pick up a prop, learn a new skill, and achieve that feeling. My involvement with this society happened entirely by a chance encounter. If I can replicate that chance for even one other person then I’ve done my job.

Trinity Juggling Society meets for practice Tuesday evenings from 7pm -10pm in Goldsmith Hall. All are welcome.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

23

Sport

Great but not the greatest

Whilst this season’s Manchester City team are no doubt impressive, they cannot yet be called the Premier League’s best ever.

A Joel Coussins Sport Editor

S I SIT DOWN TO WRITE THIS article, I have just indulged in a handy 90 minutes of procrastination by watching Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City side demolish Everton at Goodison Park. Of all of the City performances I’ve watched this season, this one was by far the most impressive - 3-0 up at half time, 82% possession away from home and 18 attempts on goal. Indeed, in the first half Everton managed just 59 passes, whereas two City players (De Bruyne and Fernandinho) managed over 60 in that time. The result leaves City one win away from securing the title mathematically, and if they manage to do so next weekend (at home to archrivals Manchester United no less), they will set the record for the earliest a title has been sealed in the Premier League era, with 6 games to spare.

That is far from the only record City can or have set this season. With 21 points still available, Guardiola’s men need just 12 to break Chelsea’s record for the highest number of points in a season (95), and just 16 more to break the 100-point barrier. Already this season City have set the Premier League records for most consecutive wins (18), and most consecutive away wins (11), as well as setting club records for the number of home wins, away wins,

◄Man City

players celebrating

“

And yet, I still don’t believe that this City team can yet be hailed the greatest since 1992, for one simple reason...

consecutive league games unbeaten and consecutive overall games unbeaten. There is no doubting, then, that this City team are an incredible side, and one of the true great teams of the Premier League.

But are they the greatest?

The temptation among pundits this season has been to try and match Manchester City up against the greatest seasons other title-winning clubs have had: Manchester United’s treble-winners in 1999, Arsenal’s invincibles of 2004 or Mourinho’s juggernaut Chelsea side of 2005. In terms of achievements, this City side doesn’t seem to match up to those - if they win a treble this season, it will be missing the FA Cup, they cannot go a league season unbeaten and they are yet to beat Chelsea’s points tally (although they may well do so).

But in terms of pure footballing ability, it seems fairly clear that Guardiola’s charges would blow any of

those teams out of the water.

The football is better - their average possession stats are the best of any title-winning team, they’ve already scored more goals than any of the 3 aforementioned teams, and they’re the first team to have 3 players reach ten goals and ten assists in the same season.

Besides which, it seems undoubtable that in the eras in which those teams played, the league was far easier to win nobody talked about anything more than a ‘big 2’ in the 1990s, and at best Chelsea saw off a ‘big 4’ in 2005, nothing like the so-called ‘big 6’ of the modern Premier League.

And yet, I still don’t believe that this City team can yet be hailed the greatest since 1992, for one simple reason: we are yet to see them manage a sustained period of total dominance. As Althea Gibson famously said, “In sports, you simply aren’t considered a real champion until you have defended your title successfully. Winning it once

can be a fluke; winning it twice proves you are the best.”

And when this rule is applied, we find at least two teams that might be better considered as greater teams.

The previously mentioned Chelsea and United teams both went on to defend their titles, with largely the same personnel - indeed, that Manchester United side of 1999 would go on to achieve what Americans would term a three-peat, not relinquishing a grip on the Premier League until 2002, and even then the title only left the red half of Manchester for one season before it was recaptured.

In fact, this was not the last time that an Alex Ferguson United team would go on to do this - the exact same thing happened at the end of the noughties, with United picking up every title from 2007-2009, and then again in 2011.

This is of course not to say that City cannot achieve

The Tiger sleeps no more

this - in fact, having so thoroughly dominated the league this season, it would be a shock indeed if the title went anywhere other than Maine Road in 2019. However, this is speculation, and weirder things have happened in sport - just look at Chelsea’s collapse in 2015-16. After a comfortable title-win the year before, the team spent much of the season languishing in the bottom half of the table, even hovering perilously close to the relegation zone for a time.

Again, it should be clear that I do not expect this to happen to Guardiola’s team the professionalism that seeps out of that man and infects his players should make sure that they are just as hungry for success going forward. All I am saying is that it is currently too early to pronounce judgment on their status as the best ever. So, then, we shall have to be content for now simply to enjoy watching them dismantle opponents and scoring for fun.

◄ Tiger Woods using his driver.

Cameron Hill analyses the sustainability of Tiger Woods’ latest comeback Cameron Hill Assistant Sport Editor

S

PORT CAN BE A CRUEL MISTRESS. Often it has no time for fairy tales or romantic endings. As a proud Mayo man, I am well aware of this.

Our proud county has been on the wrong side of so many tight results, and it seems like we will be forever wallowing in our own misfortune.

Of course, we are not the only people who have been subjected to the merciless nature of sport. One thinks of the Netherlands in football, Caroline Wozniacki in tennis and the Minnesota Vikings in American football. However, Tiger Woods’ spectacular fall from grace demonstrates that success in sport relies heavily on confidence.

It suffices to say that Tiger Woods has been in the rough for the last decade. I am reminded of May last year, when the 14-time Major champion was charged with a DUI. His police mugshot circulated around the media at the time, and it was particularly difficult to believe it when I had seen it initially.

His unshaven, exhausted expression said it all. This was a Tiger Woods that we had never seen before; a Tiger who had lost his lust for life; a Tiger

who was tired of constantly running; a Tiger who had had enough. The photo is strikingly similar to that of O.J. Simpson in 1994. Although this time the reaction was a lot more sympathetic. However, I feared that this really was it for Woods, that there was no way he could even come close to his glory days ever again.

Yet, here we are almost a year later, and Woods is staging a comeback, and my word is he doing it in style. He began the year impressively, making the cut at almost all tournaments so far. However, his 5th place finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational two weeks ago suggests that this is no mere flash in the pan. Fellow player Steve Stricker claimed last week that this time, Woods’ comeback is, “for real.”

Having seen him play, it is very hard to disagree.

He seems to have regained his swagger on the course, replacing perhaps the Major-winning ego of his younger years with a mature confidence. As Stricker puts it, “He’s walking with a bounce in his step like he did when he was out here kicking everybody’s butt.”

Of course, one must proceed with caution when evaluating his latest attempt to return to form. After all, we’ve been here before. Just two years

ago, it seemed like he was on the up again, but back spasms unfortunately undid his progress. Before that in 2013, Woods was sidelined by more back trouble, resulting in a lengthy spell off the fairways.

For the sake of fairness, I won’t mention 2009. The difference however between those instances and now, is quite straightforward; this time, we really didn’t think that he could do it.

Up until 2016, most people within the golfing world believed that Woods would always return to winning ways.

They thought of 2008, when he battled a leg injury to win The US Open; an injury that would be revealed to be severe damage to his ACL. If he can a

Major in those circumstances, surely these niggles were nothing to worry about. When he once again failed to live up to expectations, they grew weary of waiting and, fed up, they began to doubt his true capabilities. All seemed lost.

Yet, I believe that Woods thrives in adversity, and his career proves that. We just haven’t been looking hard enough.

It is important to remember that Woods had to transcend an ugly aspect of golf culture: institutional racism. This was a black teenager making a name for himself in one of the most exclusive and bigoted sports in the world.

In an interview with USA Today in 1990, the 14-year-

old prodigy was well aware of the problems within the game that he loved. “Every time I go to a major country club I can always feel it. Always sense it.

People always staring at me.

‘What are you doing here?

You shouldn’t be here,’” he says uncomfortably. Despite these difficult circumstances, young Woods managed to rise to the top of the game, always conscious of his role as a pioneer against racism and ignorance. In the toughest conditions, he was still able to flourish.

This is why I feel he truly is returning to his former glory. Much like during his adolescence, Woods found himself in an utterly hopeless situation after his DUI arrest.

No one dared to believe in him like years before, due to his nasty habit of letting them down. When news broke last month that Tiger was making a comeback, I distinctly remember hearing on the Luas, “Here we go again.”

Yes, maybe I am being optimistic, but Tiger’s return appeals to the romantic in all of us. We so desperately want to believe that it will come to fruition this time. After all, even the most cynical of us enjoy a nice success story from time to time. Moreover, I am fully confident that the golfing world will welcome back their prodigal son with open arms after almost a decade in the wilderness. The true test will be at the Masters

in Augusta this weekend. Of course, I would love nothing more than to see Rory McIlroy finally wearing that famous green blazer, but if Tiger ends up claiming it, I won’t feel too hard done by.

Obviously, I have my doubts, but I also had doubts about Leicester City in 2015.

I was sceptical about Ireland’s potential to win a Grand Slam this year. I even foolishly thought that somehow, Mayo would finally trump the Dubs (How wrong was I?). Many of my friends will agree that predictions are not my strong suit. With that in mind, while I hope that Woods’ comeback is indeed, “for real,” I am predicting that it won’t be.

May the gods prove me wrong.

Trinity News | Tuesday 3rd April

Sport

24

Cameron Hill analyses the sustainability of Tiger Woods’ latest comeback p23

Live Report

Trinity defeat Louth to kick-start season Trinity American Football racked up 35 points in the comprehensive win Leendert van Dalsen Contributing Writer

T

R I N I T Y A M E R I C A N F O O T B A L L TEAM got their season back on track with a comprehensive 35-6 victory over Louth on Sunday evening.

An early special teams mistake by Louth left Trinity’s offense in the Maverick’s red zone, but some dropped passes meant Trinity had to settle for a field goal; Jordan Mulvaney putting TCD up 3. Trinity’s defense proved far too much for Louth, forcing the first of many 3 and outs. Trinity’s offense didn’t disappoint this time out - driving well down the field before Quarterback Ben Dowling sent a deep ball

to Receiver Conor O’Dwyer for the touchdown; a missed Point After Touchdown (PAT) left the score at 9-0.

The ball was quickly back in the offense’s hands though, after safety Raphi Stärk grabbed his third interception of the season. With the offense set up just behind their own half, running back Rory O’Dwyer took the handoff, bounced outside, taking advantage of excellent blocking from Stepan Lavrouk and Andrew Kharchenko, juked out a linebacker, followed the blocks his older sibling Wigwam provided, and took the ball 60 yards for the touchdown. Another blocked PAT left Trinity up 15-0.

Louth continued to struggle offensively, Trinity’s defense not giving their QB any time and stuffing the runs with Mulvaney, Erick Lomas and

Jack McKenna making big tackles.

Trinity finished off the second quarter with a strong drive downfield, Dowling hitting Stärk and captain Len van Dalsen on the quick-outs, before throwing a deep wheel back to Stärk for another touchdown. Trinity went for two extra points, with Dowling firing in a quick slant to Eoghan O’Dwyer to give Trinity a 23-0 lead at the half.

Trinity came out strong again in the second half, intense pressure from Blaise Connor and Patrick Sullivan gave Louth no hope of gathering momentum.

A strip sack from Thomas O’Hara gave the offense possession once more to start the fourth after a lackluster third. Trinity drove efficiently again, Dowling connecting

with Van Dalsen multiple times, before ultimately going back to Stärk on a play mirroring his first score.

After a failed 2-point attempt, Trinity led 29-0.

Louth’s offense got moving but still couldn’t put together a solid drive. Trinity capitalized quickly with Dowling going back to back on a deep seam play to Van Dalsen before hitting him again on a shallow cross for another TCD touchdown. Trinity’s woes at the 2-pt line continued with another missed conversation attempt leaving the score at 35-0.

Louth suffered a major injury at the start of their following drive, with the maverick player having to be taken away in an ambulance.

Louth ran hard and drove the ball downfield, scoring on an easy pass touchdown, putting

IAFA SBC NORTH

Trinity: 35 Louth: 6

the score at 35-6.

The game had to be called there with roughly 5 minutes still to play due to the lack of a standby ambulance and no immediate replacement available.

Trinity will come away from this game content, but determined to build on it and push on, as they face tougher opposition in two weeks time against long time rivals, the Belfast Trojans.

Comment

“I am not a role model…”

Top-level athletes are impressive in many ways, but not as people to look up to

I Eoin Roche

Online Sport Editor

N THE EARLY 90S CHARLES Barkley, a Basketball hall of famer and overall very outspoken player, appeared in a commercial for Nike in which he defiantly proclaimed “I am not a role model, just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids”. I love this quote; it’s a massive simplification of the subject and I imagine, unfortunately, that some Nike executive probably got him to say it, but it still rings very true. The fact Barkley said this in a Nike advert is quite apt, because even back then he was a product. He and his contemporaries, across multiple disciplines around the world, were the first crop of an emerging cultural shift: players really weren’t normal people any more. Long gone were the days when you could see the best players having a quiet pint on a Sunday evening like George Best.

I think you could point to a few things that accelerated this shift. The ‘Dream Team’ that the United States brought to the 1992 Olympics put the NBA on the international stage and just a few months after the Olympics, a little venture called the Premier League was starting in the UK. Both of these things escalated the NBA and the top tier of English football respectively and led the way to them becoming money making behemoths and sports becoming one of the biggest entertainment industries in the world. Players were no longer just people, but walking billboards and brands. Ultimately there’d be a content shift too, thanks to hack writers like me, and the players would quickly become far more significant then the games that made them famous. This would remove most players so far from any semblance of reality that using the term ‘role model’ around them seems foolish.

A role model is someone we not only look up to, but hope to imitate. Just because you can kick a football well doesn’t make you a good person. I’ll give you a perfect example of this: when I was growing up Ryan Giggs was my favourite footballer, I enjoyed watching him adapt his game as he got older and become a player who sat back and dictated play more. His volley against Fulham in 2007 and his assist for Michael Owen’s winner in the Manchester Derby in 2009 stand out as some of the best pieces of play I’ve seen. I respected his allegiance to the club too, having stayed there for his entire career. Ryan Giggs’ loyalty however, did not stretch into his personal life.

An affair with his brother’s

“

We live in the era of the individual and sport is no exception. We don’t talk about Barcelona, we talk about Leo Messi, we don’t talk about the Cleveland Cavaliers, we talk about LeBron James.

wife estranged Giggs from his family and ruined my appreciation of what is a great footballer with a slack sense of morality. And examples continue to be made to this day, with the horrendous Paddy Jackson trial.

As sport became an entertainment industry, celebrity status closely followed, meaning players’ personal lives were suddenly of interest. But even the players who keep their personal lives in order are questionable role models. We live in the era of the individual and sport is no exception. We don’t talk about Barcelona, we talk about Leo

◄ Ryan

Giggs captaining Manchester United.

Messi, we don’t talk about the Cleveland Cavaliers, we talk about LeBron James. Both of these players have been at the top of their sports for over 10 years, have both done great philanthropic work and appear to be grounded individuals, but they still shouldn’t be role models. The mentality that made them who they are, in reality, is not a healthy one. An insanely driven, self obsessed focus. In truth, if everyone looked at the world as Cristiano Ronaldo does, we’d all be friendless, stressed and infinitely unhappy. Despite this, these players are the perhaps the greatest we’ll ever see in their sports. Leo Messi

plays football like a poet and I already know LeBron James is the most dominant athlete I’ll ever see. You have to take them and all other stars in the abstract, they are freaks of nature, outliers, pieces of entertainment.

And that is exactly how I look at sports stars now.

Purely entertainment. I don’t expect them to be saints or even normal people. I’d be naive to expect the 20 year old working class kid who’s getting £100,000 a week to hold onto the same worldview he had when he was 15. In fact I try to avoid the tabloid rubbish written about players.

They get attacked by the media for such petty things, for sounding off on Twitter, having a night out or for daring to spend any of that money that’s being dumped in front of them by the truckload.

Their clubs are no better, they aggressively monitises their young stars. You are not a person, nor a player, but you are set of numbers.

Number of followers, number of mentions, number of ‘impressions’, the number of jersey sales. You are an asset to be sold to the highest paying sponsor. It must be hard for a 18 year old to get their head around that. It’s no

surprise these kids sometimes attempt to have ‘fun’, only to be condemned in the media.

Ultimately, just because someone excels at a sport, this should not make them any kind of example for the masses. By all means, follow them on Twitter, read the rubbish scrawled out about them by pea-brained journalists; but remember, just like Charles Barkley, they’re being engineered by executives. Respect them too, for what they’ve achieved, but keep in mind the mentality that got them there, and bear in mind: they won’t all be good guys.