Trinity News, Vol. 66, issue 8

TRINITY NEWS

Ireland’s Oldest Student Newspaper

ESTABLISHED 1953

Vol. 66, Issue 8

As silence falls over Trinity, hope lingers

PHOTO BY CIARAN O CUIV FOR TRINITY NEWS

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In this issue News

Features

“Pride and sadness of Trinity graduates at virtual ceremonies page 4

In quarantine in Milan because of Covid-19 - page 14

Comment

Student nurses deserve to be paid -page 21

Scitech

Looking into the history of Ireland’s bog bodies - page 26

Sport Funding for women in sport - page 30

TRINITY NEWS EDITORIAL STAFF Editor Deputy Editor Online Editor Managing Editor Leader Writer Life Editor Life Deputy

Aisling Grace Lauren Boland Jack Kennedy Georgina Francis Eoin O’Donnell Alison Traynor Suzanne Flynn

News Editor Features Editor Comment Editor Scitech Editor Sport Editor

Finn Purdy Milena Barnes Hugh Whelan Cian Lynch Conor Doyle

Head Photographer Head Videographer Art Editor Head Copyeditor

Vicky Salganik Melanie O’Donnell Katie Murnane Niamh Murphy

Printed at Irish Times print facility, City West Business Campus, 4080 Kingswood Road, Dublin 24

Trinity rejects “no detrim but approves other meas The ability for students to defer assessments until the end of summer are among the measures announced Finn Purdy News Editor

Trinity’s University Council has approved several measures designed to “ease pressure” on students completing assessments during the coronavirus pandemic, but declined to implement a “no detriment” policy.

The approved measures include allowing students to defer assessments until the end of the summer and discretionary powers granted to the board of examiners to consider final year students’ overall profile of marks throughout their time at Trinity when marking their work from this term.

For final year students who achieve significantly lower grades on their final modules, examiners will be asked to adjust a student’s overall mark “in a manner they deem justified”.

Students who attempt assessments but find that they are not able to perform as expected will also be able to apply for a deferral until the end of summer, according to the new measures announced today.

Students will also be allowed to progress into the next year having failed some modules in this term, provided they meet the overall pass mark for the year.

Trinity have also said that they will mark on students’ transcripts

any modules taken in the time of the Covid-19 crisis which they say “will flag exceptional circumstances to any prospective employers”.

Students in their junior sophister or senior sophister year may apply to re-sit any second semester assessments in the reassessment session to try and improve results.

These measures, while significant, fall short of the “no detriment” policy called for by many students which would have meant that as long as students receive a passing mark, their overall average grade would not be brought down by upcoming assessments.

The press statement from Trinity announcing these measures, states that Trinity is “aware” of the calls for a no detriment policy but “believes that the measures outlined offer the best way to offset the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, in a manner compatible with its progression and award regulations and assessment practices”.

“These measures are designed to alleviate pressure on students while preserving the integrity of the academic qualifications Trinity students can expect to hold on graduation”, the statement reads.

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ment” policy sures

“

Two petitions calling for the implementation of the policy have also circulated among students, with 4,300 and 1,100 signatures

Speaking on the measures passed by University Council, Kevin Mitchell Trinity’s senior lecturer and dean of undergraduate studies said: “Our goal has been to do all we can to ensure that every student can complete their studies

for this year and either graduate or progress to the next year as normal.”

Mitchell stated that Trinity “recognise the unprecedented levels of stress that many students are under and the challenges they will face in completing these assessments to the best of their abilities”, claiming that these measures will “provide a safety net for students affected by the Covid-19 pandemic”.

In an email sent to members of the University Council before its meeting but after these proposals had been circulated to members, Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union education officer Niamh McCay said that “the student ask is still not fulfilled” by these measures.

McCay wrote that there is no indication of the “upfront safety net that students are asking for” and “no explicit confirmation that their grade will not be impacted by this crisis”.

An emailing campaign lobbying for a no detriment policy to be implemented was launched by students, with the provost confirming that he must have received “200 emails” relating to the policy. Two petitions calling for the implementation of the policy have also circulated among students, with 4,300 and 1,100 signatures.

The no detriment policy is similar to measures taken by several UK universities in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the policy, if a student receives a mark higher than their average from previous assessments before the closure of college their average mark would go up, but if they received a mark lower than their average but high enough to pass, their average would remain the same.

Students received an email signed by the senior lecturer and vice-provost informing them that semester two undergraduate assessments will be conducted through a mixture of online and offline exams and assignments.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced closure of universities in response to the coronavirus in a statement to the media in Washington in March.

Analysis

How Trinity has reacted to the Covid-19 crisis January 27, 2020 Trinity establishes a Covid-19 Working Group, “to monitor the situation regarding a potential outbreak of Novel Coronavirus in Ireland”. Group advises students and staff to practice good hand hygiene and avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness.

March 5 Trinity emails staff and students to inform them that one of the 13 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Ireland is connected with the campus. The relevant part of the campus is closed.

March 6 TCDSU cancels Council the following Tuesday, as a “precautionary measure”.

Trinity bans staff or students who have returned from “high risk areas”, such as China or Northern Italy, from returning to campus for 14 days.

A petition started by students to close Trinity reaches 1,000 signatures March 8 Trinity students living in oncampus accommodation are banned from hosting day-time or overnight non-college guests.

JCR events involving large numbers of people are cancelled for “the foreseeable future”.

March 10 Provost announces that all lectures for the remainder of the academic year will be held online, with labs, tutorials and seminars continuing as normal.

Trinity is the only college to take this step. A number of schools decide to move all activity online.

The Book of Kells, the Douglas Hyde Gallery and the Science Gallery close to visitors.

A hoax WhatsApp message is widely circulated, suggesting that all students will be given 65% in their summer exams by default if they are cancelled.

March 11 A second case of coronavirus in Trinity, a Health Science student, leads Medicine students to be withdrawn from placement.

Final year medicine students take their clinical exams, five weeks earlier than scheduled.

After confusion over the weighting of the exam, students are informed that the exam will be worth the full 25%.

Widespread cancellations of

most society events.

March 12 Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announces that all schools and colleges will close with immediate effect until at least March 29.

The provost says in an email statement: “It would be wise to allow for the possibility of a longer closure.” Campus is closed to everyone other than residents, staff and some postgraduate students.

March 16 Trinity announces that all students in college accommodation with a home in Ireland must vacate within 24 hours, with some exceptions such as students at risk of homelessness and students who are currently self-isolating with the virus.

International students were told to leave within two days. Trinity will refund rent to affected students.

March 17 College website announces two new cases of Covid in Trinity, bringing the total to 10.

March 19 College announces that spring graduations will take place online, over a live stream.

March 24 Trinity Ball is cancelled. Ents says they will provide ticket-holders with refunds.

The government announces colleges will remain closed until at least April 19.

April 3 Pressure builds on the College to implement a “no detriment” policy for summer exams, in which student’s grade average would be no lower than their average grade achieved in Michaelmas Term. An email bombardment of college officials is organised on social media to push senior college officials to implement the policy.

April 8 University Council announces a raft of measures for Hilary Term summer exams, “to mitigate any disadvantage arising out of current circumstances”. These include deferral of assessment, retrospective deferral, aggregation and permission to resit passed modules to improve grades.

The proposals do not include “no detriment”. Assessment will consist of “offline” assessments when possible, and “on-line” realtime exams for modules where this is not an option.

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Trinity to establish coronavirus research centre AIB have committed €2.4 million in funding to go towards the project Shannon Connolly Assistant News Editor

Trinity and AIB have announced a collaboration project to establish a research centre in College to “urgently accelerate” Trinity’s immunology research tackling the Covid-19 pandemic. AIB has committed €2.4 million in funding to go towards the project.

The AIB Covid-19 Research Hub has been set up within the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI). The centre will include immunologists and infectious disease clinicians from St James’ Hospital in Dublin.

It will be led by Professor Kingston Mills, director of TBSI, and Professor Aideen Long, director of Trinity Translational Medicine Institute.

AIB CEO Colin Hunt said of the new centre: “In the face of this unprecedented medical, societal and economic crisis, it is imperative that we mobilise all the resources at our disposal in a strategic way.

“We are investing in a national and international endeavour to save lives. Trinity ranks in the top 1% of research institutions globally in medicine and biological sciences and its immunologists collaborate with the best internationally,” he added.

Trinity Provost Patrick Prendergast noted that the “solution to the Covid-19 crisis will probably be found in university laborato-

ries in the months ahead following collaboration between leading researchers across the globe”.

“Trinity is one of the world’s leading universities when it comes to research into immunology and immunity and has the research expertise to play a major role. Donations such as this are a generous, practical and timely contribution to the fight against this terrible virus,” he added.

The centre’s research is to focus on addressing the design of new drugs and vaccines to combat the virus, as well as the problem of supply and validation of the testing kits. They are also looking to develop rapid antibody testing to identify current and previous infections in healthcare workers.

Professor Kingston Mills, who is co-leading the project, said: “Our project will study, in detail the immune responses to the virus in infected and recovered patients.”

He explained: “This will provide key information for the design of vaccines and immunotherapeutic drugs for controlling the often fatal inflammation in COVID-19 patients, and will assist in developing and validating new assays for detecting antibody responses to the virus, thereby identifying those that are ‘immune’ and therefore safe to return to work.”

This project will involve scientists and immunologists working on basic and applied research and infectious disease consultants, immunologists, respiratory disease physicians and intensive care specialists working with Covid-19 patients.

Trinity have also said that the project will benefit from College’s global network of collaborations and contacts in universities such as M.I.T. in Boston, and Utrecht University in The Netherlands, and with Public Health England in the UK, allowing for knowledge to be shared across institutions.

Virtual commencements a mixture of “pride and sadness” say graduates Trinity held the College’s first ever virtual commencement ceremony via a zoom call due to the coronavirus pandemic Finn Purdy News Editor

Trinity held the College’s first ever virtual commencements ceremony last week via a Zoom call between senior members of College staff. These measures having been made necessary by the coronavirus pandemic which has caused the closure of College and prevented any form of public gathering.

The provost, Patrick Prendergast announced on twitter that the graduation ceremony had been held online and that Trinity’s chancellor, Mary McAeleese had conferred 532 degrees on the Zoom call.

Students receiving their degrees were then able to view a recording of the event which was later uploaded to the College website.

Graduates could listen to the service conducted entirely in Latin and witness their name being entered into the university record.

Introducing the ceremony, Trinity’s registar Paula Murphy stated that it was a “time of special emergency” and “we earnestly regret that we could not share these events with you in person”.

Shelli Ann Garland, who received a doctorate in education

says that she felt “an odd combination of pride, relief, disappointment and sadness... but mostly, sadness”, as she recounts how she “sat alone, in my small apartment in Malahide and cried” as she listened to the ceremony.

Garland states that “there were some very dark days during my PhD studies when just reminding myself of how I would feel hearing my name called, in Exam Hall and the procession into the square afterward, where I would be surrounded by family, friends and colleagues eager to embrace me and congratulate me, was what inspired me to continue”.

She adds that “In the end, it was not as I had dreamed” and she feels that the virus “robbed” her of her longed for day.

Garland says in the grand scheme of things she feels blessed and that in time the sadness of not having a proper graduation ceremony will fade.

“The first half of 2020 will hold many stories for many years to come, and the virtual conferring of my degree by Trinity is just one small aspect of a much bigger part of history.”

Donal O’Keeffe, who received a doctorate in philosophy expresses a similar sentiment, stating that “With the mental health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (from losing someone you love and not being able to grieve them properly, to losing identity, self-worth, and financial security from sudden unemployment), not having an

‘in-person’ graduation ceremony seems almost insignificant”.

However, he states that “rites of passage are so important in life.

Graduating with a PhD is such a monumental one of these, the accumulation of so many years of dedication,that to realise that I could not attend my own PhD graduation ceremony saddened me”.

O’Keeffe adds that the day would have been “more special” had the ceremony been live streamed, as graduates were originally told it would be and if the email he had received informing him that he had graduated had been personalised with his name and degree.

O’Keeffe says that he “made the most” of the day, celebrating in his back garden with his fiancée and a glass of raspberry wine.

Elizabeth Treacy, who received her MSc in Mental Health says that she was “delighted” when she learnt that College would provide a virtual ceremony. She had originally been scheduled to receive her degree in December a couple of days after her uncle had died and said that the “last thing” she wanted to do was attend a big ceremony.

Treacy says of the virtual ceremony that she “watched it with my family and reflected on my achievements”. She even recommends that Trinity continue the practise in the future for those unable to attend their ceremony in person.

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250 Trinity staff members earned upwards of €100,000 in the last year Staff costs amounted to €271.5 million in 2019 Lauren Boland Deputy Editor

Staff costs represented College’s largest expenditure in 2019, amounting to €271.5 million, with six members of staff earning more than €300,000 each.

1,107 of Trinity’s employees are categorised as “higher paid staff ”, with the category capturing those with an annual salary of more than €60,000. 36% of these higher paid staff earned between €60,000 and €79,000 in 2019, while 39% earned between €80,000 and €99,999. 258 members of staff, or 23%, received over €100,000.

College’s top earner received between €360,000 and €370,000 in 2019, while five others received between €300,000 and €340,000. A further five staff members earned between €280,000 and €290,000.

In a statement to the Irish Times, a spokesperson for College said that “salaries paid on all of the main universities are governed by strict State rules”.

Other operating expenses cost College €111.4 million last year, an increase from €102.5 million in 2018. Service contracts, consumables, and computers and equipment, account for the largest proportions of these expenses, at €12.7 million, €11.6 million, and €11.1 million respectively. €10.4 million was spent on student related costs and awards.

Interest and other finance costs were €4.2 million, while depre-

ciation amounted to €24.2 million, bringing total expenditure to €411.3 million for the 2019 financial year.

College’s capital expenditure in 2019 amounted to €61 million, with spending allocated to infrastructure projects such as the Trinity Business School, Printing House Square, and existing campus facilities.

The new Trinity Business School building was officially opened in May 2019, eight years after its initial inception. It houses a 600-seat auditorium and 140seat lecture hall, several smaller lecture theatres, and the Forum restaurant.

The redevelopment of Printing House Square, which is to be used as on-campus student accommodation, has experienced a series of setbacks, the most recent of which is due to the closure of College and construction sites amid the outbreak of Covid-19 in Ireland.

College’s financial statements for the year ended September 2019 were approved by the College Board on March 25.

In his report accompanying the financial statements, Chief Financial Officer Peter Reynolds commented that while “financial performance is strengthening”, he identified that “there are still major challenges in achieving the income required for a globally-competitive research university”.

Revenues amounted to €404 million for the 2019 financial year, with a surplus of €5.7 million recorded for College and its subsidiaries.

2019 marks a significant increase from the surplus of the previous year, which saw a €0.9 million surplus. In 2017, 2016, and 2015, College returned a deficit of €3.5 million, €9.4 million, and €14 million respectively.

Trinity generated €12.8 million from accommodation in 2019 College has recorded a €5.7 million surplus for the 2019 financial year, a significant increase on previous years Lauren Boland Deputy Editor

Trinity generated €12.8 million from accommodation in the 2019 financial year, a slight decrease from €13 million in the previous year.

Accommodation represents the second largest income stream in College’s “Other Income” category in its financial statements, which is separate to major income sources such as state grants, academic fees, research grants, and donations, after Library income, which amounted to €18.3 million.

Of the €13 million generated from residences in the 2018 financial year, €10.9 million constituted a profit.

College’s financial statements for the year ending September 2019 were approved by the College Board on March 25.

In his report accompanying College’s financial statements, Chief Financial Officer Peter Reynolds said that “given the financial

challenges that the University has encountered over the last number of years, it is satisfying to see that the non-Exchequer income generating strategies” have “continued to deliver improvements”.

Revenues amounted to €404 million for the 2019 financial year, with a surplus of €5.7 million recorded for College and its subsidiaries.

2019 marks a significant increase from the surplus of the previous year, which saw a €0.9 million surplus. In 2017, 2016, and 2015, College returned a deficit of €3.5 million, €9.4 million, and €14 million respectively.

Despite the increase, Reynolds cautioned that “significant additional funding will be required from the Government to address the shortfall in public funding per student”.

“While our financial performance is strengthening, there are still major challenges in achieving the income required for a globally-competitive research university,” he said.

Income from state grants, academic fees, and research grants all increased from the previous year, with state grants rising from €48.7 million to €50.4 million.

Reynolds outlined that “exchequer income has declined from 70% of the University’s total income in 2008 to 39% in 2019 and the financial outlook for the University will continue to remain uncertain unless the Government commits to long-term funding or lifts the cap on undergraduate student fees”.

Academic fees increased from €149 million to €153.1 million,

continuing an upwards yearly trend seen over the last five years.

The growth reflected a 1.8% increase in student numbers between the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 academic years, including an increase in non-EU students which saw them account for 17% of the student base, up from 15% the previous year.

Undergraduate EU students accounted for over a third of total academic fee income with €71.7 million, while undergraduate non-EU students generated €31.5 million.

Postgraduate taught Non-EU students generated €1.6 million more than their EU counterparts, bringing in €18.4 million and €16.8 to College respectively.

Postgraduate research students, both EU and non-EU, represented the smallest proportions of academic fee income, generating €6.8 million and €2.9 million.

Research grants and contracts generated €101.4 million last year, an increase of €1.7 million, while donations and endowments grew by €5.5 million to €20.5 million.

New research awards in 2018/2019 included a Science Foundation Ireland award of €48 million.

In his report, Reynolds emphasised that a “globally-competitive research university needs a national Research & Development funding environment where its academic staff can compete for research contracts”, noting that public funding for research in Ireland has decreased by 21% since 2008.

Investment income remained steady at €7 million.

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Analysis

How will the coronavirus affect Trinity?

Shannon Connolly Assistant News Editor

With the recent outbreak of Covid-19 throughout Ireland, life as we know it has changed dramatically over the course of a few weeks. However, students have a lot of worries and questions about what is to come next for Trinity. In his most recent email to the student body, Provost Patrick Prendergast said “we have to prepare ourselves for difficulties over the rest of the semester and during the next academic year”.

While Trinity is currently undertaking “extensive planning” for life after quarantine, how college will be affected in what will be a different world is still undetermined.

Early this week saw the Leaving Certificate postponed until late July or early August, which will affect the normal commencement of the academic year for incoming first years. This late commencement of the academic year may reshape the structure of the whole year, and raises some logistical questions about how this would work. These first years could have less assignments if the traditional 12 week term was to be condensed. Whether incoming first years will have a reading week along with the rest of college and sit their exams in the regular exam period remains to be seen.

The mental health of current sixth year students is also something to take into consideration.

Now that their Leaving Cert has been postponed until late summer, students could be burntout trying to adapt to the new demands they will face in college without a long summer break.

Current Trinity students have also expressed a lot of worry regarding their education. More students will likely defer for supplemental exams than the usual amount. However, whether large scale gatherings will even be allowed come the end of summer is still unclear and more students may be repeating a year in the upcoming term.

Students hoping to go on Eramus in the upcoming year have also expressed some concern about what this means for them.

The situation is up in the air, as no one truly knows what longterm repercussions the virus will have on traveling abroad. For students whose course requires them to spend a term abroad (a requirement of many language

degrees), this question is particularly pressing.

The current functioning of college online has raised questions in relation to how the courses will be conducted in the future.

Will more schools be using online methods of turning in classwork, and will they begin a more “online” teaching approach?

These questions are being asked as many academic staff have brushed up on their technology skills to adapt to working from home and this may have an effect on the future running of courses.

The current coronavirus situation also poses a challenge to the wider running of Trinity, with funding streams and construction projects being interrupted by the pandemic.

It seems unlikely that Printing House Square, the 250 bed accommodation complex on Trinity’s campus, will be ready on time for students to rent rooms at the start of Michaelmas term, as College hoped it would be.

There will likely also be a longterm delay to the construction of Trinity’s Engineering, Environment and Emerging Technologies (E3) Learning Foundry. While it was hoped the six-storey building would be completed by 2022, this is unlikely to happen by that projected date given the current economic climate. Other projects, like the renovations to the Old Library and the construction of more accommodation in Dartry, may also be delayed.

College is likely to also be financially impacted by Covid-19.

Students are to be refunded for their accommodation, meaning a financial loss for the college. Normal college income such as tours, catering, admission to the Book of Kells and Old Library and Trinity Gift Shop have all been affected by the pandemic. These closures may negatively affect the financial situation of Trinity in the months ahead.

It is also unknown if Trinity will be renting out college accommodation to tourists during the summer months as it regularly would. This all largely depends on when restrictions are going to be lifted, and if they will be lifted before or during the summer. If college remains closed, Trinity will lose out on more revenue.

Coronavirus has affected everyone in one shape or form and college is no exception. The pandemic is likely to reshape the normal landscape for college, as the economy and normal timetable for incoming first years is going to change.

College lights up green for the HSE College was lit up green in support of the HSE and healthcare workers dealing with Covid-19 Shaunna Bannon Ward Staff Writer

Trinity lit up the front facade of College in green last Friday night in solidarity with the HSE and to support the frontline workers for their dedication during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A tweet from College announcing the decision said: “Tonight we will light up green to convey our solidarity with HSE and for all the frontline workers doing our country proud during this pandemic.”

Lighting up the front facade of the campus has been a tradition for the College for a number of years.

Green has been used to signify the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, which was downscaled this year to

prevent the spread of the virus. In January, the College also used red lights in celebration of Chinese New Year.

The statement from College announcing the decision went on to remind everyone to stay at home to help the frontline workers flatten the curve. This is a sentiment that has been advanced by leaders across the globe in an effort to prevent a large scale spike in Covid-19 cases that could overpower the health care system.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has mentioned on many occasions when discussing measures to prevent the spread of the virus the importance of flattening the curve:

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“Anticlimactic”: Final years submit dissertations online, in break from tradition Instead of printing a hard-copy thesis, many final years submitted their thesis over turnitin Aisling Grace Editor

In a break from tradition for some departments, many final year students submitted their dissertations online this year due to college’s closure in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Students were stripped of the opportunity to post photographs of their printed and bound thesis’ on social media, as typically occurs in mid-Hilary Term, as many final year project deadlines occurred after the shutdown of Irish colleges. Some students found creative ways to mark the occasion, however.

European Studies student Meadhbh Ní Mhidigh told Trinity News that submitting her dissertation via turnitin “was just quite anticlimactic”. She said: “With everything that's going on at the moment, my dissertation no longer felt like it was the be all and end all that I thought it was a few months ago.”

Her course decided not to allow “The number of people who have Covid-19 will continue to rise every day, every week, for a couple of weeks. But the objective in a couple of weeks time is to flatten the curve then so that we don’t have a single spike at the same time that would that would overwhelm the health service.”

“

The number of people who have Covid-19 will continue to rise every day

the opportunity to celebrate pass by though. “Lots of people photoshopped photos of themselves with their dissertation in front of the Campanile and sent them to our course group chat,” she said, “and we made a collage of all of them. It'll be nice to have something to look back on in place of a class photo.”

Other students agreed that the online submission of their dissertation was anticlimactic. Biomedical Engineering student Aisling Kearney said: “Finishing my dissertation should've been one of the defining moments of my college experience, yet clicking the submit

button felt hollow. The finality of the moment was a shadow of what it could've been. It was strange.”

Kearney doesn’t have a photo of herself holding her thesis in front of the Campanile, as many fourth years from previous years do, but she approximated it. “Years ago, when I was the first person in my family to go to Trinity, I was given a poster of Front Arch,” she said.

“It hid away in a wardrobe until I thought it would be funny to take a picture with it holding my thesis, for posterity's sake. That was mostly how I marked the occasion, along with a few cans and catching up on Ru Paul's Drag Race.”

Home exams scheduled to begin at the end of April Assignments will also replace exams in some modules Jack Kennedy Online Editor

Semester two undergraduate assessments will be conducted through a mixture of online and offline exams and assignments, College has announced. Senior Lecturer Kevin Mitchell and Vice Provost Jürgen Barkhoff laid out

the timetable for the assessment period in an email sent to all undergraduate students.

Exams will be scheduled between Monday April 27 and Saturday May 9. These will be a mixture of real-time online exams, and take-home papers with a set deadline for completion. In some modules, assessment will be conducted through assignments, the deadlines for which will fall between May 11 and May 15.

Timetables for precisely when assignments and exams will take place will be released “as soon as we have finalised them", the email stated.

Students in Schools with professional accreditation require-

“

Some students may have technical issues with poor connectivity

“Strange” was how several students described submitting their dissertations online. “Submitting my dissertation from my kitchen table the night before it was due felt very strange,” said English student Tom Fogarty. “It didn’t quite feel finished. I was up early the following morning for work as I do grocery deliveries for my parents’ shop - but I did send my wonderful supervisor Julie Bates some thank you post.”

Some students expressed a wish to recreate their final year photo in front of Trinity’s defining landmark at a later date. History student Cathal Byrne said: “It was a bit anticlimactic handing it in, I didn't do anything specific to mark it, but I think I'll hopefully still get a copy printed off when things eventually get back to normal.”

Liam Byrne, also a History student, said: “I was a tiny bit disappointed that I couldn't take a photo under the Campanile with the hard bound copy. I might do it when this is all over”. Byrne added that he primarily felt “relief ” that his thesis was completed. To celebrate, “I video called my girlfriend who had to go back to the States because of coronavirus,” he said.

Kearney, like many final year students, laments the lost opportunity to savour her last days as a Trinity student. “There's a rhythm to life: success is followed by celebration. That was absent,” she said.

“I couldn't celebrate with my boyfriend and friends at a pub. Take one last jaunt through campus.

Sit in my favourite nooks. Read the names on the rose garden benches. So many of us regret the lost potential of college, that we didn't make enough friends or go to enough parties. The last weeks of my degree is now one of those things. Submitting my dissertation is one of those things.”

But she added: “With all that said, I don't need a party to confirm how happy and proud I am about what I've achieved.”

ments and Health Sciences students whose assessments have been expedited are not included in this schedule.

The email went on to say that College recognises “that some students may have technical issues with poor connectivity...or concerns about access from different jurisdictions and time zones”. A mock exam environment is to be set up for students to test their ability to participate in online assessment. Those who face technical difficulties have been asked to contact IT Services “who are exploring a number of solutions".

Additionally, Barkhoff and Mitchell advised those with “generally difficult working conditions at home, either for studying or completing assessments” to contact their tutors individually. The email promised they would be “as generous and flexible as possible in taking such circumstances into account in considering requests for a deferral".

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Trinity casts doubt over whether Erasmus programmes will go ahead The coronavirus has made it difficult to guarantee foreign exchange plans, says College TSM office Madalyn Williams Staff Writer

Trinity’s TSM (Two Subject Moderatorship) office appeared to cast doubt over the possibility of foreign exchange programmes going ahead next year due to the coronavirus pandemic in an email circulated to all TSM Erasmus and Non-EU Exchange candidates in their Senior Fresh year.

“Due to the current situation regarding the coronavirus,” the email read, “I’m sure we are all very unclear of what the future plans will be.” The TSM office has therefore decided to hold off on the normal procedure of asking students to choose their major subject for the upcoming academic year.

They told students that the

office would be contacted to continue with regular exchange procedure “if exchanges are going ahead”.

In normal circumstances TSM students going on exchange would need to select which of their subjects they are majoring in by the end of their Senior Fresh year (in some cases they might also decide to do both subjects equally), in order to plan their modules and credits for the following year abroad. However, with the coronavirus pandemic shutting down campuses around the globe, the office told students that “we don’t want to ask you to make the choice now”.

Trinity’s Erasmus and Exchange students who were abroad while the COVID-19 outbreaks gained momentum this year were advised to “follow the guidance given to you by your host university and the local health authorities” by the Senior Tutor Aidan Seery but were not explicitly asked to return home

by College.

Should study abroad exchanges and Erasmus proceed as normal, some students would have to leave as early as a couple of months time in order to take part in courses in the Southern Hemisphere. No timeline was given as to when students could expect to receive confirmation that their exchange was going ahead.

“We’re in this together”: Zoom call with resident Aisling Grace Editor

On the call, the provost called the proposed no detriment policy, whereby students’ overall grade average cannot be brought down so long as they pass, “good in concept”.

“We’ll see how we can ensure that the sensible and reasonable aspirations behind no detriment are put into practise,” he said, lat Provost Patrick Prendergast hosted a Zoom call with residents of Trinity in early April, seeking to reassure students remaining on campus and field questions.

On the Zoom call, which was attended by several dozen students and staff members, Provost Patrick Prendergast said: “I’m addressing you as a fellow resident...We are all in this together.” He addresses concerns from students relating to the proposed “no detriment” policy, extension of leases, and printers.The purpose of the approximately 40 minute call was to provide “the provost an opportunity to interact with some residents on campus”, offer

reassurance, and allow student residents to ask questions, said Breer adding: “We are certainly keen that students don’t suffer any detriment and we will work to find a way for that to be possible within the Trinity context.”

Prendergast said that he must have received “200 emails” relating to the policy, as part of an emailing campaign launched earlier that day. Two petitions calling for the implementation of the policy were also circulated among students, gaining 3,400 and 1,100 signatures.

The following week, the policy was rejected by University Council, but other measures were adopted. The approved measures include allowing students to defer assessments until the end of the summer and granting discretionary powers to the board of examiners to consider final year students’ overall profile of marks throughout their time at Trinity when marking their work from this term.

Several students posed questions to the provost. The provost confirmed that student residents requesting an extension to their lease will be granted it. “Absolutely no problem at

all, but keep in touch with me and I can extend your tenancy,” Accommodation Officer Hazel Kinmonth said in response to a student highlighting that the leases end before the end of the now extended assessment period.

One student requested that residents have access to printers on campus. Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) President Laura Beston suggested that the assistant junior deans email their assigned residents and offer to print material for them, so long as the staff didn’t receive too many requests.

In response to a question, the provost said that “there’s a greater scope for using tech in education” and some elements of online learning may continue to be used after the pandemic ends.

The call did not occur without some issues. “What is this thing beeping on me when I’m trying to smoke the Mary Jane,” was the first question posed to the provost by an anonymous attendee.

The anonymous user also inquired about a ghost haunting one of the campus buildings. “I don’t know the answer to those questions,” the provost said in

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News

Residents express outrage and upset at requirement to vacate One student described her “great distress”, while another called the decision “utterly shameful” Aisling Grace Editor

: Provost hosts ts response. He joked about the ghost later in the call.

The call was attended by the provost, Beston, Trinity’s assistant junior deans and the acting head of the counselling service, who highlighted the means through which they can help residents.

Each assistant junior dean has been assigned to around a dozen students, who they have reached out to offering assistance. Less than 100 students remain on campus, Assistant Junior Dean Philip Coleman said.

“

We are certainly keen that students don’t suffer any detriment

The no detriment policy that was proposed is similar to measures taken by several UK universities in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Under the policy, if a student receives a mark higher than their average from previous assessments before the closure of College their average mark would go up, but if they received a mark lower than their average but high enough to pass, their average would remain the same.

A private Facebook group was established that morning to share information on which members of staff to contact to lobby for the policy to be implemented, and an email template that students could use was posted. Students were encouraged to email the provost, vice-provost and senior lecturer.

Students received an email the previous Thursday signed by the senior lecturer and vice-provost informing them that semester two undergraduate assessments will be conducted through a mixture of online and offline exams and assignments.

Additional reporting by Finn Purdy

Residents of Trinity accommodation have expressed their outrage and upset at College’s requirement for on campus residents and students in Trinity Hall, the Binary Hub and Kavanagh Court to leave this week.

Residents have been emailing college staff members this evening to express their anger at the decision which requires students with homes in Ireland to leave by 8pm tomorrow and students coming from overseas to leave by 5pm Wednesday.

Aisling O’Driscoll, a fourth year History and Political Science student, described in an email to College staff her “great distress” at College’s requirement for students to vacate college accommodation.

She said that she believes it is “deeply unethical” to require students to leave within a day, and “to essentially force many people who may, by Trinity’s suggestion… already have come into contact with the virus” to leave.

Expressing concern that she will have to return to her mother, who is at “exceptionally high risk”, she added: “I cannot stress the extent to which I cannot go home.”

Students who fit certain criteria are permitted to remain on campus. This list includes students who faces homelessness, students who have the virus or are currently self-isolating, if their family at home has the virus, students who have immigration, travel, and/or visa restrictions, students whose home is in an area with extremely limited internet connectivity, and PhD students who must conduct lab or other research on campus that’s required for their thesis.

Simon Benson, who is undertaking a taught Masters in Biodiversity and Conservation, told Trinity News: “I left for South Africa for a field trip on the 9th and had no internet for a few days…

I’m currently in a tent in a field surrounded by zebra, wildebeest, elephants and rhinos and have to

worry that I’m going to be kicked out of my apartment. I won’t even be back until nearly a week after they’re deactivating the cards, and I don’t fall under any exemptions.”

College said that students who have already vacated on a temporary basis and not removed all their belongings will need to collect their belongings by 6pm on Friday.

Benson added: “I may be able to plea homelessness because I cannot afford to rent in Dublin, but I’m particularly annoyed that research for PhD research is included as an exemption, but not my MSc research.” He said that he is optimistic he can make arrangements and added: “I’m sure myself, my course coordinators and my supervisor will sort this out, but it kinda makes the ‘upholding academic excellence’ and ‘being fair to students’ mantra we’ve been hearing over the last week ring hollow.”

In an email to College staff, Mila Stieglitz-Courtney, a fourth year Economics and Geography student, said she was “deeply unsettled” by the announcement. “[I] need to stay longer, not only because as an international student I have no accommodation alternative in Dublin, but also because I am self-isolating,” she said, explaining that she has visited the UK and Portugal in the last 14 days.

She added: “In the eventuality that I have the virus, I would feel deeply uncomfortable going into someone else’s home and risk giving them the virus. I also have to pack up not only my belongings, but those of my roommate who had recently left for America and did not know she wouldn’t be able to return.”

Catalina Rete, a fourth year Computer Science student, said to Trinity News that the next direct flight back to Romania is on March 25. She said: “By then perhaps, all flights could be cancelled, the situation is so unpredictable I can’t make plans that far.”

She continued: “I wish I could go home, but now instead I have to rely on friends who were nice

enough to offer me a room. So for the next few days I will leave in the fear that I might’ve infected other people without knowing, as I don’t have any symptoms at the moment.”

Hiram Harrington, a fourth year, Film studies and Spanish student, told Trinity News: “I think it’s utterly shameful that the college is putting students out of their homes at a time like this.

When the virus has spread to campus, the answer isn’t to send people who could be carrying that virus out into the wide world. I’m lucky that I have a home in Dublin to go to – but I have relatives who are severely at risk. Will Trinity pay for their hospital fees?”

They added: “I cannot fathom why they would make this decision, and especially at such a late time in the day that we get no confirmation as to whether our circumstances are severe enough to stay until an entire day later. It’s nothing except thoughtless and cruel.”

Speaking to Trinity News, Aaron Koay, Masters student in Pharmacy, said: “I think College definitely could’ve been more considerate of our individual circumstances, give longer notice and provide alternative accommodation etc. should it be necessary to evict students in the interest of public health.” He intends to email College to request that he remain on campus as he is an international student on clinical placement.

College said that the order for residents to leave was “one of the most difficult decisions to date”.

It follows the announcement that three more cases of coronavirus have been reported in the Trinity community, bringing the total to eight.

“This decision has been taken because large, highly concentrated numbers of students living on campus will increase the chance of rapid transmission of the coronavirus. Our capacity to quarantine those who are sick and those who have been exposed is extremely limited,” College said.

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News Trinity Business School hosted the Defence Forces at the end of March as they trained the volunteers in performing contact tracing for Covid-19.

Binary Hub and Kavanagh Court to offer partial refund to some residents Finn Purdy News Editor

Binary Hub and Kavanagh Court, two private student accommodation complexes leased exclusively for the use of Trinity students, have said they will offer partial refunds to some students forced to leave early due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, students staying in Kavanagh Court have been told that they have to fill out an application to apply for a refund and that applications are being processed on a case-by-case basis, while those staying in Binary Hub have been told that anyone who left early will receive a partial refund.

Binary Hub, operated by the accommodation company Aparto, have stated on their website that all students who have left will be refunded any licence fee or rent paid beyond May 2 until their tenancy end date.

They have also offered a 30% rent refund on the period from May 2 to the end of their tenancy to anyone who is remaining in their apartment and has rebooked for next year.

Kavanagh Court, which is operated by the company Uninest, have told students that have left early that they will need to fill out an application form, asking them to explain their situation and provide supporting documents to apply for a partial refund.

One student who stayed in the complex this year told Trinity News that the company has given no indication of what the criteria they will have to meet to be eligible for a refund is.

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) have urged all providers of student accomodation to provide

“

Applications are being processed on a case-bycase basis refunds to students who had to move out due to the spread of the coronavirus.

Trinity initially ordered residents of private complexes Kavanagh Court and Binary Hub to vacate, along with all residents in Trinity accommodation except when students meet certain criteria.

Trinity then reversed the decision, saying on the Trinity website that “we recognise that these properties are not owned or managed by Trinity College but by private providers. Therefore we are not in a position to manage the situation for students residing in Binary Hub or in Kavanagh Court.” Trinity said that they were “strongly advising” students leaving in these complexes to leave but were not requiring them to do so.

The provost said in an email statement that Trinity would refund students who leave campus or Trinity Hall early but could not guarantee that Binary Hub or Kavanagh Court would provide refunds. “We believe that privateproviders should also do this but of course that is ultimately a matter for the accommodation providers,” he said.

Trinity Business School hosting contact tracing volunteers Lauren Boland Deputy Editor

The Trinity Business School building is currently being used as a venue for contact tracing volunteers as the HSE looks to expand the tracing of individuals who have been in contact with confirmed cases of Covid-19.

The school hosted the Defence Forces at the end of March as they trained the volunteers in performing contact tracing for Covid-19.

The business school building, which opened in May 2019, is currently closed to students along with the rest of campus, as universities and schools around the country have been told to shut until April 19.

Speaking to Trinity News, Dean of the School of Business Professor

Andrew Burke said that Provost Patrick Prendergast “deserves the credit”.“He was keen to offer the building for this activity and out of courtesy asked Trinity Business School & Tangent if this was ok. We said absolutely yes!” Burke outlined. “In fact, we are honoured to have these wonderful volunteers in Trinity Business School during this health crisis,” Burke continued. “We really admire and respect them for what they are doing. We are delighted that the building is being used for this critical activity rather than standing idle at this time of need and community spirit.”

In Dublin City University (DCU), a call centre has been set up to facilitate contact tracing, with volunteer staff from the university making contact with individuals who have tested positive for the virus and those who may

have been exposed to it.

The HSE has identified two types of contacts that are to be contacted under the contact tracing programme: close contacts and casual contacts. Close contacts include individuals who have spent longer than 15 minutes face-to-face with a confirmed case, household members, aircraft passengers sitting within two seats in any direction of the case and crew members working in the same section of the aircraft, and healthcare workers exposed while not fully protected by personal protective equipment (PPE) during the infectious period.

Casual contacts include healthcare workers who have used appropriate PPE, individuals sharing a close space with the confirmed case for less than two hours and aircraft passengers sat more than two seats in any direction away

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News

Third level entry for first year students delayed as Leaving Certificate postponed Leaving Certificate exams have been rescheduled to late summer Lauren Boland Deputy Editor

Leaving Certificate exams have been postponed from June until late July or August, with students intending on entering third level education expected to start at a later date than usual.

This year’s Leaving Certificate has been postponed and the Junior Certificate has been cancelled and replaced by school-based assessments in the next school year following advice from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET).

The higher education admission process, operated by the Cen-

from the case during the infectious period.

Guidelines from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) outline that individuals identified as having been in close contact with confirmed cases of the virus should be contacted by a staff member at the Department of Public Health each day for a set number of days to check whether the individual has developed symptoms.

The guidelines, which were published on March 20, direct that contact tracing “should be initiated IMMEDIATELY after a confirmed case of Covid-19, or a highly likely suspected case, is identified in Ireland”.

A letter template for communicating with close contacts gives information on coronaviruses, the associated risks and symptoms, and directions for isolation.

Individuals identified as having been in casual contact with a confirmed case are to receive a similar letter. However, casual contacts will not receive a daily follow-up from the Department of Public Health, and are instead advised to monitor themselves for symptoms and contact their local Public Health Department if they develop symptoms within 14 days following exposure to the confirmed case.

tral Applications Office (CAO), is expected to operate “as closely as possible” to the standard timeframe for offers, while prospective first year students will receive a delayed entry date for the start of their courses.

Minister of State for Higher Education Mary Mitchell O’Connor said: “The third level institutions look forward to welcoming this year’s Leaving Certificate students who have applied to enter their courses. I appreciate the particular challenges these students have had to face and I welcome the flexible approach indicated by the sector to enabling these students to take up a place in the year ahead.”

The Department of Education outlined that it has asked the Higher Education Authority (HEA) and the higher education sector to consider methods of assisting higher education access for students from under-represented groups.

Primary and secondary schools, along with universities, have been shut since 6pm on March 12 due to the outbreak of Covid-19 in Ireland.

Minister for Education Joe McHugh said that “all decisions we are taking in relation to rescheduling exams are based on current public health advice and put the best interests of students first. The welfare of students and that of their families is front and centre in all decision making.”

McHugh stated: “We’ve had a lot of engagement with representatives from the third level sector. They’ve been very positive and they have adopted the position of flexibility, that they will work with the new timeline.”

A revised exam timetable is due to be released in early June, while arrangements for exam centres, social distancing and other measures are also to be determined by the State Examinations Commission (SEC) in June.

McHugh explained that “asking Leaving Certificate students and their families to refocus their attention from June to August is not something we do lightly”, but said that rescheduling the exams represented the “fairest way of assessing students and giving them certifica-

Printing House Square construction faces possible delays The accommodation complex was set to be completed this summer Aisling Grace Editor

The completion of the Printing House Square project faces possible delays due to the coronavirus.

The on-campus accommodation complex, set to house 250 students, was expected to be completed this summer in time for the new academic year. However, following the government’s decision to halt all non-essential building work, construction sites on campus have been closed and it is unclear when they will reopen.

In an email statement to Trinity News, a college spokesperson confirmed that “all construction sites were closed at the point of notification from the government

that they should close”. Trinity will continue to “take direction from the government” regarding its response to the Covid-19 crisis, they said.

“Delays to construction projects are possible,” the spokesperson confirmed, “but it is too early to speculate as to when reconstruction may recommence.”

Printing House Square’s construction has faced several setbacks. The accommodation complex was initially planned for completion in 2018, but concerns raised by An Taisce and An Bord Pleanála introduced delays.

A new completion date was then set for early last August, but was not achieved. Dean of Students Kevin O’Kelly told Trinity News last summer: “the construction sector in Dublin is very overheated and all projects are experiencing difficulty with the various trades.” The completion date was then revised to this July.

As well as providing six storeys of accommodation for students, Printing House Square will house a new Health Centre, the Disability Service, and sports facilities, including a rifle range, squash courts and a handball alley.

The building will be located on the former site of Oisin House and beside the Printing House, and will feature a courtyard that will serve as a new public entrance to campus.

Last summer, College launched an investigation into reports that

tion of achievement in school and a pathway to higher and further education and training, apprenticeship or work”.

Since the revision of Trinity’s academic calendar in 2018, an orientation week for first-year students (Freshers’ Week) has taken place during the first week of September, followed by six weeks of teaching, a study week, and a further five weeks of teaching before two weeks of revision and assessment in the first semester.

In an email to staff and students last week, Provost Patrick Prendergast stated: “We have to prepare ourselves for difficulties over the rest of the semester and during the next academic year. Extensive planning has already begun in order to examine how best to protect the University in what are sure to be constrained times. We know, for better and for worse, that things will not quickly return to the way they were before this pandemic.”

workers on the Printing House Square site were receiving hourly pay €2 to €3 lower than the legal requirement. Workers protested in July against their low pay.

Printing House Square is one of several major construction projects ongoing in Trinity. Existing buildings on the site of the Martin Naughton Learning Foundry have been demolished to prepare for construction, but it is unclear whether this cessation of construction work halted progress on the site.

Trinity also has plans to provide 350 student beds in a new building at Trinity Hall, while College’s Strategic Plan lists a new Law School and creation of the Trinity St James’ Cancer Institute among their planned projects.

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College-wide referendum to be held on amendments to TCDSU constitution The referendum is to be held alongside class rep elections next year Finn Purdy News Editor

Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) Council has voted to put several amendments to the union’s constitution to a referendum of all students.

Students are set to be given a vote on accepting or rejecting a raft of 76 amendments to the union constitution.

According to the motion passed

by Council, the changes involve “cleaning up” the constitution of “typos and conflicting passages”.

However, amendments have also been proposed to the criteria required to hold certain positions within the union. Nominations for the position of Officer for Students with Disabilities would only be open to students with a disability under the changes and nominations for the Secretary of the union Council would only be open to those who have served a term of office on the Oversight Commission.

The motion to put these changes to a referendum was submitted by the union’s Engineering, Maths and Science (EMS) faculty convenor, Daniel O’Reilly, and seconded by union president Laura Beston.

Under TCDSU’s constitution all changes to the constitution must be approved by a College-wide vote. The referendum is expected to be held within the first few weeks of the 2020/21 academic year, alongside class rep elections Speaking to Trinity News, Laura Beston stated that the purpose of the amendments is to “clean up” the constitution to make it more “clear and accessible”, as well as fixing small errors.

Beston noted that the proposed change to require the Officer for Students with Disabilities to have a disability “has always been a contentious issue”, but stated that “if we don’t give the opportunity to a student who is a member of that community then we are probably not representing that community effectively” and it was important to have someone in the role who “is aware of the issues that community is facing”.

With regard to proposed changes to the criteria required to run for the position of Secretary of Council, Beston said it was important for the occupant of this role to be aware of the correct procedures.

Some of the proposed changes serve to formalise procedures already common practise within the union, for example the procedure for what happens if the Chair of Council is absent, which involves the appointment of a temporary Chair, approved by a vote of Council.

Other proposed changes include the removal of any reference to TSM courses, a programme phased out with the introduction of the Trinity Education Project (TEP), and changes to sections of the constitution which reference other documents that are now out of date.

The vote to put these amendments to a referendum was taken at a meeting of TCDSU Council, conducted entirely online. This was due to the coronavirus pandemic which has caused the closure of Trinity and the cancellation of in-person council meetings.Council also voted via email to pass motions to mandate the union’s Officer for Students with Disabilities to draw up an accessibility policy for the union and to mandate the Oifigeach na Gaeilge to formulate an Irish Language policy. Council further voted to mandate the Communications and Marketing Officer to make available online the minutes and agendas of Council meetings.

Incumbents retain seats Trinity Seanad election Lynn Ruane, David Norris and Ivana Bacik were all reelected Aisling Grace Editor

Lynn Ruane, Ivana Bacik and David Noris have all been reelected as Senators for the University of Dublin constituency.

Ruane was deemed elected following the eighth count with Bacik

following the sixth, and Noris following the fourth. The total valid poll was 15,041 making the quota for election 3,761 votes.

The count took place in the Dargan Theatre in the Trinity Business School, where the staff observed social distancing guidelines, and concluded on April 1.10 candidates vied for positions, down from 2016’s 16 candidates.

Norris was first elected to the Seanad in 1987 and will now serve his ninth term in the Seanad.

Bacik, a Reid Professor of Criminal Law in Trinity’s Law School, was first elected in 2007. Lynn Ruane was elected to the Seanad in 2016 while serving as Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) president.

Hugo MacNeill, the retired rugby player and former director of Goldman Sachs, came in fourth place with 2,961 votes. In fifth was Tom Clonan, a retired Irish army captain, lecturer and security analyst, with 1,172 votes. He was eliminated on the seventh count and his votes were redistributed.

The other five candidates – Joseph O’Gorman, Abbas Ali O’Shea, Derek Byrne, Keith Scanlon and William Priestly – were all eliminated and their votes redistributed on earlier counts. Byrne and Ali O’Shea were eliminated first, followed by O’Gorman, then Scanlon and finally Priestley.

Priestly, a Green Party County Councillor, was elected to represent Rathfarnham-Templeogue in

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College to hire two fulltime student recruitment officers for China Trinity plans to spend €200,000 on a drive to recruit students from China to Trinity Lauren Boland Deputy Editor

Left: The University of Dublin count was conducted in Trinity Business School where social distancing measures were observed. Trinity livestreamed the count from their website. Top: Lynn Ruane. Top left: Ivana Bacik.

Far left: David Norris.

in 2019, while Ali O’Shea is the director of AFA Consultancy, an organisation that connects students with business interests and facilities study abroad programme.

Keith Scanlon is an electrical and electronic engineer and Derek Byrne is a lecturer in addiction studies at Maynooth University and regular contributor to the opinion page of the Irish Times.

O’Gorman has been the Strategic Development Officer of the Central Societies Committee (CSC) in Trinity and an assistant junior dean for over a decade. In March, the Sunday Times reported that O’Gorman has given himself and his partner around €1.3 million in the last four years through the tour company he runs on cam-

pus.

All six university Seanad seats have been filled. Incumbent senators Rónán Mullen, Michael McDowell and Alice Mary Higgins were re-elected to the Seanad for the National University of Ireland (NUI) constituency.

“

The count took place in Trinity Business School where the staff observed social distancing guidelines

College is to spend €200,000 on a recruitment drive in a bid to increase the number of students from China who choose to attend Trinity.

The tender for services, published last week, calls for a vendor to “provide student recruitment support services based in China”, with the services comprising “legal, financial and infrastructural resources to support up to (two ) full time staff members”.

The staff, who would receive a

12-month contract with an option for College to extend, are to act as student recruitment officers and advisors.

In a statement to the Irish Times in relation to the impact of Covid-19 on the recruitment drive, a spokesperson for College said that “the Covid 19 crisis continues to evolve and is impacting Trinity and its staff and students in many, complex ways. At this point it is too early, however to predict whether, or to what extent, it will have an impact on student recruitment in this area”. There are currently around 500 Chinese students studying at Trinity, according to the spokesperson.

A tender for services published elsewhere last Wednesday details College’s “ongoing need for Education Consultant Services in order to respond to these strategic internationalisation objectives through developing a presence in overseas markets such as China”.

In 2019, College launched a new Global Relations Strategy focused on diversifying Trinity’s student population. One of its key goals is

USIT will not offer refunds to J1 students, says company The company went into liquidation at the end of March Finn Purdy News Editor

USIT, the travel agency which supplies J1 visas, have said that they are “not in a position” to offer refunds following the liquidation of the company last month due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a statement posted on their website, the company said that “unfortunately, due to the insolvency of USIT, the Joint Provisional Liquidators are not in a position to pay any refunds to any category of customer or client”.

The website stated: “It is extremely unlikely that summer programmes will go ahead this year given the scale of the COVID19 pandemic and resulting health risks”, adding that “there are more severe restrictions now in place by both the US and Ireland and the

US Embassy in Dublin remains closed so no visa paperwork can be processed”.

However, the website also notes that “to date, no formal decision has been made by our US partners to cancel the programme”.

The Dublin-based travel agents were popular with students seeking J1 work visas to travel to the USA over the summer, and also offered other student travel packages.

The number of students applying for J1 visas had been declining before the coronavirus outbreak.

In 2013, over 8,000 students trav-

to increase the number of students from 18,000 to 21,000 by 2024.

The strategy also outlines College’s plan to increase Trinity’s international population in order that 3035% of Trinity students come from outside of Ireland by 2025.

In the 2018/2019 academic year, College spent over €1.4m on efforts to recruit non-EU undergraduate and postgraduate students according to figures released to Trinity News under the Freedom of Information Act 2014, an increase of around €300,000 from the previous year. A spokesperson for College explained to Trinity News that the spending was on “essential activities for the College in continuing to grow Trinity’s global connectivity and campus diversity”. From January 2017 to July 2019, Trinity’s global relations department spent €69,551 on sponsored Facebook and Instagram posts. The majority of this expenditure was comprised of advertisements on Facebook for international recruitment events and promotions of specific postgraduate study and specific courses. elled to the US on the visa, while only 3,300 applied in 2019, a drop of nearly 60%.

David Andrews, the chairman of the business, announcing the liquidation in March, said that “the tsunami of effects related to the Covid-19 pandemic have left us with no business whatsoever and no possibility of overcoming these challenges.”

In a statement, the company said: “The outcome for customers who have booked with USIT is uncertain but management will provide as much support as possible to help customers assess their options.”

USIT’s parent company also owns the English Studio language school, which has now also gone out of business. KPMG has been appointed the provisional liquidator to USIT along with its parent company Kinlay Group and the language school.

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News

Trinity Ball cancelled following continued college shutdown Aisling Grace

announced the continued shutdown of universities alongside a raft of new measures aimed at reducing the spread of the coronavirus, including a ban on gatherings of more than four people and the closure of nonessential businesses.

Trinity Ball headliner Tinie Tempah was booked to perform

alongside 16 other acts, including Irish rapper Rejjie Snow and British DJ Eats Everything.

Other Trinity Ball 2020 acts included Cooks but We’re Chefs, Lyra, Franc Moody, Moncrief, Maliki and Holly Lester.

The line-up was due to be announced at a launch party held by Ents, but was instead

GSU elections to move “completely online” The timeline for the election is due to be decided this week Lauren Boland Deputy Editor

Sabbatical officer elections for the Graduate Students’ Union (GSU) are to take place “completely online” this year due to College’s closure amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

The GSU Electoral Commission has confirmed that elections for a new president and vice-president are to be held online, with details of the systems that will be used for the elections are still to be finalised.

The GSU constitution requires that the election of sabbatical officers is held during the Trinity term of each academic year. In 2019, the election count took place on April 11, while in the previous year, officers were elected on

Finn Purdy News Editor

Editor

Trinity Ball was cancelled following a government announcement that all colleges will remain closed until at least April 19.

Trinity Ball was due to be held on April 17. “Following the announcement made by the Taoiseach this afternoon it is clear now that Trinity Ball will be unable to go ahead,” Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) Ents Office Judith Robinson told Trinity News.

Full refunds will be given to students who purchased tickets for the ball, according to Robinson.

She confirmed: “Unfortunately, postponing the ball is not possible.”

She said: “I am very saddened by this as we had such a fantastic line up and a huge amount of work has been put in to prepare for the ball.” ”However,” Robinson added, “we have to remember that it is for the best, and what is important now is our health and well being.”

She said that College is expected to announce the cancellation this week.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

Lauren Boland elected editor of Trinity News

March 9.

A meeting of the GSU Electoral Commission on Friday provisionally decided that nominations for candidates is to open on May 11 and results are to be announced on May 29, subject to approval by the union’s executive committee, which is to meet this week.

Speaking to Trinity News, a spokesperson for the GSU Electoral Commission outlined that the body “has begun to update our regulations and develop tools for an online campaign and election”.

“While the details are not yet finalised on the systems that will be used, due to the current ongoing situation with COVID-19, the campaign and election will have to be completely online,” the statement continued.

“This will include using the numerous communication channels available to the GSU to ensure that postgraduate students are fully engaged with the election process, even though they aren’t able to be on campus at this time.”

Under normal circumstances, GSU elections are typically held

following a week-long campaign period. A hustings is normally held during the campaign period that coincides with a meeting of the GSU Council.

The GSU’s constitution currently requires the union to “arrange to have supervised polling stations erected at suitable points throughout College to allow the ballot to take place” and that “all full members of the Union who are members of the appropriate constituency shall be entitled to vote in an election held in this manner”.

The constitution also makes provision for a “suitable system” of electronic voting subject to its approval by the union’s electoral commission and executive committee. It details that such a system should allow members to vote securely and anonymously; have provision made to ensure the system is available for use “even in the face of technical failures”; and provide a full audit of each ballot cast. It requires that “all members of the union shall be offered the opportunity to inspect the design and operation of the chosen e voting system”.

announced by TCDSU online following the leak of the line-up on social media.

Tickets, priced at €91, sold out within two hours, with students queuing up from 8:30am to purchase a ticket outside House 6 as well as buying them online.

The constitution further stipulates that “all computing services directly required in the provision of e voting shall be supervised by the Electoral Commission and shall reside in a secured location upon the main campus of College”, and that “upon closure of polling, all ballots cast electronically shall be printed upon paper and placed inside a ballot box under the supervision of the Electoral Commission”.

Speaking to Trinity News, current GSU President Shaz Oye said that “taking account of the unprecedented circumstances in which we are operating”, the GSU had not yet set a date for the elections.

“We are considering the options available to us, and will endeavour to act in the best interest of the postgraduate community, and the wider College community as circumstances allow,” Oye continued.

The GSU annually elects two paid sabbatical officers; a president and a vice-president. The sabbatical officers sit on the union’s executive committee, which includes parttime officers.

The GSU sabbatical officer elections are overseen by the GSU’s Electoral Commission, which is separate to the Electoral Commission of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) that oversees undergraduate union elections.

Lauren Boland has been elected the next editor of Trinity News at the paper’s annual general meeting.

Boland, who ran unopposed for the position, is the paper’s current deputy editor and a former news editor. She will serve as editor for the 2020/21 academic year, the 67th volume of the newspaper.

The vote to elect Trinity News’ next editor was held as a secret ballot among editorial staff, following a Q and A session conducted over a Zoom call.

Boland is a Senior Sophister English and Sociology student and has also served as deputy editor of TN2 magazine, current affairs editor of Trinity FM, and chair of the Trinity Publications executive committee.

Boland’s tenure as editor will begin on May 13. Speaking shortly after her election, Boland said that she is “absolutely delighted and honoured to have been elected editor”.

Boland stated: “My time in Trinity News has been the highlight of my college experience, and I’m excited to be in a position to provide the opportunity to be involved in Ireland’s oldest student newspaper to other students over the next year. Working with our current editor, Aisling Grace, and everyone on the team this year has been a pleasure, and the hard work and dedication of the entire staff has been especially evident in the difficult circumstances of the last few weeks while the college is shut.”

Boland added that she is “looking forward to another exciting year of high-quality journalism and strong editorial stances”.

Trinity News’ current editor Aisling Grace congratulated Boland on her election saying: “Lauren will be an amazing Editor.

She excelled as News Editor and was supportive to the whole staff as Deputy this year. I’m delighted to be passing on the newspaper to such capable hands.”

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TRINITY NEWS | Tuesday 14 April

News

CALLING ALL STUDENTS! When you are a full time third-level student in Ireland you can sign up for a

digital subscription for The Irish Times, worth €144 per year.

This allows you access to The Irish Times across all your devices.

Sign up for news you can trust at

irishtimes.com/studenthub

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Tuesday 14 April | TRINITY NEWS

Features

Students on lockdown in Italy Isabella Noonen

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Final year students’ bittersweet farewells to Trinity Comhall Fanning

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“

You start thinking ‘I’ve been doing this for how many months and how much change has happened?'

In quarantine Italian professor Giorgio Provolo discusses life in Milan, isolation and the social consequences of the coronavirus Sam Cox

Crossword Editor

O

n Friday at noon, I am the second of Italian professor Giorgio Provolo’s three video calls. Amidst the nationwide lockdown, Dr. Provolo has grown used to the medium, with all of his lectures and meetings moved to the format. Having gone through his 14 days of isolation, in which time he was bed-ridden with a fever (“No other symptoms, luckily” he said with a smile), he seemed surprisingly calm in the context of the broader pandemic.

Teaching at Milan University, Dr. Provolo is a lecturer in the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and was among the first in Italy to feel the effects of the virus. On February 20, he was one of 60 attendees at a conference in Udine

in Northeast Italy. At the time the disease was largely confined to Asia, and Provolo said awareness of the spread to Europe had yet to arise. “There was no knowledge of [serious] infection in Italy. We enjoyed the conference without any worries. We stayed in contact, we were all together, talking, coffee breaks. We didn't notice any problems.”

After returning home, it wasn’t until the following Saturday Provolo received a phone call – after a number of colleagues had come down with a fever (Provolo included), tests had been carried out, yielding positive results for the coronavirus infection. A healthcare service was the next call, asking him about symptoms, and instructing him to remain in quarantine.

“14 days from the last day of the conference, we had to stay without contact from other people. Closed at home. Some others from different universities had severe reactions, with some still in hospital now.” Recounting this, Provolo seemed aware of his own luck, and the variation in reactions to the infection. “Most of the people that have been checked for the virus have been positive.

At that conference, there seemed to be a real spreading. Most of the people who went have been touched by the virus.”

In isolation Curious as to why Provolo hadn’t been screened for the virus, he sighed, leaned back in his chair

and offered an explanation: “In my area, there was a rapid increase in infection. There were so many people that were asking and being subjected to tests. They had no capabilities to test. They also would have had to come to my house to take a sample, moving in a protected way with masks, coming into my house — it would've been complicated, taken time and a very big effort. What they told us was that if we weren't very ill, we should just stay at home and take pills for the fever.”

Expecting this to be the primary time of difficulty for the professor, I asked if the isolation had been difficult psychologically.

Surprisingly relaxed, he responded: “Not really...I have to say the connection is quite good — you can talk by phone, the internet, I can still work. When I had the fever, I couldn't do anything because I was just sleeping during the day but when I felt better, there was no real restriction for me in the work that I usually do. I had several meetings with colleagues. Of course, there is some restriction in movement but for me, there weren't many depressive consequences.”

Even Provolo’s description of Milan seemed relatively quiet.

He noted the first two days of lockdown saw grocery shops sold out, with panic to grab supplies (as seen in Ireland), but once shoppers saw the stores restocked, this anxiety ebbed away. With that said, tourism had all but vanished upon the shutting down of hotels, with

the previous day to our interview seeing only “essential” shops remaining open (of which Provolo named groceries, pharmacies and cigarette shops, with a smile) Behind the veneer Provolo had obviously adapted quite well to the situation. Food, he said, wasn’t an issue. His health had recovered. He had conducted three lectures for his university already, with ‘classrooms’ of over a hundred students, to which he quoted a positive response. I asked if there were concerns for him, now that he had seemingly gone through the virus and come out the other side: “Of course.” He paused for a moment, and took a breath before repeating “Of course, there are worries — it would be stupid not to have them. My parents, they're very old. My father is 99, and my mother 95. They are very at-risk. If they get an infection, they wouldn't survive. However, they are always at home — there is one person in contact with them, which reduces the risk.”

Provolo’s academic and analytical tone had dropped, and the personal elements of the pandemic came to the fore. In every way a success story of the outbreak, a survivor who was coping well within enormous stress, there was an anxiety; an uncertainty. He remained positive, and discussed his and his universities prediction of the next few months: “We're hoping the situation won't last forever. We have online lessons until the beginning of April, and then there is Easter,” he says. “We expect if everything goes well, to start lessons again in university after the beginning of May,” he continues. “So also

examinations would be present.

That is what we hope for — we obviously don't know but... We expect the maximum of infections in two weeks, and then one month after than for it to be less, and then one month after that to be under control.”

Economics was a different matter. Qualifying that it would largely be based on how long shops remained closed (a month, he felt, was recoverable but any longer and…). Regardless, the ramifications would be felt for the foreseeable future: “Generally it will take a long time before people are confident to come back to a country that has been closed like Italy. I suspect, at least for a year to recover from this escalation from an economic point of view, but that’s just my feeling.”

But why was Italy the European epicentre? Why had the virus struck there first, and not others?

Would they follow suit, and what could be garnered from this example? “I don't understand how much other countries have been infected. If you see now, all the countries are spreading the infection around. I think Italy was a week or ten days before the others. I don't know the reason for that. Nobody is giving a real answer to this question.”

Talking of his colleagues in Lisbon, he started naming countries that were following Italy’s decision to shut universities and take increasingly drastic precautions: Spain, France, Germany, Ireland… Provolo’s demeanour had returned to the analytical, and he seemed confident the crisis would, eventually, be averted. Through this veneer, however, there had been moments of worry – very real, human anxieties that wouldn’t make it into academic papers, but would be remembered by all present.

Societies moving events into cyberspace page 2

Karen O’Mahony on Rag Order Dublin page 8

Life

The rise of Irish spoken word poetry page 13

TRINITY NEWS

Pullout section

Joni to Whitney: Trophy Wife on her inspirations

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Tuesday 14 April | TRINITY NEWS

Table of contents Creatives in Trinity:

Trophy Wife - page 4

The Jewish experience at Trinity - page 6

Brewing beer at home - page 8

Alumni tales: Aimee-Louise Carton

- page 12

Baking: a sadly underrated date activity - page 15

Careers in the arts: Karen O’Mahony on creating Rag Order Dublin - page 8

Life staff Editor-in-Chief Life Editor Life Deputy Editor

Aisling Grace Alison Traynor Suzanne Flynn

Arts and Culture Editor Deputy Arts and Culture

Grace Farrell

Societies Editor

Maggie Larson

Student Living Editor

Brigit Hirsch

Food and Drink Editor Deputy Food & Drink

Daniel O’Dwyer

Sex and Relationships Editor Deputy Sex & Relationships

Emily O’Reilly

Maeve Harris

Alfie Fletcher

Henry Petrillo

Societies moving their events into cyberspace LitSoc, Players and the Phil discuss how they are adapting to social life online, writes Maggie Larson

I

n the midst of a pandemic, it’s difficult enough just to keep up with Zoom lectures and assignment deadlines, so it may seem like society events wouldn’t be high on many students’ list of priorities. However, maintaining the social connections we build in college can be a vital reminder of normality in a time that is anything but. Without the shared space of campus, many societies have begun providing a meeting space for their members on online platforms instead, with virtual coffee hours, quizzes and film screenings to fill time during lockdown.

The closure of college on March 12 was a sudden end to the year for most societies, with events cancelled and AGMs moved online in accordance with the CSC advice. Events such as Language Ball, one of the main events in the calendar of the various language societies, were cancelled, and in many cases so-

ciety committees were divided by geography and time zones as students travelled home. The last few weeks have been a difficult period for most students, many of whom are contending with illness, having to look after vulnerable family members, online assignments and the uncertainty of changes to final assessments.

For societies with social spaces such as regular coffee hours, maintaining a sense of community has been an important but difficult goal. Speaking to Trinity News over email, Trinity Literary Society’s Secretary Todd Pender said, “It's been a difficult transition for LitSoc in particular because like a handful of other societies a lot of our usual activity takes place during daily meetups in our society room. To go from seeing each other and our members every day to not at all has been particularly challenging.”

LitSoc’s usual Conversational Coffee Hours are now being held over Discord, a voice call and messaging platform popular for gaming; they recently collaborated with DU Computer Science Society (DUCSS) to hold a coffee hour on storytelling in video games. Despite the difficulty of running a society online, LitSoc is embracing the opportunity to try out “new and unique events”, such as their Club Penguin Coffee Hours, “which were inspired by a committee member's nostalgic love of the platform”.

Other than coffee hours, some of the most popular virtual events are quizzes, such as LitSoc’s literary quiz and DUCSS’s “COVIDpardy”, a Jeopardy-style quiz held on Discord. DU Germanic Society recently held an online version of their usual “Kaffee und Klatsch” events, while DU Rovers also had a virtual coffee hour (location: “the comfort of your own gaff ”).

As their Wednesday night event for week 12, DU Players held a “Shave or Dye” event on Facebook Live which raised over €2000 for the Irish Cancer Society.

While most big events were cancelled, some were moved online instead, including one of the University Philosophical Society’s annual internal debating competitions, known as Mahaffy’s. Incoming Treasurer of the Phil Liam Brady, who ran the competition, explained: “Mahaffy’s was already on the calendar before college was closed.…It's a day of debating and good humor, and that is generally in person. So when college was cancelled, we had to adapt.” The competition was rebranded as “Mahaffy’s eDebating Competition”, and adapted so that it could be held entirely over Discord.

For the Phil, it was a relatively successful first online debate: “Of course there were ups and downs, and it can't really rival an actual day together, but it did fill in.”

Ultan Pringle, the recently-elected Chair of DU Players, is proud of how the society has

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“

For the current situation it works, but I don’t see online events gaining a permanent foothold in college life responded to these circumstances. Though “not what I would have hoped for the committee”, he says, “Players in the past few weeks has in my opinion, made an astounding leap into the online stratosphere and I think it is a testament to our membership that we've been able to do that”.

The lockdown was “a blow” to the society: “We had to cancel eleven productions and so as you can imagine, that was awful to have to do”. Players has been one of the most active societies since the closure of college, with a book club, film club, writers group, and virtual coffee hours. A dedicated DU Players Discord server was set up early on as a “virtual hub” for the society, inspiring societies in NUIG and UCD to do the same. They are also holding online tech theatre workshops, have released a virtual edition of their termly magazine The Player and in collaboration with Trinity FM, have created SugarKissAngelHill, “a weekly radio drama soap opera with a massive ensemble of actors and an incredibly talented writers room that broadcasts every Friday”. These virtual events have been well attended, Pringle says, with Wednesday night events “averaging 30 to 40 attendees” and a “really solid live listenership” for the radio drama. Pringle believes that making events “as collaborative as possible” and reaching out to people to get involved has helped to keep members engaged: “You're not able to overcome the block of the screen and of course we all would get more from being in our theatre together but for now, this is working”.

As with DU Players’ lockdown

edition of The Player and the Trinity FM radio drama, one of the main ways in which societies and their members are maintaining a sense of connection is through art. DUDJ are continuing their mix series on Soundcloud, providing a soundtrack for the isolation experience, and TFM’s Quarantine FM features a variety of radio shows broadcast from members’ homes. These projects are a reminder even while we’re physically separated, shared experience and collaborative work are as important as ever. Both creating and consuming art made during this time can be a welcome distraction from online lectures and the monotony of days spent within a two-kilometre radius of home.

Virtual society events, of course, can’t fully replace the experience of in-person events on campus. “It's a lot harder to get people excited about online events,” says Liam Brady. “A whole part of society events is that you can chat with your friends, crack jokes, and explore interests…For the current situation it works, but I don't see online events gaining a permanent foothold in college life.” Ultan Pringle also acknowledges the difficulties: “It's tougher to make work and definitely requires good faith from everyone involved and patience when dealing with dodgy internet connections”. While virtual events are usually more accessible for students with disabilities or those with demanding schedules which prevent them from attending events in person, internet access issues can make them more difficult for some students. It’s likely that this experience will at least equip next year’s society committees with a more varied toolkit for organising events, whether on campus or online.

In the meantime, virtual meetups are an important source of connection for students. As Todd Pender says, “working on these events has helped me maintain a sense of normality and given me things to look forward to”.

Ultan Pringle echoes the value of providing this online space for society members: “We wish to be a place of creativity and imagination for any TCD students who desperately need that right now.

This is lonely and this is difficult and we hope that we're providing a virtual space for people to connect, collaborate and create.”

Above: DU Rovers on their first virtual coffee hour. Top left: TFM and DU Players’ radio drama soap opera, SugarKissAngelHill

College characters: The Zoomer Taking full advantage of their new virtual reality, the Zoomer knows how to make the most of their isolation, writes Brigit Hirsch

W

e are living in strange times. Forced indoors out of necessity, our every thought is saturated with uncertainty, as if the air we breathe has been replaced by a noxious gas. However, as with any period of change, we are beginning to view our peers in a different light. Amongst the shattered debris of our former perceptions of reality, something - or rather somebody - new is born. The time has come to say hello to the most recent college family initiate: the Zoomer.

Before examining the habits of the Zoomer, we should first consider the origin of their name. It is a little known fact that Generation Z, which refers to those born between the mid-1990s and early-2010s, actually stands for Generation Zoomer.

Members of this computer-savvy age group tend to thrive during pandemics, because they allow them to take advantage of their well-honed technological skills. The term ‘Zoomer’ was popularised by New Zealand MP Chloë Swarbrick, who sarcastically responded to the heckling of notorious luddite Todd Muller by saying “Ok Zoomer”, implying that his lack of computer literacy rendered his input irrelevant.

It may be hard to believe, but those who are now considered Zoomers once spent their days smoking rollies by the Arts Block benches, or in the depths of the Hamilton, weighed down beneath bagfuls of laptops and oversized textbooks. Like a bear who has been forced into an urban environment because of the destruction of his forest home by lumberjacks, Zoomers have been stripped of their natural habitat, thanks to COVID-19. Now, they must reside in their bedrooms, only leaving to

heat up the occasional ready meal or drop

by Tesco for the daily larger-run. Upon entering this brave new world, they have mutated; they will never again be known as the Nerd, or the Socialite, or the SU Hack.

At the first whiff of crisis, these arbitrary roles have been demolished along with our two-tier medical system. Now, it is the Zoomers who are leaders of men.

In former times, the Zoomer-in-Training’s alarm clock would rouse them in the morning. Nowadays, they are instead awakened from their slumber by a different noise: the screech of an incoming Zoom call. Upon dragging themselves out of bed and slinking drowsily to their laptop, their fellow-students and lecturers alike share incredulous glances, barely suppressing their shock at this sudden transformation.

Once the Zoomer-in-Training strutted around campus, clad in Tola Vintage with their hair neatly coiffed, waving a KeepCup full of green tea. Now, they don animal print pyjamas and an unwashed dressing gown. Having forgone brushing their hair for the fourth day in a row, they excuse themselves, flippantly claiming that they are aiming to “bring back the bedhead.” Yet, do not think that the Zoomer has let themself go. Despite their desire to capitalise on the opportunity to cease giving a fuck, they still have the ability to dress to impress when they feel like it. On days when they are feeling particularly chic, they may just dig out that old pair of Canterbury’s that they thought they had left in 2007.

Neither should we be fooled by the grainy quality of their camera - the Zoomer loves having an excuse to video-chat with their friends. Once the lecturer has departed from the virtual classroom, they will undoubtedly insist that their fellow classmates remain, as it is the perfect opportunity for “cans and a catch-up”. Some grinch will probably point out the fact that it is only 10am and they have three assignments due next week, but the Zoomer knows to look upon this person with both pity and disdain. In the words of George Berkeley, do they not realise that if you just ignore the Junior Dean’s ominous requests for a Skype meeting, then they aren’t really happening?

ARTWORK BY LIKA AERVADZE FOR TRINITY NEWS.

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Society spotlight

Creatives in Trinity

Juggling and Circus Society Maggie Larson discovers that it’s about more than just juggling

F

ounded in 1998, Trinity’s Juggling and Circus Society are probably best known on campus for their juggling displays during Freshers’ Week, or their awe-inspiring fire shows which have been performed as part of Fourth Week, Diwali and Trinity Arts Festival in previous years.

Although it is sometimes known as Jugglers, the society’s activities cover a wide range of different skills. According to its treasurer James Hennigan, “Juggling is one of the more popular ones”, but acrobatics and, more recently, pole dancing have become increasingly popular. Skills similar to juggling, such as diabolos and devil sticks, are also well represented. People also practice “flow arts” such as poi, staff spinning, contact juggling and hula hoops. Members of the society regularly learn from each other: “Everyone who comes to our society is willing to teach the things they know. For example, if you come along and see a person riding a unicycle, or see a group of partner acrobats in some cool position, you can always go over to them and ask if they’ll show you how to do it.”

The society meets every Tuesday night from 7-9.30pm in Goldsmith Hall. “There’s always a great atmosphere; people come to our society to have fun,” says Hennigan.

On Tuesday evenings, Goldsmith is usually “full of friendly people, music, and amazing skills”.

One of the society’s main functions is to make equipment and props available to its members.

The range of items in their inven-

tory reflects the impressive variety of skills that the society practices.

In their storeroom by Goldsmith Hall, they keep hundreds of props, including juggling balls, clubs, diabolos and hula hoops. They also have mats for practicing partner acrobatics, a pole for pole dancing and a slackline which can be set up in the lecture theatre.

In Trinity, juggling is rarely so high-stakes; its members are “mostly coming to have fun and relax” after a day at college. However, the society still has no shortage of talent: “Some of the best jugglers in the country are Trinity students. The country’s best club juggler (clubs are those props that look like bowling pins) comes every week! One of our members also used to hold the Irish record for seven ball juggling, but that was beaten by someone in another university recently.”

Trinity Juggling and Circus Society is very open to new members. They provide all the equipment so you can get involved even if you don’t have your own props.

Likewise, they possess a wealth of knowledge which is shared readily with new members. “The majority of our members hadn’t practiced any circus skills the first time they came to one of our sessions,” says Hennigan. “Everyone is willing to help newcomers because (a) we like to see the community growing, and (b) we all learned because somebody else was willing to help us on our first day!”

Most of the committee only got into juggling and circus skills while in college, including the current chairperson, Carolyn: “I joined the society in first year with some friends, and suddenly found myself trying and learning loads of new skills.” According to Hennigan, “It’s just something that people randomly come across, and quickly become involved in once they see how enjoyable it is, and how friendly the community is!”

Joni to Whitney: Trop Wife on her inspiratio Ruby Smyth, the creative behind Trophy Wife, speaks to Maeve Harris discusses her upcoming EP and Whitney Houston

Q

uarantine day 4,725 and interviews, for whatever reason, are still not deemed “essential”. Thus, I endeavored to virtually communicate with Trinity musician Trophy Wife.

Fourth year English student Ruby Smyth has graced the cultural scene since she took her first steps as a realized creative at the age of 12. “I started playing guitar [at the] age [of] 11, after being

classically trained in the violin and piano. I loved classical music but I always knew the guitar was where it’s at,” Smyth admits. With an extensive background in music theory, Ruby decided to expand her creative portfolio. “I remember seeing a video of Emilie Remler performing Tenor Madness and I just couldn’t believe how much it slapped. I have a whole Spotify playlist of guitar solos that I just listen to and cry. The guitar is just such a special instrument, nothing gets me like it.”

Smyth’s affinity for the guitar soon blossomed into a melodic enterprise. “I wrote my first full song at 12 and then proceeded to have a four year period I call the ‘fetus Joni Mitchell stage.’

I worshipped the ground that woman walked on and tried really hard to emulate her sound, her guitar tunings, her vocal delivery, and inflections. I still adore Joni and her music, but I reached a stage where I realised that wasn't who I was or the type of music I ultimately wanted to write and

produce.”

“Trophy Wife’s sound as it is now came together about two years ago, and I’ve just been striving all the time to improve and expand it,” Smyth adds. She discusses the ins and outs of making music, particularly as a solo artist. “A big part of that is producing, learning the technical side, and how to make shit sound good on a sonic level. It’s a huge learning curve, but so important and I am very very lucky I have been surrounded by people who could show me the ropes.

I am still learning all the time, but guess I always will be, so I’m down with it.”

In terms of the artists who have inspired Trophy Wife in the past and those who continue to influence her work, she admits it's more of a continual process rather than a concise one. “I find myself getting influenced and inspired by so many different things all the time.” Trophy Wife is an accumulation of so many external influences, not just those

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phy ons relating to music. “I really am inspired by the big ass emotions, that is - feelings such as love, longing, joy and pain usually push me to create something.” For Smyth, emotions translate into art and provide a platform for her to explore what matters most to her.

“It really do be one big extension of self - feeding into who we are, how we express ourselves and vice versa - and that can be harnessed to create something that connects with people. That’s why the EP is called Art.” Evident in her instagram posts, Trophy Wife’s “holy grail of inherent musicality is Miss Whitney Houston. If you want to talk about a flawless fusion of technique, soul and just sheer talent, she’s your girl. I’ll stan Whitney until I die.”

It becomes clear to me throughout the interview that these influences do not merely serve to educate Smyth’s style, but rather to shape her musical creativity into the ever-changing form it continues to represent.

While many artists priori-

tize the melodic science behind producing songs, Smyth focuses on all aspects of her brand, from image to song material to album art. “I’m a very visual person, so I spend a lot of time looking at paintings and photos. I’m a real hoe for Monet (and impressionism in general) - I just love his use of colour and the way that his paintings are simultaneously clear and unclear..”

“On the other hand,” she continues, “I feel like artistic inspiration doesn’t always have to be overbearingly pretentious, or come in the way you want or expect it to.” She credits almost everything around her for informing her aesthetic. “I find myself getting inspired by the things closest to me every day. I’d have to say my biggest artistic influence is the people that surround me.”

And like any good artist, Trophy Wife dotes on her many confidants for helping her realize her personal creative path. “A lot of my friends are crazy talented, and I am always in awe of the art and music they produce” She finally adds, “Oh, and more recently, re-visiting Kylie Minogue’s complete discography has creatively blessed me.”

“Beauty Queen”, Smyth explains, is her most recent single, “is a song about a few things. At the time I wrote it, I was on Erasmus in Barcelona and thinking a lot about female identity.” She continues, crediting another creative platform for informing her genius. “When I am reading about something like that it tends to permeate my brain so I was definitely reflecting on beauty standards [and] general standards women face both today and throughout history. In ways, Beauty Queen may sound like a love song, which, I guess it kind of is, but maybe not in the way people would expect. It walks the line between appreciating female beauty, but questioning its role in society.” Though Smyth is giving me a fabulous education on the ins and outs of musical production, she stops herself to gather her thoughts. “Ok, I sound like a bit of an asshole when I lay it out like that but I can’t deny the presence of those ideas in the lyr-

“

I’ll stan Whitney until I die ics, even if not fully consciously.

The song fundamentally centres around the challenge of loving someone who has endured a life of being defined solely by their appearance, and the pain that comes with keeping up a facade that is ultimately, psychologically and emotionally, empty.” She continues: “I was listening to a lot of Morsheeba at the time, and you can definitely hear my budget attempts to emulate some of their sonics in the track.”

She credits her ability to find beauty in her personal work as a great foundation for artistic confidence. “I’ve found that’s the way you gotta be - otherwise comparison will rob you off all your ideas and motivation. I think that applies to many things. I like that people have different reactions, I think that’s ultimately a good sign. Of course it feels really vulnerable to release songs about your big heartbreak moment or sad girl hours, but equally these experiences have aspects of good and valuable lessons. It feels really good and empowering to transform them into something tangible - for me, turning big ass emotion to banger is the ultimate form of self expression.”

Looking to the future, Smyth discloses that her “final single off the EP On The Phone is going to be released [in] early June and the rest of the EP will be dropping in the summer.

I find myself enamoured by her self awareness and profound confidence, which are ubiquitous within her work. For Ruby Smyth, her musical career is only beginning. And as a master of all things expressive, Trophy Wife’s artistry is only on the up.

Getting tested for Covid-19 Jack Ryan recounts his experience

A

certain eerie calm had descended on the area between the IFSC and our so-called Silicon Docks. Hanover Quay normally hums with phone calls, overpriced croissants and business suits. On this day, it stood nearly devoid of life, the silence pierced only by the trill of a distant Luas or the odd cry of a lone seagull.

It was for this very reason, along with its central location, that Hanover Quay was chosen to host a Covid-19 testing centre.

I found out I was to be tested for Covid-19 a week after coming back from the Trinity Surf Club trip to Fuerteventura. A student on the trip had tested positive, and we were informed we would be contacted by Public Health Tracing in the following days. Sure enough, a day later I received a telephone call from a friendly young soldier stationed at the Curragh. He was working with Public Health Tracing, and booked me in to get tested for Covid when I told him I had a mild sore throat.

Due to delays in testing, and my low-risk status, it was two weeks before I was contacted to be tested.

On arriving at the testing centre in Hanover Quay, I was met by a soldier who handed me a surgical mask, and pointed me through to the entrance of the long military tent tunnel in which the testing took place. The tunnel was strictly one-way, to avoid those being tested from crossing paths. After fitting my surgical mask and thoroughly sanitising my hands, I was directed to sit in a chair so my contact details could be taken. Despite the great lengths that were evidently being taken to sanitise and clean all surfaces, it was slightly nerve-wracking to sit in the knowledge that the Covid-19 virus could well be all around me, including on the seat in which I was sitting.

Once my details were taken I was sent further down the tent, where a medic invited me to confirm my details once again. I was then handed a tissue and asked to blow my nose. The swab test itself then took about five seconds.

Down the throat and up the nose.

Pleasant? No. Bearable? Certainly. Keeping in mind that the staff are working 12 hours a day, testing someone every 15 minutes, I felt obliged to mumble a sheepish apology for squirming as the swab made its way up my nose.

Five seconds and it was over, and the medics went back to their endless routine of sanitising the testing area and disposing of their gloves. I was directed to the end of the tunnel, where I was handed a home-kit. Included in it were two surgical masks, two thick bin bags, and a pamphlet outlining what I should do while waiting on my test results. Despite the heavy workload and potentially dangerous environment, all the staff throughout the process were friendly and courteous. But no one was chatting or joking. Everyone was alert, and clearly very aware of the gravity of the situation. Soldiers and medics walked and talked quickly, they worked efficiently. There was no escaping the dystopian vibe that hung over the whole process, from the military garb to the visors and surgical masks.

In the unlikely event I test positive, I’m likely to fully recover with minimal, if any, symptoms.

But brushing against the coalface of our fight against Covid-19 was scary. I was astounded by the level of professionalism and dedication to duty shown by the soldiers and the health workers. While I felt nervous sitting in the testing centre for five minutes, those staffing the centre were voluntarily exposing themselves to the virus for weeks on end. In the context of one in four infections being healthcare workers, that’s a remarkable personal sacrifice to protect the health of others. A few weeks of Netflix doesn't seem as gruelling now.

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The Jewish experience at Trinity Jacob Woolf writes about the small but thriving community in Trinity, and the challenges that they face

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he first thing to know about Irish Jews is just how few of us there are.

There are only about 2500 Jews in the entire country, and the community here in Trinity is reflectively small. We are currently the only university in Ireland, including the North, that has enough Jews for a dedicated society.

Judaism is largely focused on community, so for a lot of Jewish students Trinity can feel isolating.

This is especially true for students, often on exchange programs, who come here from places with bigger Jewish communities and populations. That’s why, despite its small size, the Jewish Society provides an invaluable service to Jewish students. If nothing else, it provides a solution to the daunting task of tracking down the small number of other Jews from among the sprawling student body.

Having a network here to help and support, as well as to celebrate our holidays, means a great deal.

The importance of this support network becomes apparent at times of fear. On last year’s Yom Kippur, a gunman in Germany attempted to force entry into a full Synagogue with the intention of killing Jews. Our Yom Kippur dinner that evening became a vital safe space for Jewish students, many of them living away from their own communities, to come together in a mutually supportive environment. If there is one issue it is that we lack a space of our own. The Chaplaincy very graciously lends us their room each Friday for our Shabbat service.

While we deeply appreciate this gesture, a room on campus – even one shared with one or two other minority student groups – is a goal I would like to see realised.

For many people, you will be the first Jewish person they have encountered. Personally, this is a fun opportunity, since I love introducing people to my favourite elements of Jewish culture: challah and klezmer and some of our holidays (“that’s the most badass thing I’ve ever heard,” was one enthusiastic reaction to the story of Purim). Simultaneously, however, it can be challenging.

People you just met ask your opinion on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, or the UK Labour Party’s issues with antisemitism.

Setting aside the complexities, these are politically charged issues in which people are emotionally invested, so you have to think carefully about the response. You carry a responsibility for shaping their perceptions of the issues, and you are also acting as an ambassador for their perception of Jews and Judaism. Even as a politically engaged person, open to these conversations, I find myself reminding people that there is no singular Jewish viewpoint (two Jews, three opinions, as they say), and that I’m an individual with my own perspectives and experiences. All Jewish people are aware that individuals within a community have power to shape the public’s perception of that community, and of Jews in general. In Yiddish, we have this word, ‘shanda.’ Literally, it means shame or embarrassment, but, more specifically, a person’s words or actions are, or cause, a ‘shanda’ when they present an unwanted image of us to the gentile (non-Jewish) public.

Once, I appeared on the Echo Chamber Podcast to talk about antisemitism, which received a decidedly mixed response from Irish Jews; some asked what right I had to assert myself as their representative. I responded that I had made no claims of representing them, only myself, but I also knew that what we do as individuals will inevitably reflect on the whole community.

This doesn’t mean that I assume responsibility for what people think of Jews. But as one of the few visible Jews on campus, I often receive the transmutations of people’s perceptions of us. This is especially true when it comes to antisemitic conspiracies that are, unfortunately, increasingly common. They’re inherently ridiculous, but Irish antisemites face the added challenge of a lack of Jews to provide even the scant “proof ” that usually fuels internet conspiracies. The result is that I’ve repeatedly been personally used as evidence of conspiracies. I’ve seen my association with activist groups or causes taken as evidence of a “secretive Jewish cabal”, giving me cause to worry about friends and associates receiving harassment because of me. A recent example is my attendance at a Jewish conference in New York, which was spun out into an insane conspiracy about so-called ‘zionist globalists’ funding groups in Ireland. My usual response is to try to find both humour and opportunities for education in the malicious ways antisemitism operates. Being an Irish Jew, and especially an Irish Jew studying at Trinity, is an identity imbued with a myriad of complexities and challenges. I wouldn’t want to be anything else, and I’m delighted to have shared a taste of it with you.

As always, shalom.

Paganism: Ireland’s contemporary shining light Lisa Jean O’Reilly speaks with two students at Trinity about their Pagan religion

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n tough times, two Trinity students, whom I had the pleasure to virtually meet, see Paganism as their guiding light. In this unprecedented crisis I myself found a moment of sweet escape in learning about their Pagan beliefs. Like nothing I’ve ever heard of before, Paganism drew me in. Despite being a student of philosophy, in which I study the philosophy of religion, I surprisingly knew more about the incarnation of viruses than I did about Pagan beliefs up until this interview. Having spoken to Ralf Moore and Carla Kerr from Trinity’s very own Pagan Society, I think that I have just uncovered Ireland’s oldest and wisest secret: Paganism.

Amidst the chatter and din of this viral pandemic that has swept the world off its feet, perhaps you have found yourself feeling quite lost. It is difficult to keep in full spirits at the moment when the walls of your home have transformed into boundaries, but upon reading about Carla Kerr and

Ralph Moore’s wonderful take on Paganism, perhaps you will feel less blue. Today, they chose to let you in on their beliefs, and discuss things like why they joined the Pagan community, who they have met through being a part of this religion, and what exactly it is that they believe.

Ralph Moore is a PhD student of Classical studies. Ralph moved here almost a decade ago from a small village near Norwich in the UK, in the pursuit of his undergraduate degree at Trinity, followed now by his PhD. Carla Kerr is undertaking her masters in English Language teaching, and is a fellow Irishwoman. Strictly speaking, neither Carla nor Ralph were born Pagan- although an element of discussion arose at our virtual table when this question was asked, as neither believe in any child being “born” a religion.

“I don’t believe that a child can be ‘born’ a religion,” Carla affirmed, “there is always an element of choice involved.” Ralph agreed, not a born Pagan, but a chosen Pagan. He went on to explain why.

In a nutshell, Paganism is an umbrella term for a large group of religions that are outside of the field of Abrahamic religions- these being the wider known Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, whose foci centre around one God that takes human form. Their core beliefs include unity of people, and a love for the earth; elements that natu-

rally exist within everybody.

Unlike these popular religions, Pagans believe in multiple Gods, who are very much open to subjective interpretation. Where Carla’s preference lies in the inspiration of ancient Gods like Apollo (whom she says is the God she has the closest connection with), Ralph believes more in Gods that do not reside in anthropomorphic (human) or zoomorphic bodies, but that can transform into such so as to communicate with us humans.

“

With a rich history of Paganism still living in our land, these beliefs and stories are that of our ancestors

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His idea of a God is something more along the lines of a plane of energy.

Pagans also believe that multiple Gods exist in the world, independently of us - not for us. In other words, the purpose of such Gods is not solely to create us, or to watch us, or to guide us; they have agendas of their own. This is why they can be also viewed as a type of natural force, or natural law (like a physics law) that governs us, but that is not centred around us.

Thus, Pagan Gods and ourselves are not connected in some extra or fundamental way, but are merely connected on the basis that we live in the same world.

At this point, I thought it might be interesting to ask Ralph what he thought of the traditionally Christian God, which is man-like in appearance. His reply left me transfixed: “I think that it has something to do with our understanding of Gods, because at the end of the day we would find it very difficult to connect with something that is not a human or an animal. I think it is just easier to believe in something that looks like you, even though on the inside that God could look very different.”

Carla believes that there are many Pagan-based beliefs scattered throughout our Irish culture, and that Paganism never left Ireland at all. If you can recall your Junior Cert history class, The Celts invaded Ireland in 500 BCE; that’s a whole 500 years before Jesus Christ came around. The Celts were Pagans, and they spread Celtic Paganism throughout Ireland.

They believed that the Gods rested in the stars, and they worshipped the seasons and the weather.

Further back again, long before the Celtic people gave Paganism a name, was Newgrange. Embedded in the earth in County Meath, Newgrange was built to worship the earth by people over 5,200 years ago. Its functional purpose was a tomb to bury the dead, but it was also much more than that. The building was meticulously crafted so as to align with the winter solstice at sun rise, on December 21 - every single year. On this day the sun aligns and fills the passageway down to the tomb, illuminating the whole structure. This was the first way that the Pagans managed to contact or connect with

“

Pagan Gods and ourselves are merely connected on the basis that we live in the same world their Gods. Ireland’s Pagan past is strong and bountiful. Today, Paganism only tickles the outskirts of society.

Both Ralph and Carla have expressed to me their personal experiences of comfort and safety found in their Pagan beliefs and in their Pagan community. On at least two occasions, these Pagans have found solace in this. At this very strange and surreal time in Irish (and global) history, Paganism seems to be a universal light at the end of this tunnel; as its beliefs are accessible, humane and kind, and it contains an inexplicable warm energy that brings about great comfort. Paganism is also viewed as being at one or on the same level as other planes of existence, like heaven, that are outside of our space and time. Our reality is not to be compared to ideas such as heaven or hell like in some religions, but it is to be accepted just as it is, having elements of both, perhaps, within us.

Paganism’s Irish appeal seems to be innate. With a rich history of Paganism still living in our land, these beliefs and stories are that of our ancestors; they are in our blood. Paganism's broad beliefs are welcoming too, and with an undefined rule-set it seems very easy to adopt some Pagan beliefs, just as Ralph Moore and Carla Kerr discovered for themselves. Times are changing, and if you want to, too, you can get in contact with Trinity’s Pagan Society for information on how to join.

Is the music industry a “boys’ club” and who decides who gets in?

Singer, songwriter and Trinity student Aoibh Ní Mhuireartaigh examines the gender biases in the music industry

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bout two years ago, I made a point of expecting handshakes in professional contexts. I am in no way a stickler for formality, but the handshakes taking place around me while I was offered hugs, and kisses on cheeks, irked me on a deeper level. There was nothing, other than gender, that set me apart from my colleagues.

We were playing the same gigs, attending the same shows. I resolved to put a stop to it where possible. Someone would lean in for a hug and I would sternly extend a hand to shake while trying my hardest to keep the expression on my face genuinely friendly.

I didn’t mean this as an aggressive manoeuvre. I just wanted to be treated the same as my peers. Overall, the reactions were positive. Aside from the odd expression of affable surprise, my handshakes were accepted.

I made an effort to have a firm, businesslike handshake, the kind they recommend in TED Talks. I thought for a while that this the most feminist way of dealing with this inequality, by demanding to be treated the same as the men in the room. However, it didn’t erase the issue that there were quite so many men in the room, and that they saw me as someone who merited different treatment in the first place.

The term “boys’ club” is thrown around a lot, and not just in reference to the music industry — a lot of professional sectors can be described in this way. But in an industry that praises outlandish behaviour, that rewards the passionate outburst and that has long-honoured traditions of sex, drugs and rock and roll, what is the avenue through which one can voice their discomfort?

When addressing gender inequality in the music industry, it’s important to come at it from two intercrossing angles: access and acceptable behaviour. It’s important to address the structural issues that inhibit women

from participating fully in the music industry. The way that female musicians are treated does not exist in a vacuum. Female musicians are expected to be all things to all people. Sexy but not too sexy. A role-model, but not self-righteous. Romantically available but not obsessed with love and relationships. This is not a world in which many women are afforded the opportunity to be themselves. When we create art, we often do it based on our lived experiences. A lot of music is derived from the more tumultuous times in our lives; loss, grief, heartbreak. The feminine lens on these topics is often disregarded as whiny or superficial, maybe because it’s taken as a given that women are sentimental. We’ve all heard the argument that women are too emotional to think rationally, yet they are often deemed too emotional for the self-indulgence of the songwriting process.

Female songwriters who lean into their sentimentality are often dismissed as romantically fixated, especially when the subject of the song is a breakup. The things that male songwriters are praised for are seen as mistakes or frustrating tropes on the part of the female songsmith and are often met with vitriol from their critics.

One of the most controversial instances of this trope is, of course, Taylor Swift. Love her or hate her, it is difficult not to acknowledge the spite she inspires. Her catalogue of breakup songs is illustrious and, debatably, infamous. Strangely, however, her array of A-list exes never encounter the same scrutiny. Take, for instance, John Mayer, who writes often and in detail about his breakups. He dated a 19-year-old Taylor Swift and wrote about it afterwards. But for some reason, he has not triggered countless opinion pieces on the matter as she has. The goalposts are simply in different places.

The behaviour we deem acceptable from male artists is highlighted when compared with behaviour that is criticised from female artists. The value with which women and their autonomy are considered in the music industry must be taken into consideration when examining the accessibility of the music industry as a space for women. The “rock star” lifestyle is, unfortunately, particularly conducive to sexist behaviour and often presents barriers to those who attempt to modify this situation. This is an environment where the progression of your career is often irrevocably linked with your willingness to put up

and shut up. A recent instance that epitomises this dilemma is the behaviour of Slowthai towards comedian Katherine Ryan at the NME awards, where he aggressively sexually propositioned her mid-performance. Though Ryan managed to defuse the situation with a lot of grace and humour, her wry resilience is the exception, not the rule. The ability to remain unbothered by the aggressive advances of your peers should not be a prerequisite to a woman’s success in this industry. The way Ryan dealt with the inappropriate behaviour directed towards her is certainly commendable, but she shouldn’t be viewed as any less professional if she had been visibly upset by Slowthai’s behaviour.

Women who speak up about inappropriate behaviour or sexual inequality are often considered whiny or attention-seeking.

The question then arises: how are women supposed to access the music industry when it seems so perfectly designed to work against them? How can they be expected to participate to the same extent as their male counterparts when what makes them more readily accepted is often their capacity to tolerate bad behaviour?

I was once asked in an interview who my musical role models were. I rattled off a list of my favourites, not thinking much of the question. The follow-up question was whether female artists should feel the responsibility to act as a role model for younger women.

Though it is perhaps unfair to put this responsibility on female artists, they are certainly unable to function without the pressure of the expectation to be a role model.

This is an industry that demands a lot from women. It is indeed a boys’ club, but what is additionally troubling are the factors that allow women conditional access to this club. The trouble is that a woman’s membership of this club is inevitably defined by her relationship to the men around her. When she succeeds, it is often in spite of the conditions of this industry, whereas a man can often attribute part of his success to these same conditions. We are not on equal footing, so how can we be expected to reach the same heights?

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Brewing beer at home In case there isn’t a steady supply of beer in your area, Grellan Lambert teaches you to make your own

Karen O’Mahony creating Rag Orde Jane Loughman chats with Karen O’Mahony about the designing business and the need for conscious consumerism

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orget the incessant barrage of fearful and virulent information infesting our newsfeeds during this dark time and read on to immerse yourself in the art-science of brewing.

Within the fabric of these words, I shall do my best to reveal to you the dark and occult secrets that hide beneath the brewing veneer, you will learn to both control the arcane and call forth otherworldly powers previously unknown to you. This article will hopefully lay bare the primordial reagents used both during and after the brewing process, and hopefully by this article’s end you’ll be tempted to start brewing.

My first encounter with brewing was in March 2017 during TY at school. One of my two weeks of work experience was with Rascal’s Brewery in Inchicore. My work mainly consisted of cleaning kegs, doing beer deliveries and watching the master brewers work their magic because, to be honest, I hadn’t a clue how any of it worked.

It was then that a colleague told me about homebrewing and I was immediately hooked. I had a vague idea that homebrewing was a thing, but I never dreamed of trying it myself. He recommended a few books to me and gave me links to a couple of websites that really helped me start out.

The homebrewing process, while daunting at first glance, is actually quite simple. Making beer, to put it crudely, is purely a process of releasing the sugars locked away in plants and converting that sugar into alcohol using yeast. This can be done in hundreds of different ways and using various methodologies, which accounts for not only the hundreds of different types of beer that exist but also the hundreds of types of alcoholic drinks. Spirits such as whiskey and vodka start out as beer-like alcoholic sugary liquids which then undergo a process of distillation, effectively isolating the alcohol. The main difference between different alcoholic drinks is the source of sugar used, whether that be barley (beer and whiskey), grapes (wine and brandy), honey (mead), or even rice (sake) among many others.

At first, I had to invest around €100 into starter equipment which was all bought off The Home Brew Company’s website. They have a very useful starter equipment

Careers in the arts

package that got me two 33L fermentation buckets, sanitizing acid, a bottle capper, a bottle-filling tube, a hydrometer and my first extract beer kit among other things. There are many different ingredients you can use in homebrewing but I would recommend starting with just a simple can of liquid extract syrup. This is effectively wort (sugary beer-water) that has been concentrated down into a syrup and can be mixed with water to easily kickstart a brew. Generally, you can get extract that already has hops added or you can add your own hops during the brew. The former is easiest to begin with.

Although homebrewing mainly consists of cleaning and waiting, there are still four main steps: Cleaning/Sanitisation, Brewing, Fermentation and Bottle Conditioning.

The first step is arguably the most important: everything must be kept spotless before and during the brew. Once everything is cleaned with soapy water it must be sanitized with diluted acid.

This ensures no bacteria/fungi can contaminate the brew and spoil anything you try to make.

This includes your brewing pot, fermentation bucket and all other equipment.

The second step is Brewing.

Brewing involves boiling your liquid extract with around 11L of water for about an hour. The extract then dissolves into the water and releases the sugar. Hops are generally added at the start of the boil (for bittering hops) and 5 minutes before the end (for aroma hops).

Once the hour is finished we move on to the third step: Fermentation. For this step, the wort must be transferred to the fermentation bucket and cooled down to around 18-24°C as this is the only temperature that most yeasts can survive. I normally do this by surrounding the bucket with cold water in my bathtub. Once the

right temperature is reached you can pitch the yeast and leave the bucket in an environment where the temperature remains between 18-24°C (I used my attic).

At this point, it is important to take a sample of your beer and take the “original gravity” using a hydrometer. This involves placing a hydrometer (which looks a bit like a graduated thermometer) and seeing what level it floats to.

The hydrometer measures the sugar density of the liquid and is used to measure the alcohol percentage of your beer. The number that the beer lines up with is the value you want. Now all you gotta do is wait for around 1-2 weeks and let the yeast do its work. After fermentation, you can take the “final gravity” and you will get a different value. Then, take the difference between the original and final gravities and multiply the result by 131.25 to get your alcohol by volume (ABV).

The final step is Bottle Conditioning. This involves using a bottle-filling tube to transfer the beer from the bucket into (clean/ sanitized) bottles. Sugar can then be transferred into the bottle at a ratio of about a half-teaspoon per 500ml. The remaining yeast in the bottle will then convert the sugar into alcohol and, more importantly, carbon dioxide which will give the beer a nice fizz. The bottles should then be capped and left in an environment with a stable temperature of 18-24°C for about two weeks to condition.

And that’s pretty much it! I’ve simplified the process but my main hope is that I’ve piqued your interest somewhat and encouraged you to find out more detailed info for yourself. The homebrewing world is vast and full of magic!

The resources I recommend are: • thehomebrewcompany.ie • homebrewwest.ie • Mastering Homebrew by Randy Mosher

“L

ike everyone else, I'm feeling it,” Karen O’Mahony tells me when I ask about how the pandemic is currently affecting her business, Rag Order Dublin (@ragorderdublin on Depop and Instagram). “However, all this time off has given me the opportunity to really focus on designing more.” With life slowed down, she’s now working on projects she has the time for and hopes to “flex [her] creative muscles” — she is “leaning into what's going on and making the best out of it.”

This drive and positive outlook of O’Mahony shows itself in her work — she runs the altering, tailoring and upcycling service Rag Order Dublin. Her clients give her vintage or pre-worn clothes, and she sees the value in their materials and colours. O’Mahoney gives them a new lease of life with some cutting, material additions or re-hemmings. Her recent commissions and projects have included turning a sleeveless hoodie into a chic jacket, updating a little black dress with tulle linings, and patchworking five men’s denim shirts into a

peplum top, perfect for summer time. O’Mahony has a true skill in “making the best out of ” the clothing she is given, in working with what she has, and in sourcing sustainably.

O’Mahony has been sustainable in her fashion choices long before her Rag Order Dublin days and “way before sustainable was even a buzzword.” She used to be a stylist for advertisements, and the process of going through more and more clothes once and then never using them again was “soul destroying.” She says: “just seeing the amount of different styles in the shops week after week and the mindless consumption of them is enough to make anyone think twice.” The journey to sustainability had been a natural progression, and she has been shopping in charity shops for the past decade, avoiding the high street.

After her styling days, she worked in a number of roles in the film industry. Never finding the work very fulfilling, O’Mahony decided to switch it up and to pursue her true passion: design. She attended the Grafton Academy of Fashion Design to build some skills in “basic pattern drafting and making.”

After completing some courses, she used her career in film to her advantage to land herself a job on the set of hit History channel TV show, Vikings. Over two years, she “learned a huge amount about sewing and tailoring” while she worked in the “demanding, fast paced environment” of the show with top designers and tailors. Her work there has been defining for her career: “I pretty much always use techniques that I learned in my work now… the use of corset closures are a particular favourite

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“

on er Dublin of mine.”

When the Vikings days came to an end two years ago, O’Mahony began to do leaflet drops in her neighbourhood for her new venture — Rag Order Dublin. She started out with some simple alterations, and from only working in her area she got a “good bit of work.” She “fleshed [the business] out a bit” and broadened out her services to designing and upcycling as well as alterations. She claims that “word of mouth is key” in growing her business as well as social media: “Instagram in particular has played a huge role in getting the word out.”

O’Mahony thinks it unnecessary to have a website with the popularity and utility of Instagram and Facebook: “I'm able to communicate my work in real time in a casual way and that suits me and what I want for Rag Order really well.” What also helps her growth on social media is the “support from some amazing females who have championed me since the beginning.”

Rag Order has a fantastic lineup of past clients, including threetime Paralympian Ellen Keane, influencer and performer Jess Brennan, and 2FM presenters and DJs Louise McSharry and Tara Stewart: “I always feel so lucky to get to work with such inspiring women.” One of the women who has championed O’Mahony’s work since the early days of her business is Louise McSharry, who happens to be one of her close pals: “we used to live together many moons ago and have been friends for over a decade now.”

McSharry has always been very supportive: “it helps that we have a similar taste in fashion so she really believes in what I do and trusts my judgement.” O’Mahony has made two dresses for her, and one in particular got the attention of the public eye — a black gown with big, stunning tulle shoulders for the VIP Style Awards, “she absolutely rocked that one!” She also gives some props to Tara Stewart’s good influence on Instagram: “she has blazed a trail for sustainability and does it with such good humour and individuality.” The DJ was featured in a Vogue article last June wearing a Rag Order co-ord that O’Mahony created from a sparkly vintage maxi skirt: “there is something so raw about her style,” O’Mahony tells me of Stewart, and “there's something very punk about her attitude.”

So, you have a piece of clothing you want to do something with instead of just throwing it away: how do Rag Order’s services work? I ask O’Mahony: “It

O’Mahony has been working with RTE on the upcoming programme Clothes with Soul, due to air on RTE Player in the coming months

depends on the client really and whether they know exactly what they want or if they want to work collaboratively.” A client would meet her at her studio in Drumcondra to have “a good chat” on the budget and the client’s style, as well as to brainstorm. “Sometimes we agree on a direction there and then, or if it's a large project I'll take a day or two to think about it before going back to the client with some options,” O’Mahony informs me. She updates the client regularly with pictures, but the best part for her is the “big reveal” — “seeing a client looking and feeling amazing in something

“

I feel like we all have the capacity to come back from this and in a much slower and more considered way

I've made for them is so rewarding and makes all the hard work worthwhile. “ When the population of Ireland started staying home to prevent the spread of Covid-19 just a few weeks ago, online consumption skyrocketed — not just in Netflix and Disney+ binging, but also in online clothes shopping.

Many fast fashion websites, with their big sales, have seen a surge in customers; Pretty Little Thing recently has so much traffic on their online shop that they had to limit users. I ask O’Mahony what she thinks about this: “I genuinely could see this coming. I do think that it’s just situational though, people are bored at home and feel anxious and scared, so what better way to make yourself feel better than to shop? I get that.”

She thinks that people can still be conscious shoppers in these turbulent times — she suggests asking yourself some questions like: “Is it well made? Why are you buying it? Do you need it? Do you have something similar already?”

We shouldn’t be buying clothes “to fill a void.” With the urgency of the climate crisis, O’Mahony believes “it's more important than ever to know where your clothes are coming from and who is making them.” Sustainable fashion can still triumph in these crazy times She thinks that people can still be conscious shoppers in these turbulent times — she suggests

asking yourself some questions like: “Is it well made? Why are you buying it? Do you need it?

Do you have something similar already? just look at the many Instagram accounts that advocate it, like Sustainable Fashion Dublin (@sustainablefashiondublin) who share “tutorials on how to embroider your clothes, declutter and keep busy and creative during the down time.” O’Mahony feels that it is difficult to “reach the PLT masses” as these consumers are “disconnected” and don’t “feel the fear from the climate crisis.”

She believes that more influential people need to “take the reins” and educate these consumers to become more conscious: “We have to keep educating and keep positive about it and hope that they see the light.”

O’Mahony shares with me some tips for sustainable shopping: “Charity shops, charity shops, charity shops!” These treasure troves contain many hidden gems for your wardrobe.

They require a lot of work though compared to the high street: in charity shops, “you need to dig.”

For anyone new to the sustainable scene that doesn’t know what to look for, “just go in and try and get lucky. Look for colours and textures that you like.” Sometimes you may find yourself a designer label or brand new items, especially in affluent areas where O’Mahony guarantees “you won't

be disappointed.”

But what about while we’re in self isolation and staying at home?

O’Mahony recommends Etsy. A “BIG fan,” she says that sometimes you have to wait a while for orders to come from the States, but they’re worth the wait: “I have gotten some showstopping pieces on Etsy. It's super for presents, loads of handmade items, and you're supporting smaller businesses which is always a plus.”

On Depop, she loves to search for shoes: “I recently bought a pair of Alexander McQueen platforms for €30, I'd say they'd been worn once.”

I ask O’Mahony for advice for any budding designers reading this, or anyone that is interested in upcycling clothes at all: “Just get creative.” With YouTube and Pinterest at our fingertips, there are lots of tutorials available to us, and “you can basically learn any technique or skill online now.”

O'Mahony stresses that young designers are not limited to a formal education: “I don't have a degree in design and I meandered my way to this point and I feel like you can learn so much more that way.”

What are the plans for Rag Order Dublin? O’Mahony has been working with RTE on the upcoming programme Clothes with Soul, due to air on RTE Player in the coming months. In each episode O’Mahony works with a client’s piece of sentimental clothing and she transforms it into “something more wearable.” Covid 19 has put a hold on filming, but she’ll be returning to it as soon as everything goes back to normal. Other than that, she isn’t “sure what the future holds” for her business.

She's going to keep on altering, tailoring and upcycling in this time, and will be hoping “for good things to come.” She tells me that she understands “that things won't be going back to the way they were.” She accepts that she has to “rethink” her business, but she’s “good at doing that when the time comes.” On a parting note, O’Mahony says: “I feel like we all have the capacity to come back from this and in a much slower and more considered way.”

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Bringing board games back: a cultural renaissance Conor Doyle asks what the future holds for the Irish board game industry

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aming has always been a pastime that has engaged large audiences.

Throughout history, the dreary world around us could be put to the side in favour of colourful maps and plastic pieces that would let us escape for an hour or so. But as people grow up and a Friday night game of Monopoly becomes less and less appealing, we drift away from board games. Video games tend to take over. They’re louder, they’re flashier, they’re sometimes rated over 18 which means they have to be super cool. But as a result, board games become the relics which are brought out every Christmas or Stephen’s Day to entertain the family as the food coma takes hold. Or that was how it used to be. Board games and other tabletop games are enjoying a renaissance at the moment,

returning to prominence as one of the go-to forms of entertainment.

Aided by cultural touchstones such as Stranger Things or Critical Role, the board games industry is not just becoming lucrative again, it’s becoming cool.

Nobody knows that better than Jack Murray, founder and CEO of Heel Turn Games. Heel Turn is an independent games company based in Cork and Murray has seen that recent years have done wonders for the industry. “It was an $8.5bn industry last year. It’s doubled in size in the last 5 years.”

But Murray didn’t need to hear the figures to want to be involved in the games industry. Having played games since he was 11 or 12, Murray has always been a passionate gamer. More impressively, however, he has also been designing games since then. “I was 11 years old and it was in my maths copybook for school”, he explains as he recites the memory of the first game he ever designed. “I was in fourth class and my teacher discovered my Command & Conquer crossed with X-COM in the back of my maths copybook and said, ‘This isn’t the homework’, and confiscated the copybook and I never got it back.” He talks eagerly about how he would also design new

spells or character subclasses for the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) games he was playing, both as a child and presently. “I’ve been doing that for fun for forever but it was only after I had been working for a game designer for a few years that I went ‘Hey, wait a second – I’ve been doing this since I was a kid’. It never occurred to me, doing all that stuff on the way up, that I was moving in that direction, but

“

I can look back and say I made my first game when I was 11 years old, so there’s a natural progression

in hindsight, I can look back and say I made my first game when I was 11 years old, so there’s a natural progression from where I was then to where I am now.”

Despite never retrieving his first ever creation, Murray was not deterred from entering into the industry. He did his Masters thesis on video games before doing a PhD in game design. He went on to teach game design at University College Cork (UCC) before settling into his current role as a game designer and CEO. However, despite all of his academic expertise, Murray didn’t necessarily feel that it prepared him for the realities of the field. “I need to be clear though that there is very little cross-over between academic games study and game design...there is, in my experience, an over-emphasis on technical skills in games education and an under-emphasis on design skills, which for me are both the more important parts of the process and the more transferable skills.” The increased popularity of computer science courses has enveloped game design to some extent and as a result, most educational depictions of game design focus on creating virtual environments or coding, learning the technical skills needed to create the game. And while there are no universities in Ireland which offer an undergraduate degree solely in game design at the moment, Murray doesn’t think it will stay like that for long. “It is a type of programme that is very attractive to students, which is what universities want, and it’s one that I think we will see all the major universities offering.”

After leaving the world of academia, Murray began spending more and more time in the technical side of game production. Initially, he was working on a couple of different ‘spec projects’, as he calls them, but in 2014, he had the brainwave that would turn into Radiant. Radiant: Offline Battle Arena, or ROBA, is the first game published by Heel Turn Games, designed by Murray. It is a two player card game that was inspired by video games such as League of Legends and DOTA 2. Murray remembers with vivid clarity how the idea for ROBA came to him. “One weekend on the train home from Dublin, I had like an A4 notepad with me, and I said, 'I wonder how you could make this video game genre into a tabletop game' so I spent that train trip scribbling ideas and that was

“

There are a lot of people out there already.

There’s a very cool scene in Dublin where the game came from.” From there the project grew legs, going through several prototypes and iterations. Over 100 people were involved in playtesting ROBA before it was deemed finished. After some issues with publishers, the game was launched in October 2019 and received much critical acclaim.

Murray himself wasn’t quite sure what to make of all the praise he was receiving. “My stupid brain is the kind that, every time we get a milestone of success, [it] moves the goalposts out like ‘Yeah, that was good but it doesn’t mean anything until you get this next thing’.

It's taken a lot of seeing positive responses and seeing people in the wild who I’ve never met play the game and enjoy it, to grasp that it was something that people enjoyed, and this was something good.”

When people think of growing Irish industries, few would point straight to the board game industry, but it's not as small as one might imagine. “There are a lot of people out there already”, exclaims Murray, as we talk about Irish developers like Backspindle Games in Northern Ireland or Woodland Games in Cork. “There’s a very cool scene in Dublin. Celtic Cardboard: a bunch of indie game developers meet up once a month and do playtesting. Sometimes they will club in for a booth together at big shows. Anyone can go to one of their meetups even if you don’t have your own game. You can go along and you can play a prototype, you can give your feedback and that’s so valuable to designers.

I’d endorse those guys for sure.” It seems that Ireland will not be left behind in the global explosion of the board game industry. Alex Lolies, a video producer for YouTube channel Dicebreaker, thinks that this renaissance of the industry is familiar. “The trajectory of board games is very similar to records, in the facts that they’ve had a simi-

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TRINITY NEWS | Tuesday 14 April

lar uprising in recent years. This is currently being referred to as the Golden Age of board games.” Even the concept behind Dicebreaker feels like something that wouldn’t have existed a couple of years ago.

The channel makes videos about the board game and tabletop game industry, covering everything from reviews and recommendations to Let’s Plays and livestreams.

Lolies also notes that the industry has been giving developers a lot more autonomy through the wonders of crowdfunding. “Platforms like Kickstarter are making it easier for individuals to publish their own games as well, which is getting all these people with ideas coming out of the woodwork. They can get funding without having to set up a meeting with someone like Hasbro.” ROBA was funded on Kickstarter and Murray points out that they are one of the first major projects in the Irish board game industry to receive that kind of success through crowdfunding.

But not being beholden to big publishers means that game designers have full creative control of their projects, which is great for the industry and something Lolies is excited to see more of. “People are getting really creative with what they are making and even the design of board games has improved a lot. Even the visual elements like boxes and things. People are doing some really exciting things with board games these days which almost makes them more attractive to people as well.”

However, this spike in popularity did not happen instantaneously. Many people still view board games as toys for children, and tabletop role-playing games like D&D have fought hard to shake off the overtly nerdy stereotypes associated with it. TV shows like Stranger Things and Community have dealt a huge blow to those perceptions with their portrayal of the game, and Wizards of the Coast, the company behind D&D, have even released a Stranger Things themed beginner’s guide to the game. “It’s funny because, in Ireland in particular, it’s not as prominent as it is in the UK or the US. It’s still a growing thing, there aren’t as many board game cafés and things”, remarks Lolies. And while board game cafés may not have taken off yet, there is a significant spike in pubs that boast a small stock of board games. They may not have the latest game from Essen or Spiel, but it shows a shift in the mentality around board games. It’s a timely reminder that

if good ideas aren’t visible, people will dismiss them or forget about them. Lolies, who grew up in Cork but is currently based in the UK, has returned frequently and noticed that sometimes Irish games tend to stay on home soil. “[When in Ireland] I might have come across one or two games that I wouldn’t have recognised and maybe spoken to the shop owner for them to tell me, ‘Oh yeah, this is someone who self-published’, but that would be like the only shop I’d see that game in.”

One way that games can take root in Ireland as a mainstream form of entertainment is by building communities to try and capture those curious minds eager to try something new. Murray has been a massive proponent of this and has seen it first hand during his time as a developer. “The thing I would say about this industry at all levels…it is a phenomenally collaborative industry. I would have a really hard time transitioning back into a different industry now because the culture of cooperation and collaboration and friendliness in this industry — it is so unique. Maybe it’s because gamers are used to competing for fun — we can be relaxed about it.”

But as a player, gaming has not necessarily always been the most welcoming community. The community built around video games has notorious levels of gatekeeping, and it appears to be seeping into board games as well. “When we publish Magic: The Gathering videos, there are loads of people saying, ‘You’re not playing the right rules!’ and that kind of thing”, recounts Lolies. “There’s definitely some gatekeeping for sure but I don’t necessarily think it’s as bad as some other industries.”

Board and other tabletop games are an amazing hobby to get into.

They are immensely varied, challenging yet rewarding, and, more often than not, absolutely hilarious. Despite all the changes in the industry, they still serve to give people a temporary reprieve from the stress of everyday life. And as a country, board games feel like an appropriate industry for us to succeed in. We are a nation of storytellers and poets, living on an island steeped in history and culture. There is material abound for the creatives among us. And with a community of budding game developers already in place, like Jack Murray, the future looks positively Radiant.

Helping your local restaurants Adam Balchin outlines how we can support the catering industry shutdowns

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mall businesses are the backbone of our economy, or so the saying goes. You’ll often hear politicians echo this remark, from Washington DC to Wellington, NZ. It is, however, a statement that is ringing true for a lot of towns and localities in these uncharted waters, during a pandemic. With national lockdowns coming into force, social and travel restrictions too, it is up to us, to support our local businesses – particularly local pubs, restaurants and cafes. Our efforts will truly sink or swim these foundational pillars of our local economies. There is still hope; people and governments across the world are waking up to the importance of their local entrepreneurs, but more needs to be done. What then, can we do to provide assistance?

First and foremost, support local home delivery services. I cannot stress this enough. While there are a plethora of options on Deliveroo, Just Eat, or whatever other foodie app you are using to appease your growing addiction to takeaway food in this time of quarantine, most local businesses won’t have established themselves on these sorts of quick services.

Some of us might not actually have access to these apps, especially in rural areas, where the choice is local restaurants or a home-cooked meal.

This isn’t stopping local food outlets from continuing to deliver their food straight to your door, in many cases, for free, with no delivery charge. Just the other day my family had a delivery from our local chip shop, operating out of a food truck in the nearby village.It tasted just as good, if not better, than any meal I ordered off Deliveroo or Uber Eats in Dublin.

My point is, try, where possible, to see if your favourite local place is still operating home delivery or collection services, albeit in an unusual fashion, for them, and for you. And don’t forget to tip.

Pints. Truly the backbone of student life. One small issue.

The pubs are all closed. So how can you support them? Virtual Pints. While the lockdown may have taken away our ability to go down to Doyle’s or the Pav to have a good one, it has ushered in a new way to still relive that pub atmosphere, and support your local pub at the same time. I am of course, talking about the new Virtual Pint Drive. Starting as a Just Giving page, the aim is to raise money to support local, independent pubs and music venues that have shut in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. The effort has since gone viral, complete with its own virtual menu, complete with non-alcoholic beverages and round options. Those who donate €20 or more are also put into a raffle for concert and festival tickets once this has all blown over. You can find out all about it on their website.

Speaking of getting pints delivered, those who still live in Dublin can avail of a once in a lifetime experience. Getting a pint of Guinness delivered directly to your door. Graingers Hanlons Corner on the North Circular Road are pulling out all the stops

to make sure you can still enjoy a drink whenever you like. Following social distancing and hygiene recommendations put in place by the government, this Dublin pub delivers everything from a pint of Guinness to bottles of wine.

Their details can be found on their Facebook page.

And also try to support your local food banks. They may not put food into your stomach, but they’d greatly appreciate the food you and your family don’t use in order to help feed the less fortunate, especially in high risk areas, like Dublin and Cork City Centres.

Further afield, In the US people are putting hope into the hearts of local food outlets. Websites are popping up to help local restaurants ‘weather the storm.’

Websites like Save our Faves in San Francisco, co-founded

by Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, and Portland SOS are helping local restaurants and cafes push through this crisis, matching customers with gift cards for use when the virus dies down.

In New York City, an organisation known as City Harvest is taking in food donations and distributing them to essential local food services, such as food pantries, soup kitchens, and other businesses struggling to stay afloat in this difficult time, when supply chains aren’t as stable as usual.

Though it will be a challenge, the ‘backbone of our economy’ will survive, but only if we come together and act. Support those local businesses of yours that are feeling the awful effects of not having a steady stream of customers coming through their doors, or they might not be there when this is over.

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Tuesday 14 April | TRINITY NEWS

Alumni tales

Aimee-Louise Carton on how to KeepAppy Georgina Francis speaks to the founder of the mental wellness app

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licking into Zoom, my faithful companion over the last few weeks, I was struck yet again by the strangeness of the situation we all find ourselves in. It has not escaped anyone’s attention that we are in the midst of a global pandemic. And while the majority of most people’s feeds and conversations are consumed

by Covid-19, there has also been an added awareness around our mental health. As we upend our entire routines, stay home and reduce our social interactions, it can be difficult and destabilising for many. It seemed fitting, then, to be speaking to Aimee-Louise Carton, Trinity graduate and co-founder of the mental wellness app, KeepAppy.

What is KeepAppy?

Carton describes KeepAppy as “a gym for mental health” which “provides you with a collection of tools, just like a gym would a collection of equipment.” The app has a multitude of features that allow the user to tailor their own

experience. It is free to download and use, but for unlimited access a subscription is necessary. A user can keep track of their daily vitals by noting how much they sleep, drink, and spend time with friends and family. There is a gratitude journal, and a mindfulness exercise as well as a medicine and period tracker. There is also the added feature of a virtual pet dog to take care of. The purpose behind the gym analogy is that “We all learn not to eat too much McDonalds, to not eat salt, not eat sugar, to exercise… but at no point do we ever really learn about mental health.” Carton underscores that “one in four people may have a mental illness, but all of us have mental health.” The app currently has 15,000 downloads and is used in 86 countries. Their idea is that 21% of Europeans go to the gym regularly to look after their physical health, and Carton argues that the same practice should be afforded to their mental health.

The journey to KeepAppy For Carton, the journey to KeepAppy has been a personal and difficult one. After nearly taking her own life, Carton was frustrated by the approach and underfunding of mental health services in Ireland. She advocated for improvements by emailing the thenHealth Minister every week for 52 weeks: “I’m fairly sure his secre-

tary blocked me.” The psychiatric ward in Beaumont Hospital was a prefab, a temporary building which “was crumbling, there was mould on the walls.” From this frustration, KeepAppy was born.

Despite a growing and positive conversation on mental health in recent years in Ireland, we still have the third-lowest number of beds per head of the population in psychiatric wards in the European Union, and Mental Health Reform has repeatedly called for reforms, and the enacting of any reforms, of the Mental Health Act, 2001.

As an undergraduate, Carton studied Sociology in Trinity before pursuing a Masters in Political Science and came back to Trinity in 2019 to study a Masters in Entrepreneurship.

Before College, Carton had been involved in Amnesty International and while in Trinity she was involved in SUAS and Jailbreak.

Chatting about her time at Trinity, she clearly had fond memories: “I miss the environment of Trinity… There is such an atmosphere of curiosity, and revolution and willingness to evoke change”.

It was while studying for her Masters in Trinity that Carton met KeepAppy’s other co-founder, Will Ben Sims. They were not immediately destined for success, as Carton readily admitted, “My first impression of Will Ben was that I hated him… He thought he was the shit and he then looked

at me and saw me as this social justice warrior who literally would not shut up about mental health.”

They were repeatedly put in class projects together, though, and projects they worked on proved to be successful. They realised that their “skills really complemented one another.” Carton added, “We were coworkers before we were friends!” Sims also shares Carton’s personal background to the app: his uncle died of suicide, so he understands the importance of caring for mental health. In my conversation with Carton, it is evident that KeepAppy is more than a chance to achieve success in business and a passionate act to make a real change. And such a personal project has its burdens: “I really, really struggle to seperate myself from KeepAppy, and as a result, I have been burnt out.”

Social enterprise Carton distinguishes between an Irish understanding of a social enterprise (a charity) and the model of a B-corp which is, as Carton describes it, that they “match profit and impact on the same level”. While most businesses are profit driven, Carton is as concerned with the impact which KeepAppy has; this is reflected in their one-for-one model. The idea is that for every person that purchases a subscription service on KeepAppy, another person gets it for free. KeepAppy have partnered

with help lines and youth organisations, and these organisations choose the people who recieve them. I was curious if this was a practice unique to KeepAppy, but she said the idea came from Toms shoes, who promise that for every pair of shoes they sell they donate another pair. She is frustrated that more companies don’t adopt this practice, in particular in tech.

For companies like Toms, there is a heavy cost burden because they have to physically produce products whereas in tech Carton highlighted they just have “the hosting costs, which is so small.”

While Carton is clearly a driven entrepreneur and grew up in a family who ran their own business, her focus lies in the impact KeepAppy can have: “My background was politics and sociology, I was going to save the world from a political landscape.”

Carton’s experience in social justice organisations helped grow her passion for change but also opened her up to the hurdles involved. Like many volunteers, she struggled to understand how everyone is not always united for “the common good.” Recognising the incredible work these organisations do, the rose tint began to fade from her glasses: “I understand why we need compromise, but I’ve always really struggled with it.” Carton’s solution to this conundrum came in the form of using a social enterprise model, “You can do double the amount of change in half the time”. Part of Carton’s reason for KeepAppy is her evident impatience for compromise, and this was exemplified in her schedule for the day: she was calling crisis organisations in the US to create a “nationwide response to Covid-19” on mental health because “we’ve given up on the government” in the US. Data storage In this app, you can record thoughts and feelings, as well as track your period, and Carton was aware of the sensitivity of this information in the creation of

“

I have been told that my co-founder should be the face of the company just because he’s a boy and is more likely to get investments

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their app. As a result KeepAppy only stores the data on the phone, rather than on a cloud. In February, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that wellness apps were sharing user information to corporations like Facebook, so while KeepAppy’s approach sounded like a great idea, Carton admitted that “We actually get a lot of slack for that” from investors. “The most valuable thing in today's society is data, and health data has the potential to be really valuable.”

The study The Market for Neurotechnology: 2018-2022 predicts that neurotechnology will be worth $13.3 billion in 2022, while popular neurotechnologies, such as Fitbits, can range in price from €120 to €190. There are many apps that can be downloaded for free, and when so many of these products can be enjoyed for free, there is still a cost: “if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” The ramifications of selling and sharing data is already beginning to emerge. Carton cited the example of Fitbit pairing up with insurance companies. While some users saw their premiums go down, others equally saw it go up. Carton also noted that one in five employers in Ireland say they wouldn’t hire someone with a mental illness “and that’s the ones who actually went on the record.”

Women in tech and business As a woman in the tech and start-up industry, she contrasted discrimination in business and politics. Carton said from her experience in politics “discrimination is so subtle,” whereas in business it is “so direct.” In our conversation, she told me one of the most startling pieces of advice she had received: “I have been told that my co-founder should be the face of the company just because he’s a boy and is more likely to get investments.” A survey ran by the Central Statistics Office revealed that as you go up in seniority in business, the number of women involved diminishes, and in Ireland, only one in nine chief executives in large businesses are women. Though there have been signs of this improving, and Carton is clearly a step in this direction, that she is still subject to discrimination is astounding.

One such example is that Sims, her co-founder, gets invited to

play golf, instead of her. Carton pointed out that she, in fact, loves to play golf, while Sims does not even play.

Some advice For anyone looking to venture into the start-up world, Carton had some advice: “you always need to be talking about your idea... Tell everyone about your idea, the idea of securing it or keeping it secret is such bullshit”.

Carton also pointed out that advice in business can be blunt and incredibly direct but “Sometimes it's really positive because it helps you grow.” Being involved in a start-up “is the steepest learning curve you will ever embark on.''

Contradicting my preconceptions of a cut-throat industry, Carton said her experience with fellow start ups has been that they focus more on “how can we help one another to get further.” For many students, coming to Trinity is one step in a much larger, ambitious life plan. Carton agreed that “We are so ambitious, so many Trinity students, our whole lives are mapped out,” and that “from a very young age [she had] not just a five- year plan, not just a 10-year plan, but a 30 year plan.” Carton was earmarked by The Independent as a woman to watch in 2020 and was featured in 30 under 30 in business in Ireland alongside her co-founder Ben Will Sims; she has achieved a lot already. To any student, this might seem daunting, but it's worth remembering that while successful, this was not part of the plan. “My whole world has become so much more positive because I didn’t follow that plan.”

Before wrapping up our conversation, Carton offered some advice for those struggling under the Covid-19 circumstances. She was keen to emphasise “that we are all different,” so what works for Carton might not work for you and me. This tailored and individualistic approach is reflected in KeepAppy’s variety of tools.

The next few weeks will be critical for the success of KeepAppy, and while the future seems uncertain for many at the moment, it is clear that Carton’s concern for their users' data and thoughtfully tailored app can secure her a place in the Tech for Good movement.

The rise of Irish spoken word poetry Aoife Coyne explores the medium experiencing a surge thanks to climate change and the housing crisis

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or many of us, the newfound excess of spare time we have on our hands has resulted in extra hours of mindless scrolling. However, if you’re looking for some online content that will feed the soul, look no further than the abundance of Irish spoken word poets that have been cropping up in recent years.

With social media playing such a big role in the growth of the scene, their work is quite literally at your fingertips.

For most of us, when we think of Irish spoken word artists, the first person we think of is Emmet Kirwan. Indeed, when I spoke to some of Ireland’s up-and-coming artists, they all cited him as an influence. “I think a spoken word poet who has a huge influence in the rise of the art is Emmet Kirwan,” says Lucy Holmes, one of the scene’s rising talents. “His spoken word videos made poetry seem cool, for want of another word.” Kirwan rose to prominence in 2017 with a YouTube video titled Heartbroken, which dealt with the hot button issue of the eighth amendment in a beautiful and evocative way.

Since then, he has appeared on

the Late Late Show several times and in 2018, his play Dublin Old School which features spoken word poetry was made into a film.

Since his success, many other spoken word artists have emerged in Ireland. “You see people like him on mainstream news, and that’s giving people the inspiration to write,” says Emmet O’Brien, another spoken word poet who is gaining traction. Holmes attributes the rise of spoken word poetry to the accessibility of social media, which allows people to effectively self-publish. “Instead of poetry being limited to notebooks and never seeing the light of day, people now have a way of sharing their art,” says Holmes. As well as this, social media lends itself more to the form of spoken word as opposed to written poetry. “From personal experience, poetry that is spoken and in a video format gets a lot more engagement than poetry that is written or typed out.”

Of course, when young aspiring artists see other artists sharing their work online, it encourages them to do the same and this has a cumulative effect; as O’Brien puts it: “There are so many prolific writers, and that inspires more people to write.”

For O’Brien, the freedom spoken word allows artists is a significant reason for its growing popularity. In his view, this is connected to a shift in culture. “There hasn’t necessarily been a surge in writing poetry,” he says. He explains that people have always written poetry, but culturally, the limits for what was acceptable were very stringent. “People are more free to write about what they feel in whatever style they feel,” he explains, “It’s not that more people are writing than before, it’s that there’s more freedom of

expression there.” He also sees the growth of spoken word as closely related to the growing popularity of hip-hop, especially for those from working class backgrounds.

Given that both art forms are synonymous with criticism of social issues, their rise can be attributed to the social unrest that seems to pervade our society. This is certainly Holmes’s opinion. “The world seems so unstable and a lot of people turn to art to try and rationalise the irrational,” she says.

She cites things such as the financial crash, the housing crisis, the climate emergency and, of course, the current pandemic as factors that push people to take solace in consuming and sharing art.

Although the unique Irish experience has typically been strongly represented in Irish writing, it would seem that this is changing somewhat. “Being Irish is part of my personal experience of the world,” says Holmes, but she prefers to keep her work “open to the reader’s interpretation.” This openness is not surprising given that there is less of a one-size-fitsall Irish identity now than perhaps there had been in the past. This is reflected in the diversity of the spoken word scene, with poets such as Wuraola Majekodunmi writing work that explores identifying with both Irish and Yoruba experiences.

It is clear from the rapid growth of the Irish spoken word scene that the art form is here to stay. The freedom the art form grants writers allows for the exposition of experiences and identity in such a raw, redolent way that it is not surprising it is growing in popularity. Thanks to social media, the world of spoken word poetry can be explored in depth with ease.

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Maintaining relationships online Small ways you can keep in touch during self isolation from Suzanne Flynn

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he current circumstances have created challenges for everyone.

Friendships, as well as romantic relationships, have been strained by a lack of physical communication.

However, using self-isolation as a chance to let relationships grow and develop under extraordinary circumstances offers a potential positive, and there are a few ways this can be done.

Arrange virtual dates With your pals, gals, lads or your SO, mark a date in your diary to have a Netflix watch party. I would wholeheartedly recommend watching a film series together, such as the Twilight saga. Alternatively, both parties watching a show or film at the same time and having skype open on a split screen can work well and allow you to see each other. If you are missing your wider group of friends and family, apps like House Party and Google Hangouts allow up to 8 people to chat at a time. Zoom is another option as it works for larger groups and tends to function quite reliably with some fun features available to spice up your video chat.

Go for coffee Without Dublin Barista School and the Buttery, many of us are truly lost. In saying that, it doesn’t mean you can’t go for coffee with a pal regardless! Arrange a time and day as you normally would, but instead of leaving your house, be your own barista by making your drink of choice at home. Grab your mate’s details, give them a

call and have a catch up. Sitting outside or in a garden can add to the feeling of actually going out somewhere, while still staying safe.

Send letters and postcards Embrace your inner Elizabeth Bennett and write a letter to that person you have been pining for.

This could be the chance to break out of your Tinder dependency, or take it as the opportunity to spice up your current relationship with a love letter. An Post are delivering free postcards to most households in Ireland in order to encourage communication.

Take advantage and ask around for addresses both overseas and within Ireland. If you are living abroad, send someone a postcard from your hometown, or better yet, make your own postcard with some sturdy card material to write a letter on.

Remember to stay in touch Although it is both easy and appealing to stay wrapped up in blankets and never speak to anyone again, your friends will appreciate hearing from you. Having a chat with someone can make all the difference when you are feeling down and anxious. Reaching out can put your mind at ease if others are going through something similar. If you have had to move back to your home outside of Ireland in particular, keeping in touch with your friends from college is especially important.

Overall, the most essential thing is to keep as positive as you can. Taking this opportunity to connect with your friends and significant others in a different way will stand to strengthen your relationships when this is all over.

Instead of falling into the trap of thinking that you will never see them again, make plans for the future and stay inside so the time for seeing friends again comes that bit sooner.

ARTWORK BY JAMIE PANAGOS FOR TRINITY NEWS

Let’s talk about sex!

Dearbháil Kent interviews Sharon Travers, a psychotherapist who specialises in sex and relationships

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ex is a natural piece that you have to deal with but you can’t talk about one thing without talking about the other. If a couple is sitting in front of you, of course they’re going to talk about intimacy and sex, especially if their relationship isn’t going well. I never sat down one day and thought, ‘hey, I’m going to be a sex therapist’, and I’m really a psychologist, a psychotherapist - that’s what I really see myself as - and someone who works with sex and relationships as well.

How can two people in a relationship reconcile two very different sex drives?

It’s an issue that lots of people talk about. When there’s mismatched desires, sometimes one

might have more sex than the other but maybe what they’re really craving is general intimacy and it comes out in a sexual theme. It’s not necessarily that one is looking for more sex or if someone has a lower sex drive there might be something hormonal going on or they might have a lower sex drive.

Often in therapy, we get couples to talk about that, and they often talk about that it’s not one person’s problem and they come to some sort of agreement of what would be okay, rather than blaming someone.

Students and young people are probably the biggest group of people who will experience problems with or around sex. When you’re 18-20, you’re not always confident and sure of what you’re doing and you might not have experience with relationships. Lots of young girls have fears - they have what’s known as vaginismus - surrounding penetrative sex. They may have body issues, self-esteem issues and might avoid getting into relationships and then be fearful and then as a result, they tend not to date.

Then they can be lonely and isolated. For someone like this, therapy can be a place to come and talk about it because they might not be able to talk to their friends. Sometimes friends can be judgemental or can’t believe that some they ha-

ven’t had sex. The person might be concerned with themselves, that there’s something wrong with them or that they are abnormal because they haven’t had sex and they’re 20. It’s not abnormal, they could fancy loads of people but people for all sorts of reasons haven’t had sex. Every year that goes by that can be even more difficult, there’s a sort of panic. One of the biggest questions I get is ‘how do I tell a partner?’. Because they’re trying to read books and look at porn and different things to get knowledge before they do it so it looks like they know what they’re doing. When really it should be more about relaxing and enjoyment because they’re so caught up with how they should perform that they perform and they can’t.

There’s this perception that it’s only older males that have problems with erections but in fact, there’s a lot more younger men not all the time, but some of the time - that have erectile difficulty.

There’s often a load of shame for those people. Then they worry about it, and the more they worry about it the more it’ll happen.

It’s like a cycle because the more worry they have, the more difficult they will find it to have an erection.

What are the main factors you see young men having difficulty

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TRINITY NEWS | Tuesday 14 April

er. Sometimes people are trying to replicate what they see, even down to physical acts that they would see.

Do you feel like because the intimacy and love is taken out of porn, that it reinforces the idea that sex is about an end goal?

Certainly. It really focuses on the end goal, rather than the time the two people have spent together or the enjoyment that they’re getting out of sex. Also, young girls are often trying to look and act like the girls they see in porn - being porn ready - with shaved pubic hair and all of that.

with getting an erection?

The main issue behind it is anxiety - sometimes it’s nerves - but performance anxiety. Expectations can worry someone; they’re worried that the girl or their partner is expecting something and they might not be able to live up to it.

Then they get caught up in their heads and becomes quite difficult.

It’s quite common. Also there’s a lot of guys using a lot of porn and it’s having a negative effect on reality.

Do you feel that social media has perpetrated the effects that are mirrored in porn?

Yeah. When you think about it now, a fourteen year old boy can just go now online on smartphones and you can find anything.

You get visual images and then that distorts what sex is. Because porn is not real in a lot of cases. If you talk to anyone who works in that industry or produces porn, it’s a lot of falseness; there’s false arms, false legs even put in to make a [sex] position that even the best yoga teacher couldn’t do. They inject into the groin area; they exaggerate things a little bit; they use photoshop for a lot of things and it looks like something is happening for way longer than it is. So you have people watching that and thinking that this is what real sex is. Porn is more visual, it’s about performance and ejaculation and there’s very little about the intimacy between two people; there’s no detail about love or affection or how much they care for each oth-

How do you think women can break stigma and shame around female masturbation?

There’s a lot of shame around female masturbation but having open conversations around it can help. Both males and females masturbate and it’s a natural part of life and sexual development. I think the more conversation we have that it’s not something to be ashamed of or have negative views about. That has come down to a history around that masturbation is alright for guys but not for girls.

There is quite a lot of church teaching, shame associations with sex and I would see that in a lot of the clients that I have that have negative or unhealthy views of sex.

This can be associated with a strict upbringing; it could have been a strict Catholic upbringing. We also see it in other traditions. Muslims, for example, would have various sexual practices too.

The message I want to get across is that everybody needs to have conversation; we need to talk as a society - in our friend groups, our families and the wider society - about sexual issues so we break down barriers. If someone is having difficulty then, that there’s no shame in that, it’s totally natural and to go seek advice and help.

You don’t have to go to sexual therapy, but it is one option.

How can we get the ball rolling in breaking down barriers and having these conversations?

Articles like this are great because some students will pick up the article and think ‘oh I never knew people went and talked about this’. They might have an idea in their head that they have to work it out for themselves and struggle with it. Or if someone has a fear of sex or intimacy, they might just decide that’s just the way they are and they mightn’t get into relationships. When in reality, it would be such a pity because they’re missing out. But if they just went and sorted it out, it’s like any other problem.

People think that their problems are unique and that they’re the only person facing the type of issues. Sometimes when they find out that they’re not the only person, it can be comforting.

Do you think social media has changed the dating culture?

For sure. It’s good in one sense, because people who are shy or new to dating can go on Tinder. It’s very

easy to spend a couple of hours online, looking at people and connecting with them. The downside to it is, someone can spend hours and hours online and swiping, and get lost in that. Because there is so much availability they can keep searching and they don’t always settle then. Not in the sense of being with one person, but this idea of matching but never meeting there’s a lot of frustration around that. You have a lot of people who spend a lot of time looking but who don’t actually go on real dates.

When, in fact, this is where you learn your skills. When you date someone, you learn more about a person than you ever did: how they present themselves; how they treat you; how they act around you; whether you like them and are attracted to them. You just can’t get that online. You’ll have people who their sisters are answering online but when you meet the person, they can’t have a conversation.

I do think social media creates a barrier On Trinder, this is what she had to say: You might try and make some sort of effort to make physical contact with them. If you like someone at college and you know they go for coffee somewhere at a certain time, you might just happen to be standing in the queue at the same time and strike up conversation and then you can work around that. There are lots of people who like others and never do anything about it. I suppose you can’t really just rock up out of the blue, and admit you like someone can you?

If they’re going to an event you might rock up and start a conversation. Whether or not you come out full on and admit you like them and they reject you - that’s a bit awkward. You might find a way of letting them know that you like them with your body language and being interested in what they’re saying and strike up a bit of a rapport first. Then when somebody’s brave enough, yeah - just go for it.

All they can say is no.

Do you see a lot of clients concerned about what others external to the relationship think?

I’m not saying people should care less about what others think, but they should focus on what they think, what their partner thinks really because we can get so caught up in what other people are thinking. It might prevent someone from dating because they have views that other people mightn’t agree with and you cannot live your life like that. There is more pressure for people to post about their relationship online. But if that’s not what you want to do then that’s okay; don’t feel that you have to. If you break up and you can see it all online then the person can’t heal or get over it themselves without everyone already knowing.

Make sure you’re okay before you disclose it to other people.

Make or bake Baking is a sadly underrated date activity, writes Vanessa Nunan

S

o you’ve met someone lovely, and you’ve been for coffee together, and maybe you’ve been to the Hugh Lane gallery together, or for a pint perhaps. But what next?

The answer, to me, is obvious. It’s time to make bread.

I make bread as frequently as time allows, and I find it to be in equal parts cathartic and rewarding. Although I certainly enjoy it as a solitary activity, I think it is also ideal to do as a date. The process alleviates much of the awkwardness that one can feel at the start of early dates, as you focus on the task at hand together, while also allowing for time to focus on one another during the resting and baking periods. How perfect!

Bread-making is, of course, a time consuming affair, so it is perhaps wise to wait until the second or third date to commit to the business of kneading and proving. That being said, it provides a perfect excuse to hang out with someone out of the public sphere, and if there were ever to be a lull in conversation, bread-making itself provides a lot of conversation starters. This recipe given is one for tiger bread, because it is not your run-of-the-mill loaf, but still easy.

To begin, you are going to stir all the flour, sugar, salt and yeast together in a bowl (the measurements are below). Your dough is going to grow, so make sure the bowl is large. After that, add the water, which has to be blood temperature, so as not to kill the yeast. If you can dip your finger in the water and not really feel anything, then you’ve nailed it.

Add the water gradually until the dough starts to come together. No need to mix it too much. It will probably look a bit scraggly and dry, don’t worry.

Next comes the kneading part, a crucial but very fun part in the bread making process! Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and begin to knead the dough by stretching and folding it.

Initially, the dough will be rather sticky, so you can add some more flour to your hands and to the surface, but try to avoid adding too much. Continue to knead the dough for ten minutes or so until the dough is soft and smooth and elastic. Working and stretching

the dough like this is what forms the gluten in the bread, allowing bubbles of air to grow. It is both satisfying and a bit tiring, and a process with some potential for sexual tension. So definitely share the burden with your date.

Once you are happy and done with the dough (when it is beautifully smooth), oil the bowl you started with sparingly, and place the dough back in. Cover it with a damp tea towel and leave it to rest for an hour in a warm place – a perfect amount of time to go relax with your love interest. Once you return, it should have doubled in size, how exciting. It’s very satisfying to poke at this stage! Now you have to knead it just two or three times, to knock a bit of the air out.

Then, shape the dough into an oval, and place on a baking tray that’s been lined with parchment paper. Leave it once again – covered in a tea towel so as to ensure a dry crust doesn’t form on your dough – to grow and double in size for about 45 minutes or an hour, depending on how hot your kitchen is. This will give you two the chance to come up with and agree upon a name for your lovely dough child.

About ten minutes before it is finishing its rest, preheat the oven to 200C fan, gas mark 6, and start making the coating. This is what will give the bread it’s signature tiger pattern-like crust. Simply whisk together all the ingredients until it becomes a spreadable paste, adding more flour or water if necessary. If you don’t have rice flour, you can just put some rice in the blender until it becomes fine and powdery and use it. Even if you do have rice flour, it’s fun to blend rice! Leave it to sit for five minutes, and then spread it in an even layer over your burgeoning loaf. Bake the loaf for 35 minutes and allow it to cool for as long as you can wait before slicing into it. Enjoy with jam, or good olive oil, or whatever you have lying around. Or maybe just on its own – the bread will speak for itself.

• 500g strong white bread flour, plus extra for kneading • 7g sachet fast action yeast • 1½ tsp caster sugar • 1½ tsp fine sea salt • 300-350ml warm water • vegetable oil, for the bowl For the topping • 90g rice flour • ½ x 7g sachet fast action yeast • ¼ tsp salt • 1 tsp golden caster sugar • ½ tbsp toasted sesame oil • 90ml warm water

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Tuesday 14 April | TRINITY NEWS

Puzzle page Crossword Answers Across: 2. Elbow 3. Flamingo 7. Training 11. Aslan 12. Bee 13. Poll 15. Stealing Glances 16. MERS 18. Burnout 21. Oedipus 22. Petals

Down 1. Pierrot 3. Fidget spinner 4. Aspect 5. Glue 6. Anticipate 8. Orange 9. The finish line 10. Mayo 14. Ligament 15. Spectacle 17. Idea 19. Ore 20. Smirr

Across 7. French director of whale fame (8) 8. Sweet lass (8) 9. Pumped up on Freud (7) 10. Repetitive, life-affecting job (9) 11. Yellow, Greek buffoon (5) 13. Carbon Quarantine (7,8) 15. To put it insanely (5,4) 18. Vegan purple paradox (8) 19. Third on the spectrum (6)

Down 1. Lazy in the middle (4) 2. Meta-puzzle (9) 3. Tarkovsky’s male offspring (7) 4. Calcified dreams (9) 5. Microsoft’s angelic ring (4) 6. The art of spelling (10) 12. Three illicit unknowns (11) 14. Physicists indecisive pet (3) 16. Ahead of the isolation game (6)

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Trinity shouts and murmurs “i say ‘i’m definitely gonna fuck them after quarantine’ about people who definitely don’t wanna fuck me after quarantine” - @dustydior “The one year my Mam played “Easter Bunny” with us, she hid my egg in the hotpress and it melted and I threatened to run away. So we haven’t done that since” - @weekndatfernies “I think caroline calloway would have really liked college debating” - @baldspice “Sharing those ‘you don’t need to be productive during quarantine” posts is nice, until i remember that if I don’t write thousands of words and head hundreds of pages over the next month before nailing 4 exams it’ll affect my prospects for the rest of my life” - @FollowTheLaoide “I’m glad we are in quarantine while Tiger King is popular, so I don’t have to walk in to Penny’s and see joe exotic branded pyjama sets and “Carole Baskin fed her husband to a tiger” tshirts” - @yurtieahern69

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Stay home Switch Summer Isolation Bernie New York No Detriment Zoom Two km Blinding Lights Livestream Cocoon Not a vibe Tom Nook Productivity Take care

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TRINITY NEWS | Tuesday 14 April

Features

From aperitivo to lockdown: students describe the Italian coronavirus outbreak Irish students on Erasmus in Italy share testimonials about the progression of coronavirus from rumour to fullcountry quarantine

Isabella Noonen

Deputy Features Editor

A

lthough one’s Erasmus is meant to be a year of lifechanging experiences and unexpected adventures, for students studying in Italy, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has taken this way too far. “I think one of my big takeaways from the lockdown is how suddenly life can change,” said Tilly Lyons, a third-year Trinity student. She continued: “One moment you’re worried about where to go for aperitivo and university assignments, and in the space of a few days you’re living under what feels like martial law.”

Tilly was on her European Studies-mandated Erasmus year in Rome when Italy’s first coronavirus cases appeared.

Consisting of isolated instances of quickly-quarantined tourists, it seemed for a while that the Italian state had the situation well under control. “There was even celebration in Rome as doctors in the Spallanzani hospital isolated the virus,” she recalled. “The President praised the success of Italian medical advancements.”

Although Italians were generally aware of the outbreak in Wuhan, China, there was little in the way of public fear that a domestic outbreak would follow. “From what I’ve learned so far in my time in Rome is that Italians can be hypochondriacs, blaming illnesses on not wearing a scarf and being struck by a ‘shot of wind,’” Tilly continued. “So the fact they weren’t panicking about the virus was reassuring to me.”

Ailbhe Kelly, a Trinity student on Erasmus in Milan, agreed.

“Very few people in Italy were talking about it until mid-to-late February,” she said. “I became concerned when there had been a significant rise in cases and all universities in Lombardy were closed.” Over the course of a single

weekend, the number of known cases in Italy had jumped from just three to over 150. In reaction to the outbreak’s sudden spread, 11 municipalities containing 50,000 people in Lombardy’s Lodi province, which borders Milan, were put under quarantine on 21 February 2020.

The rest of the country reacted to the Lombardy outbreak with uncertainty. “I was in Siena when the outbreak hit and the train back was a totally different experience to the train up there,” Tilly said.

Passengers “were sitting as far apart as possible,” and “Trenitalia [Italy’s primary train operator] was disinfecting the doors every few stops.” A woman sitting nearby Tilly spent the train trip on the phone, loudly theorizing that the outbreak was a right-wing excuse to close borders. But as Tilly recounted, the precautionary measures taken by the rail service “instilled me with a lot of confidence that the government was on top of it.”

Danielle Comerford, a Maynooth student on Erasmus in Trento in the Italian Alps, expressed a similar sentiment.

“Everybody was definitely a little on edge because it’s such an unknown thing; but at the beginning, especially before the quarantine, life was pretty normal” she said. “We all did large shops just in case but the only thing the shop ran out of was pasta… which is so typical of Italians” she added.

Tilly also reported a pastaspecific supermarket shortage, with one noticeable exception.

“One thing that made me laugh was that even with a potential pandemic on the horizon, there were still particular brands and types of pasta the Italians just wouldn’t buy,” she said, recalling otherwise “completely empty shelves that still had a good 10-15 bags of penne lisce.”

Occasional bouts of disasterprepping aside, Tilly concluded from her vantage point of Rome that at the time the outbreak remained “still very much a northern problem.” Symptomatic of Italy’s larger “North-South divide,” she described how “signs went up on hotels in the south saying ‘Vietato ai settentrionali’ (Northerners forbidden)” and noted that one Neapolitan “joked that for once the north can’t blame the south for its problems.” The extent to which the coronavirus would evolve into an all-Italy problem was not yet apparent.

The situation within Lombardy itself felt more dire. “Me and my friends were shocked by how quickly the situation seemed to spiral,” Ailbhe recalled. “When the universities closed, swimming

pools, gyms, and nightclubs also closed. All of my Erasmus friends immediately returned home and my Italian friends returned to their homes outside of the city.”

Milan, an urban area of more than five million people, had emptied out—empty metro stations, empty supermarket shelves, and an empty square in front of the Duomo.

Ailbhe ultimately opted to return home when Lombardy extended its university closures for a third week, which was fortunate timing, as “only two days later they announced the lockdown of the region.” On 8 March 2020, Italian Prime Minister Conte announced that the existing 50,000-person quarantine would be extended to cover the whole of Lombardy as well as parts of the Veneto and Emilia-Romagna regions—all told, an area encompassing over 16 million people. The quarantine closed many public spaces, imposed a one-metre requirement of social distancing, and restricted travel in or out or the region except in cases of “proven work needs, emergencies, or health reasons” under threat of three months’ jail time. People across the newly declared ‘red zone’ rushed for the last trains out – a move which likely served to accelerate the virus’s spread south.

“Many people I spoke to on Monday in Rome told me there was very little chance of them implementing a similar lockdown in the rest of the country,” said Tilly. But she knew that the number of coronavirus cases in the south, though far fewer, were growing at a similar rate to those in the north. An extension of the lockdown seemed only a matter of time.

Wanting to avoid the possibility of becoming trapped in Italy, Tilly booked a flight home for the next day. This turned out to be a prophetic move, as the lockdown was extended to cover the whole country that very evening. Not every Irish student in Italy made it out of the lockdown. Danielle was on a trip to Bratislava, Slovakia with two friends when the Lombardy quarantine began. Having decided to travel when her Erasmus host university closed for the week, Danielle rushed back to campus in Trento on the morning of March 9 without her travel companions. “I had a feeling the region was going to be quarantined,” she explained, and wanted to have access to her belongings in Trento before that happened. Danielle’s return came just in time as the whole-country lockdown was announced just hours after she arrived back in Trento.

Danielle’s friends were not able to make it back to Italy

from Slovakia, and have since made it home to Ireland. While, as an Irish citizen, Danielle is technically allowed to leave the Italian lockdown with flights out of Italy cancelled and borders with surrounding countries closed returning home herself is not possible for the foreseeable future.

“In a way it would be nice to be at home because it’s comforting in this kind of situation,” she said, “but I also love this country and I came here because I wanted to be here and I still do.” At least until the scheduled lifting of the lockdown on April 3, Danielle is in Trento to stay.

The quarantinein Italy grew progressively stricter with people allowed to travel only to go to the pharmacy or supermarket, on urgent work business, or to return home. “There are police out to make sure people have not left their homes without a good motivation,” Danielle reported.

If a person repeatedly breaks the quarantine, “you can be fined, put in prison up to three months or, in the case of showing symptoms of the virus, I have been told the offence can be the same as manslaughter—so five-plus years in prison,” Danielle says.

According to Tilly and Ailbhe, word from Italian friends stuck inside the lockdown conveys worry, anxiety, and boredom in equal measures. “There have been jokes that our grandparents’ crisis was going to war but all we’ve been asked to do is stay in bed,” said Tilly. Yet Italians thus far seem to be treating quarantine, inglorious as it is, with the same sort of civic duty that war incited in previous generations.

“Everybody - my friends and housemates - seems very concerned with doing their part to limit the spread by respecting the rules and following sanitary protocols,” Danielle reported.

Considering the sacrifices that doctors and nurses across the country have made to combat the virus, she opined that, “I don’t have a lot of respect for anybody complaining about or disrespecting the quarantine when it seems the absolute least we can do to help the situation.”

With the situation evolving so rapidly, universities like Trinity were forced to walk a difficult line between over and underreacting to the outbreak in regards to students on Erasmus. According

to Ailbhe, as the outbreak’s spread was “escalating in the north,” the Senior Tutor sent out a letter to all Erasmus students in Italy “asking us to update the college on our situations and locations.”

While she clarified that “at no point was I requested to return home,” Ailbhe explained that they were “advised to follow the advice of our host universities and to follow the online learning process.” Ultimately, the choice of whether to leave or stay was left up to the individual student, which both Ailbhe and Tilly appeared to appreciate.

However, for Tilly at least, a greater amount of communication from Trinity would have been welcome. “Being on Erasmus in Italy felt like being in limbo,” said Tilly.

“No one expects them to offer us a cure for coronavirus but we just want to feel like we haven’t been forgotten abroad.” She reported that Trinity’s first Erasmus-specific communications on Covid-19 came “a week after the outbreak began” in Italy, which was a few days after the first Covid-19 emails were sent to students on campus in Dublin. When she reached out to Trinity to ask about the implications on her academics of voluntarily returning to Dublin, she received only a warning “not to come into Trinity College” if she did so. “I felt as though I didn’t receive reassurance from the college about my situation,” she concluded.

One overarching question is whether or not Italy could have done more to prevent the outbreak from reaching the level of severity that it has, and, subsequently, whether countries like Ireland can avoid any such similar missteps. “I keep hearing people say the Italians were not proactive in trying to prevent the virus, but I think it is more a case of them having been extremely unlucky with how things have played out,” Tilly opined. Ailbhe seemed to agree, stating that “the Italian government has taken serious measures to try to slow the spread as much as possible” but adding that “it seems that the delay in finding ‘patient zero’ at the beginning was a major issue.”

On social distancing measures, Danielle said. “It’s frustrating but it’s for a very, very good reason…

Nobody benefits from the spread of the virus, and it’s all of our responsibility to manage it.”

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Tuesday 14 April | TRINITY NEWS

Features

Two soon-to-be graduates reflect on the highs, lows, and unpredictable end to their time in college Comhall Fanning

Deputy Features Editor

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his year’s Senior Sophisters have ended their time in Trinity abruptly. Thursday the 12th of March is a date that few in Trinity, especially its final years, will forget in a hurry. At 11am, Leo Varadkar announced from his state visit in Washington DC that all schools and colleges would close from 6pm that evening. Students were left with a frenzied day of trying to make arrangements before college closed indefinitely: clearing out lockers, checking out mountains of library books, and saying uncertain goodbyes. Some on-campus residents also decided that evening that they would leave their accommodation and return home. For thousands of final year students, their journey in Trinity was suddenly over. Tears were shed as students finally left campus, laiden with bags. As security stood watch, one thing was clear: there would be no re-admittance onto campus for the foreseeable future. Many final year students even submitted their dissertations in the week that everything shut down. Annual class photos were cancelled and it became obvious that the bonding experiences of the final weeks in college would be lost for many final years.

As significant as this is, it makes

up just a segment of four years in Trinity. Trinity News spoke to two final year students and asked them to discuss their experience in Trinity and offer advice to their past selves and incoming first years.

Roisín Quirke is a Senior Sophister Student in Science. Asked what she might say if she could turn back the clock and speak to herself on her first day starting in Trinity, she says: “I know this place seems super daunting and scary, but do not be intimidated!” She stresses: “I guarantee you most people you will meet here will be the nicest friendliest people around, and you’re gonna make some great friends. So don’t be shy, just be yourself, not one single person here is going to judge you, even though it might feel like it right now. Just relax, have fun, go to your lectures, and for god's sake lose the super dry jacket.” Discussing the highlight of her time, Quirke lingers over the “community spirit” in Trinity. “There’s something so comforting about this place, it just feels like home. I feel like I really grew up here, and I have made so many amazing friends and met the most insane people.”Offering advice to incoming first years, Quirke says: “I only really started to ask questions and give my opinion in class when I was in third year and it honestly made my life so much easier.” She emphasises that it is quite a different experience to school, with speaking up a lecture of 300 people is undoubtedly intimidating at first.

However, Quirke adds a line of reassurance: “If you’re completely wrong, who cares!”

Of course, college life, as glamorous as it can look, is not always smooth sailing. Just like all parts of life, whatever you end up doing, college has its bad moments. Quirke says: “You are currently looking at the undisputed queen of repeats

right here. I found general science really difficult, especially transitioning from a tiny Leaving Cert class in a Meanscoil to being crammed into Goldsmith with 300 first years.

I failed exams again and again, and even e n d e d up repeati n g second year o f f b o o k s .”

However, Quirke’s experiences c e r t ai n l y ought to offer incoming

and experiencing independence, a sense of purpose, joy... it can happen to you too!”

Godley also talks about the importance of societies during her time in Trinity. She says: “I joined Germanic Society in second year purely because my friends were in it and talked about it all the time and I felt like I was missing out.”

She continues, “in a wild turn of events, I fell in love with it and ended up becoming someone who talks about Germanic Soc all the time!” She admits that running at an AGM can be scary or intimidating but stresses how rewarding it can be: “Those couple of minutes of nerves might lead to a whole academic year of positive experiences.” Godley, similarly to Quirke, emphasises that college is far from easy. “You’re suddenly responsible for your own schedule, budget, grocery shopping, laundry, cooking, transport, study, homework, sleep, cleaning, cooking, socialising, going out enough, not drinking too much, deadlines, maybe society work or volunteering or a job or all of the above. I have had plenty of college days where I just simply could not get out of bed and face it all.” Like Quirke, Godley stresses that it is normal to struggle with your course. She adores German in Trinity: “The people, the modules, the little community of it has been incredible... despite being a slightly chaotic Department, organisationally, German is my home in Trinity.”In contrast, she struggled with English but emphasises that this was her personal experience and does not want to discourage people from studying English. She says, “for me, English was too much. There are so many people in your year that it’s harder to make friends. There are so many books to read every week that you always feel behind.” Godley offers encouragement: “if you are passionate about English then all of these issues will dissipate, you will find your people in it and you will love it.” She concludes, “if you think it will make you happy, then do it! You’ll always find a way.

Trinity is great - you are smart enough, you will make friends, you can do it!”

ARTWORK BY MARTA MENTA CZINKOCZKY FOR TRINITY NEWS

Final year students’ bittersweet farewells to Trinity

students reassurance. She remarks: “What really got me through was my friends, who kept pushing me to get through it; my tutor and the SU both who were so helpful especially with going off books; and of course, freepeats. I would simply not be writing this today if it wasn’t for freepeats.” The abrupt end to final year due to coronavirus has, as for so many, caused Quirke stress: “I’ve had a few breakdowns over the last few weeks. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster.” She focuses on her final moment in Trinity before it was shut down, admitting that she “did have a little cry walking through Front Square for the last time as an undergrad.” This poignant moment will undoubtedly strike a chord with many from the class of 2020. Quirke asserts that she is angry about her time in Trinity being cut short, “especially these last few weeks which are always the best of the year. No more cans at the Pav, no sitting in the sun between lectures and no Trinity Ball.” However, she concludes: “I can only be grateful for the amazing times I’ve had over the last five years, and honestly I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.”

Geena Godley, a final year student of German and English TSM, told Trinity News that if she could tell her first-year self something, it would be: “this will be different, but in a good way,” and remarks that Freshers’ Week is unpredictable some people you meet may become lifelong friends, whilst others you might never see again. Yet, she emphasises that this unpredictability is beautiful, “all you can do is go with the flow to find where you fit.

And you will fit, I promise!”

She lived in Austria during her degree, working as an English language assistant in two schools. She says: “It will probably always be one of the best years of my life. Such cliché things as building incredible friendships, falling in love,

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TRINITY NEWS | Tuesday 14 April

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Trinity’s safety net policy is not enough Sam Cox

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ARTWORK BY JACK SMYTH FOR TRINITY NEWS

Comment

Student nurses deserve to be paid Chloe Mant

Tuition fees should be refunded Online teaching doesn’t amount to the same learning experience as in class Dearbháil Kent Deputy Comment Editor

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t was surreal for the college community when Trinity closed its doors in March, leaving a lot of people unsure as to what to do in both a personal and an academic sense.

Without strong contingency plans in place for many departments and schools in Trinity, the closure left many students unmotivated, frustrated, and forced into impractical and difficult study environments with little to no

resources. As Trinity students are left to learn by themselves online across the globe, we have been forced to think about the pros and cons about learning from home.

Trinity prides itself in its teaching excellence but how does this translate to unconventional and unprepared online learning?

While there both are positives and negatives to online learning generally, there appear to be more negatives with this impromptu system of learning that Trinity has attempted to put in place. Science-based subjects can’t participate in lab work, while language based and theory-based degrees lose the advantage of classroom discussion.

Teaching staff can argue that an online discussion board has the same function as an in-class discussion. There’s a stark contrast, however, between discussing face-to-face and passively reading comments on Blackboard about a subject you’re attempting to

understand with your neighbour’s pneumatic drilling drowning out every possible thought you might have. The point is that as students, we are being forced to learn from and make do with unsatisfactory teaching methods in unconventional working environments and situations.

By no means is the teaching in Trinity inadequate, but the space that a lecturer and student occupy and the opportunity to foster an organic education has been totally debilitated by this online transition. The system of online teaching that Trinity has constructed isn’t sufficient for communicating the expert field of knowledge that lecturers can offer students, nor does it accurately convey the questions and considerations that students often express in a lecture amongst their classmates, potentially inspiring ideas and queries amongst their peers.

Lectures taking place online cannot yield as much of an inter-

active learning experience as they do in a classroom environment.

Needless to say, it’s very hard to concentrate when someone’s dog keeps barking in the background of your Zoom meeting, or when you don’t have a quiet space in your own home to call from.

Trinity encourages and champions its independent learning, but it’s too easy for students to slip through the cracks if they’re not communicating about how they’re handling and adjusting to these new circumstances and environments, especially in larger courses.

This is worsened if a lecturer isn’t responsive to any sort of correspondence: as an aside, touching base with your tutor is a good idea if you’re feeling overwhelmed.

Particularly overwhelming is the complete uncertainty of details and structure of exams themselves and the examination period: at the time of writing this article, many students are still left without knowing how or when their exams are going to take place, including my own. I find it quite ridiculous that students are still expected to continue studying considering the circumstances and limitations of which we can study. Even though there have been additional weeks added for the study period, it doesn’t excuse the poor effort made by the College to communicate any sort of detail about exams to departments

and then in turn, departments to its students.

Students are sharing in a collective feeling of surrealism at the moment that stems from trying to do any sort of work for college, and the lack of transparency surrounding exams in the current climate isn’t very grounding, reassuring or motivating. Considering the adjustments Trinity has made, is it honestly reasonable that the College should still be charging full fees for the entire academic year? Not only are students being denied the comprehensive education they signed up for, but their access to resources has been limited. Adequate access to the library, counselling services, sports facilities and pretty much anything else that comes along with the “college experience” have come to a grinding halt.

If students only have access to limited facilities and education, what exactly are we paying for?

This question has been left on the minds of students over the last couple of weeks, particularly those who experience financial hardship and non-EU students who fork out thousands upon thousands to attend Trinity. It’s not exactly fair that students should pay full fees for an education that wouldn’t exactly be called fit for purpose.

In recent weeks, universities have been warned by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that they “may be in breach of consumer law” if they fail to meet obligations to their students. Thus, it is possible that universities could be reprimanded for not upholding the promise and purpose of any educational institution: namely, providing a decent education to its students.

If Trinity was to partially refund students, which I think they should, we should remain vigilant as to how and when we would be refunded, considering that there is no current system in place for such refunds. Taking this into account, I think it’ll be highly unlikely that College will give refunds to students.

Considering that the safety of students is paramount, Trinity should really consider putting contingency plans in the event that something like this international pandemic recurs. Beyond a basic duty to keep its students safe, Trinity should be able to provide an adequate education from “Ireland’s leading university” that students have chosen to go to. Upholding this duty to provide adequate education should be at the core of what educational institutions nationwide are doing currently, if they hope to continue to justify charging students thousands to be taught online.

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The Covid-19 pandemic puts students with EDs at risk of relapse The habits of everyone throughout the pandemic can have a huge effect on those with eating disorders Ursula Dale Deputy Comment Editor

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ssues of stockpiling, the collection of food provisionally and how to manage meals going forward are normal enough conversations at this stage of the pandemic Covid-19. Students returning home to be with family are talking about how and when to go to the shops and what the pragmatic food-based choices are. This, coupled with a suspension of almost all normal means of entertainment and socialisation, makes for an environment where personal unrest isn’t more than likely, but inevitable. What needs to be considered is, as with all times of crisis, how those who are already mentally vulnerable are put at risk to a disproportionate extent.

Social media, in what is an admirable effort to bolster mental health during a time of almost exclusively virtual socialisation, is now abound with free tips on maintaining productivity and general well-being during lockdown.

The conversation on general health has become inextricable with one concerning physical fitness, as the majority of formally active people have now been forced into a sedentary lifestyle.

Unfortunately, this push for increased personal development and change during our communal ‘respite’ will have a necessary impact on people of all ages who suffer, or have suffered from, eating disorders, BDD or other self-image related conditions.

The unison of well-meaning advice with other friendly ‘tips’ on ‘maintaining your body’ or ‘getting a smaller waist during quarantine’ is unfortunately inescapable. Despite my not following any exercise-related accounts on social media, the algorithms of platforms like Tik Tok have still suggested tips to me concerning weight loss or other forms of physical activity during the lockdown. After seeing content like this, usual coping mechanisms for avoiding negative circular thoughts or a trigger of

past behaviours are interaction with regular stimuli, maintaining your standard routine by socialising and/or working. Without the intervening process of college and the mental productivity and distraction it offers, un-stimulated young people are at a far higher risk of reverting to destructive and unhealthy behaviours. As a means of filling this ‘extra’ time, as is expected, engagement with others online through social media will increase, promoting more extensive personal reflection and consciousness of image during a period of already potentially damaging isolation.

During quarantine many students will naturally be led to believe they have more ‘free time’, which not only internalises pressure for those trying to grapple with an unfamiliar routine, but also promotes a belief that increased productivity is the only viable solution. This unhealthy mindset, prompted by the misleading idea that you are more ‘free’ to achieve things - when we are actually more restricted than ever - contributes to the exact mentality which can incite a potential relapse. My times being home, without mental stimulation and a standardised routine, have always been the worst when it comes to me feeling out of control of my eating disorder. Under the influence of a lockdown climate of ‘stay fit’ culture and the need to self-regulate my time, all put my, and so many others, mental health

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Those who are already mentally vulnerable are put at risk to a disproportionate extent

in a far more precarious position than if we were simply continuing college.

The advice on social media, while well intentioned, uses language - often unfiltered and without warning - which can be incredibly triggering and dangerous for any person with food or body issues. In the case of this article, even, the language used by those with a wider platform needs to be careful and treated with absolute authority it holds because - as I have experienced in the past - one video or one poorly-handled byline can be the difference between sustained stability or a harmful recurrence for someone struggling with their mental health.

For those attempting to navigate a meal plan - even the loose structure of something like mechanical eating - such a drastic change in routine, resources or even the type of food which is now available, can have an incredibly deep impact on personal wellbeing and undo the progress of months steadily building towards a goal. The lack of fresh fruit and vegetables, which I have experienced first hand on trips to the supermarket, could be potentially very worrying for someone who has recently entered into recovery, or is trying to adhere to a particular set of meals. It is important to recognise that, in conjunction with this change in routine, how the wider changes in society’s routine and the availability of food has can become such a specifically harmful factor for some. A culture of stockpiling, of bulk buying particular foods or of restricting what can and can’t be eaten is happening right now, and the potential damage is very real.

The student counselling service has made efforts to continually accomodate the needs of students by offering phone calls to students in lieu of in-person sessions in an effort which, though necessary, should be commended due to the swiftness of their response.

They can be reached on +353 1 896 1407 or at student-counselling@tcd.ie. These wide-reaching changes to general lifestyle will undoubtedly affect everybody you know in some way, but there is a sense of solidarity to be found in a pandemic. However, the impact on the most vulnerable individuals - who you may or may not know - needs to be considered in the way we act and communicate with each other as we operate communally. If we consider this, hopefully we will come out of Covid-19 all the better for it.

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The coronavirus pande exposed the pitfalls of This health crisis has laid bare the necessity of recalibrating politics outside of the interests of profit and the Stock Market Grace Gageby Staff Writer

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he outbreak of Covid-19 is of course natural but its spread and impact is undoubtedly political, exposing the failure of the capitalist market to protect public well-being.

The pandemic has exposed the need for tenant’s rights, universal healthcare, and to recalibrate politics outside of the interests of profit and the Stock Market. Not only has the need for these measures been laid bare, but the very possibility of their implementation has been illustrated.

In Ireland, the government’s response has demonstrated that measures previously deemed ‘utopic’ or unfeasible are entirely possible when there is a political will for them. Rents have been frozen, and evictions banned for 90 days. In 2018, Solidarity- People Before Profit introduced a bill

to ban evictions, which was supported by the majority of the Dáil.

However, the bill was blocked with a money message (a form of official approval from the government on spending) in October of the same year.

In 2019, Eoghan Murphy deemed a rent freeze bill from Sinn Féin ‘unconstitutional,’ saying it would damage supply of housing, when the reality is that Fine Gael has an ideological opposition to solving the housing crisis. However, these new housing measures should go further. Nothing has been said about what will happen to tenants at the end of the 90 days, or what will happen to eviction notices already issued. Nor has there been any measures put in place about penalties for landlords who flout these laws.

As well as this, those living in hubs and hotels cannot practice social distancing. Nor can people in Direct Provision, who face overcrowding, and must queue in a canteen for meals each day.

These conditions aren’t natural disasters, but a result of policies which have been pursued, or not pursued by successive governments. Therefore, the pandemic should not be used to whitewash Fine Gael. Leo Varadkar and Simon Harris’ public speeches haven’t indicated strong leadership, but their primary virtues at this time are that they aren’t Boris Johnson or Donald Trump.

Healthcare workers today are putting their lives on the line to care for the sick and are being lauded as heroes by the government. Despite this, two years ago

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emic has capitalism Harris claimed he wished to introduce penalties for nurses who went on strike for better working conditions. Last year, paramedics were forced to go on strike for the right to choose a union of their choice, which the HSE and the government opposed.

Tumultuous capitalist expansion means viruses contracted by human contact spread extremely quickly. Measures necessary to slow the spread of Covid-19 mean that businesses have suspended operations, and countless workers are out of jobs. In countries where Left parties and fighting labour movements have built robust welfare states that check some of capitalism’s worst faults, this will be bad, but not as ruinous.

However, in Ireland, numerous businesses have fired staff during the pandemic. For example, the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel fired all workers, while the establishment raked in €20 million last year in revenue alone. This hotel is owned

by LRC/Amaris Group, which bought 600 buy-to-let homes across the country from a US private equity fund.

We are currently witnessing how society quickly grinds to a halt without cleaners and supermarket staff. Interestingly we don’t notice the absence of advertising executives or CEOs; it is clear the gross pay of jobs doesn’t reflect their societal importance. Capitalist ideology dictates that the profits capitalists make are a reward for exceptional intelligence, innovation or skill. However, here we see the only thing they have is the money to purchase the intelligence and skill of others.

Profiteering has seen non-essential businesses like Burger King remain open. If fast food workers are deemed essential to the point of jeopardising the health of themselves and others during a global pandemic, why are they only earning minimum wage if wages reflect society’s need based on supply and demand?

When Donald Trump was asked “do the well-connected go to the front of the line?” during an interview about non-symptomatic athletes being tested for Covid-19 while ordinary people waited in line, he replied in the negative but continued: “But perhaps that’s the story of life.” Trump is not a man renowned for his ability to speak particularly astutely on his feet, yet this answer unwittingly captures the logic of a for-profit healthcare system.

Capitalism is a system in which Prince Charles can be tested for displaying mild symptoms of the virus, while healthcare workers on the frontlines cannot. It is a system in which a vaccine for coronavirus (of which Covid-19 is one strain) was developed years ago, but not pursued by pharmaceuticals due to lack of profitability.

Capitalism means Cuba and Vietnam sending doctors to Italy, while America needed Italy to send over testing kits. It means tone-deaf (in every sense of the word) renditions of Imagine from exorbitantly wealthy celebrities who croon about the virtues of ‘no possessions’ to an audience feeling the sharp end of the crisis. Britney Spears’ recent Instagram story telling fans she would pay for their groceries if they were struggling during the pandemic starkly demonstrates the ludicrous nature of a system in which the Princess of Pop must step in and fill the role the state has left vacant, in the wealthiest nation on earth.

Nothing reveals the calculating ruthlessness of capitalism more stark than an editorial launched in the Wall Street Journal mere weeks ago, debating whether potentially saving millions of lives from the virus is worth the damage it would do to investment portfolios. The editorial discussed whether or not to reverse some of the measures taken to slow the spread of the virus, in order to minimize profit losses, saying “no society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of its overall economic health.” The editorial also proposed a rowing back on social distancing in the workplace.

This disregards both human life, and the fact that America could easily afford to freeze rents and give short-term income to all. Evidently even a short-term economy built on need, not profit accumulation, is beyond the realms of possibility for some in the upper echelons of the American Stock Exchange.

Karl Marx famously compared capital to the leeching bloodlust of the vampire, and given the systemic pitfalls the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed, it remains as apt as ever.

Student nurses deserve to be paid Chloe Mant Contributing Writer

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he current pandemic situation has brought us all to a standstill.

It is at times like this that we truly realise the value of our frontline staff - the various nurses, doctors and other healthcare workers who are going out to face this everyday. Imagine for a second that you’re in this position, imagine how worried you’d be, going into work everyday, afraid that you’d fall ill. Now imagine that you’re not even being paid for this work.

Historically, there has always been a discourse around student healthcare staff and lack of pay.

In the case of student nurses, they are put on placement, where the vast majority of their work consists of the same duties of that of a healthcare assistant, except they are not paid as they are encouraged that “this is part of a learning process”. While it may be true that they are not qualified nurses yet, after every nursing student has completed their first year of their degree they are eligible to apply to work as a healthcare assistant, and many do. Why is the expectation there that students should do the exact same work under an ethos of learning, for no benefit other than experience?

On the 26th of March, Minister Simon Harris announced that student nurses would be paid for their work, and students were sent a link through which they could sign up for the HSE, and be placed in areas relative to their location to avoid travelling long distances, which facilitates

students who may have had to move home. Internship students have had their pay raised to match that of a healthcare assistant, and it seems like a relatively good solution to the nursing students’ problems.

If you were to ask any person, the majority of them are in favour of paying student nurses. All one has to do is simply look at the tirade of comments left on articles discussing the issue before pay for student nurses was secured. There was outrage. People were in shock that the government would even consider sending unpaid students out. It would be exploitative.

Even though this issue didn’t start with the pandemic, it seems that it was the public outcry directed toward the government that kickstarted the movement for student nurses to be paid. With this outbreak, there has been a cultural shift in terms of how we view our healthcare staff as a whole. People have come to realise how non-expendable our healthcare staff are, and it would only be expected that after the pandemic eases, there will be greater calls for pay rises. It has been a long road for student nurses to get compensation outside of their internship, and now that it’s finally here it begs the question: what’s going to happen when this is all over?

Healthcare staff are under immense pressure at the moment. It’s only fair that we do all we can to relieve that pressure. The question of why it took a global pandemic to turn the government’s attention to the HSE is a discourse that is best not to dwell on right now. It has shown that while there was an ability to compensate students, it just took a global crisis for it to happen. In a few months down

the line, when this is hopefully all over, what is going to happen?

Will the government deem that the risk that student healthcare staff face outside of a pandemic is not high enough? Will the public outcry that propelled the government into action resort back to the nonchalant “It’s what you signed up for” attitude that seemed to exist just a few months ago?

With all the other economic changes that this situation has brought, it would only seem fair that some sort of compensation for student nursing staff remains.

It’s great that the student nurses are being paid. It’s bad that it took a horrible situation for it to happen. If we go back to a reality where student nurses aren’t being paid for doing a day’s work, there will be huge disillusionment in the nursing community. If student nurses are not paid for doing what they would be doing given “normal” circumstances, we must ask, is that work somehow of less value than the work that was carried out during the pandemic? Is there a certain threshold of need that the government requires before they consider compensating their student healthcare staff ? One would hope not.

Only time will tell. Optimistically, there will be a shift in the way we value our student nurses.

This movement may pose its own problems, as student nurses aren’t the only student healthcare staff that have suffered under this exploitative system. Perhaps it is time to re-examine the way we utilise and support our student healthcare staff. It has been a long fight for the student healthcare population, and that fight is far from over.

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What they said “Today, three things FG and FF told us were impossible were achieved: a single-tier health service, rent freezes and the first signs of income support - it has taken global tragedy for people to see the true value of a society that puts people first.”

Holly Cairns TD, Social Democrats

Trinity’s safety net policy is not enough

Sam Cox

Crossword Editor

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he talk of future employers devaluing grades awarded during the Covid-19 crisis has felt surreal. It’s that sensation when you’re listening to someone speak your second language, and you know your interpretation must be at fault because there’s no way they’re saying what you’re hearing. You think you know the individual words, but the way they’re being put together doesn’t make any sense.

Collectively and individually, people are in pain. Aggravating, prolonging and pushing this further should be avoided if at all possible. We are being told it’s not possible - that the framework can’t accommodate this safety net. If it can’t, then the framework itself needs to change - not the students who occupy it.

I haven’t been able to approach my essays. The material doesn’t make sense any more. Lecturers have done their best, and are sympathetic. They’re not the problem - I am. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but I feel disconnected from it. Talk of the statistical analysis of intelligence, or the psychology of group processes doesn’t cohere right now.

When the college shut down, I moved my books and things to my girlfriend’s house where she

was alone. She had, and has, ongoing physical and mental health difficulties. For anyone who has dealt with severe depression or other similar issues, you’ll know that the two often blend until they can’t be distinguished. When your mind won’t let your body out of bed, and you can’t will yourself to swallow your meal, that particular divide loses its meaning.

She’s kind, and wonderful and the bravest spirit I know, but she had no one to help her. She was cut off from her support and care. Her psychiatrist was only interacting over the phone. Her grandmother, who she usually lives with, was in hospital for other tests, and would be gone indefinitely. So, me and her settled in, and waited with worry.

Two days later she had a sore throat and her body ached. I could hear her voice rasping and her cough was dry. She was swabbed tested, and we were told a text would come through with the results. We waited. She had been all over town in the days prior, and she knew the possibility of a Covid-positive result was very real .

In her garden, I tried to work.

We had a group project due.The report was to be submitted online, with a presentation given virtually to support it. She came out to me, deeply upset. Things were worse than ever. The world felt like it was falling apart. She didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. I stifled my reaction, not

wanting to make her feel worse than she already did. We made lunch, and hoped things would get better.

They didn’t. Her grandmother was to be released from hospital, and would have to come back to the house. We couldn’t be there.

There were no “right” options, only ones that had fewer degrees of badness. My own home had my stepdad - a 68-year-old man with underlying health problems. My mother insisted it would be fine, she would take precautions and act as a go-between and isolate if necessary. I knew if she caught it, she would transmit it to my stepdad before any cough came. She knew it too. She wanted me home so she could be the parent, and help when she was helpless.

I took part in the presentation for the project. I could hear my girlfriend upset in the background as I did. After, we had a few hours to pack and clean and organise.

Dettol anti-bacterial wipes felt pointless in a house of soft surfaces. Once at home and upstairs, I howled crying into my girlfriend’s arm at the fact we were back here.

If circumstance decided it, if we slipped up, if we weren’t careful, the man I had grown up with could start to cough and detorriate and the headlines that had bombarded us for weeks would become very, very real.

After that night, I felt resigned.

I was at once angry, in disbelief, and afraid, while simultaneously getting emails in my inbox telling me that the newest lecture had been uploaded. My therapist had offered to continue over Zoom.

With my girlfriend in the next room, I was being told by the college that they cared about my wellbeing, while hearing from friends who were fleeing back to their homes, often just before the border would close. Doors were being shut, and staying shut - there was a disconnect from everything and everyone that couldn’t be bridged.

It’s that disconnect, in the context of this absurd and frightening time, that hurts the most. Phrases that made sense before feel surreal. Discussing neurobehavioural interventions and their efficacy has no attachment to my world or the room I’m in. I want to try, but I know I’m not the same student I was five months ago, and I need the college and the provost to acknowledge that. After 14 days, the text came through with a negative result returning some sense of relief. The pressure hasn’t lifted yet, however, or the hurt and worry healed.

I want to try and put effort in, and it to be acknowledged both as the student I was five months ago, and now am - compromised.

So many of us are compromised.

As carers, and as patients, and as a society. I don’t want to defer until the end of summer and have it over my head, not knowing what that will be or if it will end.

Deferring assumes we’ll be back to normality and we will be healed and things as they were.

We don’t know how much better things will be in four months time. We can’t keep pretending the framework can accommodate this abnormality so easily. A safety net would let me be the student I am now in an extraordinary circumstance. Now, I am being told if I can heal and adjust in four months time, I can try again then instead. Alternatively, a Board of Examiners would adjust grades “in the spirit of the approach that no student should be disadvantaged”.

It’s hard to glean comfort from this promise. That’s not what a safety net is. That’s not what a safety net would mean to students like me. A safety net would mean acknowledging and accommodating that now, and then allowing the time and space to recover from a collective trauma without exams hanging over our heads.

“We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here. And isn’t it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama?”

Kayleigh McEnany, Donald Trump’s fourth press secretary “We are fighting a bit of a battle, even a war. It is a war against a silent and dangerous enemy. And it is not one we can win with armed forces, it is actually one that we can win with communities.”

Paul Reid, CEO of the HSE “We know, for better and for worse, that things will not quickly return to the way they were before this pandemic.”

Provost Patrick Prendergast “I have heard stories of people who have asked their employers to lay them off because they’d be better off on the €350 payment than maybe working 20 hours a week for €11… I would just say to anyone who’s thinking that, we are all in this together, and nobody in any walk of life should seek to be better off, or seek to make a profit out of this crisis.”

Acting Taoiseach Leo Varadkar

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Trinity should not have a monopoly on its tours Trinity tours should be used to benefit students and TCDSU Maia Mathieu

Contributing Writeer

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ollowing a recent report in the Sunday Times, the College community is now aware that the contract to provide guided tours of Trinity College was awarded to Authenticity Tours, the company run by Assistant Junior Dean, Joseph O’Gorman, without ever issuing an invitation to tender being put out. According to the report, when Tom Molloy, Director of Trinity’s Public Affairs and Communications, was asked about this possible nepotism, his response was to dodge the question and cite the current Covid-19 outbreak.

Given recent policy prohibiting

unauthorised tours, due to ‘wear and tear on facilities’, this is a multimillion euro monopoly on the fourth most popular tourist attraction in Ireland. Indeed, the report notes that this contract has enabled Mr. O’Gorman (who recently ran for the Seanad in Trinity) and his partner Andrew Nangle to pay themselves at least €1.3m between 2015 and 2018.

When approached to comment on this, both Trinity College and O’Gorman declined to speak about “commercially sensitive information.” If you’re surprised by any of this, you’ve probably not been paying attention. In 2017, when the TCD branch of Aramark Off Our Campus sought information about the College’s connection with the company who has ties to Direct Provision and the US prison system, activists had to file a Freedom of Information Request to get any details at all.

Tourism in Trinity is an internally contentious issue as any of us who have had trouble muscling through Front Gate to get to class on a sunny day will tell you. If tourist money wasn’t

such a motivator for the College administration, the Take Back Trinity occupations of the Book of Kells wouldn’t have been such useful leverage in negotiations a few years ago. I’m not solely writing this to clutch my pearls, but rather to propose a possibly radical alternative to allowing a senior member of the College community to enrich himself on the non-student hoards that descend upon campus during the nice weather. What I’m suggesting is that the contract, once College has availed of “an exemption allowing it to extend the concession with Authenticity Tours until 2021 without a tender”, should be bid on by and awarded to the Student Union.

Prior to November 2019, TCDSU was in deficit for four years. Penny-pinching methods, such as shortening the term of the Ents Officer - one of the revenue generating Sabbatical Officers of the union - and a lowering of spending on campaigns and overall, have contributed to the first surplus in a long time.

However, with Trinity Ball cancelled and other events off

the table until the pandemic is over, it remains to be seen if that surplus is sustainable. Financial independence of the student union as a capitated body of the College is essential for operation, and another revenue stream would assist greatly.

If TCDSU were to take over from Authenticity Tours, it would allow for the union to provide jobs for students, as the current provider does, but in a more cooperative model. Rather than the currently somewhatadversarial relationship between students and tourists, if TCDSU operated the tours, it would mean that weaving through crowds on your way to an exam would actually benefit the student body in tangible ways. It would go a long way towards sweetening the relationship between students, who always seem to come last with this profit-driven, often-

“

Imagine an influx of that much money going towards the collective good of Trinity students

amoral administration, and the public they are always so keen to court.

Imagine that €1.3m that was pocketed by the Assistant Junior Dean going, instead, towards helping Trinity students through union lobbying, welfare supports or defraying costs. Even before the current pandemic put a crimp in everyone’s ability to earn money, there have been many Trinity students struggling to get by financially. Even before we were all cooped up at home like it’s that week between Christmas and New Year’s that always feels like it lasts six months, there have been many of us who have been struggling with mental health and stressrelated issues.

Imagine TCDSU having an influx of that kind of money to put towards supporting union members. When Repeal The Eighth came around, the Union’s budget suffered a major deficit to be able to contribute our voices to the national conversation - the only way students are allowed to officially contribute to political issues is through the SU. After all, having money to invest in lobbying for issues of vital importance to students is as crucial for a strong SU as any of the internal matters they deal with. Imagine an influx of that much money going towards the collective good of Trinity students, instead of enriching two individuals. Imagine it helping redefine the working and financial relationships between the College and TCDSU. This could be an extraordinary way forward for the College community as a whole.

Editorial: There’s no shame in struggling For many, this is a period of extraordinary difficulty, stress, and uncertainty

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his past month has been disorienting, shocking and upsetting for just about everybody on the planet. After four weeks of social isolation and national lockdown even the most seasoned introverts among us are starting to go stir-crazy, and some are facing far bigger stresses than just boredom. For many, this is a period of extraordinary difficulty, stress, and uncertainty.

Some have been thrust back into toxic family environments, separated from the social safety nets of friends, and some have no family environment to fall back on whatsoever. Some have been evicted from their accommodation, stranded across

borders, separated from loved ones. Some are working on the frontline, constantly worried about getting sick or infecting loved ones, and some of us might have lost our jobs completely and are sitting at home feeling helpless. Every one of these struggles is valid and difficult, but just remember that this period of dread, anxiety and hopeless uncertainty won’t last forever.

In the face of all this, our academic lives can seem trivial, but students aren’t spared the strain that’s being placed on the whole world’s shoulders at the moment. Anyone in a difficult home environment, financial situation or with mental health difficulties are likely struggling more than ever with their studies.

While some departments in College may be doing their best to help, plenty of students are left at a disadvantage coming into unclear and terrifying exams, and that stress is weighing on them immensely.

Some Erasmus and foreign exchange students were forced to cut their time abroad short and

now face an uncertain academic future, and final year students have been robbed of their last weeks in College that would have otherwise been savoured with friends. Online dissertation submissions, graduations via webcam and a final lecture delivered over Zoom aren’t quite the emotional end many envisaged, and it’s okay to mourn the experiences we may have missed out on.

More than anything though, spending time alone in isolation and reading about the sorrows of the world can bring about guilt: guilt that you’re at home doing nothing, unable to help; guilt that you’re unproductive and unable to function at as high a level as before; guilt that the days are passing and blending into one another. It doesn’t feel right, fair or normal, but this is far from a normal time. It’s okay to feel helpless, it’s okay to feel “lazy”, and it’s okay to feel anxious. Those of us with a history of mental health struggles are likely finding it tougher than ever, and even those with no prior difficulties must be

feeling a strain.

Take the time you need to breathe. Be productive if you want to be, but if you don’t have the energy, whatever you can’t bring yourself to do will probably still be there when the world starts spinning again. Exams and assignments can be terrifying at a time like this, and while we may not yet have gotten full assurance from College for those struggling to cope, we cannot allow our studies to push us too far, when the global situation has left so many people vulnerable already. Counselling services are still available over the phone, and while it may not be sufficient for those in an unstable environment, there are always people willing to help.

Take care of your friends and family to whatever degree is safe, and most of all, take care of yourself. Nobody will look down on you in months time for not taking this time to write a novel or master a new language- some of us just want to make it to the other side in one piece and feel normal again. Take a break

from the news and from social media if you need to, nobody will begrudge you for going off the grid for a while. Reach out to your friends if you feel up for it, but if you can’t ensure everyone else’s wellbeing, you can at least do your best to ensure your own.

Every one of us is sacrificing something to bring us safely to the other side of this crisis, and big or small, every sacrifice will take its toll on our physical and mental wellbeing. More than anything, we want everyone to get through this, and rest assured, we will get through this. For that though, sometimes the most important thing to do is to stay home, stay safe, look after ourselves and look out for one another.

TCD Student Counselling Service is taking phone appointments at studentcounselling@tcd.ie Samaritans can be reached at 116 123 for mental health services over the phone

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Violent murders make beautiful mummies Enya O’ConnellHussey 26

The living fossil in Library Square Julia Carroll 27

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Projects have been brought to a complete standstill

How research labs are functioning in quarantine As the world grinds to a halt, does science go on?

Clara O’Carroll

Contributing Writer

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he world is currently in the midst of a global pandemic gripped by the virus COVID-19.

Nearly one month ago, caretaker Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced that schools, colleges, and public offices were to close. In doing so, Trinity closed its door for the foreseeable future.

Along with its doors, all labs were closed; only research labs actively researching Covid-19 or con-

tributing to testing remain open.

Over the past few weeks, further nationwide restrictions regarding people’s movements have been imposed through a so-called quarantine. Other terms used are Lockdown, Social distancing, and Social Isolation. Coronavirus. Our new social lingo is starting to sound like it’s been extracted straight out of a medical epidemiological textbook.

In summary, the government is asking us to stay at home.

As researchers globally lock up their labs, we might wonder: can science carry on? How are scientists coping with the effects of coronavirus on their lives and work?

A great deal of work and research can be done from home (technology huh?) but what happens if the work involves long-term experiments that depend on consistent testing over weeks and months?

This can not be done remotely.

For some scientists, like Professor of Synthetic Chemistry Stephen Connon, this means putting their lab experiments on the shelf.

Parts of the scientific process can only be physically carried out in the laboratory meaning “all data gathering has stopped”, but this doesn’t mean that hands-on research is the be-all and end-all.

“Technology makes a lot possible that wasn’t before” allowing direct communication with students and colleagues, says Connon. Between writing research papers, preparing teaching material and organising examinations, Connon’s research group are trying to make the most of a situation that is “far from ideal”.

For PhD student and organic chemist Dylan Lynch, his labbased research has stopped completely. The quarantine experience has meant ‘projects have been brought to a complete standstill’ for Lynch and his colleagues. The

current situation is a far cry from the usual day in the life of a thirdyear research student whose “usual workday is 9 hours in a lab-coat”; this has definitely “thrown a spanner in the works”. The new quarantine workday involves “marking reports, analysing the data collected off the College servers just before the shutdown, and working on paper drafts to publish later this year”.

It could be worse, however.

For final year PhD students expected to submit a thesis in September, the uncertain situation surrounding COVID-19 brings into question whether they will have laboratory work finished in this time-frame. However, it seems likely that College will offer extensions in those cases.

Dr. Colm Cunningham from the School of Biochemistry and Immunology halted all ongoing experiments and effectively shut down his lab a month ago. Cun-

ningham is already making preparations for the uncertain future as he estimates this team will “be out of the lab for at least 3 months”; and believes that “most labs in TCD are experiencing the same disruptions and projecting for the same sort of hiatus”. A day at the home office for Cunningham involves working on papers and a review that he has been “meaning to write for months”. In addition to this, he is involved in the reconfiguration of “teaching and exams as the coordinator of both a large Senior Freshman module and Senior Sophister Neuroscience class” along with home-schooling his two children.

Dr. Robert Baker, whose research group focuses on Inorganic and Materials Chemistry is currently “writing up experimental results at home” while the labs are on lockdown. It is evident however that this shutdown does not just affect research here at Trinity.

Baker’s group had “experiments scheduled in large scale user facilities in the UK”. This type of research involves major planning for up to six to eight months and large-scale funding, “about three-quarters of a million euro”.

With facilities around the UK closed and with no indication of when restrictions will be lifted, there is a considerable amount of uncertainty regarding when ex-

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Being a modern-day scientist does have its perks, as a lot more work can be carried out online.

For Professor Jane Farrar, from the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, working under quarantining involves a never-ending list of tasks including “reviewing grants for various international organisations, going on video conference calls to discuss the same, generating lectures with slides and audio for undergraduate classes, participating in staff meetings via Zoom to plan around what needs to done for our undergraduate students, talking to my research team members via email and phone, drafting papers, dealing with grant reports, setting assignments and grading various other assignments, considering if we may be able to help with the Covid-19 in any way, finalising grant applications and additionally dealing with the many other work issues that arise each day”.

Farrar’s research group is primarily concerned with the Molecular Genetics of Retinopathies and as such deciphers the causes of genetic eye diseases and designs innovative therapies. In the past weeks, some select team members were continuing to undertake really essential hands-on lab work to finish “important experiments on-going for, at times, up to twelve months”. These experiments were of high priority for continuation but may now be completely halted. Thankfully, a lot of work involving data analysis can be carried out from home.

Although it is disappointing for many to have to close up labs on campus and abandon research projects, even if only temporarily, the safety of researchers and laboratory staff is paramount. Research teams are finding creative ways to continue their work and collaborate with their colleagues.

The overall message from Trinity’s scientists is that, although it is difficult to juggle online teaching, research, and family during this uncertain time, the scientific process must go on. Amongst the large volume of negative news that is constantly being devoured by us all, Trinity researchers bring a message of positivity and hope.

While most of society has ground to a halt, science can and will go on.

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It is disappointing to have to abandon research projects

The balance that zoos strive to achieve Andrew Mooney discusses his recent paper highlighting how zoos can achieve higher attendance rates and what it means for conservation Róisín Winters

Contributing Writer

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hen you think of the zoo what type of animal first comes to mind?

Do you think of the colossal elephants, elegant giraffes, ferocious wolves? Or perhaps the croaking frogs, crawling insects and stone cold reptiles who strangely pose a striking resemblance to your lecturer. For most, the attraction is the larger animals, yet many smaller animals are in greater need of the zoos’ conservation efforts. Not to mention that larger animals need far more space to meet standard of care.

So why do zoos keep the animals they do and can this be optimised?

A recent paper published by Andrew Mooney, a PhD student at Trinity, in the Nature Communi-

cations journal investigates this.

Mooney entered into this field of research as a result of his intrigue with human interactions with the natural world and wildlife. Realising that most people experience exotic wildlife by visiting zoos, Mooney decided that “understanding this relationship and the role zoos play in wildlife conservation and education are vital if we are going to save species from extinction”. He and his team took a global dataset of over 450 zoos and developed a model of how zoo composition and socio-economic factors directly and indirectly influence visitor attendance and in situ project activity.

The data collected by Mooney highlighted an increase in attendance at zoos that contained a higher proportion of diverse large animals. However, the model also strongly supported a tradeoff between the number of animals and body mass. In short, large animals result in higher attendance rates, but as they consume more resources there is less capacity for other species.

The aim of this study is to find ways to maximise the contribution of these institutions to conservation efforts, through attracting increased funding and providing sufficient resources to house a proportion of endangered species.

Zoos currently house one in seven endangered species, protecting them from extinction. Thirty-eight species that are extinct in the wild are only still conserved due to their care in zoos. The recent bushfires in Australia show just how

important zoos can be in terms of veterinary experience and rehabilitation facilities. Clearly the impact that these institutions have on conservation efforts is significant.

While there is no doubt that the contribution of zoos to conservation is impressive, what is the impact of someone visiting the zoo?

Income generated by attendance is used to fund the upkeep of all animals kept at the zoo including those that are endangered. Additionally zoos invest more than $350 million annually to conservation in the wild. However, the many animals that are protected by zoos are smaller, less charismatic species such as frogs. These species do not attract the general public to the same extent and so funding suffers. The larger animals which do attract larger crowds cost more to keep and as a result drain funding. So how can zoos use this information to improve their

compositional strategies? Mooney draws attention to the fact that “ultimately there is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to zoos”. They have to find the sweet spot, maximising the different ways to attract visitors while funnelling appropriate levels of funding and resources into conservation of endangered species.

Mooney’s states: “We find that in general zoos with lots of animals (particularly mammal species), large animals, and which are dissimilar to other zoos achieve higher visitor numbers and contribute to more conservation projects in the wild. However, this is not easy to achieve, as if you have lots of animals, then they can’t all be big.” Mooney explains: “We end up with a trade-off between maximising all the different ways to attract visitors and in the end each zoo must make an informed decision while considering its own institution-specific goals. The presence of multiple different routes does mean that it is possible to keep visitor numbers high even if you can’t have lots of large animals.”

Zoos globally will be able to use the findings of this paper to optimise attendance and maximise their contribution towards the biodiversity crisis. However, the responsibility is not entirely in their hands. As members of the public we all can contribute by donating to conservation charities and attending your local zoo. With this combined effort more animals can be spared from extinction and we can support the development of a wonderful diverse world. So what better way to celebrate the end of quarantine when it comes, than heading back to nature and supporting your local zoo?

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As they consume more resources there is less capacity for other species

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Violent murders make beautiful mummies The legacy of Ireland’s bog bodies Enya O’Connell-Hussey Staff Writer

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ime erodes all things, shifting our surroundings day by day, inch by inch until the outside world is unrecognisable to parents, or grandparents, or ancestors long gone. It is a perversion of the natural order to resist decay, and preserve memory. Yet a select few, lying under the cool sphagnum moss of Ireland’s quiet peat lands, defy this rule and carry a lost, violent world into our present.

The bog bodies are a collection of over a hundred men, women and children unearthed over the years from Ireland’s bogs. Most were accidental additions—drowning victims, or informal burials. Archaeologists, however, soon began to uncover a pattern in some

of these bodies, of excessive injury and trauma. Beyond their remarkable preservation and archaeological appeal, these bodies have become Ireland’s oldest, and yet unsolved murder cases.

All across Northern Europe, some 2500 years ago in what we call the ‘Iron Age’, tortured people were thrown into the cool, wet abyss of bogs—but not to rot. Whether intentional or not, these bodies would not decay in their graves. Bogs are filled with waterlogged sphagnum moss.

No drainage means no oxygen, so plants decay at such slow rates that dead matter accumulates and forms layers which ultimately compress to form the peat we use as fuel. If a body is buried deep enough in this cold, oxygen-free morass, microbes can’t break it down. Sphagnum moss also produces tannic acid, which turned the skin of these people into leather, preserving even the meals within their stomachs.

When thousands of years later, they saw skies again, unearthed by unsuspecting peat workers and

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Unlike other European bog bodies, the sacrificed bodies in Ireland’s bogs were all men, apparently well nourished and cushioned in life

farmers, they were thought to be recent homicides. Those who unearthed the bodies would be forgiven for thinking they were recent deaths — Tollund Man, a man from the Netherlands, lived 300 years before Julius Caesar, and still has the stubble on his chin, and the deep furrows on his forehead.

Each bog body conceals the story of a life, far in excess of what it takes to kill a person. Old Croghan Man, who stood at six foot six inches, was killed with a stab wound to the chest, then dismembered and beheaded. Clonycavan man was disembowelled and his head was smashed in.

Both these men’s nipples were also severed. The similarities in death, the strange clothes and accessories they wore, the lacing of hazel and leather throughout their bodies, all point to ritual sacrifice. At the time these people were killed, there was no writing system, nor any real permanent recordings of how they lived. Their lives, their hair, the way they dressed and their painful ends would have been lost to the world, were it not

for the strange nature of the bog.

So who were these victims, and who were there murderers?

These answers are pieced together a combination of guesswork, forensics, and a patchwork of techniques in archaeological science.

Isabella Mulhall, the co-ordinator of the National Museum of Ireland’s Bog Body Research Project, notes that radiocarbon dating is one of the first steps in analysing a body, to determine just how old it is. From there, every element of the remains are looked at, at which point she says “the information we have gleaned from the remains is combined, to give a very comprehensive overall view of the life and death of these individuals”. Everything, from the leather armbands, to the ropes they were tied with, to the hair gel and hairstyles they wore, are clues to their existence.

“Stomach contents can yield remarkable insights into the foods they consumed prior to their death. Also, paleodietary analysis of hair, nails etc. can provide a lot of clues regarding the diet of the individual”. Mass spectrometry of hair samples tell us about diet through the amount of elements like iron or calcium, giving clues on their levels of nourishment.

Unlike other European bog bodies, who were often disabled people, the sacrificed bodies in Ireland’s bogs were all men, apparently well nourished and cushioned in life.

Old Croghan man’s last meal was cereals and buttermilk, but prior to that his diet was rich in meat. Their hands are free of calluses, indicat-

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The bodies remind us this is the same earth that was toiled by men in cloaks and gold tolunds

ing a lifetime free of manual labour.

Sequencing of DNA is perhaps the most difficult task— the acid that can tan the skin so perfectly comes at the cost of destroying its DNA, however methods are being refined to increase the likelihoodgive a better chance of finding usable samples.

With X-rays, and spectrometry, the astute eyes of forensic experts and all the advances in science, we can estimate when they died, and how, and where they travelled, but not why they did any of these things.

Iron Age Ireland is somewhat of a mystery. It spans about a millennia, and we know lands were split up into kingdoms, with some trading with other realms in the Roman Empire and the rest of Europe. They didn’t leave much behind, other than some ornate ornaments, and the bodies.

There’s many explanations for why they were killed, but even the bog bodies of Denmark might have different reasons than the bodies of Ireland. What we do know is that this brutal sacrifice has a long history. Cashel Man, only unearthed in 2011, was sac-

rificed after his back was sliced open and his arm broken in self-defence. But unlike the other victims, he is over four thousand years old—alive at a time when Ireland still had brown bears and before the Celts came to be.when bears still roamed in Irelandmammoths were still roaming around Siberia, before Ireland became Celtic. It seems incredible that a 2000 year-long practice was never recorded by the many generations it encompassed. One explanation even more rousing is that these callously tossed bodies were kings.

Given their unworked hands, and burials near the boundaries of Iron Age kingdoms, Eamonn Kelly, an archaeologist for the National Museum of Ireland, believesproposed they may have beenwere failed kings.

As the consort between men and the goddess of the land, it was a king’s duty to remain in her favour. If his people suffered poor harvests and hardships, he had failed, and must appease her. A goddess who could encompass land and fertility, but also death and war, would only be satisfied with excessive violence. Nipples were symbols of kingship, recorded in art dating as far back as the Bronze Age. Hence slicing them off from disgraced men of power.

The whys of the bog bodies will probably never be fully answered. Peat bogs are being left to rest, after a long history of milling and digging. Celtic Ireland is clouded by colourful imagery of mystical maidens and proud warriors. But these people from millennia ago aren’t stories, they’re as real as the curled hand of Old Croghan Man, so fresh it looks warm enough to grasp. When we walk over fields of cows or a muddy bog, history can seem like an old wives’ tale. The bodies remind us this is the same earth that was toiled by men in cloaks and gold tolunds, the same earth of violence. This land is theirs, and the people before them, but also ours and the people who come after us.

Gingko tree, the living fossil in Library Square Examining the history behind the highly evolved tree lineage of the Ginkgo biloba and why it is an excellent choice for Library Square Julia Carroll

Contributing Writer

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ver 200 million years ago during the late Triassic period, an order of tree, the Ginkgoales, was widespread throughout Asia, America and Europe. This was during the early onset of dinosaurs. Our world did not resemble the globe we take for granted today. Instead, all landmasses were interconnected to form one large supercontinent, which we now know as Pangea.

Fast-forward to present day, and there exists only one lonely survivor of the order of the Ginkgoales, the newly planted Ginkgo biloba now sitting proudly in Library Square in Trinity. Luckily for us, the extinct dinosaurs are no longer present to feed on this tree.

I spoke to Professor Jenny McElwain, a palaeobotanist, and Chair of the Department of Botany here at Trinity, to discuss the significance of this highly evolved tree lineage. Many texts have described the G. biloba as being relatively unchanged over the past 200 million years. McElwain assures me that, while the Ginkgo tree is indeed a ‘living fossil’, the over-simplification of the tree being described as ‘unchanged’ couldn’t be further from the truth.

“The fossils, the leaf has a really distinctive bilobed leaf, kind of a double-lobed leaf, and the fossils look so similar to modern leaves that we just presume that it’s genetically unchanged. But that’s incorrect… Ginkgo once had many species, but today we have only a single living species, in a single genus, in a single family”. While the family has shrunk in diversity, Ginkgo has managed to survive. As like other evolving species, it has undergone extensive genetic change.

Another Trinity alumnus, Jessie Dolliver, a graduate of Botany, did her undergraduate thesis on Ginkgoales. By studying the fossil record, she observed that Ginkgoales have what is known as “Whole Genome Duplications”.

This

means the tree’s genome was doubled at some point in time. This is quite a unique feature for many species but is not uncommon amongst angiosperms. Amazingly, the tree’s capacity to double its genome enabled it to survive two mass extinction events, the Triassic-Jurassic boundary and the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary.

While other groups such as the dinosaurs were virtually wiped out, the possession of an extra set of each gene gave the Ginkgos the ability to adapt and to adjust to extreme environments.

The G. biloba is a dioecious plant, so male and female reproductive organs are present on separate individuals. A curious, but somewhat controversial theory put forward by Peter Crane in his book, ‘Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot’, partially credits the Ginkgo’s survival to its “sex-switching” branches. In times of stress, a female tree could possibly sprout male branches. By doing so, an entire tree can be fertilised, and multiple seeds can be produced.

McElwain says we must consider that many botanical experiments have taken place over the years,

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The fruit from the female tree would have been attractive to dinosaurs

particularly during the Victorian times. Often, a male branch would be grafted onto a female branch to study its effects. So, Crane’s theory remains controversial as it is unknown whether this ‘sex-switching branches’ phenomenon is naturally-occurring or not.

G. biloba is an ideal species for Library Square, as it is extremely resilient. Following the bombing in 1945 at Hiroshima, Japan, six Ginkgos were seen to be budding a mere 1.3 km from the hypocentre of the bombing. They have come to be known as the ‘Bearer of Hope’, within this region which is an uplifting message to convey during these times. Additionally, these trees are extremely long-lived, and can live up to 5,000 years old. They are ideal trees for urban areas, as they are resistant to urban pollution. While our temperate Irish climate is regarded as suboptimal for this species, future climate change will see it flourish in Ireland.

A group of German palaeontologists attempted to uncover the food dinosaurs would have eaten before the existence of flowering plants. They studied a collection of fossil species, including Ginkgo and examined their nutritional quality. They found that Ginkgo had a decent nutritional quality and may have been browsed on by passing dinosaurs. In addition, the fleshy, smelly fruit from the female tree would have been attractive to dinosaurs. Today, Ginkgo fruit and seeds are primarily used in cooking and traditional medicine.

The uncertainty surrounding Ireland’s future climate means that it is difficult to predict which plant species will become commonplace in our landscape in the years to come. On a positive note, it is clear that the resilient nature of this tree will ensure that they persevere as they have done for millions of years and will continue to be enjoyed by visitors to Trinity for the years ahead.

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What happens now?

Jonathon Boylan

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Covid-19 and funding for women in sport Cameron Hill

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Keeping active while social distancing From walking to Wii Fit, there are plenty of ways to stay active whilst staying safe Suzanne Flynn Deputy Life Editor

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n the current circumstances, keeping active is perhaps more important than ever, as we are challenged to really think outside of the box in regard to maintaining our current fitness levels and stopping ourselves from diving head first into a box of biscuits on the sofa. Although social distancing confines us to our homes and staying two metres away from those outside, physical activity can still be achieved, and in fact should be achieved now more than ever.

Here are some of the ways you can keep active within the bounds of social distancing Walking Rudimentary as it may be, walking is the most simple and oftentimes one of the most effective ways to keep active. You can choose to walk alone (and maybe listen to some Green Day while you’re at it) or with a household member, but remember to maintain the 2 metre or 6.5 foot distance from anyone else you encounter. Although this

may sound impossible, it is totally doable and still allows you to talk to the person you’re walking with.

Walking is a good way to explore your locality in a different way than you usually would, taking the time to look around rather than moving for the sake of reaching a destination. Podcasts can be helpful accompaniments. For me, when I’m listening to true crime in particular, I find I won’t want to stop walking until the episode has finished.

(Free) online classes YouTube is a fantastic companion for many things at the moment, but contrary to popular belief it contains much more than compilations of cat videos; specifically, a variety of online sports classes. Zumba routines, yoga routines (Yoga with Adrienne’s thirty day challenge is particularly good), home workout routines are just some of the things you can check out and roping in a sibling or someone at home to do them with you will prove to be more fun. Alexis Ren’s 10 minute ab workout can be moulded into your own challenge to do it for 30 days, which I have done before and can attest to its benefits.

For something more advanced, Cyberobics, which was initially a subscription based service has now become free and offers hundreds of workouts from line dancing to kettlebells and is well worth a try. Fitbit Premium is also offering a 90 day free trial which includes workout videos and stress management techniques.

Video games With the popularity of Animal

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Walking is a good way to explore your locality in a different way than you usually would Crossing: New Horizons at the moment, why not have a bit of a Nintendo throwback moment in another way and break out Wii Fit and Just Dance? If you were lucky enough to own a Nintendo Wii or fitness games on your Xbox, now is the time to break them out and get moving. Games such as Wii Fit and Just Dance, although not always the most proven ways to stay active, are fun alternatives that can be done with other household members. Wii Fit allows you to set fitness goals and includes activities such as Yoga, balancing activities, muscle training and aerobic exercises. Particularly fun dance routines on Just Dance that will give you a proper workout include: Jai Ho (You are my Destiny), Rasputin and Jump in the Line.

Xbox also offers Zumba and

Fitness games, giving you a good opportunity to start a new hobby.

Running Feel like running away from the coronavirus? Why not start by running around your local area first? Grabbing a running buddy from home or one of your friends as long as you maintain distance could be a new hobby during this time. There are many running apps that can help you get started, such as Couch to 5k (what better time to start this than now) and Zombies Run. The latter is very handy to use with headphones and really will get you to run far away from fictional impending doom zombies. The app is a story based workout app that begins in a base camp during a zombie apocalypse and sees you running to survive and collect supplies. Although this is a concept a bit close to home at the moment, it is an interesting way to keep active and will motivate you to finish your run.

Tennis If you have some rackets and tennis balls lying around

somewhere, you could head to a local tennis court and play with a partner. As the game actually requires you to maintain social distance, tennis is a good one for keeping active and safe at the same time. Table tennis if you have access to a board is also a good way to keep fit and work on hand eye coordination in particular.

While a number of clubs may have shut their doors, given the new government restrictions, even heading to a local park and setting up your own tennis variant could be a fun alternative to pounding the pavement.

Times may be difficult and having the motivation to keep fit and active can be challenging when we are told to stay inside as much as we possibly can. Recruiting fellow members of your household to exercise with you can be helpful to keep you on track and can also help with mental health which ought to be minded too in this time. Without pushing yourself too hard, small ways to stay active can help you to stay sane in this unprecedented time.

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From Belvo to Belfield: Hugh O’Sullivan’s Leinster journey Conor Doyle Sports Editor

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ver the last few years, Leinster have enjoyed a sustained period of success, dominating domestic and European rugby. They have only lost two games in the Heineken Champions Cup since 2017/18 and in the Guinness Pro14, they are currently on a 13 game winning streak after winning back to back titles. One of the key factors to this continued success is Leinster’s faith in their younger players. Particularly when some of their senior players are on international duty, the club is more than happy to start some of their Academy players and give them a shot at laying claim to a starting shirt. One of these rising stars is Trinity’s Hugh O’Sullivan, who spoke to Trinity News about his journey through the rugby ranks.

Born and raised in Kiltale, Co. Meath, O’Sullivan started throwing the oval ball around in the early days of his childhood but he was involved in more than just rugby. “I played in Navan when I was younger, about six or seven. But before I went to Belvedere (College), the rugby, the hurling, the GAA - it was all very intermixed. At that young age, I probably would have preferred the hurling and football more, rugby wasn’t that big on the radar back then.” Despite an early passion for the Gaelic games, O’Sullivan really invested in rugby when he started in Belvedere College.

Schools rugby was something he had seen a lot of growing up and the prospect excited him.

“My eldest brother went to Castleknock (College) and my other brother went to Belvo, and they both played schools rugby so I remember going to those games when I was young as well and thinking that it was a really cool atmosphere.”

Belvedere has always put a substantial emphasis on rugby and O’Sullivan’s natural abilities made him a real asset to the school teams. As early as second year, O’Sullivan was playing in the Leinster Schools Junior Cup, before reaching the Senior Cup level in fourth year. By the time he left school, O’Sullivan had reached five finals, winning back to back Senior Cups in his last two years. Despite some heartbreaking losses, O’Sullivan looks back on his time in Belvedere fondly.

“The atmosphere I experienced in the school was really special and I really enjoyed it. There’s something really special about

playing with lads that you’re spending most of your day with.”

His success at school level earned O’Sullivan a place in the Leinster Academy. Schools rugby is intense in its own right but the Academy was a new experience for O’Sullivan. “It was challenging, obviously. I went into the Academy straight after school so I spent a lot of that summer in the sub-academy in Donnybrook.”

Having played a combination of full-back and scrum-half during his time at Belvedere, there was a question of where he was going to play but O’Sullivan was confident from early on how that would play out. “I sorta knew that I was going

to play scrum-half, I probably wouldn’t have the physical size to play full-back. But even at school this was something I knew.”

Luckily, O’Sullivan finds that his experience playing at No.15 hasn’t been wasted by any stretch of the imagination. “The way things are going nowadays, a lot of teams are playing in a way that their No.9 ends up defending a lot in the back field, back with the full-back a lot of the time,” he explained, “so to be honest, that experience of playing No.15 a lot back in school has actually helped me a lot because I’m pretty comfortable back there.”

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Leinster train in Belfield beside UCD and so a lot of players choose to study there for ease of access.

However, O’Sullivan wanted to pave his own path

Leinster train in Belfield beside University College Dublin (UCD) and so a lot of the players in the squad choose to study in UCD for ease of access. However, O’Sullivan wanted to pave his own path. “When it came to my CAO and stuff, I was adamant that my rugby wouldn’t affect what I put down. I didn’t want to put down a course in UCD that I didn’t want to do just because it would be easy to train there. PPES was my first choice and I got exactly what I needed, so I scraped in.” Now in third year, O’Sullivan admits that it can be difficult to balance academic work with training but Trinity has always been very understanding of his schedule.

“Both my tutors have been very good to me, whenever I need anything like extensions or getting excused absences from tutorials.

I’ve had no bad experiences with lecturers, they’ve been more than happy to help.”

O’Sullivan was in the Leinster set up for a year before he made his debut for the senior side. It was a home game against the Newport Gwent Dragons in 2018 and he has fond memories of it.

“I remember it was a lovely sunny day and a late afternoon game,” he recounts, describing the RDS spectators as an “unbelievable” crowd. “It’s unique because it’s quite closed in so going on for the first time was great. It helped that I think we were beating the Dragons quite well at the stage I came on.” (They were; Leinster were 45-10 up when O’Sullivan entered the fray.) Joining a side with so many internationals can be quite daunting. On his debut, the starting team included such stalwarts as Jonathon Sexton, Rob Kearney and Garry Ringrose

but O’Sullivan was never in any doubt that he’d be able to hold his own. “If you’re able to survive in the sessions, which I knew I could at that stage, you feel pretty confident in your ability to go out onto the pitch.”

O’Sullivan’s debut season went from great to spectacular when he was named on the bench for the Heineken Champions Cup final against Saracens.

Some would say that it was a meteoric progression for the young scrum-half and, in some ways, O’Sullivan agrees. “Things definitely developed quicker than I thought they would. But, in sport, that’s often the way things happen.” Even though the result didn’t go their way, with Saracens running out 20-10 winners on the day, O’Sullivan still remembers it as a personal highlight. “The atmosphere, walking into St James’ Park, it was one of the craziest things I’d ever seen. The bus was engulfed by Leisnter supporters and flags everywhere - I’d never experienced anything like it in my life.”

O’Sullivan has since made 20 appearances for Leinster and at the start of the 2019/20 season, he was given a senior contract, marking the end of his tenure as an Academy player. As a scrumhalf, O’Sullivan is not short of company for the coveted jerseys.

Luke McGrath and Jamison Gibson-Park are traditionally Leinster’s first choices but Patrick Patterson and DUFC’s Rowan Osborne have also put their hand up for consideration. Despite the increased competition, O’Sullivan doesn’t feel that there’s any animosity. “It wouldn’t really work day to day if you were in this big antagonistic relationship,” he explains. “When I went in there first, I saw that Jamison Gibson-Park and Luke McGrath were very good mates. Everyone has different strengths and you become quite a tight-knit unit. We kick every Wednesday so there’s a collective desire to want to get better.”

Sports have been cancelled or suspended currently due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While the situation is certainly an odd one for fans, O’Sullivans assures me that it’s no less strange for players.

“All the collective training has been postponed for the moment.

We don’t really know when we’re going to get back playing yet but it’s sort of insignificant in the current climate.” Despite the lack of certainty about when things might return to some semblance of normality, O’Sullivan’s approach to the crisis is exceptionally mature. “The way you have to look at it is to control things that are in your control.

You can really turn it into a good opportunity to work on certain things as well. A game of rugby at this time, when the potential for loss of life is so high, it puts things in perspective.” There might not be any news on when we’ll start seeing live rugby on our screens again, but when it returns, it will be exciting to see what heights O’Sullivan’s career will reach.

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The challenge posed by Covid-19 to funding for women in sport Sport’s cure for the coronavirus cannot come at the expense of female athletes Cameron Hill Staff Writer

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lite rugby referee and former Ireland international Joy Neville spoke last week on The Dugout podcast about the challenging circumstances the women’s team faced during her playing days. In particular, she recalls their journey to France for a Six Nations in 2011. After a gruelling 17-hour journey on an overnight train, they then faced Les Bleues in Pau the next day, only losing by a point. Since their creation in 1991, the women’s team had always been the poor younger sibling to the far more established male equivalent. This latest injustice proved to be the final straw.

The IRFU were roundly slated for allowing a national representative side to go through a saga which would make Odysseus feel that he got off relatively easy, and from that point on, significantly more funding and resources were made available to the women’s team. “From that moment on, a lot was addressed,” Neville explains. “The biggest improvement was in data analysis; we had a data analyst come into us to monitor each player’s activity.

Instead of simply tapping a player on the shoulder and telling them where they went wrong, you could now hold them responsible for each of their actions during a game.” Bringing in these resources goes a long way towards establishing legitimacy for female athletes, ensuring that this wave of success for women in sport is not a fad, but the new norm.

This is a common narrative for female players and teams across the world, but especially in Ireland. First, a team achieves unprecedented success in spite of their lack of resources. Afterwards, the challenges and financial struggles of the team are exposed, either through the media or from team members themselves, mounting huge pressure on governing bodies to resolve their unacceptable conditions. Finally, the powers that be provide the funding and resources to ensure that a team can remain competitive for the foreseeable future. The Ireland women’s rugby,

hockey and football teams are good examples of this arc; each have put in immense work to get to where they are now, and will do their utmost to prevent all the good work from being undone.

However, Covid-19, and the widespread disruption that it has caused to sport, poses a huge threat to these hard-fought gains.

Already, the pandemic has had huge implications for the industry, but the real indication of where sport goes from here will only become clear once the uncertainty has subsided. Therefore, there is a danger that in rebuilding sport for this brave new world that men’s teams will be prioritised and female athletes will be neglected.

One area of concern for clubs and organisations is funding. The lack of actual sport taking place has resulted in the stream of matchday revenues completely drying up, a vital stream of income for all clubs.

This means no gate receipts, no sponsorship revenue and no TV money (for the clubs who collect the eggs of that particular golden goose).

Just as there is significantly less money coming in, the money going out of clubs has increased dramatically. On top of the usual regular expenses (wages, utilities, maintenance), creditors will naturally increase pressure on clubs to repay debts, while the threat of TV companies such as Sky and BT cancelling their deals

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The IRFU were roundly slated for allowing a national representative side to go through a saga which would make Odysseus feel that he got off relatively easy

with the league and demanding reimbursements hangs overhead like the Sword of Damocles.

As demonstrated by Bury FC and Bolton Wanderers earlier this season, many clubs and organisations are already on the brink of collapse and this latest crisis could be enough to persuade the man upstairs to shut off the power. Just last week, USA Rugby filed for bankruptcy as a result of the blanket shutdown of sport; all signs suggest that they are merely the first of many sporting bodies who will not survive the storm.

Kathleen McNamee of ESPN believes the smaller clubs will be worst affected by the disruption and instability: “The unfortunate reality we’re facing is that a lot of big clubs and well-supported athletes will come out of this fine but we will lose a lot of good people from sport because they can’t deal with the financial toll of not being able to compete for sponsorship deals, competition money or benefit from TV rights.

I think the effects will be felt at a much lower level and then ripple up through the top tiers.”

One can assume that there will be a similar situation for clubs in Trinity. Dublin University Central Athletic Committee (DUCAC) Chair, Jemil Saidi, has stressed that the body have, “tried to keep things operating as normal [as possible]” and are still settling on how best to assist struggling clubs. “The closure of the Pavilion Bar during this time has an effect on DUCAC as it is not in the position to make contributions to DUCAC as it normally would,” Saidi has said to Trinity News. He also added that “at the time of college closure, the majority, if not all, of the clubs hadn’t fully claimed their budget allocations so they should all be in a financially stable position.

Should they require more funding,

the possible solution would be for them to make an application and a decision would be made based on their application and taking this situation into consideration.”

He also confirmed that DUCAC hope to meet members from all clubs to discuss a contingency plan in the wake of the pandemic, but admitted that a date for this proposed meeting has yet to be finalised.

Trinity, like all other universities and schools in Ireland, closed from 6pm on March 12. By that stage, some clubs, such as Dublin University Football Club and Dublin University Association Football Club, were approaching the end of their seasons, so funding and competition money may not be in jeopardy. Clubs in

other sports such as cricket and rowing, for whom the seasons were about to begin, are in far more dire straits. Miriam Kelly, captain of Dublin University Ladies Boat Club, explains that Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on their season: “All of our domestic regattas that would have been held in April have been cancelled, including the Irish University Championships.

Domestic regattas from May onwards have been suspended; however, Rowing Ireland are currently looking at the possibility of holding the Irish National Championships in September, as they are usually held in July. We were also hoping to go to Henley Women’s Regatta and Henley Royal Regatta but these have also been cancelled.”

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The real issue surrounds whether it is decided that women’s teams may fall into the ‘less important’ bracket

The lack of events will have consequences for the club’s funding. “I suppose it’ll affect things like how much money we get from the [Bank Of Ireland] grant next year because they won’t have results or events to base figures off [sic],” Kelly adds.

It is a situation that a lot of clubs will face, both in Trinity and the wider world. When it comes to ensuring the survival of clubs and organisations, McNamee is not confident that the emergency measures taken by higher powers will be enough: “Certain bodies have put money aside to help clubs but I can’t see it being enough in the long term... I think largely the pressure will be on leagues and individual clubs - possibly even fans - to keep their favourite clubs and athletes afloat.”

In order to keep from going under, clubs and organisations may be forced to introduce emergency measures. One can imagine that a club will redistribute their funding

and resources, with priority given to the more financially lucrative teams (e.g. a senior men’s team) at the expense of other teams which are perceived to be less important.

The real issue surrounds whether it is decided that women’s teams may fall into the ‘less important’ bracket. McNamee explains: “One of the dangers for me is people introducing ‘temporary measures’ to get funds back on track and suddenly it is a couple years down the line and we have lost the progress of the last few years.”

It is easy to see how this scenario may become a reality, even accidentally. All the efforts of both the players and the media to secure more resources and respect for female athletes would be completely in vain. Hellish 17hour train journeys, having to foot the bill for the right to represent your country, sharing tracksuits and changing in toilets; nobody wants to see a return to those dark days. If these cost-effective measures are to the detriment of women’s teams, the onus is on the media and the public to ensure that clubs and organisations are held responsible for their actions. I Given the uncertainty arising from these precarious times, it is entirely understandable that the media has resorted to discussing classic matches and all-time greatest teams - there is nothing like the warm, comforting blanket of nostalgia to offer a brief respite from fear. If anything, the reaction of journalists and fans alike has highlighted the importance of sport to the fabric of normal life.

Women’s teams, however, may not remember the past with any great affection. This is why once the storm blows over and sporting authorities begin to dig through the rubble and start rebuilding, female athletes cannot be left behind. Of course, extraordinary times will require some form of sacrifice and one will face tough decisions, but sporting bodies can no longer be permitted to rob Patricia to pay Paul.

Out of left field: DU Table tennis Captain Oran Donovan discusses tournaments, getting involved, and bringing something different to Trinity’s top table Jonathon Boylan Staff Writer

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here aren’t many children who run around their back gardens screaming the name of their favourite table tennis player having played a game of ping pong. (That said, the only ping pong they’ve ever played in their back garden is probably the song by Enrique Iglesias.)

Indeed, the sport is undoubtedly on the periphery in the outside world. However, it is clear from talking to captain Oran Donovan, that table tennis is an important staple in intervarsity life, with the paddle and balls bringing unrivalled social, and competitive opportunities.

Donovan himself has been “involved from the get-go” becoming a “member in the Fresher’s Week of first year”. As a third year now, he has been club captain for two years. If anyone knows Trinity Table Tennis, it is this man. “You could say our club is one of the smaller clubs in the college, averaging about 150 members or so a year.” This

small membership however, is no deterrent to high levels of activity. “We pride ourselves on being a club that’s active both competitively and socially. We compete in two college league events each year, in addition to one Intervarsity tournament. We’re also currently the only University team to participate in the Leinster Table Tennis League.”

It is clear from the off that life with Trinity Table Tennis is busy, but undoubtedly rewarding, with a little something for everyone.

However, one issue with taking part in so many competitions is that newcomers may feel a little intimidated. This is something Donovan has worked hard to counteract. “One of the main

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Table Tennis is just as much fun when you’re 10 pints deep as it is playing in a national competition

issues I’ve been trying to overcome is that club membership can be perceived as being reserved for the elite, which tends to intimidate prospective members.”

This couldn’t be further from the case. “When we do hold social tournaments in the Pav, like ‘Paddle at the Pav’, we draw many non-members, who quickly realise that we are very accessible to players of all levels.” Furthermore, Trinity Table Tennis “tends to be a popular choice for collaboration events with other clubs and societies.”

This makes the society an enticing prospect for potential professionals and college socialites alike. Donovan is keen to stress this, noting that “Table Tennis is just as much fun when you’re 10 pints deep as it is playing in a national competition. Just ask anyone who has had the privilege of doing both!” In fact, this group of ping pongers are so welcoming to new members, that their reach has extended beyond students.

“Having grafted to get a table up to the third floor of Botany Bay accommodation, many a maintenance worker has said that they’d love to stay and have a game with us. I think they find the novelty of such a large object in a student kitchen pretty amusing.”

While this is indicative of how welcoming the society is, it is also testament to the importance of sports clubs, small, medium or large, in Trinity as a whole, by virtue of their inherently positive impact on community spirit.

For those looking to get involved in this niche group of table-based Federers and Sharapovas in a post COVID-19 world, Donovan notes that training takes place twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays, with “external coaches for competitive players,” and “free play for all abilities simultaneously facilitated.”

In essence, “it’s a relatively inexpensive and straightforward sport to get involved in,” making it the perfect new hobby for anyone to take up during their college journey.

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Keeping active while social distancing Suzanne Flynn

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Out of left field: DU Table Tennis Jonathon Boylan

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Thankfully, there seems to be a silent acceptance that sport should be put on pause, even if it means declaring seasons null and void

What happens now?

The world of sport is left in limbo as Covid-19 sweeps the globe Jonathon Boylan Staff Writer

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his time of year is usually a joyful one for sports fans. We were promised, amongst other things, a Premier League run-in, Euro 2020, the conclusion of the Six Nations, the British Open, Royal Ascot, the Olympics, and a trilogy fight between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury. Alas, such events were not to be, for the foreseeable future at least.

The position sport finds itself in is unprecedented. That said, some sports have dealt with it more wisely than others. While boxing, horse racing and golf seem to be indefinitely on hold, and rightfully so, there appears to be certain

sports, most notably football and MMA, who are unwilling to accept their fate, and whose ignorance may well put their employees at risk.

For quadrennial events, such as Euro 2020 and the Olympics, postponement is not overly complicated. You simply push it back a year. For annual events however, the situation is more complex. Take for example the

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For annual events, however, the situation is more complex

English Premier League. While postponement was definitely the correct thing to do, it poses complicated questions. What happens if play cannot resume before next season is due to start? Is the season null and void?

Does anyone get relegated? Are Liverpool crowned champions? A myriad of problems arise. In any case, the situation is less than ideal.

The situation is so far beyond ideal in fact, that certain solutions seem to be unrivalled in their stupidity, by virtue of their desperation. One of the leading recommendations to solve the coronavirus dilemma for football is to play remaining games behind closed doors in a “special base camp” located somewhere in the Midlands. As alluded to by Wayne Rooney, such lunacy undeniably treats footballers like “guinea pigs,” placing TV contracts and private revenue above the welfare of players.

What is most frustrating about such ideas, is that they are put forward under the guise of a means of raising “global morale” during “unprecedented times.” Such a suggestion is farcical. Speaking as a passionate football fan, I can quite honestly say that watching

Manchester United crawl to a 1-0 defeat against Aston Villa in an empty stadium located somewhere in Middlesbrough will do nothing to boost my spirits. In fact, the idea of having to be subjected to such torture while concurrently under quarantine, is nothing short of frightening. Furthermore, the idea that sports should continue at all costs as soon as possible shows a blatant disregard for those involved in their organisation.

What if a player becomes infected in a hotel before a game and ends up giving the virus to an elderly kit man? The risks are far too great.

While calls to finish the season clearly lack perspective, clubs such as Liverpool are left in a precarious position. Once again as a United fan, this isn’t something that I lose too much sleep over but the idea that a team so far ahead at the top of the league will not be crowned champions as the result of a pandemic must be a bitter pill to swallow. It is also one that doesn’t seem to be imbued by fairness. For smaller clubs, such as those in the lower leagues, not finishing the season may be detrimental from a financial point of view. As with all businesses who are struggling at the moment, moratoriums

and government aid appear to be the answer. Thus, despite such concerns, public health should undoubtedly be prioritised over finance and sporting triumph.

Thankfully, there seems to be a silent acceptance that sport should be put on pause until the end of this pandemic, even if it means declaring seasons null and void.

That is, in all sports apart from MMA. Despite the sporting and indeed general world going into total lockdown, UFC President Dana White has ploughed on.

Postponing only three fights, White has proudly secured a private Island to stage UFC events for the “next couple of months.” White’s stance on the coronavirus has been notably laissez-faire, proudly proclaiming that “people need to feel some sort of normalness.”

He has also said “since when do Americans hide in their houses?

If the coronavirus doesn’t kill you, something else will!” It is hoped that this kind of blind arrogance does not find its way into other sports. As with football, the suggestion that White’s persistence is down to some kind of duty to bring “normalness” to the world is laughable.

Indeed, taking White and the Premier League as a case note, the coronavirus has exposed the ugliest side of sport as we know it. Due to the high levels of revenue on the line, some sporting organisations appear willing to put lives at risk in order to proceed with a “business as usual at all times” fallacy. Such an attitude is harmful, and may well result in disaster.