Trinity News, volume 59, issue 4

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

www.trinitynews.ie

Interview with restaurateur Antonio Carluccio InDepth -p.10

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>> As food prices rise again, Adam Kelly argues that we can no longer turn back the tide of technology in agriculture.

Science -p.20

Illustration: Éna Brennan

Bookshop faces cuts to hours and budget, as staff raise fears of closure Meeting with Students’ Union representatives places emphasis on co-operative’s need to “justify its existence" Prospect raised of using the space for office or welfare meeting-room

T Ruairí Casey Deputy News Editor

he Students’ Union bookshop faces closure unless it can justify its existence, according to the Students’ Union president, Rory Dunne, who held a meeting with staff on Tuesday 23rd October.

The meeting, attended by two members of the co-operative that operates the bookshop, as well as Mr Dunne and the Students’ Union’s finance and services officer, Jack Leahy, established that the bookshop faced closure unless certain financial problems were remedied.

According to bookshop co-op member Fergus McKeown, Mr Dunne said that the room occupied by the bookshop on the first floor of House Six could be put to “better use” as an office or meeting-room for student welfare.

Trinity News understands that Mr Dunne’s actions are widely unpopular among members of the bookshop co-op, following cuts to opening hours and the bookshop budget.

Speaking to Trinity News, Mr McKeown criticised Mr Dunne, referring to the commitment to fighting cuts which is mentioned in Mr Dunne’s profile on the union’s website. This profile states that the president’s

role includes “maintaining and improving union services”, and affirms the notion that the union aims to “ensure that college cutbacks don’t affect student services”.

Mr McKeown said that this was “clearly not the case” and called the cutback “needless”, since the bookshop remained profitable.

The bookshop co-op member added that the meeting followed a “substantial” reduction in the shop’s budget, stemming from the elimination of funds for the purchase of non-academic books.

Mr McKeown further rejected suggestion that the space could be better used as a welfare office on the grounds that the bookshop’s location is in a public thoroughfare and lacks privacy.

Two weeks ago, Trinity News reported that the opening hours had been reduced from 9am-5.30pm to 12pm3pm. At the time, Mr Dunne stated that changes were made to “guarantee that the bookshop remains both viable and sustainable”.

For comparison, the bookshop of the students' union of University College Dublin is open from 10am-6pm, over twice as long as the new hours in Trinity. The equivalent bookshop in University

Different pieces, but the same monopoly powers control the US political game

Comment -p.16

College Cork is open for fiveand-a-half hours.

Mr Dunne also said that “we want to continue to provide both a book buying and book selling facility to students.”

In correspondence with Trinity News on Saturday 27th October, Mr Dunne said that it was “disappointing” that co-op staff felt that the “entire meeting” was about closing the bookshop. He said that he “met with representatives of all SU services to discuss the development of strategic plans so that we can work towards guaranteeing [their] viability”.

Speaking on the possibility of the space currently occupied by the bookshop going to other Students’ Union uses in future, Dunne said: “We have an obligation to ensure that all of our resources are managed as effectively as possible on behalf of students.

“In TCD, space can be as crucial and scarce a resource as any. In this regard, we must ensure that our use of space is as efficient as possible when considering how best we serve our members.”

The Students’ Union president went on to say that the discussion, which lasted one hour, focused on “the challenges facing the bookshop

and the best way of overcoming these”.

The union informed the bookshop co-op that its hiring policies were no longer acceptable, as they did not accord with the 23rd mandate passed by the union’s Council in the 2011-12 academic year.

This new mandate stipulates: “Each vacancy in [the union’s] services is filled by a recruitment and interview panel of at least three people, namely the president, a president’s nominee and the service manager.”

The mandate, a revamp which will significantly alter the composition of Trinity’s co-ops, will also change the hiring policy at the Junior Common Room café in Goldsmith Hall.

A copy of the bookshop’s accounts obtained by Trinity News shows that the service cuts enforced by the Students’ Union come against a backdrop of steep decline in projected revenue for this academic year.

In the 2011-12 year, sales totalled ¤47,289, but ¤26,089 of this (55%) represented sales of laboratory coats and dissection kits. Sales of these items, which had subsidised book-buying by the bookshop and had buttressed its profit of ¤1,237 for 2012, were

Beauty in brutalism: Paul Koralek on the Arts Building and Berkeley Library

InDepth -p.6

“

Dunne said: ‘We have an obligation to ensure that all of our resources are managed as effectively as possible on behalf of students.’

transferred to the Students’ Union general shop in the Hamilton Building this year.

Predicted sales for the 2012-13 year are ¤14,100, a 70% decrease on last year’s figure. This year’s predicted wage bill will be 43% lower than last year’s, however, on account of reduced opening hours. There will be no reduction in the number of people working at the bookshop.

Even with reduced wage expenses, the bookshop is still expected to end the year in deficit. Account predictions place the deficit between ¤366 and ¤1,366. This would continue a trend of waning profitability for the bookshop.

Last year’s profits of ¤1,237 represented a decline of 57% from the figures for the 2010-11 year. Nevertheless, Mr Dunne commented: “We are working to ensure that [a deficit] does not happen.”

Mr Dunne also noted that transferring sales of lab coats and dissection kits, which had been “one of the biggest profit drivers in the bookshop […] will undoubtedly result in a significant fall in revenue.”

This, he said, would likely be coupled with a decrease in sales this year.

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Three wins on the trot for DUFC in Division 1B of the Ulster Bank League

Sport -p.22

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

2

News

“ “ “ “ Just because lads go for pints together, doesn’t mean they are up to no good.

What They Said

Dargan Crowley-Long Deputy Editor

When I am back from Ennis I want those Abercrombie models gone from outside my college because they are making me feel bad.

This thing of people actually adding hashtags to the end of their real-life spoken sentences needs to stop soon and permanently.

Samuel Riggs (@samwhatislife)

It’s inhuman to order at this hour.

It’s just inhuman.

Do you think I can fly over there?!

Pizza Man The response given when collecting production weekend pizza at 2am. #angrypizzaman

Donncha Ó ConmhuÍ (@DonnchaKnow)

EDITORIAL STAFF The panel and winners of DU Psychology Society’s “Dragon’s Den of Mental Health Week.”. L-R: John Buckley, SpunOut, Catherine Healy (winner), Owen Murphy (winner) Orla Barry of Mental Health Reform, Óisín Scollard, Turn2me.org, Ruth Baker, Headstrong, Caroline McGuigan, CEO of Suicide Or Survive.

Mental Health Week recap

M Ruairí Casey Deputy News Editor

ental Health Week, organised last week by the Students’ Union welfare officer, Aisling Ní Chonaire, continued the union’s policy of supporting and raising awareness of mental health issues in College. The campaign, which featured a packed schedule of events, worked in collaboration with a number of student societies and organisations such as DU Psychology Society, the Parlour and Student2Student (S2S).

From Monday to Thursday, informal discussion took place at an S2S event entitled Tea & Chats in the Parlour , and workshops were held for undergraduate and postgraduate students on various mental health issues such as stress and anxiety.

On Tuesday evening, the Psychology Society hosted its Dragons’ Den of Mental Health Week in the Robert Emmet theatre. The event, based on the television show, features a panel of five experts with backgrounds in mental health. It began with a discussion on issues surrounding the mental health of young people in Ireland before moving onto the competition.

Five projects to improve mental health in Trinity were pitched to the panel, to be judged on their “creativity and feasibility”. The prize money of €2,000, which would fund the winning project, was provided by Think Big, a mental

health initiative by O2 and Headstrong.

The winners on the evening were Catherine Healy and Owen Murphy, whose project aspires to bring new housemates closer together: “We want to intervene before that window for easy bonding passes and encourage housemates to talk and get to know one another … Without those people to talk to, students bottle up their issues, which can often lead to much more serious mental health ramifications.”

They plan to provide packages with the ingredients and recipes to cook a three-course meal for five or six people. Included in the package would be a booklet containing more ideas for cheap group meals and a “What I’d tell my firstyear self” advice section.

The project is aimed at students in Trinity Hall who have moved away from home for the first time and who may be finding the transition difficult. It is planned that the project will be ready by orientation week in Halls.

Wednesday was S2S Day, as Trinity’s Student2Student service organised a number of events, including a “help a friend” workshop and a mental health themed movie screening at the Pav. During the evening, S2S held their “Speak your Mind” event in the Parlour. Hosted by the RTÉ presenter Claire Byrne, the event gathered a number

of cultural figures to engage with mental health issues “through performance, prose, music and all important discussion”.

The lineup featured Dublin poet, playwright and musician Stephen James Smith; writer and comedian John Moynes; singer-songwriter and Trinity student Morgan MacIntyre; and the director of See Change and Shine, John Saunders.

Thursday featured a number of workshops and a gig by the Dublin musical duo The Heathers in the Grand Social on Liffey Street.

Student2Student also raised awareness online through their “It’s alright not to feel ok” campaign on Facebook. The campaign encouraged people to change their Facebook profile pictures to be more unflattering: “On Wednesday October 24th, support the message that it’s alright to not always be at our best by changing your Facebook profile photo to one where you’re not looking the greatest.”

Welfare officer Ní Chonaire spoke to Trinity News about the week, which she regards as being one of the most important responsibilities of her position. “I wanted to make this week fun. I wanted people to get the message that mental health is something everyone has and has to maintain in order to function on a daily basis.

“For some, conscious work has to go into its maintenance. For others it's part of the daily routine, to have a vent to a friend, to play some music, to write.

“By putting it out there that there are so many ways to look after your own mental health, my aim continues to be for people to talk about it more and not to feel that the only time you need to find help is when you've found yourself in a really dark place.

“If we focus more on preventative measures, from early on, positive mental health can knowingly be something everyone can strive for.”

She said that “Mental Health Week 2012 embodied collaboration, from external mental health organisations to college support services, to a range of college-run societies.” Some of her highlights of the week include the success of the “It’s alright not to feel ok” campaign, the large amount of views of the MHW video and the acts of random kindness given out on Friday.

During Mental Health Week, the welfare office continued to promote its “5 a day for mental health” plan, which encourages students to “connect, be active, take notice, keep learning and give”.

More information on the ideas and issues behind Mental Health Week can be found on www.welfare.tcdsu.org.

Peace after Inaugural

I Catherine Healy Student Affairs Correspondent

n a week that saw the resignations of several members of committee, including the auditor, the annual Inaugural meeting of the College Historical Society took place last Wednesday in the Examination Hall.

The date had been brought forward in order to facilitate a paper by auditor John Engle, who will soon formally resign from his position following the passing of a no-confidence motion by the society’s committee.

Addressing the audience in a speech entitled “Pax Americana”, Mr Engle began by acknowledging the recent successes of the Hist, citing competitive debating victories and the securing of high-profile guests to come as examples of its continuing strength as one of the biggest societies on campus.

“We have surpassed all past records of external funding,” he added.

Mr Engle then went on to deliver the remainder of his speech on American foreign

policy in the 21st century. An American citizen, he pointed to the unparalleled power and positive influence wielded by the US since the fall of the Soviet Union.

“It worked to construct a global empire in its own image … The peaceful status quo is in many ways a result of dominant American leadership,” he said.

He acknowledged instances where it has abused its privilege but reiterated that that the US has “done more good than harm” in the post-World War II era and lauded its “export of liberal democracies” and establishment of organisations such as the IMF and the World Trade Organisation.

With the rise of China, however, Mr Engle spoke of ensuring a “comfortable retirement” for the waning superpower.

He argued that one way to do this was to continue working for worldwide peace and “help fledgling democracies instead of trying to impose

democracies on countries not yet ready for it”.

Mr Engle concluded that the US must avoid an attitude of exceptionalism and “take full advantage of its power while it still has it” in order to “leave its permanent imprint on the world order”.

Despite the overwhelming passing of a no-confidence vote by the Hist committee a week previously, the soonto-be ex-auditor received a standing ovation.

Following Mr Engle was Dr William Perry, the former US Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton. Mr Perry, who had worked to improve nuclear technology during much of the Cold War and held responsibility for weapon systems development during the Jimmy Carter administration, told the audience about his own changing views with regards to nuclear disarmament.

He spoke of having been summoned to brief President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, believing in

“

The peaceful status quo is in many ways a result of dominant American leadership, Engle said.

Editor

Rónán Burtanshaw

Deputy Editor

Dargan Crowley-Long

Art Director

Éna Brennan

Web Editor

Aoife O’Brien

Copy Editor

John Colhurst

Deputy Copy

Gabriel Beecham

News Editor

Ian Curran

Deputy News

Ruarí Casey

Student Affairs

Catherine Healy

InDepth Editor

Max Sullivan

Deputy InDepth

Saphora Smith

Comment Editor

Manus Lenihan

Deputy Comment

David Barker

Science Editor

Anthea Lacchia

Deputy Science

Stephen Keane

Sports Editor

Sarah Burns

Deputy Sports

James Hussey

Photography Editor

George Voronov

Deputy Photography

Henrietta Montague-Munson

Editor-at-Large

Elaine McCahill

Public Editor

Hannah Cogan Niamh Teeling

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its uncertain aftermath that “each day would be my last on this earth”.

During his time as an under-secretary in Carter’s administration, Mr Perry said he received a 3am phone call from an army commandant reporting 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles aimed at the US. Despite it turning out to be a false alarm, he spoke of the incident along with others as witnesses to the very real threat posed by the same nuclear technology he was working to develop at the time.

With the end of the Cold War, Mr Perry said he felt “a moral imperative to dismantle that nuclear legacy”.

He poignantly referred to a message passed on to him on to him from former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on taking office under Clinton, imploring him not to make the same mistakes he had made during the Vietnam War. It was in the course of that administration that Dr Perry, as Secretary of Defense, spearheaded key advances in nuclear disarmament, “assisting” countries like the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Be-

larus in the first reduction of nuclear proliferation since the start of the Cold War. “In all my time in office, I helped bring about the dismantlement of 8,000 nuclear weapons,” he said.

While acknowledging setbacks since that time, referring to North Korea and Iran as obvious threats, he lauded instances like the ratification of the New Start Treaty as evidence of the Obama administration’s commitment to nuclear disarmament.

The other guests speaking at the Inaugural were Tom Grant, chair of Republicans Abroad UK, Dr Jeffrey Weber, lecturer in international politics in Trinity, and the UCD Clinton Institute’s Dr John Thompson.

The event took place two days before the election of former committee member Ruth Hoey as treasurer of the society on Friday, a position left vacant following the resignation of Emma Tobin.

The election for the position of auditor is to take place this Friday, as well as an election for an ordinary member of council, after a fourth committee member resigned last week.

Tuesday 30th October 2012

3

InDepth

Trinity awards highest percentage of 2.1s in the country

Non-academic factors to be a part of pilot admissions scheme

Majority receive second-class honours.

Personal statements and performance relative to rest of class to be considered.

Catherine Healy Student Affairs Correspondent A new Irish Times survey of third-level grades has found that Trinity awards the largest proportion of 2.1 degrees of any university in the country.

The survey of graduates since 2005 found that an average of 56% of Trinity students graduated with an upper second-class honours degree in the past seven years, which is 9% above the national average for the period. Only one-fifth of its students graduated with 2.2 degrees.

Along with UCC, Trinity also awarded the highest proportion of first-class honours last year, with 18% of our most recent graduates achieving top marks, though DCU was found to have awarded the highest overall proportion over the seven-year period.

The proportion of firsts awarded by Trinity has been relatively steady in recent years, reaching a 20% peak in 2009 after an average of 16% in the three preceding years.

More significantly, however, the proportion of students achieving 2.1 degrees has exponentially risen over the past 20 years.

Despite having decreased from 61% in 2005, the percentage of Trinity students graduating with second-class honours degrees was still 11% higher than the national average of 47% last year.

In contrast, the University of Limerick (UL) has awarded 14% of its graduates firsts over the past seven years, the lowest proportion out of any university, while only 36% of UL graduates received a 2.1, an average 20% lower than that

of Trinity.

With the increasing importance of graduate grades for the jobs market, organisations like the Network for Irish Educational Standards have levelled charges of grade inflation against the third-level sector, particularly in universities’ increasing proportion of graduates emerging with 2.1 degrees.

Between 1994 and 2004, a survey by the organisation found a 125% increase in the awarding of second-class honours degrees to Trinity students, rising from 23.3% to 52.3% in ten years. It also revealed a doubling of Trinity students achieving first-class honours grades in that same period.

A survey conducted by Trinity's University Council on the range of grades awarded in the following three years similarly found further increases in the proportion of 2.1 degree results achieved, as well as a significant decrease in the awarding of pass grades.

The survey conducted by the college concluded in its 2010 report that, “The 2.1 grade has become the majority grade and it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between holders of qualifications.”

According to a survey published earlier this year by Gradireland.com, such increases have heightened the expectations of graduate employers, 60% of whom expected applicants to have achieved 2.1. degrees or higher.

This represents a significant increase from 2010, when just 38% of employers sought second-class honours grades.

T Ian Curran News Editor

he University Council, Trinity’s highest academic committee, has passed a proposed admissions scheme which will see factors such as personal statements and references being considered alongside the exam results of prospective Trinity students.

Ratified at a meeting of the Council on Tuesday 23rd October, the pilot programme is now set to commence in 2014, when around 40 undergraduate places will be allocated through the alternative admissions scheme.

Students who opt in to this alternative scheme through the CAO system in that year will therefore be eligible to be considered for a certain number of ringfenced course places regardless of their Leaving Certificate results.

Along with these results and additional personal assessments, prospective students competing through the pilot scheme will also be assessed by their “Relative Performance Rank” (RPR), or academic performance relative to other students in their school.

Reforming Trinity’s admissions criteria was a key election promise of the current provost, Patrick Prendergast, and much of the groundwork for the ratified scheme was completed by the senior lecturer, Patrick Geoghegan, who held discussions on the matter with various deans of admissions from the Unit-

ed States over the summer months.

In an exclusive interview with Trinity News in September, Geoghegan said he was confident of the scheme’s ambition, stating, “This could be something that, when the history of education in Ireland or even the history of the 21st century in Ireland [is written], people could point to this and say, 'That was the year that the points race stopped.'”

Geoghegan told Trinity News that the pilot programme – and its RPR consideration in particular – would lead to a greater diversity in Trinity students, given the continuing domination of feepaying schools in the college’s top feeder schools.

While programmes such as Hear (the Higher Education Access Route) and Dare (the Disability Access Route to Education) have offered courses at reduced points to disabled students and students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds since 2009, the college’s current alternative admissions figures are still a long way off the Higher Education Authority’s overall national target of 30% nonstandard entries by 2013.

The pilot scheme, which is to run for two years as a feasibility study, will be expanded if deemed successful as an alternative model to the points system. It is also hoped that the scheme will be anonymous, with all supplementary

Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

Ruth Hoey, newly elected treasurer of the Hist.

Election season comes early at Hist GUBU histrionics in the GMB

Deputy News Editor Ruth Hoey has been elected as treasurer of the College Historical Society, following an election last Friday. Polling continued until 4pm, at which point ballots were counted according to a single-transferrable-vote system.

Other candidates included Jamie Donnelly and Cian McCann. Donnelly was eliminated after the first count, leaving the final count to be contested by McCann and Hoey, who won by a margin of 28-21.

She takes up the position left empty after the resignation of Emma Tobin during the recent scandal surrounding an unapproved loan made to ex-auditor John Engle.

Engle officially resigned on Thursday, following the Hist Inaugural at which he delivered an address entitled “Pax Americana: US Foreign Policy in the 21st Century”. The resignation came as a result of a vote of no-confidence from the Hist committee, passed a day after a report found that Engle had misused society fi-

nances.

In his resignation letter, circulated among Hist committee members, he referenced a quotation from Shakespeare’s Othello: “I have done the state some service, and they know't.

No more of that.”

It is unclear whether Engle also intended to reference former taoiseach Charles Haughey, who used the same quotation in his last Dáil address.

Nominations for the position of auditor open after private business on 11am Monday 29th and close at 7:15pm Wednesday at the regular private business meeting. The election will take place on Friday 2nd November.

Trinity News understands that the position is unlikely to be contested and that Hannah McCarthy will probably be appointed as the new auditor of the Hist. McCarthy told Trinity News that she would nominate herself for the position after private business on Monday.

Nominations will also be open for the position of MC due to the resignation of Kirsten Nelson-de Burca.

Nominations and voting for the position will take place alongside those for auditor.

p.12

The senior lecturer, Patrick Geoghegan, provided much of the groundwork for the new admissions scheme which has been passed by the University Council information being provided through the CAO. Geoghegan also told Trinity News that there will be an official launch of the programme in late November or early December. The launch will coincide with a release

of the collected information on the scheme to the general public. The senior lecturer said that Trinity would be working with teachers’ unions and guidance councillors to help students understand the process before 2014.

Micheál Martin tells Trinity Europa Society: full bondholder repayment “ridiculous” The Fianna Fáil leader set out what he sees as the problems and solutions in the present European project.

Ruairí Casey

News

Rónán Burtenshaw speaks with the children's minister, Frances Fitzgerald

The continued full repayment of unsecured, unguaranteed bondholders by the Irish state is “ridiculous” and Ireland’s debt needs to be restructured, the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin told a crowd in Trinity last Wednesday. But, speaking to the DU Europa Society, he said that despite “serious failures” in how it has dealt with the economic crisis, Europe remains “central to Ireland’s foreign agenda”.

The speech coincided with two sets of positive poll results for his party in a week, indicating that Fianna Fáil is now the second most popular party in the state again after falling to third in last year’s general election.

Despite this, the leader of the opposition said that he was “not thinking about” the position of taoiseach and preferred to concentrate on rebuilding a party that suffered the largest defeat in Irish electoral history in the early days of his stewardship.t Speaking on the question of a debt deal for Ireland, he said that the crisis was caused by structural flaws in the European Union that had allowed “cheap wads of cash to flow to the periphery”. But Mr Martin did reaffirm the “moral responsibility” to repay our debts. This moral argument could also be applied to the size of the debt burden placed on Ireland, he said, and this case needed to be made more strongly.

He continued by criticising the current government for

missing an “historic”, “oncein-a-lifetime opportunity” to push through reform during the crisis, saying that the Irish state’s political and financial institutions which had failed in the lead up to 2008 remained largely unchanged.

“Parliament,” he said, “should be separated from government and ministers should resign their seats once they take up position. We need to look at bringing in outside expertise for Taoisigh as well, because the current arrangement isn’t satisfactory.”

But, in a speech focusing on Europe, the former minister for foreign affairs was keen to play up his party’s pro-European outlook. He pledged continued engagement with Brussels on financial and institutional integration and characterised his own politics as “pro-Union” but more critical than those of “europhiles”.

Martin acknowledged that Europe could often be “arrogant and disconnected”, also criticising its welfarestatist “centralised” and “dead heavy” economic outlook by praising Ireland’s historical emphasis on the free market.

In his address, Martin also played up Europe’s advantages for Ireland, saying that it was “our best bet” for energy security and to tackle climate change in an increasingly volatile geopolitical climate.

He noted its “key role” in agricultural policy and said that the Fianna Fáil MEP Pat the Cope Gallagher’s influence had risen to such a degree that he was known as “Mr Fisheries”.

Fianna Fáil, he said, “had spent European money very

well” when it was in government, using it to “invest in human and social capital” and to “develop Ireland’s economy into a knowledge economy”.

The party believes that the European Central Bank (ECB) should be the lender of last resort for the Eurozone and Martin criticised former ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet for being “too conservative and orthodox, and very slow to buy bonds”. By contrast, he said, his successor Mario Draghi was “more radical” and had “almost single-handedly calmed markets with bond-buying”.

“There was a long phase of Europe trying to inch its way out of crisis that didn’t work and, thankfully, now seems to be changing. You can scare the markets one too many times and lose credibility forever … There is uncertainty again now about retroactive recapitalisation, with different states genuinely interpreting June’s agreement differently. This needs to be resolved.”

Martin continued by affirming his party’s support of a “European-wide framework of regulation” and “a supervisory mechanism that could prevent this happening again”. He rejected Germany’s preference that a banking union include only 20 core banks, saying that Europe’s financial sector was “too interdependent” to exclude banks considered more peripheral.

He acknowledged that crisis fighting mechanisms at home and in Europe were themselves in crisis – that “nothing had changed”. “In Ireland people signed on for change but it didn’t happen.”

“

Fianna Fáil … ‘had spent European money very well’ when it was in government

He also criticised FrancoGerman hegemony in the European Union, saying that the “community method of consensus decision-making” had been weakened.

He said the tendency was for the French president and German chancellor to be more concerned with their local politics and not enough with maintaining the viability of the European project, not properly appreciating the “catastrophic results for everyone … if the euro went down”.

The crisis had led to structural problems and increased tensions in Brussels, he argued, with bureaucrats no longer able to resolve the predominance of issues before ministers arrived meaning that fractious encounters were more likely.

The president of the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, had also had his position undermined by his reliance on the support of Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel for re-election, which was particularly problematic for smaller nations who “had

historically been protected by the Commission”.

This was regrettable also because of the way former commission presidents like Jacques Delors had embodied “the best of the European ideal”.

Martin encouraged the European Union to maintain a “critical relationship” with the globalised economy, referencing Gordon Brown’s assertion that the post-2008 crash was the “first crisis of globalisation”.

“We are a developed country with a safety net but those we are now competing with aren’t. We haven’t thought through that properly – we’re talking about 35-hour weeks while China is paying €1 an hour to some workers.”

He ruled out the possibility of Ireland leaving the euro in the forseeable future, saying that the results for Greece of leaving would be “horrific”.

“When the euro was created there was no exit mechanism written into the programme.

It could happen unilaterally but I’ve seen papers describing the reality of leaving the euro and it’s scary stuff.”

Responding to questions from the audience, Martin said that he accepted that Europe was left with a long-term decision between matching its unified monetary policy with similar uniformity in fiscal issues, or facing a break-up.

“The middle ground options,” he said, “simply haven’t worked”.

Rejecting a common military policy, Martin explained his vision of the development of the EU project: “Europe is going to move towards wanting to see budgets before they are published and a broader integration agenda … but I don’t forsee them becoming involved in consular issues like passports or visas.”

Tuesday 30th October 2012

News

Boy meets girl: Saphora Smith on the transgender experience Illustration: Sadhbh Byrne

News In Brief

4

Dracula in digital Dublin

InDepth -p.7

Frat holds “secret beach party” Reuben Smyth Staff Writer The fraternity established last year by students of Trinity, Theta Omicron, hosted a secret “Frat Beach Party” at an undisclosed location on 25th October. It is the first significant event reported since the organisation provoked a backlash last year from the wider student body.

Many fraternity “pledges” occupy prominent persons in College’s various societies, although some of those initially reported to be involved withdrew at an early stage citing concerns.

The stigma surrounding college fraternities, particularly in North America, gave

Aonghus Ó Cochláin Staff Writer A project commissioned by the Science Gallery in Trinity’s Naughton Institute will have gamers and smartphone users playing Bram Stoker’s Vampires to celebrate Halloween this year. The game comes from Haunted Planet Studios Ltd, founded by Dr Mads Haahr, a lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Statistics, in collaboration with researchers from College and the National Digital Research Centre.

The launch of the game

was a feature of the inaugural Bram Stoker festival on 26th October, being a celebration of the Dublin author’s legacy on the centenary of his death.

With a theme based on Stoker’s classic novel Dracula, the game utilizes Global Positioning System functionality for an augmented-reality experience and sees players solve a vampire mystery in a range of locations around the city centre, including locations such as College and Dublin Castle.

The location-based game involves pointing the camera at sites across the city to uncover ghosts, vampires and other visions from Stoker’s epic novel. Players will even

come face-to-face with Count Dracula and the three vampire sisters that Stoker’s protagonist, Jonathan Harker, encounters in Dracula’s Transylvanian castle.

The game showcases the incorporation of “highly realistic visuals, engaging gameplay and a unique locationbased approach to audio”, according to Haahr, in what is a celebration of both the city’s literary history and technological innovation.

Taking around an hour to complete, it was commissioned by the Science Gallery for the upcoming exhibition Game, which launches on 15th November.

Nobel laureates appointed to honorary professorships Aonghus Ó Cochláin Staff Writer The School of Biochemistry and Immunology, a constituent part at the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute (TBSI), has had three Nobel laureates appointed as honorary professors.

Each having received the Nobel prize in medicine or physiology, the new professors are Jules Hoffman, Bruce Beutler and Peter Doherty.

The three all have connec-

tions to Trinity. Doherty was involved in the strategic planning towards the opening of the TBSI, while Hoffman and Doherty spoke at a symposium on immunology in the Stanley Quek theatre last July.

The title of honorary professor is reserved for those who have a particularly distinguished academic record.

Doherty shared the Nobel prize in 1996 for his work with Rolf Zinkernagel on how the body’s immune cells protect against viruses. Hoffman and Beutler were co-recipients along with Ralph Steinman in

2011 for work they did in the area of innate immunity.

Prof Luke O’Neill, academic director of the TBSI, welcomed the honorary professors on their appointment, remarking: “We are delighted to welcome Jules, Peter and Bruce to TBSI. They will visit to take part in seminars and also to interact with both graduate and undergraduate students. We are confident that they will be an inspiration to staff and students alike.”

rise to concerns over sexism and elitism.

Members of College’s bodies, such as the Central Societies Committee and the Students’ Union, did not condone the organisation’s affiliation with College, meaning that it did not refer to its connection with Trinity explicity in its promotional material for the beach party.

The buses for the event did, however, gather on Nassau Street beside College as advertised – and about 30 people were waiting for them at the 8pm scheduled time.

The event offered “free drink, food and Jack Wills party pants” to revellers, as well as guaranteeing “sexy DJs” would be present in the rented country house in County Meath. The return

bus to town was scheduled for 4am and cost €10, although those attending were “welcome to stay”.

Organisers listed on the Facebook event page included prominent fraternity members Jack O’Connor and Andrew Nagle, while Cian Mulville, Alannah Howie and George Tetley were among the 24 hosts.

Theta Omicron is a chapter of the larger North American Zeta Psi fraternity. The organisation had its “chartering banquet” in February this year, after the plans for its establishment were put together the previous summer.

It is unclear as of yet if the organisation has succeeded in its “primary aim” for this year – of gaining a property in Dublin for its activities.

Trinity report casts light on bullying of disabled people Reuben Smyth Staff Writer A report, published on 23rd October by the National Institute of Intellectual Disability (NIID) at Trinity, indicates that bullying is a serious problem for people with disabilities. According to the research, a majority of people with intellectual disabilities experience bullying regularly, most often verbally, and in various places.

The report exposed a lack of preventative measures and raised questions about the credibility of those in charge of individual complainants.

Also common are incidents of physical assault and indirect forms of bullying, such as ex-

ploitation and isolation.

It says that bullying of disabled children is widespread in schools, but also extends to community-based locations for both children and adults, and describes bullying of adults with an intellectual disability in public places as a significant issue. Dr Fintan Sheerin, the acting director of the NIID, said that the study found people with intellectual disabilities are concerned that their complaints are falling on deaf ears with authorities.

The NIID’s report was presented to the National Disability Authority, and warned that harassment has a devastating multiplier effect, with victims becoming socially ostracised.

The report recommends that people with intellectual disabilities should be able to at-

tend training sessions to improve their confidence and self-esteem, and learn strategies to tackle bullies.

“Even in this report, it is shown that people tend not to report; they tend to keep quiet and to shy away. Their way of dealing with bullying is to walk away,” according to Sheerin.

"That fits into the perspective of people who have been disempowered; who just live with it and keep their head down so they won’t be noticed. But the bullying is coming from mainstream society, from people who don’t have an intellectual disability. It is experienced within the service and among people who have an intellectual disability as well."

UCD, like Trinity, loses medical school head Aonghus Ó Cochláin Staff Writer Prof Bill Powderly is leaving his position as the head of UCD’s school of medicine and medical science, making him the second head of an Irish medical school to leave their post this year. Trinity’s own Professor Dermot Kelleher departed from his role as head of the School of Medicine in June to go to Imperial College London.

Powderly, a specialist in

HIV, is going to Washington University in St Louis, Missouri in the US, and has commented that his decision is based on a mixture of personal and professional reasons.

Powderly returned to Ireland in 2004 after 22 years in the US to take up his position in UCD. The UCD professor remarked that the last 15 to 20 years was a “golden era” for the attractiveness of Irish universities to international talent. He further explained that cuts in salary for medical academics would become a considerable barrier for med-

ical schools to recruit strong candidates, and that less “competitive” salaries send a message that Ireland is losing interest in attracting international talent.

Another worry is that there is a growing disconnect between the Department of Health and the Health Services Executive, together responsible for the provision of health services, and other government departments.

This comes in light of rising concerns over the competitiveness of Irish universities, not only in medicine, but elsewhere as well.

Agamben to address science in the humanites Ian Curran News Editor

Prof Jules Hoffman

Prof Bruce Beutler

The political philosopher Giorgio Agamben will give a public lecture as part of an international conference and symposium entitled Biopolitics, Science and Performance.

Co-hosted by the Arts Technology Research Lab and the Long Room Hub to coincide with Dublin City of Science 2012, panels and sessions will take place from Wednesday to Friday this week.

Agamben’s keynote address will take place at 6pm on

Wednesday in the Tercentenary Hall of the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute on Pearse Street. His lecture will be entitled The Archaeology of the Work of Art. Agamben is an Italian-born academic who rose to prominence with the 1993 publication of his collection of short essays, entitled The Coming Community, and his critically lauded work, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life.

Agamben has also been vocal on political events of the last decade, criticizing America’s response to 9/11 and discussing the protesters at the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001.

He explored American politics in his 2005 work The State of Exception, which described the situation of exception created by the event itself which led to the passing of the Patriot Act. He discusses this paradigm of exception as being the primary shift in politics that allows governments to turn the political body into a criminal body.

Agamben is currently a professor of aesthetics at the University of Verona, Italy and is the Baruch Spinoza chair at the European Graduate School.

Historic public lecture on American politics Ian Curran News Editor College will play host to the American political scientist and historian Gary Gerstle this week as he addresses the issue of money in American politics.

The Department of History’s annual public lecture in American history will take place at 7pm this evening, Tuesday 30th October, in the JM Synge theatre in the Arts Building.

Prof Peter Doherty

The lecture is entitled Democracy and Money in America: A Historical Perspective on the Election of 2012.

It is set to explore contemporary issues in campaign financing and the landmark 2010 supreme court decision in the Citizens United case.

Gerstle is a professor of political science and American history at Vanderbilt University and is the Harmsworth professor of American history at the University of Oxford for this year.

The lecture represents the second in a series of annual

lectures in American history funded by a grant from the University of Dublin Fund, which is a fund that receives its donations from Trinity alumni living in America. It is also sponsored by the School of Histories and Humanities at Trinity.

The series is organized by Dr Daniel Geary, the Mark Pigott lecturer in US history.

The first lecture in the series, Barack Obama and the American Democratic Tradition, was delivered by James Kloppenberg of Harvard University in March 2011.

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TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

InDepth

6 Gabriel Beecham writes on the Africans who fought for the Allies in the second war. world war African soldiers

>> p.9

Brutes on campus The Arts Building and Berkeley Library are perhaps Trinity’s most misunderstood structures.

Lara May Ó Muirithe talks to Paul Koralek, one of the architects responsible for shaping Trinity’s modern aesthetic..

A conceptual brutalist image, by Filip Dujardin, from the series Fictions.

A Lara May Ó Muirithe Contributor

s a new student to Trinity this year, I have spent the first few weeks of term mostly taking in the new environment, walking around and establishing a psychological connection with its topography. Trinity can be seen as an island site within Dublin, and its architectural configurations confer an individual collegiate identity while simultaneously engaging with the surrounding cityscape. I see a remarkably fluid continuity between the old and new elements of the college.

Although architecture is always a collaborative project, Paul Koralek’s involvement with both the Berkeley Library and the Arts Building has given him huge responsibility in shaping Trinity’s modern identity and helping the old and the new to coalesce.

In 1961, College decided it needed to have a second library adjacent to Thomas Burgh’s 1712 building. Along with two others, the young Koralek won a competition to design it and was appointed principal architect of the Arts Building, which he worked on from 1969 to 1978.

Between 1938 and 1958, full time students at Trinity increased from 548 to 915. By 1968 the figure had grown to 2,466, with a forecasted growth to 6,000 students.

Koralek’s remit was to plan a multipurpose, faculty building to accommodate the expansion.

Previously the departments

were dispersed, rather like the Oxbridge model, with people socialising outdoors. The original scheme proposed to build where the rugby pitch is, to bring together the sciences and the arts. Although reactions to this plan were not all favourable, Koralek was given the rare opportunity to revise it.

I was keen to question Koralek about the connectivity of the old and new elements.

It frustrates me that some people, unfairly I think, consider the Arts Building as an appendage to the older buildings on campus, to “Trinity proper”.

“As a piece of planning and urban design,” Koralek told me, “it completes the college very well. If you try to imagine what it would look like without it there, you can see that it resolves the geometry of the old part of the college.”

The Arts Building was never designed to compete with the classical ranges in Front Square, so I wonder what those critics who prefer the older areas of College would like to see instead of the Arts Building. An imitation of 18thcentury iconography? Such a derivative approach would amount to nothing more than pastiche. The parodying of the old system with its (royal) manifestations of power would undermine Trinity’s modern purpose.

Perhaps any disjunction that is felt between the old and new elements of college could be ones that are im-

posed upon it by those with a prejudice to the formal aspects of late 20th-century architecture. It is not that people who use the Arts Building necessarily feel estranged by the space. Members of staff tell me that it is generally a good place in which to work, and students are happy to spend time socialising in the new spaces.

We are obsessed by nostalgia, but one of the merits of the Arts Building is that it has managed to be forward looking without severing itself from the past. A good example of this is the entrance.

John Winter, in Architects’ Journal, writes that the junction of the portal with Nassau Street is “an object lesson in new meets old.” Valerie Mulvin of McCullagh Mulvin, the architectural firm which was responsible (along with Keane Murphy Duff ) for designing the Ussher Library, told me: “The best feature of the Arts Block is the elevation to Nassau Street which, to me, is like the walls of an Italian hill town.”

The perception of the Arts Building has been in flux since it was built. Dylan Haskins, a Trinity graduate, wrote his undergraduate dissertation on the Arts Building around the themes of scale and identity. Due to a lift on restrictions to archival resources, he was able to deploy previously unavailable material to create the first comprehensive study of the building’s “biography”.

Hopefully, now that access

“

The Arts Building was never designed to compete with the classical ranges in Front Square and so I wonder what those critics who prefer the older aspects of the College would like to see instead of the Arts Building: an imitation of eighteenth century iconography?

to the archives is open, students will be keen to further this field of study. Speaking with Haskins about his experiences of being a student based at the Arts Building, I was particularly interested in the ways in which people respond to the spatiality of the building and how they navigate its structures.

“Users of the Arts Building tend to have their own defined routes through the complex,” Haskins said. “Because we have our own patterns for relating to the building, it’s often quite difficult to conceive of the whole and how it works, how it’s ordered.

“If you stand in front of the OId Library and look at the Arts Building, it’s very easy to identify that the block is articulated by four stair towers, yet when there’s a fire drill people always walk for the two central stair wells, often oblivious to the fact that there are more stairs.”

Taking the time to look at the building more carefully can be a transformative experience. Roger Stalley, professor emeritus of the history of art, gave me a tour of the building. Walking through the corridors actualised the concept of the Arts Building as a traversed space.

As a member of the committee in dialogue with Koralek, Stalley understands the building’s origins and meanings. He told me that the architect aimed to construct an individual identity for each department within the monolithic structure. Thus, each departmental area does not face directly out onto the corridor. Unexpected pockets are found, where departments are embedded within their own sub-space.

In terms of unity, Stalley pointed out how parts of the building are quite reflexive; the granite part of the Arts Building that faces onto Ussher Library can be seen as an homage to other buildings that use the material.

Koralek’s work is unorthodox and, in its empiricism, does not adhere to abstract formulations. Nevertheless, it can be situated within the modernist lineage. Cultural production dating from the early and mid-20th century – what Eric Hobsbawm called “The Age of Catastrophe” – was beset by ongoing belligerence.

One of the most important artistic movements emerging from the wreckage of the first world war was purism, which in its measured and cerebral nature was the antithesis to the discordant eruption of Dada in 1918 and, latterly, the phantasmagoria of surrealism. In 1920, Amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (better known by the pseudonym Le Corbusier) established the purist group and published a purist manifesto in the group’s journal, L’Esprit nouveau (The New Spirit).

The magazine was dedicated to promoting the functionalist planning of architecture and city space. In its distrust of intuition – considered to have “capricious” tendencies capable of misleading one from the “guide towards discovery” that is invoked by logic – the purists espoused that imposing technocratic and rational order upon art could improve society.

Ozenfant’s and Jeanneret’s still-life paintings from the 1920s aim to evacuate the external turmoil of Europe by creating order through formal structure; the objects are flattened across the picture plane, the horizontal and vertical being shown simultaneously in the same plane while additional formal detail is omitted.

This should elevate the viewer’s senses through a “state of mathematical lyricism.”

These ideals were transposed to the field of architecture.

Many of Koralek’s older peers at the Architectural Association, where he trained in the 1950s, had fought in the second world war and believed that, as a social art, architecture had tremendous potential in rehabilitating society. Some of the principles of purism and Bauhaus (Koralek has worked with Marcel Breuer, the Bauhaus student) gained a renewed urgency.

When applied to painting, the tenets of logic, order and control may seem like cold

speculation, but with the practical art of architecture it becomes manifest that they can produce an awesome affect. Koralek’s Berkeley Library stands as a masterpiece in mid-century brutalism. Informed by the brutalist (from béton brut, French for exposed concrete) tendency of Le Corbusier’s post-war work, it is a display of the more emotional tendency inherent in such structures.

The augmentation of vital materiality of the concrete with the areas of natural light, which emanates from above and floods into our reading areas, is stunning. Le Corbusier said: “Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses seen in light,” and something of this feeling can resonate strongly at the Berkeley Library.

Testament to the paradoxical nature of Koralek’s architecture, the library demonstrates that it is possible to have a visceral experience of architecture that is borne from rational design and the deployment of calculated and geometric forms.

However, Le Corbusier’s is an exclusive definition of architecture: not all buildings invoke an emotional and aesthetic response in people, and nor should they, because architecture has a multiplicity of roles to fulfill. Judgments of taste are secondary to the ostensible need to provide useful space.

Working on the Arts Building, Koralek was working under different economic conditions, and so the considerations were necessarily more utilitarian. When I asked Koralek of the contemporary reception of the Arts Building, he said: “On the whole, it was positive. The Berkeley Library was positively received, which makes it difficult for the Arts Building to live up to Berkeley Library. They were built under different political conditions, the Berkeley Library was built using College money and the Arts Building was built using government money …

“When we were commissioned, I asked for a brief.

The college said they needed a facility for 6,000 students.

There were very few precedents at the time; there were not many new universities.

It was trailblazing. To their credit, the college set up a committee to study and develop a design brief.”

While the lecorbusian spirit-raising affect will not be felt by everyone who enters the Arts Building today, the building has proved over the years that it succeeds on a sociological level. This is due to Koralek’s empiricist approach to architectural practice: form is of extrinsic value, what must come into play is a dynamic relationship between form and function.

As part of the ongoing dialogue he maintained with the committee in College, in 1970 Koralek was proactive in organising visits to some of the new university buildings in Britain. The objective of the trip was to generate discussion about the suitability of these buildings in terms of teaching spaces, and not in terms of the aesthetic pleasure they might have afforded.

The Arts Building communicates a modernist belief in the credibility of the future.

Koralek tried to envisage the future needs of the institution and, apart from the current problem with overcrowding due to massive expansion (hardly the architect’s fault), it is generally able to accommodate the technologies of the 21st century.

I have heard the Arts Building described as variously resembling a car park and a supermarket. In this instance, the tendency to discuss architecture in metaphorical terms reveals that a full appreciation of the building might still be wanting.

Perhaps it has not yet been grasped that the Arts Building looks exactly like what it is: a purpose-built faculty building designed to anticipate the demands of the modern-day educational experience. We are very lucky to have it and should not treat it with ambivalence.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

7

Antonio Carluccio talks food, sex, depression and Guinness shandies.

A recipe for life

InDepth

p.10

Illustration: Éna Brennan

Transition years Transgender identity is misunderstood and ignored in the Irish media.

Saphora Smith speaks to Darrin from Cork about coming to terms with his gender identity.

I Saphora Smith Deputy InDepth Editor

t is difficult to talk about the “transgender experience” when many of us don’t even know what “transgender” means. It refers to individuals whose gender identity or expression is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. Although the term unites people, it is important to recognise that there is no definitive transgender experience. Everyone is different, and to generalise about the physical and psychological process of changing gender is wrong and unhelpful.

What is even more unhelpful, however, is to ignore the issue completely. It’s a habit of the mainstream Irish media who have proven either apathetic to the status of transgender people in Ireland, or have submitted them to ridicule, outing members of the trans community on their front pages.

No wonder organisations such as the Transgender Equality Network Ireland (TENI) exist to mend the lack of understanding among the Irish people about what it means to be trans. The issue has either been ignored or sensationalised in trans horror stories, feelings of isolation and marginalisation.

It is true that the process of changing one’s gender can be extremely difficult and emotionally traumatic both for the person in question and for their families and friends.

This no one can deny. Earlier this year research questionnaires coordinated by organisations such as TENI found that 80% of Irish trans people who completed the survey admitted to having seriously thought about ending their lives. 26% confessed to having attempted to commit suicide at least once. These statistics are undeniably alarming and of course need to be addressed.

It is equally true, however, that there are success stories, but these accounts are rarely deemed printworthy.

To better understand the diversity of transgender experiences, I want to introduce you

to Darrin. Darrin is 22, from Cork, and currently runs the Cork Transgender Support Group. As I logged into Skype to meet Darrin for the first time, I realised that I didn’t know what to expect; I had, essentially, no idea who I was meeting. Who I met surprised me.

When Darrin answered my call I met a boy in his early twenties wearing glasses, a checked shirt over a loose T-shirt and with both ears pierced. He looked absolutely normal; I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t necessarily this. Even those of us who are open-minded about gender identity can’t help being influenced by the media’s attempt to paint transgender people as aberrations.

Darrin, biologically, is still female. He has the ability like any other post-pubescent woman to have children.

What distinguishes Darrin from other women who are biologically women is that in his opinion he is and always has been a boy. He recalls, at the age of 10, being confused as to why he was separated from the boys in primary school. As far as he was concerned, he was male.

“I wore boys clothes, I did boy things, I shaved with my plastic razor every morning imitating my mum’s boyfriend,” he tells me. He teases his mother, after coming out as trans, as to how she could have ever doubted that he were anything but male, when there was photos of him shaving at the age of four.

Things changed for Darrin when he went to secondary school, which he referred to as “the difficult time”. Darrin never suffered from selfdoubt. He knew he was a boy.

The trouble was convincing everyone else. He recalls that even in coming out as gay, at the age of 16, he felt a degree of marginalisation and judgement.

But secondary school was also the time that he realised he was trans. This realisation offered him an opportunity

to change his life for the better. “The difference between knowing you’re a boy, when biologically you’re a girl, and understanding the implication of that is huge. I was about 16 when I realised I was trans. Before, I just thought I was a boy with a girl’s body … Realising you are transgender is about having the vocabulary and the ability to express yourself. You’ve know all along. You just didn’t know the term.”

As Broden Giambrone, the director of TENI, explained to me, many people, especially in rural communities in Ireland, don’t even know that being trans is a possibility. Often people feel trapped in their biological gender and are not aware that there is a way to liberate your true self.

Thus it is one of TENI’s roles to make the trans community as visible as possible in Irish society, creating a continual dialogue among both trans people and the wider community to ensure a greater understanding about diverse gender identities.

Realising that he was transgender, however, came with its own obstacles. Darrin explained to me some of the difficulties of establishing himself as male. “You have to tell your family.” This, fortunately for Darrin, was less of a challenge than it can be for some trans people. He is quick to stress how supportive and open-minded his mother and siblings were.

He explains that he didn’t even have to tell his mum.

“She guessed,” he says, half laughing. ‘‘She saw me walking towards her as she was sitting in the car waiting for me, and she told me that it dawned on her, that this was not her daughter walking towards her, but a man. She asked me, straight out, whether I was trans.”

Darrin jokes that when he told his brother that he was trans, he was angry that Darrin had interrupted The Simpsons. His sister, he remembers, was happy to be the

“

Darrin never suffered from self-doubt. He knew he was a boy. The trouble was convincing everyone else.

only girl in the family. “All the more attention for her,” he jests. Yet he also admits that although initially they were very accepting of his new identity, it was still very difficult for them to adjust.

They found it hard to take on board that their baby sister was now their baby brother.

Calling him by his female name, which he prefers to not share, was a difficult habit to break. His mum explained that “it’s like calling a phone a phone your entire life, and then somebody telling you that now you have to call it a lobster. It’s not an easy or immediate transition.”

Another obstacle Darrin highlights is overcoming the period when your outward appearance doesn’t yet reflect your inner gender. Darrin explained that he started taking hormones aged 19, but that the process is, of course, not an immediate transformation. He recalls a time when he couldn’t decide whether he looked enough like a boy yet to use the male bathroom, but felt uncomfortable using the female loos, and didn’t feel like he should have to use the disabled toilet because he isn’t disabled, leaving him no choice but to go home in floods of tears to use the bathroom.

“It’s difficult to understand,” he said, “why suddenly I couldn’t even fulfil the most natural urge of using the bathroom. It was hard to get to grips with the idea that some things were more difficult for me than they were for other people.”

Darrin comes across as possessing a certain maturity that seems rare for a 22-yearold. When Darrin talks of his problematic time at school, it’s clear that he’s distanced himself from that period of his life. He is not emotional, but observant. Not judgemental of others, but understanding of their lack of comprehension.

He explains that even when he came out as gay, his

friends, especially girls, ran a mile. He talks of the way they ostracised him, believing him to be looking at them as they changed clothes. “Girls can be very self-flattering,” he jokes.

His recollections are in no way bitter or hostile towards those who didn’t accept him.

Instead he seems to be at peace with the ups and downs of his gender change, because he has now found his identity.

Today, Darrin lives in Cork and has a girlfriend, a job and a loving family. He is living proof that if you do feel gender dysphoria, the condition of feeling one’s emotional and psychological identity as male or female to be opposite to one’s biological sex, it really is not the end of the world, but is perhaps the beginning of a happier life.

Essentially, Darrin’s is a story of success, one that is not often told in the Irish media. The challenges of being transgender are considerable, and Darrin is of course extremely lucky to have such an accepting and supportive family. While his story is one among many, it is refreshing to hear of a young transgender person whose story challenges the talkshow stereotype of the adult male who wishes to become a woman.

As Mary Lawlor of Dublinbased Frontline Defenders said at the International Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association’s European conference held in Dublin this week, “it’s always the case where any group is marginalised you have to fight apathy.” This is certainly the case when endeavouring to increase awareness and establish rights for transgender people in Ireland.

As it stands transgender people are not legally recognised by the Irish state. But this is a broader issue that can’t be addressed in a single article. Hopefully Darrin’s story will help those who read it to see transgender identity differently, which is where we need to begin.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

8

InDepth

Unmaking a monster Neasa O’Callaghan talks to David Doyle, who is bringing a satirical play about the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik to the Players theatre in Trinity.

A Neasa O’Callaghan Staff Writer

nders Breivik, the perpetrator of mass murder attacks in Oslo and Utøya Island in Norway in 2011, told an Oslo court last summer that he would “do it all again because [his] actions were motivated by goodness not evil.” This chilling statement is examined in The Economist, a newly-written play by the Australian playwright Tobias Manderson-Galvin and which is due to be staged by Dublin University Players this year.

The controversial and critically-acclaimed play explores the motivations and personal psychology of Breivik and his various depictions in the public media.

On 22nd July 2011, Breivik bombed government buildings in Oslo, resulting in eight deaths. He then appeared at a camp of the Workers’ Youth League (AUF) of the Labour party on the island of Utøya in a police uniform, where he carried out a mass shooting. Breivik’s rampage on the island lasted 90 minutes, during which time he is alleged to have called on the young people present to approach him for police protection, before shooting them at point-blank range. 69 people, mostly teenagers, were killed.

After the attacks, commentators placed the blame on Islamic terrorists. It was soon revealed, however, that the perpetrator was a Norwegian economist; references to “terrorist” were replaced by the description of “psychopath”.

Breivik was convicted in August 2012 of mass murder, causing a fatal explosion and terrorist acts.

The playwright Tobias Manderson-Galvin is cofounder and artistic director of MKA, Melbourne’s theatre of new writing, who first staged the play last November.

“I knew I wanted to write a play about the kind of person that doesn’t get noticed by society,” says Manderson-Galvin regarding his motivation for the play.

“Someone who was more

recognizable as a role than a full character to those around him or her. I wanted someone who I found boring at first glance. I also wanted someone who was very clearly living in late capitalism … I wanted to know what they were capable of. Once I was aware of Breivik and Utøya, I knew I had to write about it. This was something that affected me. If it had happened in Australia, I would’ve known the victims.”

Players’ production will mark the Irish premiere of the work and is directed by English Literature student David Doyle. “The focus is on how a character like Anders Breivik is portrayed by the media and how it is a created persona.” Doyle tells me. “In essence, what the play is trying to do is show that portrayals of characters like Breivik are created to make people feel like they are a once-off case, an aberration, rather than someone that could be anyone in society.”

“It’s a satirical play with music. It’s not quite a musical but there’s a lot of music in it,” Doyle continues. “There will be musical instruments on stage … If [the cast] can’t play them, we’ll teach them.

There’s also a song in Norwegian that they have to learn.”

As well as including live music and song, Doyle and his production crew aim to make it a visually “highly stylised show.” Uniform-style costumes with red shoes and other accessories will be employed to evoke a sense of the Norwegian heritage, and an AV system will play documentary footage from the attack during the production.

The play is based on various sources: the extensive diaries of Breivik; his 1,500 page manifesto entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence”, which he distributed electronically on the day of the attacks; his World of Warcraft characters; tweets; and other personal sources.

In his manifesto, Breivik

laid out his worldview, which includes Islamophobia and anti-feminism. The manifesto noted Islam as “the enemy”, and he argues for the violent obliteration of what he calls “Eurabia” and the deportation of all Muslims from Europe.

Breivik wrote that his main motive for the atrocities was to market his manifesto; as such, pieces from the work feature prominently in the closing of the play. The play

Australian run of The Economist. offers insights into Breivik, who referred to himself at the time of trial as a political martyr. In the production, his character claims that “I am the saviour and the saved.”

Breivik is shown as an isolated character, whose upbringing was replete with drugs, addiction to online gaming and extreme-right

The illusion of choice Manus Lenihan comtemplates how the ignored third-party candidates in the American presidential race could offer genuinely different policies from the corporatist, militaristic candidates of the two main parties. If only they were given a chance.

M Manus Lenihan Comment Editor

illions of people in the US and around the world watched the second presidential debate between Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Barack Obama on 17th October.

What they didn’t see were two other election-related conflicts raging off-camera: the Green party candidate, Jill Stein, was being taken away in a police car for trying to enter the premises to observe the debate, and the Libertarian party candidate, Gary Johnson, was filing an anti-trust lawsuit against the debate’s organisers, claiming they had unjustly allowed the two major parties to dominate the debate.

While CNN and the New York Times have gone so far as to run pieces on Romney’s hair and breakfast cereal (it’s “sugary”, apparently), a broad range of frustrated but determined candidates outside the two main parties have been given little attention.

Some are on the ballot in the vast majority of states, despite restrictive laws. Some command vast local support or even a widespread nationwide presence. They are running on a broad range of issues, but, without exception, their organisations identify themselves as the embryo for a new party in the US to challenge the Democrats and Republicans.

Such is the popular consciousness of the massive power concentrated in the hands of these two parties that “third-party candidate” is the term applied almost as a reflex to every non-Democrat, non-Republican challenger.

There is an almost unchallengeable assumption that there are only two parties in the US. There have been occasional third-party flashes in the pan; the pro-war, racist George Wallace in 1968 and anti-war socialist Eugene Debs in 1920 managed to gain strong votes, but no “thirdparty” candidate has ever made it to office.

From a quick look at the opinion polls, it might seem that there is little interest in

“third-party” candidates. Both Romney and Obama have boasted of support figures in the high forties. Even keeping in mind that pollsters often do not bother to include smaller parties, the third-party candidates are not close to being contenders. The highest rating that Johnson has enjoyed is 5%. Stein’s best showing has been around 2-3%. The Constitution party candidate, Virgil Goode, has fluctuated around the 1% mark while the Justice party’s Rocky Anderson showed 4% support 10 days into the race but has since receded into the background.

diatribes. The play traces the causative events leading to Breivik’s attacks, contextualizing them and recognizing that they have the potential to occur anytime, anywhere.

Doyle explains that the protagonist is called Andrew Berick, which was the pseudonym Breivik used on-line.

It explores the key moments and events in his life from the age of 15 up to the day of the shooting.” He explains that “all the actors at one point play the character that is Andrew Breivik … so what it is saying is that he could be anyone in society.”

The shock felt by the public when it was revealed that a blond-haired, blue-eyed Norwegian economist had perpe-

cans supported Occupy Wall Street, twice the percentage that supported the Tea Party movement. The majority react unfavourably to the word “capitalism” and see the conflict between rich and poor as the main struggle in society, above race, age and residency status.

Of course, polls can sometimes show a distorted picture or capture only a fleeting moment, but even if we cut these figures down by an extreme 10% or 20%, we are still left with tens of millions of people who hold radically different opinions from both Obama and Romney. Both

trated the attacks is highlighted in a telling remark in the play, when a Kurdish restaurant owner pronounces that “he was the nicest Norwegian I’ve met in 14 years here.” The question this play attempts to address is not who Breivik or Berick is, but what motivated this person to become a rightwing extremist, and what events led him to commit his a record of fighting for gay rights, the environment and opposing the Iraq war. Anderson quit the Democrats in August 2011, raging that: “The constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper.

It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican party.”

Virgil Goode of the Constitution party is a more conservative figure who emphasizes his anti-abortion and anti-gun control stance in comparison with Romney and Obama. On the deficit, he insists: “One does not get out of a hole by digging the hole deeper,” and demands that the budget be balanced immediately by budget cuts for some departments and the total elimination of others. Goode also promises a range of antiimmigrant measures, saying: “We need to utilise troops, fences and other measures to stop the invasion from Mexico.”

The Green party’s Jill Stein said that solving the country’s economic problems did not

Gary Johnson, the presidential candidate of the Libertarian party.

A look at some other polls, however, throws a different light on these figures. In September 2012 a poll found that 67% saw the war in Afghanistan as not being worth fighting; 70% opposed a preemptive strike against Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities; 58% favoured cutting spending on the military. In 2011, of the 85% of Americans who claimed to understand what “socialised medicine” meant, 45% said it would be better than the present system compared to 38% who said it would be worse.

Last summer 58% of Americans called for a third party. In October 2011 54% of Ameri-

favour staying in Afghanistan until 2014; both would consider attacking Iran; both will increase military spending; both, contrary to popular beliefs about Obama, oppose socialised medicine; both certainly view capitalism favourably and emphasize national unity not class struggle. This does not seem to have dented their poll ratings.

Formed in November 2011 at a meeting with only 30 people present, the Justice party has gone on to win the support of the former presidential candidate Ralph Nader in its presidential bid for Rocky Anderson, a two-term former mayor of Salt Lake City with

need to be “guesswork”. During the Great Depression, she comments, “We created jobs by directly creating them, not by providing tax breaks for the wealthy … We need the government to step in where the private sector is unwilling and unable.”

This is part of the party’s “Green New Deal” which Stein claims would create 25 million sustainable jobs whose implementation would be funded centrally but controlled locally. This would be funded by a massive cut to the military budget and the closing of all overseas bases.

The Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, ar-

attacks in Norway. It also challenges us to evaluate the society which produced him, and the extremist organisations and viewpoints which are cited in his manifesto.

The Economist opened in Melbourne within months of the attack. MandersonGalvin, who was criticised by Australian newspapers at the time of its premiere, defends his decision to stage the work, asserting: “It did happen, and despite right-wing press claims of ‘too soon’, I’ve as much right as any journalist to speak on it.”

The play appeared at the Edinburgh festival fringe in August, where Doyle came across it. “I became friends with the playwright and it has gone from there ... I have been talking to him over the last couple of months since August, and have been looking at the script and looking to putting it on at Trinity.”

What drew him to such a controversial play? “I was attracted to it because it’s a great piece. I thought it was really suited to the style of theatre that Players is – black box theatre. I was looking for something for a couple of months to put on this year, so it fits nicely.

“It has a really important message, but more than that, something I thought Trinity students would be quite interested in it. There was a lot of conversation around rightwing extremism because of the Nick Griffin episode last year … so I felt it was something Trinity students would really engage with as well.”

Last year, Griffin’s invitation to speak to the Phil was revoked: the society cited concerns over the safety of staff and students and threatened disruptions by opposing groups. Trinity students will encounter an alternative paradigm of an extremist right-wing figure in this play, one which the play suggests contrasts with that depicted in previous public reports and commentary.

The Oslo court found that Breivik was sane at the time of the attacks. The guilty verdict, however, not only recognises the monstrosity of Breivik’s acts (which he carried out in pursuit of his extreme rightwing political beliefs) but also results in a long-term imprisonment. Breivik was sen-

tenced to 21 years in prison, and the trial judge observed that his incarceration can be extended indefinitely if he is deemed a danger to society.

“His being declared sane means we can focus on his acts for what they are: political terrorism,” says Manderson-Galvin, “and not those of a mad man operating in isolation as many would have it framed.”

Players’ production will be the first for the play since the trial, and its timing, Doyle hopes, will add a “new dimension” for audiences when watching the piece. “It offers a forum, almost,” he says. “It’s not there to provoke, but for people to take what they want from it.”

Also involved in Players’ production are Stephen Lehane, who has previously performed in Brokentalkers’ docu-theatre piece The Blue Boy (Ulster Bank Dublin theatre festival 2011), as well as working with the theatre company Thisispopbaby. The style blogger Steve Moloney will also serve as costume designer.

Doyle’s previous experience with Players is testament to his ability to deal with sensitive and challenging topics which are based on true events. He previously directed The Laramie Project for Players, a dramatised version of a series of interviews taken by the Tectonic Theatre Company after the murder of Matthew Shepherd, a young gay man in Laramie, Wyoming in the US in 1998.

The Economist has demanding subject matter, and it is exciting to see Players taking it on. It will be staged in week 11 of Michaelmas term (3rd-7th December), as an evening show at 5pm in the Players Theatre.

The play, which “was originally a fringe show,” Doyle says, “first in Melbourne, then in Edinburgh,” will fittingly run during the Trinity fringe festival, one of College’s busiest and most exciting events.

In a month when Christmas shopping may well be encroaching on your limited free time, this play seems guaranteed to provide a most welcome and indeed challenging alternative – certainly, it is one of the most innovative production you will see in College this term.

gues: “Let’s abolish the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] and eliminate income tax and corporate tax … tens of millions of jobs get created in a zero corporate tax rate environment.” Johnson offers an immediate 43% cut to federal and military spending to control the deficit and end foreign entanglements.

Very liberal on issues such as drugs, gay marriage and border controls, the Libertarians demand “minimum government” in the economy as well.

These electoral challenges are not amateur operations organised out of garages and basements. Each of the above parties can boast of hundreds of thousands of members along with very widespread support for their policies. The fact that this author knows of their existence is due to the extremely hard work of huge numbers of people. The Libertarians and the Greens have managed to get their names on the ballot in almost all states.

The concept of “getting on the ballot”, probably meaningless to an Irish voter, means an extremely gruelling campaign to meet ballotaccess laws which vary from state to state. North Carolina, for instance, demands that an aspiring third party collect over 85,000 signatures in a three-and-a-half-year time span, averaging out to 67 signatures per day, every day, including weekends and holidays. This demands lots of volunteers, money and lawyers.

Johnson has taken out a lawsuit against what Stein calls the “mockumentary” of the high-profile presidential debates. These events are tightly-controlled by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a body set up in the 1980s by the Republicans and Democrats. In 2000 and 2004, polls showed that a majority wanted Ralph Nader in the presidential debates, but the CPD excluded him. This body also ensures that questions from audience members are cleared with the candidates before the debate begins and that candidates ask each other only rhetorical and not direct questions.

Meanwhile over $1bn (¤773m) has been raised by the Romney and Obama camps for the presidential race. Across all 2012 election campaigns, $5.8bn (¤4.9bn) has been spent. The support of the wealthy and corporations for the Democrats and Republicans is well known, but the Democrats have a long-standing link with the trade-union movement as

well.

The $400m (¤309m) given to the Obama campaign by the unions in 2008 and the 400,000 volunteers promised this time around by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, America’s biggest trade union, have provoked enormous bitterness from left-wing third-party candidates. Smaller organisations, no matter how organized or dedicated, cannot hope for this kind of backing whether because of their anti-corporate politics or their small size.

All these barriers – ballot access, media attention and funding – might account for the gap between what Americans want and how Americans vote. However, the bane of a third-party candidate’s existence has always been “lesserevilism”. The anti-corporate Nader was the subject of particular anger for “taking votes away from” Democrat Al Gore in 2000, allowing Republican George W Bush into the White House. The assumption is that there is a dichotomy between “liberals” or “progressives” and “conservatives”, represented by the Democrats and Republicans.

Naturally, third parties are having none of this. “Most Americans need an electron microscope to find real differences between most actions and policies of President Obama and Governor Romney,” raged a Libertarian party press release. The Justice party’s Anderson says he has (figuratively) packed away his “‘Proud Democrat’ coffee mug” and is considering throwing it away, seeing no essential difference between the “two corporatist, militarist parties.”

If Obama and Romney represent between them only a narrow slice of American public opinion, then the “lesser evil” argument does not hold water. Moreover it exposes a certain weakness in the support for the two main parties: if lesser-evilism accounts for a huge amount of their vote then we can expect them to disintegrate seriously once a credible and clear lead is given by third parties.

With poverty levels at their highest in half a century, two military defeats still stinging, a mountainous deficit, environmental crisis and massive inequality, it is easy to see why the third parties believe in their mission. If neither Democrats nor Republicans can begin to solve these problems then the emergence of social explosions, never mind new political forces, is inevitable.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

9

InDepth

Victoria Darragh on another American obsession with Irish roots.

A tradition that refuses to die

p.11

The forgotten forces of Africa Beginning with his own father’s childhood memories, Gabriel Beecham maps the movements of African soldiers throughout the second world war, from Benito Mussolini’s barrage of Ethiopia to the jungles of Burma.

A Free French infantryman, native of the Chad colony, who was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Created and published c. 1942.

T Gabriel Beecham Deputy Copy Editor

his week sees the 70th anniversary of Operation Supercharge, the famous military offensive during the second world war which saw Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery lead the British 8th Army in a massive frontal assault against combined German and Italian forces near El Alamein in Egypt.

The operation successfully broke through Axis defensive lines established by Erwin Rommel, the famous “Desert Fox”, and forced a retreat.

It was the first decisive victory for Allied forces since war broke out in Europe in 1939, and it proved to be the turning point in the North African campaign and a significant morale-boost for the Allies.

My father was born just before the outbreak of war in 1939 in the British colony of the Gold Coast (modernday Ghana) in western Africa.

When we started learning about the second world war in primary school, I remember asking him if he could recall anything about what it was like to live through the period.

He told me that as a small child he saw trenches being dug around Kumasi – the city where he lived, in the south of the country – as lines of defence in case the fighting in North Africa moved southwards.

He also remembered seeing ordinary men in the streets, on their way to work, being rounded up by British Army personnel and taken away as conscripts to fight in Burma.

The images have always stuck with me; it was the first time I realised that the war was waged not only by European and American soldiers but also by millions of colonial troops from the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere.

Indeed, as far as Africa was concerned, the conflict did not begin in 1939 but in 1935, when the Italian fascists under Benito Mussolini attacked Ethiopia.

Backed up by many thousands of indigenous troops

from the Italian colonial possessions of Eritrea, Libya and Somalia, and armed with modern planes, tanks and nerve gas, the Italians overwhelmed the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie’s forces, and by the time of the their surrender in May 1936 the Ethiopians had lost 275,000 combatants to Italy’s 10,000.

Other Africans took this message of the fascist threat to heart and, with the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, many willingly volunteered for service.

In conversation with the journalist Martin Plaut for the BBC documentary Africa’s Forgotten Soldiers, John Henry Smythe, a Sierra Leonean who served as a navigator with the Royal Air Force, described how he felt compelled to enlist when he learned about Adolf Hitler’s writings: “Our tutor at school … took this book Mein Kampf to the school, and we saw what this man was going to do to the blacks if he gets into power.

It was a book which could put any black man’s back right up, and it put mine up.”

Smythe was shot down while flying a bomber sortie over Germany, and was interned in a German prisonerof-war camp for interrogation.

“I said, ‘Yes, I will help you, I will give you my name and number.’ Then he started being a Nazi officer; he screamed at me, shouted at me, then said, ‘You know, tomorrow morning, they are voting whether to execute you or not. Because you are a black man, you should not interfere in a white man’s war.’”

For others, like Marshall Kebi from Nigeria, there were simply no other job options after he had left college: “By that time, the government had no opportunities or posts in the government, so I didn’t want to waste my time.

I simply went up to Enugu [in southwestern Nigeria] to join the army – that is, the Royal West African Frontier Force. I didn’t expect anything, I just wanted a military career.”

The RWAFF had been

“

As far as Africa was concerned, the conflict did not begin in 1939 but in 1935, when the Italian fascists under Benito Mussolini Ethiopia.”

raised in 1900 to garrison British colonial possessions in western Africa, including Nigeria, Sierra Leone, the Gambia and the Gold Coast.

As Japanese forces progressed through the Far East, it became a priority to defend the Indian subcontinent and the 81st and 82nd (West Africa) Divisions were formed from the RWAFF, participating in the southern front of the Burma campaign.

Not all troops gave their services willingly, however.

Korona Yeo, a French Free Forces veteran from the Ivory Coast, described how some were picked up against their will while conducting their business in local markets: “We were slaves. We had colonialism behind us. We were hit, hit, hit to do everything.

They took us just like that.

They said: ‘Here are your papers. You’re going to the army.’ That’s how they did it.”

A British Pathé newsreel from 1941 waxes jingoistically about soldiers from the Gold Coast, describing them as “bronze giants of nature … Their fathers fought with spears, but these men handle their modern weapons as expertly as crack white fellows.

“They are not conscripts, but volunteers who have found the Union Jack worth living under and fighting for.

They join the people of the other colonies and dominions in the great march towards a free world.”

By August 1944, more than half of the 550,000 soldiers that made up the Free French Forces were colonial troops: among them 134,000 Algerians, 73,000 Moroccans, 26,000 Tunisians and 92,000 from sub-Saharan African countries.

17,000 of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, a corps of black soldiers mainly from French West Africa and Senegal, had died in combat by the time France fell to the Axis powers in 1940.

By 1944 the tide of the war was turning and they eagerly anticipated the opportunity to avenge their comrades by

liberating Paris. Charles de Gaulle, the leader of France’s government in exile, insisted that a French division be allowed to lead the way in retaking Paris.

Allied Supreme Command acceded to de Gaulle’s request, but only on condition that the liberating division contain no black soldiers. A confidential memo written by the US chief of staff, Walter Bedell Smith, read: “It is more desirable that the division mentioned above consist of white personnel. This would indicate the Second Armoured Division which, with only one-fourth native [African] personnel, is the only French division operationally available that could be made 100% white.”

Britain’s General Frederick Morgan updated him him on details, but did not object, even though (unlike the US forces) the British did not practice segregation among their troops: “It is unfortunate that the only French formation that is 100% white is an armoured division in Morocco.

“Every other French division is only about 40% white. I have told Colonel de Chevêne that his chances of getting what he wants will be vastly improved if he can produce a white infantry division.”

Even this proved impossible; in the end, a hotch-potch of white soldiers from French units in the Middle East and North Africa was assembled, and troops from the Spanish military were drafted in to fill the remaining gaps.

The Tirailleurs played no part in the heroes’ welcome on the streets of Paris; many were stripped of their uniforms and sent home. The capping injustice came on 26th December 1959, when their military pensions were frozen.

There were no pensions at all for many West African soldiers who had fought for British forces, despite promises of jobs and compensation. On 28th February 1948, a protest seeking pensions for veterans

of the RWAFF’s Gold Coast Regiment took place in Accra, the capital of Gold Coast, with a petition being presented to the British governor. That petition was ignored; instead, the colonial police opened fire into the crowd, killing three former soldiers and wounding 60 more.

Five days of riots followed the shooting in Accra, and the colonial office in London set up a governmental commission to investigate the matter.

Six political activists were deemed to be responsible for the riots and were imprisoned on 12th March 1948. Demonstrations in support of “the Big Six” became widespread; realising their error, the six were released exactly one month later, on 12th April.

One of the six, Kwame Nkrumah, emerged as the leader of the country’s youth movement, and was later to become prime minister and, eventually, president of an independent Ghana. The event proved to be a seminal moment in Ghana’s journey towards selfgovernment.

Soldiers returning to African countries from Burma, Europe, India and elsewhere similarly sowed the seeds of change. In the words of one veteran: “Every soldier who went … got new ideas and learned new things.

“He came back with an improved idea about life. We, the ex-servicemen, gave this country the freedom it’s enjoying today. We gave this freedom, we brought it – freedom – and handed it over to our people.”

70 years is, quite literally, a lifetime. For those of us currently of college age it can sometimes feel like the events of the second world war are as distant and irrelevant to the details of our everyday lives as the conquest of Hastings in 1066 or the battle of Marathon in 490BC. Perhaps it is worth making some effort to occasionally harken to the words of Cicero: “Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child.”

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

10

InDepth

A recipe for life D Joyce-Ahearne sat down with Antonio Carluccio, the man whose name is found on over 50 Italian restaurants in England, a few in Dubai and one on Dawson Street.

I D Joyce -Ahearne Contributor

have a friend from Italy who refers to Jesus’s mammy as Queen Mary whenever she comes up in conversation. I have never asked if this was an Italian thing or his own little pet name for her, but I have always associate this Queen Mary with Italy as a result.

Carluccio’s on Dawson Street looks like a Queen Mary. She is blue and neat and quietly regal, a stately caryatid holding up the corner of Duke Street. I went there the Friday before I interviewed the man himself and dined with a friend who I had not seen in a while. What we ate is immaterial, because everything there is fantastic.

We chose from the menu fisso (fixed price menu), two courses at ¤15 a head. Honestly, this is possibly the best value for money you will get in Dublin. The food is exquisite. There are not many places you will get as fine ingredients as well prepared as at Carluccio’s. It’s a fine break from the college diet of Pot Noodle made with radiator water.

There was one incident.

While waiting for our starters, we ordered a bowl of olives, which never came, but which subsequently appeared on the bill. We pointed it out to our waiter and he sorted it, so no big deal. “Don’t worry, Lorna,” said I to my dining companion; “I’m meeting the boss Monday, heads will fucking roll.”

When I met Carluccio on Monday afternoon, the olives do not come up in conversation. He is sitting outdoors, tucking into the linguine ai frutti di mare. You see straight away why he is called the godfather of Italian cuisine. Even before we are introduced, it is obvious that he is something special. The man has a presence.

From the off, he is a joy to talk to. He has lived life and he knows what he is talking about, and if he does not, then he does not pretend to. It is one thing to come across as wise when you are talking, but you really can judge the intelligence of a man by the way he listens; as I ask every question, Carluccio studies me intensely. His answers convey exactly what he wants, and he is always fully confident of his reply. He exudes a wisdom that is only gained through experiencing the world through a medium you love.

We discuss food journalism and he tells me that he is critical of food writers; he has known too many lousy journalists. You must know a cuisine well, he insists, and food critics, for the most part, do not. They know bits and pieces, so how can they truly comment on a cuisine? If Antonio Carluccio only knows one thing, then he knows it better than anyone alive today.

He is the last word on Italian gastronomy. He adores it. He does not cook food; he cooks Italian food, exclusively and unapologetically.

Italian cooking is “sophisticated simplicity”, and Carluccio seems to best exemplify his philosophy. His maxim is “minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour”. “I’m not a chef, I’m a cook,” he says, with spectacularly grandiose modesty. He does not go in for “bombastic cooking”, as he calls it. He talks about how you can go to a restaurant today and there might be a dot of a reduction on a plate, with its own flavour, seemingly an integral part of the dish. This madness inspires a choice quote: “You can’t eat that with a fork!”

And that style can be expensive too, he says. It seems like an odd remark from a man who has done as well as he has. It is the only time he ever alludes to money but it is a justified comment. People need to make a living, and much of the food that Carluccio champions is wholesome southern Italian food that would have been the staples of the peasant’s table. Italian food can earn you money, but he does not say it in a mercenary way; he says it practically, and not as it applies to him.

This leads me to bring up arrangiarsi, one of my new favourite words, and one I learned from watching Carluccio’s television series, Two Greedy Italians. There is no direct translation, but basically it is getting by, managing, with an element of cute hoor-ery about it. Essentially, it is student living. He smiles when I ask him about it. I

“

He does not cook food; he cooks Italian food, exclusively and unapologetically.

Photo courtesy of Polymath Perspective.

wonder whether all the cutlery I have stolen from restaurants in the last month to stock my bare college kitchen would come under the heading of arrangiarsi. I do not ask.

For Carluccio, Italian cooking embodies arrangiarsi. It is taking great, simple ingredients and treating them right. If you know what you are doing, then you will eat very well.

He tells me a story about an event he did at the University of Cambridge. He was doing a demonstration, and started with a stack of potatoes and little else. The Cambridge crowd scoffed at such humble ingredients. He soon turned the pile of spuds into gnocchi, soft Italian dumplings which you would not have thought could possibly come from what he started with. For Carluccio, and in the spirit of arrangiarsi, if you have “a bit of fantasy, the source can be whatever you want.”

I ask him what he thinks of Ireland and he says that he likes the atmosphere here.

One thing he does not like hearing in Britain, his adopted homeland, is when they say the Irish are an emotional people, as if it were a bad thing. “It’s a wonderful thing,” he says; “If you cry, cry. Irish and Italians, we have this in common.”

He admits, with a smile, to having committed sacrilege: he has drunk a Guinness shandy. I recoil, visibly disgusted.

“It’s not bad. It’s not bastardising it if it’s a new flavour and it’s good.” Not much I can say to that. I feel that even if I were not interviewing him I would still be writing down most of what he says.

He laughs when I bring up women, who get quite a big mention in his recent autobiography, A Recipe for Life. He jokes that “women are a necessary evil”. He has had three marriages, three divorces and “many stories in between”.

Food plays as big a part in this aspect of his life as any.

His advice on the fairer sex? “Don’t say ‘come see my etchings,’ say ‘taste my pasta.’

It’s been said food and sex are the most important things; one can’t exist without the other. So why separate them?”

There are not many 75-yearold men I can think of who could say this and not seem creepy, but with Carluccio it is just another natural truth.

When I ask about his depression he responds in the same quietly assured manner. Yes, he was depressed; it is part of the reason he wrote his autobiography, because “when you see it on paper you can be honest with yourself.

You have to be true to yourself. You must talk to people, be open and communicate.

Not kidding yourself.”

He is happy now. He is 75 and smokes the entire time that we are talking. He is one of those people that you think will live forever. As Patrick Kavanagh wrote, “only wastrels die and people who can’t eat fat-bacon.” Carluccio is neither of these. He has lived life to the full and has much more to do.

“Life is made of a desire to feel well.” One of the last things he says to me is not to take it too seriously; he does not specify what “it” is. I genuinely could have sat there and listened to him talk all day.

As I leave, he asks me what it is I want to do. I say I would like to write, and he just nods and smiles as if to say, “Then go and write.” Talking to him makes you want to go out and do what you want; that is an incredible quality to have.

It comes with being content with a life well lived, and with having plenty more to do.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

11

Plastic politics: Rónán Burtenshaw discusses the disposable figureheads of Washington.

Comment

InDepth

p.16

A tradition that refuses to die With no discernible spiritual message and an imperative to buy sweets, costumes, decorations and alcohol, Halloween might seem like a celebration of capitalism.

Victoria Darragh explains why it is not the first time in history that the tradition has been hijacked.

Illustration: Alice Wilson

W Victoria Darragh Contributor

hile many cultures celebrate death and rebirth at this time of year, such as the Mexican Día de los Muertos, or the English Guy Fawkes night, none has gained the stamp of American cultural approval like the Irish-hailing Halloween.

Love it or loathe it, there is no way the approach of Halloween has passed you by.

Since the end of September, shops have been filled with sweets and costumes in anticipation of the night, characterised by both childhood celebration and adult debauchery.

What’s the occasion? For many the ancient and pagan origins of the festival are unknown. When we celebrate it, we are adhering to a mishmash of traditions from cultural sources as diverse as the Romans, early Christianity and the Celtic world.

The people who belonged

to what we today call “Celtic” culture were spread across Ireland, the UK and Western Europe.

For these people, the 31st of October represented the end of the year, and so came their festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-an). With the new year came the harshest winter months, and so it is understandable to see how they associated this time, and particularly this night – passing from one year into the next – with death.

For the Celts, Samhain was a night where the barriers between the living world and the world of the dead were obliterated, and the dead could mingle freely amongst the living, causing havoc and destruction. It was also believed that on this night it was possible for the spirits of the dead to possess the bodies of those who were alive.

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It is in Ireland that one of the most seemingly American of all Halloween practices began: pumpkin carving. Or, as it was here, turnip carving.

While sources from the period are limited, our practice of lighting bonfires on Halloween may come from their practice of lighting a sacred bonfire to honour the gods. It is also thought they believed that during the night of Samhain, faeries would roam the land, going from door to door as beggars asking for food.

Those who gave the faeries food were rewarded, whereas those who didn’t were punished – a little trick or treating, anyone?

Celtic culture was threatened by the growing Roman empire of the early first and second centuries AD. The Romans, too, had their own festivals around this time of year, including the early November harvest festival of Pomona.

Pomona’s symbol (the apple), her role as the goddess of fruit trees and abundance, and the coincidence of Samhain with the harvest festival and the opening of winter stores of fruit and nuts is very plausibly the reason behind the traditional Halloween treats of fruit and nuts. It is also possible that Pomona’s association with the apple is behind bobbing for apples as a Halloween game.

Towards the end of the Roman empire, Christianity had begun to spread across Europe and the British Isles.

Despite the Christianisation of many aspects of European cultures, Samhain continued to be celebrated.

The Catholic Church, eager to remove these pagan elements from society, often subverted Celtic festival days and placed Christian events on or near to the time of year in which they fell, mobilising popular imagery and traditions in order to aid the conversion of European societies.

On 13th May AD 609, Pope Boniface IV rededicated the Pantheon in Rome to Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Saints’ Day (to commemorate all saints and martyrs) was established in the Western Church, to be

celebrated on 1st November.

Samhain continued to be celebrated, however, so in AD835 Pope Gregory IV moved the holiday to 1st November also, most likely in an attempt to shift attention from Samhain to the sanctioned All Saints’ Day. None of this, though, entirely halted the practicing of the old Samhain traditions of lighting bonfires, going from door to door for food and wearing costume.

We also get the name of Halloween from the old alternative name for All Saints’ Day – All Hallows, or All Hallowmas. As Samhain fell before All Hallows, it was All Hallows Eve – eventually compounding into Halloween.

The practice of trick-ortreating (though still not known by this name) continued to develop under new Christian traditions. Towards the end of the 10th century AD, 2nd November was designated by the church as All Souls’ Day. In England, the poor would spend All Souls’ Day going from door to door, asking for food, and praying for the dead in return. In return for their prayers, the poor would be given “soul cakes”, and in some areas soul cakes would be handed out in return for a performance or song. This eventually became a child’s practice, done in return for food, ale or even money.

Halloween today is very much associated with America. While Halloween’s association with America is bolstered by cultural productions like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (the Washington Irving story, and later the film), it is in Ireland that one of the most seemingly American of all Halloween practices began: pumpkin carving. Or, as it was here, turnip carving.

There are at least two historical bases for this practice.

One, from the Celts, who are thought to have used hollowed out gourd vegetables to hold embers from the sacred

bonfire. But the second has its basis in Irish folklore, and began with the tale of Stingy Jack, a crook and a drunk.

Jack found himself having a drink with the Devil, and convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin so as to pay for their drinks. Once the Devil had transformed himself, however, Jack put the coin in his pocket next to a cross of silver, thereby trapping the Devil, who was unable to change himself back.

Upon the promise that he would leave Jack alone for a year, the Devil was freed – until, a year later, he returned, whereupon Jack tricked him again, this time asking him to get him a piece of fruit from a nearby tree. When the Devil had climbed into the tree, Jack carved a cross into it, preventing the Devil from climbing down. Until he had promised to no longer seek Jack’s soul, Jack would not let the Devil leave the tree.

Upon his death Jack, despite being fairly wily and apparently more intelligent than the Devil, hadn’t been the best person, and so was unable to enter heaven. However, his previous deal with the Devil had meant that neither was he able to enter hell.

The Devil, despite keeping his word, took pity on Jack, and so gave him an ember from the fires of hell, held in a hollowed out turnip, to light his way through the darkness as his spirit walked the earth for the rest of eternity. Around this time of year, when evil spirits were more prevalent, people from Ireland and Scotland would make “jack o’ lanterns” in order to scare away Stingy Jack from their homes and leave them in peace.

When British and Irish settlers began to travel to the New World, they presumably brought this practice with them – and they would have discovered at some point that pumpkins are infinitely easier to carve than a rock-solid turnip from the fields of Mayo.

Stephen T Asma, a professor of philosophy at Columbia College Chicago, believes that monsters are “alien aspects of our own identity”, representing a part of our psyche not compliant with our social order. Monster stories are therapeutic, and Halloween therefore serves a cathartic function allowing us to cut loose and give into our repressed impulses, just for a day.

Monsters have been around for eons. According to Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, a teaching assistant and guest lecturer in literature and cinema at Trinity, our modern monsters are a reflection of the human self.

When considering this, it is interesting to note that zombies and vampires dominate our present fascination, both being corrupted versions of humans, avoiding that which we fear most: death.

Modern-day zombies are no longer lumbering goons, but aggressive, fast, and impossible to reason with, making them all the more terrifying.

They are also near impossible to kill. If you chop off a limb, blow out their brains, stab them in the heart, you may slow them down for a bit; but you will not kill them.

It is a love-hate relationship: zombies represent that which we strive for – immortality – as well as symbolising the truth for all living things, that death is necessary. Flesh decays, and there is nary a thing we can do about it.

It is an interesting cycle with zombies. As the living dead, they are a conflicting contradiction. In the words of Asma: “The more disgusting they are, the more we are reminded of our inevitable decomposition … the more they keep getting up and chasing, the more we are delighted by the promise of immortality.”

As zombies have become more terrifying, deadly and disgusting over time, vampires have become more glamorised. While recent dramatisations of this romantic monster seem to have them cast as sparkly cuddly bears with teeth, the original vampires, such as Dracula, were irresistibly enthralling, playing heavily on the human ego.

Immortal, beautiful, strong – everything we want to be, but unfortunately lacking in humanity, lacking basic human emotions and empathy, and ultimately guided by bloodlust.

In the modern era, as terms like obsessed and addicted have become a part of everyday language, perhaps it is not surprising that our main monsters are those with a lust for life (both literally and metaphorically). According to Dr Helen Keane, a senior lecturer in the school of sociology at the Australian National University, addiction really developed in the 19th century; perhaps, some say, due to the rise of the industrial revolution.

Could it be possible? As our obsession with increasing our standard of living grew, so did our focus apparently shift to corporeal monsters with cravings for the very fundamentals that make us human. Perhaps it represents a mature realisation that, while some narcissistic part of us will always crave immortality, death is very much a necessary part of life.

Some monster lovers suggest that what makes these particular monsters truly horrifying is how easily you can become one. Unlike the medieval belief that transformation only occurred through serious sinning, our modernday portrayals show these monsters spreading among us like diseases.

This plays on our ego and sense of importance as an individual. Monsters scare us because they make it personal: it could easily be you or I losing our humanity. And who has not thought about what it would be like to lack that which makes us human, whether it be a soul, or the spark of reason inherent in us all?

Halloween taps into deep, irresolvable dilemmas for humanity. It takes our psychological fears of death and evil, on both a personal and global scale (28 Days Later, anyone?) and, as Asma suggests, cauterises the wound for a time.

Halloween takes our fears and helps us face, for a short while, the reality of death and the evil in every one of us. For that time, we can revel, because imagination always has a basis in reality. And monsters? They are simply the devils within us that we like to ignore.

So eat, drink and be merry while haunting the streets of Dublin. Just remember that everybody has a little monster inside of them, waiting to be let free – not just on Halloween.

Scary monsters (are super deep) Emily Ranson analyses our fascination with monsters and why Halloween can be a cathartic release from the pressures of “civilised” society.

Illustration: Éna Brennan

W Emily Ranson Staff Writer

e know 31st October as the all-important time of year when being hideous is lauded and scaring people gets you rewarded. While the US explodes each year in Halloween fervour, Ireland too has its party tricks, and the concept of Halloween itself is believed to have originated from here.

Known in Irish as Oíche Shamhna, meaning Samhain Night, the medieval Irish festival of Samhain indicated the end of the harvest season and signalled the long nights to

come.

As always, the darkness vamped up imagination, with Samhain believed to be a time when the door to the otherworld (the place where the dead and mystical beings resided) opened up.

For some, this was a time of joy, with the souls of dead family-members coming to visit and maybe staying for a spot of tea. But harmful spirits were also released alongside these jolly fellows, and while there has been some contention on the point, it is believed

that our Halloween habit of dressing up as ghosties and ghoulies originated from the custom of locals disguising themselves for protection against these harmful spirits.

These days, our costumes have evolved far beyond simple monsters. We dress up as anything and everything, from the scary to the mundane, becoming a different person for the day, from our favourite superheroes to fairy princesses to hideous spiders, but monsters remain the staple.

In the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun “monster” refers to “a large, ugly, and frightening imaginary creature”; nowadays, it can refer to anything that we consider inhuman, perhaps helping to explain our fascination with them. While the word “inhuman” could be thought to mean that which is not human – or that which is otherworldly – perhaps we should also consider that it refers to the part within us that we repress, allowing us to live in everyday society.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

InDepth

Callum Jenkins explores the role of class reps in College Reworking class reps

12

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Comment p. 14

Time for Ireland to come of age Rónán Burtenshaw interviews Frances Fitzgerald, the Fine Gael TD for Dublin Mid-West and minister for children and youth, ahead of the upcoming children’s referendum.

Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

Q. I would like to start with the background to the referendum. There has been a lot of commentary in the media recently associating it with the Kilkenny incest case of 19 years ago. Can you speak to how this referendum came about?

A. The backdrop is a sense of horror in this country about what has happened to vulnerable children in the past. There have been at least 17 reports, spanning decades, which have brought into sharp relief the issue of children’s rights: the Kilkenny incest case, the west of Ireland farmer case, the Ryan commission, the Cloyne, the Murphy, the Foyne. As well as the Church, the state itself was seen to fail – most recently in St Patrick’s. That’s the legacy.

People began to speak up about the services available to vulnerable children and ask are we protecting them properly? 19 years ago Catherine McGuinness [the judge in the Kilkenny incest case] said that we need to look at children specifically. Not just the family, but the rights of children as well. I think a lot of people came to agree with her.

The political system began to examine the issue in a series of ways. Brian Lenihan held the constitutional review group. The all-party committee which reported a few years ago, chaired by Mary O’Rourke, held 62 meetings and took lots of submissions.

After asking the questions about what went wrong, what provisions already existed and how they were being used these came back with a clarity on the necessity of changing the constitution to reflect children’s needs.

After that committee made its series of recommendations, I came into office as the first Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. I took on this work as a priority and it was in the Programme for Government. I worked for a year-and-a-half with my own department and with the Attorney General to find a precise wording for an amendment that we could put to the people. We said that it had to name the rights of children clearly and identify them as rights holders of their own status.

Q. What additional powers do you see the amendment giving to social workers? Will they feel more empowered to intervene in cases where previously the primacy of the family unit under Irish law would have prevented this?

A. If you highlight something in your constitution and say this is really important then it creates a principle of special care and that’s a practical difference. That sharpens awareness and, ultimately, I think, has an effect at the court level.

But it also lends constitutional authority to protections that, at the moment, are only in legislation. We have had some dramatic cases where decisions have been made without any children present or anyone asking what is in their best interest. I don’t think you can do that again in, say, a custody decision and that is important.

Proportionality of response is important, too, though. It is about supporting families but, when necessary, intervening in a way that is not extreme. It does not mean that when you are dealing with families care will be the first consideration, but that there is a balanced approach.

It is also important to remember the need to balance rights, and that you cannot give rights to anyone in absolute terms, particularly for judges and social workers in these situations. The amendment recognises the rights of the child in its own right – this in itself is very important for ensuring balance and giving that constitutional authority. There have been serious questions – which have affected women’s rights as well, by the way – about whether the provisions outlined in Articles 41 and 42, the strength with which the family unit is protected, has subsumed the individual components within this and denied them their own rights.

If you make the child more visible in the constitution and you reflect that in the courts it is helping to make sure that the very best decision is being taken for the vulnerable child.

Q. Why did you decide to recognise in the fourth part of the amendment the views of the children themselves? It

seems to give children a great deal more say than they would expect to have in other areas – like the running of their schools or the democratic process.

A. I think it is interesting to pose the question that way.

It makes us ask: Are children and young people mini-adults or is childhood an important period in its own right? I think the improvements in psychology have allowed us to better understand the views of children. It is about encouraging them to be themselves, giving voice to them.

But just how far along the road are we in Ireland in relation to that? And I think we could all ask ourselves that in relation to our own families, or at school level. I think there is a development going on. We are coming from a society in the 1950s where it was definitely “[be] seen and not heard”. Now there is more autonomy and recognition of individuals. When you look at what young people are doing to tackle homophobic bullying, the voice they have around that now, it is fantastic to see the work they are doing.

But it largely depends on how institutions respond – and we know we are only so far along the road. I think this referendum will tell us a lot about where we are at. If we have very low turnout then I think it would be a negative step for a society that has embraced the rights of children.

Q. Do you worry that the lack of a “No” campaign, and the resultant lack of debate on the issues involved in the Children’s Referendum, will drive turnout down?

A. Well, we have gone for a Saturday. You are writing for a student newspaper and I say that this is a real challenge for young people. Student groups have always said that it isn’t fair to have it on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday because they can’t go home. I see it as a democratic challenge to young people – are you going to get out and vote? This is a referendum about young people.

But it will also be a test for the public at large. The issue of how much debate affects voter turnout is preoccupying me at the moment. I think it is an interesting commentary on our society. If there is a lot of agreement, and people aren’t tearing strips off one another, then you get less coverage.

It does say something about democratic participation that it is so strongly linked to the conflict model of politics.

That is especially the case in the media.

Q. Did you expect larger opposition to changes related to the marital family? And do you feel that this is a movement away from the strong emphasis placed by Bunreacht na hÉireann on the marital family?

A. Some of the groups out there are frightening people about this. I read John Waters in the Irish Times describing this as against “principles that the blood of our grandparents flowed in the streets to defend”. There are others saying that this is the end of the family unit. It is complete nonsense.

This is about the child.

Whether the child is from a marital or non-marital family, you have got to treat all children equally. And this is the first time under the constitution that this will be the case. I think Irish society has gotten to a point where it is ready to say, irrespective of the marital status of the parents, if a child is at risk of physical or sexual abuse we need to protect them.

We have 1,500 situations where we confirm every year that children are being abused or seriously neglected, we have 30,000 cases referred to child and family services. This is what it is about. It is above any ideological concerns about family shape.

Q. There is a broader context in which this referendum is happening. The most recent figures from the Central Statistics Office showed that, in 2010, 96,000 children lived in consistent poverty while 205,000 lived at risk of poverty. There have been very significant cuts since then. If you go to the JobBridge website today you’ll see a request for what amounts to two special needs assistant; those would be interns filling in for positions cut by this government.

Around 85% of Ireland’s children are educated in primary school classes larger than the

Photo: George Voronov

“

I see it as a democratic challenge to young people – are you going to get out and vote? This is a referendum about young people.

EU21 average. Is there a dissonance between the language of protecting vulnerable children which surrounds this referendum and the reality of a government that is placing increasing numbers in vulnerable positions?

A. First of all, putting what we are suggesting into the constitution is really important. On its own it is just one part of doing the best for children and families. Irrespective of the other challenges we should do this. It puts more focus on children, it strengthens children’s rights and fixes anomalies in our law. It doesn’t deal with stopping child poverty or a lot of other issues you have raised but it is a very important foundation.

I don’t believe there is a dissonance from the point of view of the government because we are doing our very best to protect the vulnerable.

I take the points you make but in response I would have to ask you, why are some very hard decisions having to be taken? I want to protect the budgets as far as possible in relation to children but you have to go back to the overall economic situation. We are a country in a bailout and we have to balance the budget to get out of this economic crisis. It is an extraordinarily difficult economic situation that has affected the whole country.

But we are focusing on try-

ing to find solutions to our economic problems, and jobs in particular. Because the best way for children to escape poverty is for parents to have a job. We have had a lot of success in foreign investment and the export sector. The local economy is slower. But this is what we have to do to deal with the issues you are talking about – fix the economy.

Q. Could more be done within the current economic situation to protect children and ensure that they aren’t forced into poverty?

A. I am the minister for children and youth affairs.

Of course I would say that you have to “childproof” your budget. But there is a certain value system in this country and children weren’t at the centre of it, let’s be honest.

If we put young people at the centre of the economic value system, for example, we would have universal childcare from 0-5 years of age.

This is something you don’t correct overnight.

It is important to make sure we emphasise children and child protection. But the other side of that coin, in fairness to the government, is that I got an extra ¤13m last year to make sure that all of the children from three to four could get the ECCE [early childhood care and education] scheme. I got an increase in my budget last year – only 2%, but it is an increase. I got money for the

education and welfare service, we recently got ¤50m to take 16- and 17-year-olds out of St Patrick’s. Before I had ever seen the report on St Patrick’s, I had taken 16-year-olds out of there, and we are taking 17-year-olds out now. We are going to close it down.

Reform is an important theme of this government, though, and it is not all about spending more money. In the SNA system this was the case.

Every mother who has a child with special needs wants an SNA for their child and I understand that. But in terms of how many we can provide we have got to ask if we are doing the very best. Is this the right resource at the right time?

I look forward to economic growth, when we can deal with issues of child poverty more effectively. But the calls for this referendum, for these changes, have persisted through good times and bad.

The issues in this case transcend the economic cycle.

Voting for the Children’s Referendum will take place on Saturday, November 10th. Polls will open at 9am and close at 10pm.

Students can check their eligibility to vote and find their local polling station by entering their name and address into www. checktheregister.ie.

Impartial information about the constitutional changes proposed in the referendum can be found on the Referendum Commission’s website at www.referendum2012.ie.

Comment

David Barker singles out the prime suspect for the restriction of the press: all of us.

p.14

Intrigue of Loyola A member of the academic staff on the unholy trinity of church, cash and College, and on degradation by degrees.

Illustration: Ciar Gifford

E Anonymous

arlier this year the webpage for the Loyola Institute, a new department in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (FAHSS), came online.

There was scant information to be gleaned from it, only that the department had emerged from a merger with the Milltown Institute (hitherto a Jesuit-administered theological college); that it would be offering a BA moderatorship in catholic theology beginning in 2012; and that there was only one member of staff currently employed: the institute’s inaugural director, Dr Cornelius J Casey.

For months this unassuming and fairly threadbare webpage, tucked away in a submenu of a submenu on the faculty’s website, was the only source of information on the new department. Significantly, there was no public announcement of its foundation on the part of College authorities.

Anyone who may have stumbled across the webpage may have been puzzled by the notion of a department “dedicated to education and research in theology in the Catholic tradition” operating within Trinity, particularly considering the college’s fractious relationship with the Catholic church in the past.

Predictably, though, few people took notice; the page only came into being at the end of Hilary term, and the

student body was in the midst of exams. In light of recently emerged documents it appears that the low-key nature of this revelation was deliberate, and with good reason.

As reported in the last issue of Trinity News, a section of the minutes from a meeting of the executive committee of the FAHSS, marked as a “reserved item”, reveals that there has been a large degree of resistance to this measure among academic staff. (It should be noted that its being marked as reserved suggests that the section was never intended to be published online.)

In a rare occurrence, the move has been met with near unanimous objection from heads of school in the faculty, and led to the resignation of the then-head of the School of Religions and Theology, Dr Anne Fitzpatrick, from her post.

The overwhelming consensus was that the very concept of a faith-based degree ran contrary to College’s equal opportunities policy, that it posed a “danger to academic freedom”, and that the endowment, which amounted to €15m, would not be able to cover the new department’s costs in the long term.

These are legitimate grievances and I will return to them, but one particularly pressing question needs addressing first. Why, if there has been such a degree of

opposition to the move, have there been no official complaints made by members of the faculty?

Minutes from committee meetings as far back as February of 2011 register dissent among staff members over the move, yet there has been complete silence on the matter in the public sphere.

It is worth mentioning that the Milltown Institute originally approached University College Dublin with the proposal, but that the deal was eventually scrapped due to the continuous objections of members of staff.

Significantly, the chief concern voiced by dissenters there was that a faith-based programme would compromise the secular ethos of the university.

The comparative silence here is telling: it suggests that a number of people with significant leverage have made a concerted effort to keep the transaction discreet, and that members of the faculty had little power to prevent it.

Analysis of the minutes reveals that they were overridden by the college’s executive board and completely excluded from negotiations. Their concerns were ignored, the final deal “differed substantially” from what they had agreed to, and individual members felt “shabbily treated”.

Plainly, members of the Board had an entirely different agenda in mind: namely,

the €15m endowment being offered as an incentive for the deal. It was also noted that the whole process was “deliberately” lending it an air of underhandedness that is further underlined by there being no indication given as to the source of the endowment.

Of course, it is no secret that College faces significant financial difficulties due to austerity measures; taking this into consideration, it is perfectly understandable that the executive board, who are responsible for the college’s finances, should seek alternative sources of revenue.

In this context a more pragmatic view is worth considering. Moreover, it is hard to imagine it playing any more than a marginal role in the university, considering that it will only employ four lecturers full time.

Frankly, though, even thinking in these terms, the gains seem negligible in light of the attendant costs to the college. Documents in which the deal is alluded to indicate that the endowment is coming as a single lump sum.

There are no guarantees of subsequent contributions, yet College is committed indefinitely to footing the costs of the new department. Administration, salaries, accommodation: these obligations won’t evaporate over time, but the money will.

This seems particularly rich considering profitable

departments like English are being prevented from taking on new staff due to budgetary constraints.

Moreover, if, as the dean of the FAHSS, Professor Michael Marsh, has reassured members of the faculty, the endowment is intended purely to “fund appointments” in the new department, how much does the college effectively stand to gain?

There is also a less tangible cost to the college. Trinity’s reputation for attracting the best and brightest irrespective of religious affiliation has been a cornerstone of its international reputation, and in this regard the notion of a faith-based degree is problematic.

The commitment to hiring purely on the “basis of merit” above other considerations is a central tenet of College’s equality policy. Though being Catholic is not explicitly listed as a job requirement, the idea is enshrined in the very concept of a faith-based programme.

This is not just simply a matter of ethics; it is also about maintaining academic standards. As the policy states, “The concept of equality is central to the College’s ethos of academic and service excellence.” Given that there will hardly be many people clambering for a degree in Catholic theology given recent events, it seems likely that the entry requirements

will have to be set extremely low in order for the department to have any students at all. This lapse in academic standards will only debase the Trinity name, a particularly pressing concern considering the college’s rankings in all three major university league tables have been sliding in recent years.

In spite of this, Trinity’s reputation – particularly overseas – has been its most important long-term asset: mortgaging it off so cheaply is short-sighted and sets a dangerous precedent for the future. In effect, the college is taking on a long term burden for a short term gain.

Overall, it seems clear that the potential benefits of the deal do not stack up against the costs College will accrue.

What the church stands to gain is clear: given its diminished status in Ireland over the last few decades, it makes sense that they should opt to attach their name to an institution which is held in higher public regard. After all, a drowning man will cling onto a stronger swimmer to remain afloat.

The endowment may help balance the budget in the short term, but in exchange the college has been permanently encumbered. In the long-term struggle to stay afloat, this burden around College’s neck will only make it harder to keep its head above the water.

Unions played off pitch by Croke Park agreement Labour leaders are taking the lifeboats off the sinking ship of state and public service. Paul Shields surveys the wreckage.

T Paul Shields Siptu, Trinity College

here has been much discussion recently regarding the public service (Croke Park) agreement. It has also been a major issue in College, with the imposition of compulsory redundancies on members of staff. Opinions differ as to whether the Croke Park agreement is working depending on what you conceive “working” to mean, other than the destruction of the services that are provided by public-service workers.

Even the two parties which form the present government

spin slightly differing lines, with Fine Gael allegedly in favour of disregarding the agreement and taking on the public-service unions directly, while the Labour party assumes the role of the saviours of the public service whom they would historically have regarded as their grass root support. Labour’s line would suggest there are more gains to be squeezed from the present structures, and indeed it has provided more juice than it sought originally. The mainstream media has happily of-

fered the public sector as a scapegoat for all the country’s ills and have merrily fanned the flames of the public/ private sector divide.

When the Fianna FáilGreen party coalition government and employers reneged on the existing Towards 2016 agreement, the president of Siptu, Jack O’Connor, predicted that the trade-union leadership would negotiate with the social partners to produce and to gain support from the memberships for “the worst possible agreement

imaginable”. Through a campaign that was predicated on the fear of the unknown, and on a threat that we would be fecked for all eternity if the IMF were to occupy the country, that is exactly what the union leadership succeeded in doing.

The Croke Park agreement sought to shed 17,000 jobs from across the public sector. To date, it has delivered 30,000 job losses and is seeking a further 5,000. The effects of these cuts to service providers, who are dealing

with ever-increasing demands from the public, has been devastating to the workers who have been left to cover them.

The bin collection service for Dublin city council has been lost from the public domain, with the lucrative contract being offered under circumstances which are far from transparent to privateers who are making huge profits for supplying the service and inexplicably pocketing revenue that was deemed payable to Dublin city council. Plans to privatise the supply of water

are well advanced.

But where does this leave workers with regard to the much-hyped protections of the agreement? The agreement does offer some protections, but only for “existing staff”; hence, for example, the situation whereby teachers in the system prior to the introduction of Croke Park are earning up to 25% more than teachers who have taken up positions since its implementation.

Continued p.14

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

Comment

Continued from p.13 One clause of the agreement that neither party wishes to discuss, funnily enough, is the clause which states that, if the agreement were to produce savings, then workers earning under €35,000 would be considered with regard to a pay increase.

It is understandable that the employer might choose to ignore this section, but surely the unions who made a big deal of this clause when trying to sell it to the membership should be engaging with the implementation body to assert the spirit of that clause.

Another variable with the application of the agreement is binding arbitration. Recently the Irish Hospital Consultants Association was invited to attend the Labour Relations Commission, where the employer (the government) would inform them of their new rates of pay and have the labour court ratify the decision.

Hospital consultants, being understandably reticent to attend lest they have their salaries largely reduced, thought ill of attending the court, leading the government to cry foul and state that their refusal to attend and accept a pay cut meant that they had reneged on the agreement and thus were liable to pay cuts.

Contrast that scenario with the position taken by College, who were happy to attend court in the case against members of the Irish Federation of University Teachers who had been made redundant in contravention to the agreement, where College assumed the binding arbitration stick would be used against the workers.

When the decision of the court supported the workers, Trinity failed to implement the decision of the labour court, even after clarification from the implementation body and ministerial direction. Binding arbitration under Croke Park is only binding when it favours the employer.

In College, Siptu is the union which represent staff in the support services. This covers staff in catering, housekeeping, the buildings office, security, attendants and executive officer grades; in essence, the College employees who would not be entitled to admittance to the senior common room.

Many members work part time, and in a lot of cases they are the only breadwinner in the household. With the employment control framework

Illustration: Chloë Nagle

(read: embargo) in operation, many workplaces and offices are short staffed with huge pressures being put on staff with increased workloads.

Many workers are suffering ill health as a consequence of the staff reductions.

With further reductions needed in the workforce to satisfy the Higher Education Authority many workers are concerned as to their future.

It is predicted that, with the Start, Genesis and FIS projects coming online, College will have to make redundant many more executive officers to fund the initiatives.

In the security and attendant grade, College is trying to engage the services of contractors rather than replace directly-employed people, but yet, at a high level in College, appointments and promotions are commonplace.

It would seem that the race to the bottom at the lower end of the scale to replace workers on low income with workers on minimum wage is well under way to fund large academic salaries like those of university heads, some of whom are struggling to survive on €250,000 per annum.

Many people ask what the unions are doing to maintain the terms and conditions of employees. It does not appear that the union leadership will take a stand on any issue.

The government imposed the pension levy and the universal social charge, increased the age of retirement (reducing the value of pensions), greatly reduced sick pay across the public sector and withheld allowances which were negotiated in lieu of pay increases.

Not only has the union leadership failed to challenge the government on these issues, but ironically Siptu is donating money from members’ dues to fund the Labour party, of which Jack O’Connor is a senior member. This explains his decision to boycott a mass anti-austerity protest planned for 24th November.

It was said recently that if the unions did not have Croke Park, they would be fighting for it. I do not know if there is any merit in that, but I do fear that when the next agreement is negotiated there will be no union members left to influence the outcome.

I feel the Croke Park agreement has weakened the unions greatly, and if the trade union movement is to have a future it lies with the members, not the leaderships.

14

The new press gangs are online The rush to judgement and kneejerk reactions of social media are, for David Barker, the blowback from the recent revolution in journalism.

H David Barker Deputy Comment Editor

aving started writing for a student newspaper this year I have been able to witness college news unfold firsthand and, while no governing body or higher authority legislates the content of any student newspaper, I have still seen the freedom of student press undermined.

We live in a nation which enjoys a free press system; our government does not seek to interfere or regulate the content of our newspapers. Much the same, the governing body of our college does not interfere with the substance or direction of our student journalism. So is it safe to assume our press is free or should we concern ourselves with less obvious threats to the integrity of our freedom of expression?

While we are fortunate enough to enjoy an unlegislated and largely uncensored freedom of press in Ireland – a privilege much of the world does not share in – we are still vulnerable. We live in a society free from censorship but not free from coercion.

Our constitution protects free speech and freedom of the press and yet papers and other media outlets will still be reluctant to cover certain topics. So it is fair to ask: if our laws do not restrict the freedom of our media, what does? What influences alter the coverage we read about in our newspapers? What are the modern-day challenges to the integrity of our media?

These are not just national questions, they are global questions. However, rather than dealing with this issue on a large scale, let us examine it on a smaller, more personal front. Let us look at our own college and ask ourselves exactly how free and how autonomous our press is in Trinity.

The interesting tact in looking at the state of student press in Trinity is found in the global comparisons you can draw between the challenges newspapers face in the 21st century. Regardless of readership or circulation, newspapers are dependent upon being afforded the same freedoms and relying on the same

key codes of ethics.

The threats to contemporary journalism are the same for any newspaper and the most pressing issue arising is also possibly the least suspecting one. Globalisation and the new technologies that have accompanied it have allowed unprecedented opportunities for disseminating and sharing information. This is, of course, a good thing for society. Over the past few decades openings for more expression and increased diversity of opinion have been enabled by advances in communications technology.

This has of course been championed and exemplified by the internet, which has made a scope and degree of communication previously unimaginable a very real and very accessible reality. The crucial chance is that people now have the means not only to consume media but to produce their own.

The paradox of an open, collaborative and contestable press system is that the more open news becomes, the less reliable it becomes. The recent technological breakthroughs that have allowed both international and student media to become so interactive are putting the traditional model of producing news under significant threat.

The rise of internet-based journalism has developed a crucial flaw. While online press has shaped society in new ways, it has not brought with it the rigorous and systematic editorial scrutiny that has been a feature of the print newspaper industry.

Student journalism has, like professional journalism, become an arms race. Gaining footholds into social streams of information is key not only to success but to survival. The instant nature of today’s technology means that our news is abrupt and, as such, so are our reactions. The threat we face today to our freedom of press comes from ourselves. We have the power to condemn and to criticise media content like never before.

Freedom of press is directly

“

The instant nature of today’s technology means that our news is abrupt and, as such, so are our reactions.

tied into integrity of the press.

The absence of laws preventing newspapers from reporting news does not imply freedom. Freedom requires the absence of any outside influence. I will circle back to this point but first let us quickly look at how we get our news in College.

The channels of distribution are becoming ever more immediate. We cannot wait for the print article. We don’t want to find the online account. We want the social network summary. We want to find out what is going on in College in the same way we want most of our news; quick and easy.

The associated problem with the social networking method of delivering information is that we don’t just see the position of the paper or the opinion of the writer, we also get the comments of various other people – people who are not necessarily unbiased and who don’t have to present their opinion in an appropriate way.

We hear all the time about how instant news can be dangerous, how it can be impulsive and not fully informed.

The flipside to that argument is that instant news is subject to instant response. How informed or even valid is the criticism student journalism faces in this college?

Numerous stories have been deemed un-newsworthy so far this term, only to end up being legitimate and wellfounded reports. Yes, modern streams of media distribution are impulsive but so is the criticism.

So, what is possibly the biggest threat this college will face towards freedom of its press? Well my concern is – student reaction. Will we reach a point when our papers and other channels of media begin not reporting on certain stories for fear of backlash? Hopefully not. Let us keep in mind as a student society that if our college press is presenting us with material that evokes reaction and challenges our opinions then they are just doing their job.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

15

Comment

Conor McGlynn on the prospect of a Mitt Romney presidency.

Romniscience

p. 17

Illustration: Alice Wilson

Reworking class reps Class reps are hard to recall – firstly in terms of many people not voting for them, and secondly in the terms and conditions that are attached to any attempt to remove them. Callum Jenkins suggests some remedies.

T Callum Jenkins Staff Writer

he Students’ Union has recently heralded this year’s election of a record number of class representatives. The figure is 363 and growing. On top of this, the union pumps considerable funds into what it sees as a vital service.

Indeed, the union’s education officer, Dan Ferrick, described the union as being impossible without the class reps. Their key aims are to provide a sort of mini-sabbatical officer for each class, combining welfare, ents and education. The democratic aims of the class rep programme are of course to be commended, but there are drawbacks.

Firstly, I would like to point out that this is not an attack on individual class reps or on the idea of student representation, which I think is of the utmost importance. Instead, this is a critical examination

of the method by which the programme is implemented and how it could be improved.

Is the system truly democratic? This year, there were 127 elections for the position of class rep. Yes, some of these involved multi-seated classes, but it still leaves a significantly high proportion of the reps being unelected.

This is evidence of the disengagement of students from the Students’ Union, and is a problem across the whole of student politics that requires immediate attention.

There is also the issue of finding people to be class reps in some classes. These are mainly small arts courses but nevertheless it further exemplifies how students are less and less interested in getting involved.

The next thing to examine is the scheduling of the elec-

tions, which begin after only one teaching week. This may not be a problem for returning students who (hopefully) know their class and know who has the right qualities to represent them. However, what if you are a junior freshman meeting your class for the first time? I know from personal experience that it is unlikely you will know which of your classmates can provide the best link between the Students’ Union and yourself.

This leads to a situation in which people are elected for all sorts of reasons other than for their ability to perform the role. Firstly, this is further evidence of the disengagement of students from the Students’ Union. The class reps straddle both the union and ordinary students, making them important links in College life. Most class reps

are very good at doing this but they are demeaned by the fact some of their peers are elected for reasons other than actually being good at the job.

What if you elect someone who is not up to the job? This is a particular problem for junior freshmen, in which case the failure of a class rep to organise class events may mean that the class fails to connect as a group. This has an effect for the rest of the class’s time in College.

The Students’ Union’s constitution incorporates a mechanism for removing class reps, but it is a complicated process, for which I was unable to find any examples.

It involves a petition to onethird of the class explaining the reasons for removal of the rep, followed by a class meeting where a two-thirds majority can vote for impeachment.

There are a number of problems with this. Firstly, who actually knows about the process? I only found out about it when researching this article, and indeed there seems to be confusion amongst the Students’ Union over how it works in practice. Secondly, it is unlikely that anyone will put in the effort that achieving an impeachment would require. This is likely to lead to a situation where nothing

“

What if you elect someone who is not up to the job? This is a particular problem for junior freshmen.

happens apart from continual moaning, which does no one any good.

Rep elections have to take place when they do due to restricted time. Before they are ready to perform their roles, representatives first attend the now-infamous training weekend. This year, the weekend was not until 15th October; later elections would push this date back further, and as an added consequence the first Students’ Union council meeting would also have to be put back.

So, how do we solve the problems I have highlighted?

I suggest elections being held twice a year. In these second elections, say at the beginning of Hilary term, there could be a more developed nomination process, meaning that only elections which are necessary are held.

Yes, of course there would be a cost, but the union is already spending significant amounts on the programme, so why not spend a bit more making sure it works?

With these slight adjustments, class reps can continue to increase in numbers and provide an even better service for the students they serve.

This will help to alleviate the general problem of disengagement from the Students’ Union, if students feel that their voice is actually being heard.

Speaking up for free speech With threats from anti-fascists to militant Islamists drowning out discussion, Fiachra Ó Raghallaigh says enough is enough.

“I Fiachra Ó Raghallaigh Contributor

t’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that,’ as if that gives them certain rights. It’s no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I’m offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what?”

So said Stephen Fry, for whom the issue is very clear cut. Unfortunately, for many people, and indeed the broader society, it is not.

Last September, a movie trailer of questionable origin went viral on YouTube, provoking a wave of violence which swept across north Africa and the Middle East.

The reason for the violence was that the film, Innocence of Muslims, both visually displayed and mocked the prophet Muhammad.

Following a number of attacks on American embassies, both Barack Obama and Hi-

lary Clinton condemned not only the attacks but the antiIslamic video which provoked them. This was, perhaps, a politically sensible move intended to defuse the situation, separating the US government from the creators of the hate video. Yet, a similar case in France is less clear-cut.

In the wake of the murder of the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stephens – which was then assumed to be a direct result of the Innocence of Muslims video – the French magazine Charlie Hebdo published satirical images of Muhammad. This was an obvious protest against the lengths to which extremists were willing to go to avenge insults towards their faith.

The French government’s response was quick, condemning the decision to publish these images on the basis that it could put their embas-

sies at risk. It was unwise, the government said, to add fuel to the fire, thus implying that the Charlie Hebdo – which has a case history in mocking religious figures – could be seen as morally responsible for any Islamist reprisals.

Reprisals, I might add, that would not take place within French borders.

This reflects a new, broader definition of moral responsibility which has been gaining favour over the last few decades. Instead of being held responsible for crimes you commit, you may also be held responsible for the things you say if they inspire or provoke others to commit crimes.

Most western countries place restrictions on hate speech, and it may be argued that these do not restrict “constructive” debate. Yet, undoubtedly, some would like to see these restrictions extend-

ed. And where the law does not restrict the discussion of controversial topics, there are other practical restrictions which are just as serious.

This is a topic with which the University Philosophical Society is all too familiar.

When, a little over a year ago, it extended an invitation to Nick Griffin of the British National party (BNP) to speak at a debate on immigration, the objectors were not slow to show their presence.

“No free speech for fascists” was the slogan of the day. Given the fact that many of the BNP leader’s followers have a history of racial violence, it was deemed anyone that offered him a platform shared some of their moral responsibility.

The protesters themselves were not the only ones who bought into this kind of thinking. As tensions mounted, the

Phil found itself bogged down in security concerns. It had the responsibility to protect its guests against a presumably large group of outside protesters, a task it could not fulfil on its own. After a fruitless discussion with College authorities, the debate was cancelled. Violence and intimidation had won the day.

It might argued that intimidating a college debating society is quite easy, and is not enough evidence on its own to show that freedom of speech is under threat. Surely if the free press can still discuss important and controversial issues, we still might outlive this era of over-the-top political correctness?

I wish I could say yes; however the fact that the Charlie Hebdo faced the public denunciation of its government shows that this trend may have advanced farther than

we may think.

The fact is that we are living in an era where he or she who can assemble the most protesters, tweet the most messages, send the most emails, and – God forbid – burn the most embassies dictates what can and cannot be discussed in public. This state of affairs may be of our own making, but there is still time to unmake it.

It is time for those who believe in freedom of speech to stand and be counted.

Our message must be clear: though we must accept that people will regard us differently for the views we express, we are not responsible for what they choose to do about it.

Neither the state, nor any individual, nor any group, has the right to punish people for simple bad manners, and it is high time we accepted this.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

Comment

16

Plastic politics The yes we can is in the bin, as Rónán Burtenshaw argues that it is the people who need to put the pop back in populist politics.

A Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

s the liberal left in the United States ratchets up the rhetoric against the Romney-Ryan ticket, it is difficult not to be struck by the seismic shift in the narrative of this election from 2008. Gone is the optimism and idealism of a recreated Camelot that possessed many four years ago.

Replacing it is the same lesser-evilism that Democrats and their partisans have wielded since FDR came to power in the early 1930s. Mitt Romney is cast again as the evil at the gates, from which civilisation must be defended by mobilising support for President Barack Obama.

Under Obama, the “evil” might be less potent, but not by nearly as much as they would have you believe. Despite closing “black sites”, his administration refused to prosecute those who had committed torture in the previous decade, eventually granting them full immunity.

It has continued the programme of extraordinary rendition, outsourcing torture and human-rights abuses to states whose practices receive less press coverage. He has intensified the US’s drone war against alleged militants, giving orders that have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths.

In South Waziristan, Pakistan, as well as destroying schools, hospitals and homes, this has amounted to a four-year campaign of terror against the local population. Atlantic journalist Conor Friedersdorf recently went to the region to speak with those who fall under the administration’s conception of “collateral damage”.

His article, which is essential reading, finds a civilian population “waking up screaming in the night, hallucinating about drones”, living in daily fear that it might be the person next to them at the market, in the mosque or on the road that is the target of the killing machines that buzz in the sky. “After the drone attacks,” a resident noted, “it is as if everyone is ill. Every person is afraid of the drones.”

The perpetuation of this campaign by the Nobel Peace Prize recipient is callous, but it is also the rule rather than the exception for a president who keeps a “Kill List” of those to be executed without trial. And it is something the administration has doubled down on during his re-election bid.

When questioned last week about the extrajudicial murder of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old American citizen and son of al Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, senior Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs replied that “he should have had a more responsible father”.

The domestic policies have been as worthy of contempt as those pursued abroad. The extension of the Patriot Act, the passage of the National Defense Authorisation Act and the war on whistleblowers (which has spread wide enough beyond Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks as to include a student activist in this college) together amount to an attack on civil liberties every bit as pronounced as that waged under George W Bush.

In the economy, the man whose largest backers in 2008 included Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and CitiGroup has consistently protected the interests of the wealthy. As Matt Stoller noted in Salon, the net result of his four year stewardship is that during the Obama administration “corporate profits have recovered dramatically and surpassed previous highs whereas home equity levels, a key indicator of working- and middle-class wealth, have remained static.

That $5-7 trillion lost by Main Street did not come back, whereas financial assets and corporate profits did.”

Between 1989 and 2010 US productivity levels grew 62.5%, according to the Economic Policy Institute, while real hourly wages for both private and public sector workers grew only 12%. Since 1978, CEO pay at American firms has risen 725%, more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the same time period as wages have flatlined.

Those who listened to the shimmering rhetoric of the 2008 presidential campaign or the apple pie narrative of a fighter for the middle-class on the stump in 2012 might expect that things have gotten a little better under Obama.

They would be wrong.

Compensation for chief

executives at American companies grew 15% in 2011 after a 28% rise in 2010, while real median household income in March 2012 was down $4,300 since Obama took office in January 2009 and down $2,900 since the June 2009 start of the economic recovery.

It has been worse for the African-American community, with the numbers in poverty, unemployment and underemployment skyrocketing since the “jobless recovery” began. While 12 million people in America are officially unemployed (many more have dropped off the radar as unofficially unemployed or are underemployed), a staggering 46.2 million people are living in poverty – a twodecade high.

Add this to the continuation of the bailout regime of ringfencing the assets of a powerful elite from repossession or market competition; the failure to prosecute Wall Street executives for criminal and racist fraud perpetuated by banks in the foreclosure swindle; rubberstamping assaults on public schools; freezes to state and local workers’ wages, and you get a portrait of a man who represents the established plutocracy in American politics, not a change from it.

But, people going to the polls will ask, what is the alternative? A Republican ticket that despises the poor and working-class? That is antiwomen, anti-gay and institutionally racist? Who would be more likely to go to war with Iran and massacre tens of thousands of innocent people in the process? No. For the vast majority of people living in the US, and many more living abroad, a Mitt Romney presidency would be a disaster. In many ways having Obama in office highlights to working and left-inclined people the limits of the Democratic Party. I understand those voting for him tactically while remaining strongly critical.

But, as the late American socialist activist Hal Draper wrote, it is not the answer which is at the root of the problem in American politics, but the question. The choice offered to those voting on 6th November will be between two members of a political aristocracy – one which is removed from the populace and their interests and which is a vehicle for the advancement of super-rich businessmen, war profiteers and corporations.

Real change in American politics will not come from within that clique. Its elections are plastic politics – with trivialities elevated to titillate the masses of people, and differences between candidates framed in such a way as to exclude the issues where they maintain vast similarities from public debate. It is a Hollywood illusion of democracy where candyfloss candidates spar in a stage-managed mass-simplification.

This feeds into the popularity of American politics in Ireland. Its hallow razzmatazz is the perfect arena for a new “political junkie” phenomenon where people learn to treat politics as an abstraction and a hobby.

American politics can, for someone here, largely be reduced to debates about theory and principles that don’t materially affect their lives.

Particularly for the liberal majority here, it is politics as accessory. A way of projecting an image of the self as idealistic without having to sacrifice for it. That was certainly the case for me when I campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008.

But there was also something substantial to the infatuation many young people had with him then, and lessons to be learned from it. Few of us acknowledge the existence of the kid in south-east Asia who stitches our shoes together or count the hours under the lash for the farm labourer in Peru who tends the coca fields before we drink a can of Coke.

But there is an enduring sense, in a world where the top two per cent of the population own over half of the aggregate wealth, that something is wrong. Those who drank the Obama Kool-Aid in 2008, myself included, wanted to believe that he could deliver a more just society and compassionate leadership.

But even the most minor of egalitarian reforms ran into systemic obstacles. And most would never be attempted for

the same reason.

The failures of the Obama administration helped to cure me of any illusions I had about the prevailing political system. In 2008, possessed by a belief in a personalising narrative about the evils of George W Bush, I believed that the system was fundamentally good but its leader had to change.

In 2012, after four years of war, surveillance statism and corporate idolatry by the man who replaced him, I understand that real change in American politics will require more than the swapping of bosses.

It will require the abolition of the bosses system, which requires the existence of the ills I have identified in this article to reproduce itself. A system which needs unemployment, or a reserve army of labour, to keep wages low through competition. One which uses poverty to frighten workers into satisfaction with their ever-decreasing lot. And that had to produce a resolution of the crisis on the back of the vast majority of workers in order to restore a rate of profitability to businesses and businessmen. A system which mobilises the state to protect profits and the hegemony which secures them at home and abroad through its security apparatus and military.

As long as America remains the apex of that system its presidential election will be about choosing the chief executive of global capital, and change will not come from the corridors of the White House.

It will come from the workplace – those workers in Walmart, the Chicago Teachers Union and the Wisconsin public service who went on strike against cuts to pay and conditions. It will come from the street – from movements like Occupy, which mobilised people in almost every major American city.

The election of Mitt Romney could probably make things worse. But, if you’re looking for positive change in a world of such inequality and disenchantment, you won’t find it in Barack Obama or Washington.

No matter who is elected on 6th November, there won’t be a happy ending to the Hollywood politics for the majority of people. Change will come from below, not from the seat of power. Amidst a sea of false hope and falser mutuality four years ago, the candidate Barack Obama did get something right - “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Graphic: Dargan Crowley-Long

Student slacktivism Rather than waiting for politics to come to them, Molly Ó Catháin urges students should make the first move.

W Molly Ó Catháin Staff Writer

e are the people who can change society. We are students, with fresh ideas and youthful idealism. From the Vietnam war protests and Tiananmen Square to the Occupy movement and Tahrir Square just last year, history shows that student activism is a driving force for highlighting inequity and procuring political change.

Despite this, there are people leaving Irish secondary schools today who cannot tell you which Irish political parties are left-wing and which are right, or what these divisions mean. This is not surprising because, despite the joke of a junior certificate subject called CSPE (civic, social and political education), no one has ever explained the basics of politics to them.

A lot of people turn 18, leave school, start college, and are suddenly adult citizens with a vote to their name. The likelihood is that many of them will vote for the candidate with the best campaign poster or the candidate from the party their parents vote for; that is, if they even cast a vote. These apolitical attitudes may be the result of growing up in relative political stability, or perhaps it is due to the uniquely confusing nature of Ireland’s politics, which are defined by a civil-war debate which is today irrelevant, but blurs the primary-school clarity of red and blue that many other countries share.

At the pro-choice march last month, I met people who were publicly commenting on a political issue for the first time in their lives. I asked what had prompted them to partake in politics. One girl I talked to replied that she had been undecided and removed from the issue of abortion till the day she had a pregnancy scare. Suddenly she was 18, without the means to travel for a termination, and unable to discuss the issue without fear of stigma and judgement. That moment, the “oh fuck” moment, is when many

women (including the girl I spoke to) realise their stance on abortion. The issue which directly affects you is where you should channel your political voice.

At a recent political meeting I met another young activist and asked him the same question – why he had become involved in politics. His answer was that he was appalled at the education cuts to special-needs support, something he had needed while he was at primary school. Again, when a topic relevant to him was raised, he felt the need to speak up.

The person whom an issue affects is the person best equipped to give opinions on it. You do not need to have a degree in political science, be well voiced on current affairs or even have a well-researched argument to have an opinion on a specific political issue. The beauty of a democracy is that each voice is of equal value. You do not have to know a lot about a subject to stop and say: “I don’t agree.”

You always have the ability to oppose a matter which does not fit with your ethics or values even if you cannot currently suggest a solution.

Declare your opinion, take the time to figure out how you think it should be and support a political movement or campaign which agrees with your beliefs, on one issue or on all.

2,431 students voted in the referendum regarding our Student Union’s affiliation with the USI. There are more than 16,500 students enrolled in College, meaning that oneeighth of us voted. I am not here to tell you which way I wish you had voted. I am here to tell you that I wish you had voted.

Household taxes; the resurgent abortion debate; the incoming budget; the European economy; your class rep.

Is there a political issue which affects you? Choosing to be political is your right and your responsibility. Let us fight the political apathy of our age.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

17

Comment

Stopping the presses: Hannah Cogan on going with the flow of the digital drift of journalism.

p. 19

Romniscience Conor McGlynn explains the agenda of a Mitt Romney administration, from cutting taxes and regulations at home to raising America’s voice abroad, and is already anticipating four more years.

F Conor McGlynn Staff Writer

our years from now, we will be facing into another presidential election in the US. If recent history has taught us anything, it’s how much can change in such a short period of time. If Mitt Romney is on the ticket in 2016, not as the challenger but as the incumbent, what sort of record will he be defending? How will America and the wider world be altered by a Romney presidency?

Election campaigns are always filled with extravagant promises and wild guarantees, but I think we’ve got some pretty good indicators of how his time in the White House might play out.

Let’s start with what Romney’s presidency won’t be: a vehicle to push his values onto America. Scaremongers on the left are warning of going “back to the 1950s”, with access to contraception blocked and bans on gay marriage and abortion. In truth, however, this situation is highly unlikely.

While he is both pro-life and pro-family, these issues are not central to his election bid, and probably won’t be during his presidency. He has no plans to prohibit abortion; he intends to overturn Roe v.

Wade so that states can democratically decide on their own abortion laws. The laws regarding marriage are likely to remain much the same. On the topic of contraception, his opposition to Obamacare, which provides the mandate for contraception coverage, is not based on social values but rather its high cost and regulatory inefficiency. Social policy will be a minor issue during his time as president.

The far more important matter over the next four years will be the economy.

During the course of the past decade, America’s debt has got out of hand. It recently passed 100% of GDP and continues to rise. Under Obama, the national debt increased by, on average, $4 billion every day.

Mitt Romney during a campaign event with Republican governors at Basalt Public High School on 2nd August in Basalt, Colorado.

This strategy of throwing borrowed money at the economic crisis to make it go away has not worked. Growth has been negligible for the last four years. America recovered more quickly from the last ten recessions than this one.

What will Romney do about this? It’s hard to say exactly; as his opponents have pointed out, he has been quite thin on details. However, he has pledged to reduce federal spending and put a stop to the runaway borrowing of the Obama administration. His main focus is going to be on growth.

He will likely decrease the regulations and taxes which act as impediments to job creation, in an effort to lower the high unemployment rate, while implementing effective regulation on the financial sector. Is his plan going to work? It’s impossible to predict, but America definitely

needs a change of direction to escape the slump in which it finds itself.

Much of the debate during the election campaign has focused on China. Romney has been especially vocal on what he sees as China’s currency manipulation, which he claims is hurting American manufacturing. The contention is that China buys up other currency assets, especially US dollars, in order to devalue their own currency; thereby making Chinese exports relatively cheaper.

That China manipulates its currency is almost a certainty; an IMF study suggests that the renminbi is undervalued by as much as 40%. Romney getting tough with China is, however, unlikely to help US manufacturing. What it will do is stop the huge imbalance of trade with China, and put an end to China’s unrealistic trade surpluses. China’s cur-

rency policy has been one of the major impediments to world economic recovery. If Romney puts his foot down – something Obama has been hesitant to do – it could pay dividends, not just to America but to Europe also.

One of the cornerstones of Romney’s plan for government is energy policy. His pledge to get North America energy independent by 2020 is encouraging; his reliance on oil and natural gas, less so. Nonetheless, America is unlikely to get away from fossil fuels anytime soon, so becoming self-sufficient in this regard should be welcomed.

Dependence on a region as volatile as the Middle East to keep an economy going is a dangerous game.

Total energy independence is unrealistic in the timeframe he sets out. Nonetheless, if Romney takes steps in that direction, as he seems intent

Romney has all the wrong answers Questions may be asked of Obama, but, Jack Sheehan cautions, the country should be asking questions of itself too.

T Jack Sheehan Staff Writer

he answer to the question of why you should vote for Obama is the same as the retort you might give after being questioned about a black eye: “You should see the other guy.”

In simplistic terms, Obama is less important as an agent of change or positive advancement for Americans than as a bulwark against a radical and unhinged right-wing party led by a man utterly devoid of principles, ideals or convictions. This year’s vote is, once again, the most important in years. The reasons to vote against Mitt Romney are myriad.

First, however, Obama’s record deserves examination.

The president is at heart a small-c conservative with mildly liberal domestic policies. As has been repeated in a hundred different 30-second tv spots on every channel in Ohio, Obama’s stimulus legislation essentially rescued the US from a prolonged depres-

sion, and set the nation on a slow, grinding path to recovery.

Most crucially, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act reversed the horrific job losses inherited from the Bush administration. This achievement is often breezily stated, but it warrants further examination.

In January of 2009, the country was haemorrhaging between 700,000 and 800,000 workers a month.

Obama’s actions reversed this trend and returned the country to growth, albeit of a decidedly anaemic variety.

Obama’s actions in the first days of his presidency allow us to draw one of the sharpest contrasts between himself and Romney. The Republican candidate opposed the rescue of the American car manufacturing industry, going so far as to pen a now infamous op-ed entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”.

This episode displays two

characteristics that are intrinsic to Romney’s character. One is a willingness to exploit absolutely any situation for political gain, no matter what the risks to the people involved. The other is a belief, whether genuine or for political purposes, in a radically market-driven approach to government. Refusing to intervene in order to save the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people, as well as a yet-viable industry, because of a rigid right-wing orthodoxy should be enough to disqualify anyone from the presidency.

The overhaul of the American healthcare system designed by the president is a sober, extraordinarily conservative approach to the appalling issue of the millions of uninsured persons receiving extremely inadequate healthcare.

The design of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was largely taken

from an insurance mandatebased system signed into law in Massachusetts by then moderate Republican governor Mitt Romney. Romney’s hysterical denunciation of this supposed federal overreach makes him one of two things: a newly minted hard-right conservative or a shameless political chameleon who will take any position if it smoothes the route to higher elected office. In either case, he belongs as far from the Oval Office as it is possible to be.

Romney’s choice of VP was another illustration of his true character. Widely expected to select Ohio senator and relative moderate Rob Portman, the Republican nominee instead chose Paul Ryan, an extreme right ideologue who has spent the last several years pushing a small-government fantasy called the “Path to Prosperity”.

This so-called “Ryan Budg-

on doing, then America can benefit immensely. It is also important to note that Romney is not against green energy. He seeks to facilitate the development of alternative energy sources while avoiding the wastages of the Obama administration, such as the hundreds of millions of dollars lost on the failed green company Solyndra.

For those of us in Europe, the issue of most immediate concern is US foreign policy, particularly in respect to the Middle East. How will this change if Romney becomes president? For one, he has promised to get tough on Iran.

While the economic sanctions put in place under Obama do seem to be taking effect, Iran has yet to show any signs of slowing down its uranium enrichment program. Perhaps a more robust response is necessary, backed up with a real military option.

After Iraq and Afghanistan, no one wants to see America involve itself in another conflict, but a nuclear-armed Iran is a far more frightening possibility. Is Romney really going to have much more of an impact than Obama has had? It must be admitted that Obama hasn’t been especially forceful in this area. He has put “daylight” between the US and their only ally in the region, Israel. He has pushed to water down sanctions on Iran.

Romney has decried these moves. Whether Romney, as president, will really go as far as military action is unsure, but he is set to send out a stronger signal; something we in the West should welcome.

Four years from now, we will be facing into another presidential election in the US. If Mitt Romney is on the ballot in 2016, he could well be defending a record to be proud of.

et” not only involves grotesque cuts to governmental services and a mangling of the medicare and social security programmes, but does not even claim to balance the budget until the 2030s.

It is defined chiefly by yet another enormous tax cut for the very wealthiest Americans and an awful lot of extremely fuzzy mathematics and optimistic projection. The plan, like its author, is a sham, but one that could do an incalculable amount of damage.

It is on social issues, perhaps, that the schism between the two parties is most obvious. While some may excoriate the president for not doing more on the issue of same-sex marriage, his ideological support of the idea at least places him in a morally defensible position.

The Romney-Ryan ticket has no qualms about upholding a system in which human beings have their rights withheld based on the whims of a number of elderly white men.

Indeed, Romney has stated that he supports a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. In 2012, the candidate for one of the two major parties still supports a plan cooked up in the worst depths of mid-90s anti-gay hysteria.

In a divided national legislature, it is sometimes difficult to say what a particular party would do with power. However, by looking at the numerous state legislatures controlled

by Republicans since 2010, it is possible to see a few key themes.

In just two short years, in states across the country, they have rolled back abortion rights, instituted voting laws that are set to disenfranchise thousands of (mostly African-American and Hispanic) people, limited free access to sexual healthcare and contraception as well as a host of other hard-right fantasies.

This party of extremists and radicals, obsessed with control over women’s reproductive rights despite their small-government pretensions, is led by Mitt Romney.

While the adage of “vote for the man, not the party” may have made sense when crossing the aisle to vote for Ike Eisenhower, in a modern polarised political landscape, putting Romney in the presidency is as good as endorsing the entire Republican social and economic platform.

On foreign policy, the choice is admittedly between two hawkish men, both of whom are willing to use force with a much reduced amount of congressional oversight.

Obama’s use of drone strikes is both indefensible and ill-advised, but he is winding down America’s two current wars, favours a policy of containment towards Iran and has outlawed the base torture that was the Bush administration’s most disgusting legacy.

Romney is inexperienced, lacking in morality and downright dangerous. Whether he would allow the use of torture is an open question, because in an act of extreme cowardice, he has continually refused to answer on the subject. His rhetoric concerning Iran and Israel makes his election a stunningly dangerous gamble.

The elements of the Republican party which embroiled the nation in two irresponsible and devastating wars have not disappeared; indeed, many of them have been incorporated into Romney’s election team.

It is not difficult to imagine a foreign policy cabinet led by John Bolton, Cofer Black and Dan Senor leading the country into a conflict with Iran that would make the Iraq war look like a training exercise.

Ultimately the choice comes down to what vision of government you wish to see implemented. Obama represents a continuation of the mildly progressive forces of the 20th century. He stands for a gradual expansion of government to respond to the needs of the modern state. His plan is one that recognises the decline of working- and middle-class fortunes in America, and attempts to alleviate their pain. It is one that sees a growing disparity of wealth and takes steps to oppose it.

The president has presided over a gradual extension of civil rights to those denied them for many years. He is a responsible and humble man, if flawed.

Mitt Romney will take any position if it gains him political advantage. His only solution to the vast hoarding of wealth by modern day plutocrats is to hand them another tax cut. He is a candidate, just as his opponent accuses, with a foreign policy from the 80s, a social policy from the 50s and an economic policy from the 20s. For all the TN readers in Ohio, Iowa, Virginia and Florida, Barack Obama is the right choice.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

18

Comment

Leader of the Democratic Unionist party and first minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson.

The future’s bright, but it’s not Orange Rather than looking back on the divisions of the past, Henry Hill insists that Ulster must look forward with a united sense of purpose.

I Henry Hill Staff Writer

was a touch wary when I was first contacted about writing a response to John Porter’s article in the last issue of Trinity News about the Orange Order and northern unionism.

While I am a unionist, the Irish half of my family is Connacht Catholic rather than Ulster Protestant and I have nothing to do with the loyal orders.

However, although it is neither my place nor my intention to defend the order, I think Porter’s broader points about unionism – or, rather, unionists – bear challenging, as the perception that the Orange Order and its accompanying attitudes represent a homogeneous unionist community is deeply misleading.

Not that you would think it from looking at Northern Irish elections. The Democratic Unionist party, founded

by Ian Paisley, is the predominant party of unionism in the province (although with Sinn Féin as their nationalist counterpart it is not easy to throw stones).

The venerable Ulster Unionist party does have a liberal wing, but the party seems loath to trust it, instead dancing around the DUP’s trap of “unionist unity”. The Alliance party, originally a party for non-sectarian unionism, has drifted into the traditional liberal territory of neutrality regarding the border.

Yet, while the picture painted by observing the main unionist parties appears bleak, there are important caveats.

Firstly it is worth bearing in mind that Peter Robinson – who is by far the most capable politician in Northern Ireland, as far as party manoeuvring is concerned – has broken the DUP mould by making an explicit call for unionism to build into a broader movement and make a sustained attempt to reach out to Catholics.

While these sentiments would (and do) provoke much sceptical eyerolling coming from a UUP politician, it is a far bigger step to hear them from the leader of the DUP, which has much closer and more recent ties to the radical Presbyterianism of that party’s founder.

The second thing to re-

member is that the makeup of the Northern Ireland Assembly is very much a product of how Stormont is set up, designed to ensure an all-musthave-prizes government that leaves nobody out.

That, combined with the gradual realisation that peace appears to be here to stay, has led voters from each of the two communities to favour the harder-line party they trust to keep a close eye on the other lot. Hence the gradual sidelining of the moderate and oncedominant UUP and the Social Democratic and Labour party (SDLP). Community relations are no worse than they were when the moderates were in charge, but those who vote want different things from their parties nowadays.

That phrase – “those who vote” – is the third caveat.

Electoral turnouts in Northern Ireland, particularly amongst pro-union voters, are low. While Robinson and his colleagues can rely on them to turn out in the event of a border poll, the narrow range of options available to the unionist and pro-union voter in Northern Ireland is leading an increasing proportion to stay at home, more so among those of the less committed, more liberal persuasion.

This narrowness has also prevented effective engagement with pro-union Catholics, of whom there is an increasing number. A recent Life and Times survey showed, for the first time, that a majority of Catholics are in favour of remaining inside the UK. Although this does not necessarily mean they are suddenly enthusiastic or would identify as “unionist”, and while one can always quibble with any poll, no margin for error is big enough to disguise the fact that a significant shift in attitudes is taking place.

Neverthless, Catholic engagement with traditional unionist parties languishes at 2% for the UUP and 0% for the DUP. In short, unionists in Northern Ireland are a much more diverse bunch than their noisiest and most visible organisations might lead you to believe. Most of them neither march nor play in loyal bands, and most DUP voters are no

“

A recent Life and Times survey showed, for the first time, that a majority of Catholics are in favour of remaining inside the UK.

more viciously sectarian than the former SDLP voter who now votes Sinn Féin.

While there are sections of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland that fit Porter’s description, the breadth of pro-union views and those who hold them is far wider than his Orange-focused article suggests, and the majority of modern unionists are, on the whole, both less prejudiced than their parents’ generation and more confident about their secure place in the United Kingdom.

However, Porter ties his narrow representation of unionism in Northern Ireland into a broader thesis which I would like to examine. His notion is that the homogeneous unionist community buys into – or feels that everybody else buys into – a viciously onesided interpretation of their history, and thus face an apparently inescapable choice: reject their identity, as Porter did, or embrace an ever deeper, less contemporary, less tolerant version of it.

Whilst I cannot speak for the very Orange strata of unionist society that Porter comes from, it bears noting that this is an entirely false choice for most modern unionists, who manage to combine pro-union views with improved community relations and the modern world quite comfortably.

The question assumes not only that unionists cannot reconcile their beliefs with the modern world (which is untrue), but that they buy into the history Porter presents. To save you digging out your old Trinity News, I shall repeat the passage here: “It is a widespread opinion that Ulster Protestants are on the wrong side of history.

They are generally viewed as the enslavers, the overseers, akin to white South Africans.

They will forever be labelled as ignorant aggressors who put pause to the idyll of a united, independent Ireland that so many young men died dreaming about.”

That is an awful lot of spite to pack into three sentences. I do not want to get too drawn into a detailed response and rebuttal (as I did in a discarded early draft of this ar-

ticle), but allow me to finish by offering some broad-stroke counterpoints.

First, the notion that history has “sides” is determinist nonsense. The course of historical events is shaped by many things, but some sort of inevitable tide is not one of them. Rather, political movements try to conjure this sense of inevitability to fire up their supporters and demoralise their opponents.

Indeed, after looking at centuries of deepening integration between the three kingdoms of the British Isles, unionists in the 19th century decided that history was on their own side.

In fact, the 1641 depositions suggest that Protestant settlers in Ulster might have actually created a “British” identity before it evolved on the mainland. That sense of destiny does much to explain why unionists fought their corner so vigorously for so long before 1921.

Second, the assertions that these views are “widespread” or generally-held have no bearing on their truthfulness, for history is replete with strong majorities adhering to bigoted beliefs and interpretations. The paragraph I quote is no more accurate for being popular (if it is, in fact, popular) than the mental association between “Irish” and “terrorist” in times past, or the association between “Muslim” and “terrorist” in parts of the west today.

The last two charges are simply answered. Ulster Protestants are no more “ignorant aggressors” than all the others who waged the confessional wars of the 17th century or the sectarian terror campaigns of the 20th.

As for the so-called “idyll” of a united, independent Ireland, that is not a vision shared by unionists of any stripe, and the number of young men who died dreaming of it is irrelevant. We have dreams of our own.

This leaves only the “South African” comparison, which is interesting because it is often used to support the notion that the Protestants do not have a legitimate right to be in Northern Ireland, are not a legitimate people, and thus

Breaking down university rankings With her experience of business backing mining and petroleum exporation over other studies, geology student Francesca Mirolo says university rankings should be taken with a pinch of salt.

E Francesca Mirolo Contributor

very year, shortly after the leaving certificate results and the merry scramble for places in college, we get the release of the university rankings list.

Frankly, I have a rather jaded view of the rankings; it feels like the rankings given to secondary schools escalated to a global level.

It seems only natural that each university will aim as high up the list as possible, for prestige and to attract funding and students. While great care is taken in the calculations for the rankings, I’m not convinced the rankings are a full reflection of each university. In the words of my secondary school English teacher: you must have context. I’ll use Trinity College, my home university, as an example.

This year Trinity ranked 110th in the Times Higher Education (THE) rankings, up seven from last year, with an overall point score of 56.2.

The individual scores that

make up this average indicate Trinity is weakest in research and industry investment.

But these scores say nothing about the university’s economic environment: just three years ago, in 2009, before the beginning of the global economic downturn, Trinity was sitting in a rather comfortable tie with Osaka University at 43rd place.

Since then, Ireland’s small, open economy has drastically worsened, naturally resulting in funding cuts to all areas of society, particularly universities.

The THE industry score is calculated by how much a university’s research work promotes economic development, as measured by the amount industry invests back in the university. Let’s be honest – industry favours work that will turn a profit. That means maths, engineering, the sciences and business attract the most attention from

industry. This automatically disqualifies large swathes of work done in the arts and humanities, and favours sciencefocused institutions.

Even within a single science, more money will go to certain disciplines than to others. To take another example that I know well, industry investment in geology will focus primarily on mining and petroleum exploration, with some interest in tectonics and palaeontology since they can help pinpoint new areas to exploit.

The research score, valued at 30% of the total, is the other weak point in Trinity’s breakdown. This score is calculated using the university’s research income, a reputation score based on a survey of academics, and the paper output of its academic staff. Not only is research income sensitive to economic conditions, but the sample size of the reputation survey is only 16,000,

and thus unlikely to provide a truly global perspective.

As for paper count per academic, while this is a helpful indicative measure, it is well known not to be a good indicator of real research output; it also fails to take into account the problem of balancing teaching and research work.

Furthermore, research is not just the province of academics, and this measure explicitly does not count postgraduate students or postdocs. But, when there is a lack of funding for the latter, research output will suffer.

I suspect such a lack of research funding to be the problem for Trinity: if the research produced here is so poor, then why is the citations score – based on the impact of a university’s work and the number of times its papers are cited – Trinity’s best score at 88.1?

It appears what is being produced is quality over quantity.

“

Trinity is weakest in research and industry investment …

Let’s be honest – industry favours work that will turn a profit.

have no right to self-determination.

The basic falseness of this can be simply laid out. While Protestants did arrive from England and Scotland centuries ago, population transference and shifting borders are not uncommon in Europe and, were Ireland not an island, the irredentism of committed nationalists would be less palatable than it appears, while the notion that inhabitants of a country are “illegitimate” because of where their distant ancestors came from is fundamentally chauvinist.

If we set aside the pre-independence all-Ireland strains between the faiths, there are undoubted parallels between Northern Ireland and South Africa, and no credible commentators deny the ill-treatment of the Catholic minority in the north; although, it is worth remembering that the Protestant population of the 26 counties slumped by 70% between 1891 and 1991 with little remark from history, which only fuelled northern suspicions.

Yet the Protestant-dominated parliament and the sectarian order that resulted did not stem from inherent malevolence on the part of unionists. Indeed, it was Lord Carson who most strenuously opposed the establishment of Stormont, fearing the de-normalisation of the province’s politics and the association of unionism – which, for him, meant equal citizenship of a non-sectarian UK – with Protestant supremacism.

Rather, it was the British Liberals, staunch allies of home rule, who first foisted a parliament on a Protestantmajority territory (thus ensuring a built-in majority) and then spooked the Protestants into banding together against possible betrayal, sowing the seeds for the bigoted, culturally paranoid one-party state that Northern Ireland became.

Ironically, many of the 20th-century injustices pinned to Ulster Protestants today could have been avoided if the Liberals had between willing to concede the unionists’ main assertion: that Ulster was British, and had the right to remain so.

The lack of funding makes itself known in other ways as well. In Ireland, to be accepted to a master’s program with any hope of funding, typically you need a 2.1. Yet in geology, there are no such positions available at all, save for industry-funded research master’s courses.

To pursue postgraduate work in geology in Ireland, you therefore need to pursue a PhD, and to have any chance of funding for that you need to have a first. And that is without taking into account competition with the international students vying for the position. By contrast, at Oxford, it is perfectly possible to be admitted to a fully-funded doctoral programme with a 2.1.

The thing I am afraid of is that prospective students will use these rankings to choose between universities without understanding the caveats attached to them. Realistically, university rankings might give some indication of the relative quality of their courses, but they certainly don’t give a complete picture. They need to include a lot more contextual information, and only once they do so will they be truly useful tools for picking your course. Until then, take them with a pinch of salt.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

Editorial

Recasting the narrative

T Rónán Burtenshaw Editor

he phrase “survival of the fittest” was coined by the English social Darwinist and philosopher Herbert Spencer. Darwin, liking the phrase, chose to use it in the fifth edition of his Origin of Species as a synonym for his theory of natural selection in evolution.

He later regretted it.

The conflation of Darwinian evolutionary theory with social and economic policy suited those in power in the 19th century. It acted as a justification for the enormous inequality that prevailed – “the rich were rich because they were superior and the poor were poor because they were inferior” – this was the way of the world. Social Darwinism gave impetus to supremacism, encouraging eugenics and the idea of herrenvolk. In a dynamic that bears comparison with modern free-market economics, it gifted to those who justify supremacy the legitimacy of misapplied science. This is a valuable asset to ideologues engaged in what John Kenneth Galbraith called “the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

The ghost of social Darwinism still lurks in the background of human sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, but it has now been largely discredited. The contemporary scientific study of humanity recognises a broader spectrum of human ability, with differentiated intelligences and modalities, where the scientific consensus is that the actual scale of difference in human brainpower is quite small. As the late Stephen Jay Gould put it, “I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

But just as the powerful have been able to manipulate discussions about debt by framing them as moral questions, they have also been able to frame discussion of the economy in capitalism as a moral question. One of the most important tasks for those seeking to expose and combat the injustice of the prevailing system will be to undermine this moral argument and to recast it as a power relation.

The narrative at the moment continues largely uninterrupted on the path social Darwinism walked. Those who have wealth are no longer said to have it because they are biologically superior.

That, largely – beware the bell curve – won’t fly any more. Instead they possess it because they have “earned” it in some fair system. The fairness of biological superiority here has been substituted with a game – the market economy – to which everyone has equal access and whose rules apply equally to all participants. We are asked to ignore the his-

tory behind this game. There is little or no mention of the fact that there was no phase of wealth redistribution, no economic reset, after the great historical crimes of colonialism, imperialism or slavery.

Or that the international economic disparities created by those phenomena persist, in the main, today. But also the fact that this game is being played on a skewed field, with one team possessing more players.

Similarly, post-politics asks us to believe Francis Fukuyama’s argument that we had reached the “end of history”.

No tomorrow, no yesterday – just today. And today “we are where we are” – neoliberalism – so suck it up.

“Earning” within the capitalist framework means getting what you can, as much as you can, as quickly as you can. This is how the competitive profit motive works. If it was a system based on some moral concept of earning, the top 2% of the world’s population wouldn’t own more than 50% of the wealth while the bottom 50% owned 1%. Neither would the six Walton family heirs own more wealth than the bottom 100 million Americans.

You get what you can and you don’t give it back – which is not to say people don’t work hard for what they get; rather, this isn’t a moral framework for earning and therefore shouldn’t be addressed with moral language. The strongest, least fanciful arguments for capitalism frame it in a realistic context, not an idealistic one. They would acknowledge it as a system in the historical tradition of Thucydides, where questions are answered “between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”. And they would justify this with a description of “human nature” which emphasises greed and individualism.

Those of us seeking to provide an alternative to deepening inequality and suffering should not deny that “we are where we are” – capitalist hegemony. But we have got to recast where, exactly, this is. There is widespread ackowledgement of the different set of rules for the rich and poor in society. A number of times recently I have been drawn into conversations about disparities of justice for the powerful and the rest.

These conversations have descended, at a certain point, into wayward nostalgia about times when this was not the case.

This feeds into the notion that really we have just messed up a perfectly good system – not one that inevitably results in justice depending on your position of power.

Anacharsis wrote in the sixth century BC that the law was like a spider’s web: strong

All on the cover of Newsweek Hannah Cogan Public Editor On 18th October, Newsweek did something radical. Shifting purely to online content, Newsweek decided it will publish its last print edition on 31st December of this year, ending a 79-year print run, and will shift to a single, global edition released in a digital format.

I, for one, think this is brilliant. The wood can stay in the forests, the oil to process newsprint can stay in the ground and the fumes can stay in factory smokestacks and not spew all over the place.

Information will get to me more quickly, accessibly and cheaply, and if we are really lucky, other newspapers will cop on to this business model and they will stop going under at a startling rate.

I am apparently the only person who thinks this way.

The New York Observer thinks “the second media winter” is on the way; the Express Tribune has declared it “the end of reading”; Forbes thinks it is “the end of print, or at least the end of Newsweek”.

The world has been slow to

embrace the full capabilities of a networked planet. The internet has changed how we interact with the world around us and will continue to do so.

Movie studios, the music industry, and journalism decry its rise for a simple reason: as businesses, they will only exist as long as they can claim to be the solution to a problem. When that problem stops existing, their industry becomes obsolete, and thus perpetuating that problem is in their own self-interest.

The music industry insists it makes a career in music tenable by allowing artists to sell their recordings, pushing legislation to punish file sharing and free downloads.

They exist as a solution to the problem of procuring copies of music and have an interest in maintaining that problem.

Even as the industry tries to restrict the impact of the internet on its existing business model, it is failing: Sony, EMI and BMG all report huge losses in the sale of recordings; individual artists, increas-

ingly, maintain their income through live shows and tours, experiences that the internet cannot replicate. Emerging bands find increasing stability in a linked-in world that promotes easy sharing and more gig revenue through increased exposure.

Journalism follows much the same model, but is in some ways unique. Dealing with information, rather than an artistic product, makes its evaluation harder and arguably more consequential.

Deciding that you do not like a new band requires no special skills to evaluate, and the only significant consequence is a slightly smaller music library for you, and a band or two who should stick to their day jobs.

Deciding who to trust as a news source on the internet requires some prior knowledge and comparing a number of accounts of events, as well as possibly being able to evaluate any bias on the part of the author.

The results, meanwhile, can inform voting patterns

enough to catch the weak but too weak to catch the strong.

Capitalism has not been in existence since the sixth century BC, but it is firmly in the tradition of power-based realist politics that existed then – systems where inequalities are justified by appeals to rugged human nature. Capitalism is, essentially, just another in the succession of power-based hierarchies – with differentiated, interconnected, interacting systems of domination and subjugation – that have been the predominant social orders for humanity.

Seeing capitalism as a power-based system has important ramifications for framing political actions therein.

Those of us interested in equality must seek to create political discourse that allows them to speak and which accounts for power positions.

We should refuse to engage in discussions about economics or politics that are framed in “flat Earth” positives – like things that are good for “the economy” – but that ignore the reality that the economy applies differently to different people, based on their positions of power; conversations that are, inevitably, framed by the powerful to fit their interests. We must dismiss the belief that compelling arguments about economic growth or the need for demand will be enough to provoke a shift in policy away from austerity.

Likewise an appeal to this government to “live up to their commitments”. The seriousness with which the government treats its commitments is directly proportional to the power of those to whom those commitments were made. So, the commitment to the troika – to devastate Irish society with an austerity programme of cuts and taxes to pay for privatesector banking debt – is more important than any promise made to voters.

An understanding of capitalism that emphasises power relationships must see the government as tending towards the interests of those with most power by definition.

The job of those without power, in the first instance, is to fight to set the boundaries of possibility for the government – to restrict them in their ability to favour the powerful at the expense of the rest. The first challenge is to recast the narrative around the economic crisis to the fight – between those with power and those without, those who are ruling and those who are ruled – and away from the politics of false mutuality. The “difficult decisions” that are being taken do not apply to us all equally, as you may have noticed; 7,000 people went to jail for not paying fines in 2011 while we’re still waiting for the first banker behind bars: we are not “all in this together”.

19

Elaine McCahill

Here comes the fear

Editor-at-Large Last week I was at a party, and the conversation inevitably turned towards post-graduation plans. Are you staying in Trinity? Are you doing a master’s? Are you going to travel?

Are you going to get a job?

And so on, ad nauseam.

A few friends had answers to the plethora of questions surrounding finishing one’s degree, but for the most part we were stumped. A few mumbled about looking into graduate programmes. We all agreed that we pretty much ignored the Careers Advisory Service emails every week and we did not really have a clue about how to even go about applying for postgraduate courses.

Why, though, do we bury our heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge that we should really make some semblance of a plan for when we leave the cobbled lanes of Trinity? Two words: the fear.

In university, the fear takes many different appearances: fear of missing out, fear of exams and essentially the fear of leaving. We spend four years here and we get settled and then we do not want to leave.

We do not want to leave our friends, our lifestyle or our habits, and so we avoid thinking about it.

It is hard to acknowledge that we, once again, have to leave an educational institution where we have made our lives for the past number of years. After leaving both primary and secondary school and making it to college, it is hard to accept that we are finally leaving institutional education.

It is also challenging to leave Trinity, in particular. It is an incredibly special environment and one that cultivates amazing friendships and experiences. There is more to the fear than plain sentimentality. Master’s programmes are incredibly expensive and involve at least another year, if not two, of full-time education.

In the current climate where undergraduate degrees are a standard on any young person’s CV, a specialised master’s or postgraduate degree is necessary to maintain an edge, unless you have

advanced experience in the area you wish to work in. In Ireland, these courses cost thousands in fees, not including accommodation or living expenses, thus making it an untenable choice for many.

Loans are also not as accessible any more, nor are the part-time jobs needed to pay them back. This increasing expense and inaccessibility is in stark contrast to countries like Sweden or Norway who provide free postgraduate programmes for residents.

While this is not feasible in Ireland, what with our extensive monetary troubles, even reducing the fees to just slightly more than the undergraduate registration fee would make it a far more accessible enterprise.

Graduate programmes are another widely advertised option, but they require lengthy application and interview processes and are extraordinarily competitive. Even if you are ultimately offered the position it usually entails a commitment of at least a couple of years.

If you want to stay in Ireland, the country is no longer filled with endless opportunities; it is more like an endless dole queue. As such, recent or impending graduates have to deal with the realisation that if they decide not to stay in higher education, they more than likely have to move abroad to find work.

That is not to say that emigration is inherently negative.

More recently, many journalists and commentators have described Ireland’s mass exodus of skilled and educated young people as being positive for our future. Many of these emigrants will establish themselves abroad, but it is also hoped that these young people will come back to settle here, with more experience and skills that will contribute greatly to the workforce.

Although it is unfortunate that our economy can only provide jobs or experience for a small number of graduates, travelling abroad is beneficial for a broader and more comprehensive working experience.

A few weeks ago, at a Careers Advisory Service talk

on a career in journalism or broadcasting, one of the speakers, Niamh Collins, the channel and products manager for RTÉ Digital, encouraged anyone hoping to get into the field to work abroad, particularly in London where opportunities for internships and junior editorial positions are more plentiful due to the sheer number of publications, television stations and production companies.

While moving abroad may be necessary, it is also incredibly daunting. Whether it be alone, with friends or with a significant other, starting again in a new country or city requires a lot of effort and courage. It is not just moving away or starting a course at a different institution that is the fearful part of graduation.

It is acknowledging that the prime, fun-loving years of our lives are coming to an end.

That is not to say that the rest of our lives will not be incredibly fun; it is just that the carefree adventures of our undergraduate years are nearly finished. It is similar to when you leave secondary school; your friends are not accessible on a daily basis anymore, and now you have to make an effort to keep in touch.

It will be the same when we leave here: no longer in each other’s pockets, able to meet up at a moment’s notice: no more random days drinking in the Pav, going to a debate or movie screening; no more ball season.

It is a realisation that definitely leads to an increased appreciation of daily friendships, constant events and generally having the craic around College that in the next few years will be taken up with office politics, deadlines, month-end accounts and so on.

While change is daunting, it is best to be prepared, so it is probably high time that those of us who mumble answers when asked about our future get around to making a plan – or even just researching one – so as to feel better about the fear of eventually having to leave this place behind us.

But many of us should be.

Collective action is necessitated by a power-based system to harness the cumulative strength of the weak and fight against the dominance of the powerful. Despite the best efforts of commentators like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz to appeal to the better nature of those in power to change course, it is demonstrably the case after four years of recession that reasoned arguments won’t be enough. We need a resurgence of the struggle. “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” African-American

abolitionist and activist Frederick Douglass wrote in his Speech on West India Emancipation.

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted … The limits of [those in power] are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get.”

Until we come together,

through collective action, to create a demand for justice, nothing is going to change.

To educate, agitate, organise – that is the task of those interested in the survival of the weakest in 2012. But it starts with a fight against the hegemony of capitalism and a narrative that legitimises the grotesque inequality and injustice which exists, and is being deepened, today. The powerful in this crisis will impose as much hardship on the powerless as they can. The fight to recast the political narrative is the fight to have this known.

that might be different, stories that would not have made the news cycle, and political movements that would not have made it off the ground.

The generally short attention span of the internet means that the world’s fringe ranters and ravers (Fred Phelps, #StopKony and Chen Guangchen all belong on this list) get a platform, for better or for worse.

When Newsweek goes digital, its world will not end. Publication will not cease, and the spirit of the magazine will not be altered forever. It will not be a heavy blow to journalism and photography, forcing both to struggle for their lives against an unappreciative public, and it does not mark the gradual ceding of all journalistic power to the internet as Twitter’s abbreviated rants take preference over professional journalism.

Instead, it marks the inevitable and applaudable stratification of the internet. The web is now a platform open to everybody, professional writer or not, but commercial success can only come with high traffic; and high traffic, increasingly, is limited to truly interesting writing.

It is in the interest of online magazines and news sources to attract the best writers, driving up the quality of content, while the badge of Newsweek, the New York Times or something similar helps web users differentiate between good and bad journalism, and those are categories with objective descriptions, whatever your political stripes.

Witness the meteoric rise of Slate, one of the world’s best opinion and news sources, digital or otherwise. Their writers have an exceptional platform, it is information that is freely accessible to the public, and commercially it is more successful than most print media, particularly in bringing in ad revenue.

The shift online is a great thing for media and the media-reading public. Yes, newspapers will employ a smaller production staff, and yes, people will lose jobs. People have also lost jobs manufacturing VHS tapes and manning telegraph offices; it is not an argument against improving an industry.

We have a weirdly nostalgic attachment to print journalism; I like reading the Sunday paper in a coffee shop too, but the fact remains that we demonstrably do not like print journalism enough to keep the industry commercially viable.

If we valued newspapers as much as we claim to, we would buy more of them, but we do not. Given the choice between gutting brilliant writers and editorial staff to keep a newspaper in print and putting brilliant content online, I will take the digital option every time.

Newsweek are at the forefront of a revolution and there is no reason it should not work. The internet should not be only allowed to work halfway for the sake of preserving outdated institutions.

Embrace it.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

Science

Handing out the prizes

p.20

Science in Brief Stephen Keane

First synthetic petrol

Illustration: Chloë Nagle

Genetically modified future

Engineers at Air Fuel Synthesis (AFS), a small engineering firm in England, have reported producing the first synthetic petrol out of water and carbon dioxide.

This is a landmark discovery in the development of green fuels as the new petrol is carbon neutral.

So far the group has produced five litres of fuel in three months and hopes to increase production to 1,200

litres a day in the next two years.

The process works by extracting hydrogen from water and mixing it with carbon dioxide and a catalyst to make methanol which is the converted into petrol.

While currently more expensive to produce petrol derived from oil, it is hoped that production could eventually be scaled up to refinery sizes in order to reduce costs.

New planet discovered by volunteers

Genetically modified food is the past, present and future. While Europe is sidetracked by spurious health scares, Adam Kelly outlines how the rest of the world is moving on.

H Adam Kelly Staff Writer

ow does one best approach the problem of starvation in a famine prone-country? Emergency supplies? Financial assistance? A military presence?

If you’re Norman Borlaug, the so-called father of the Green Revolution, the answer lies in providing the means to selfsufficiently feed a country in a remarkably short period of time.

In the first year after the introduction of selectively bred wheat varieties to faminestricken India, and no doubt to the delight of its schoolchildren, so exceptional was the grain output that some local schools ended up being redesignated as grain stores.

Over the course of a decade, the Indian subcontinent was able to shift from a position of importing one-fifth of the wheat output of the US to almost complete self-reliance.

Selective breeding of plant varieties has been used since the inception of agriculture, whereby preferred crops built up a collection of traits over time by means of artificial selection. The progression of technology has allowed deliberate hybridisation of plant species, with crossbreeding taking place to consolidate characteristics such as drought resistance and increased yields within a species.

The emergence of the field of genetics has facilitated a greater understanding of gene flow, and genetic engineering techniques have allowed for greater efficiency and variety in crafting superior species of plants. The two techniques employed are transgenic, wherein genes are inserted which are derived from other

plants, and cisgenic, wherein genes are implanted from plants of the same species.

The latter technique is so comparable to conventional methods that it is usually employed when traditional crossbreeding is difficult.

The stigma surrounding genetically modified (GM) crops is certainly more prevalent in some parts of the world than others. The US is by far and away the largest GM farmer, with 66.8 million of a total 103 million hectares containing genetically engineered seeds. Developing countries, which stand to see the greatest benefits from adopting the technology, are also showing remarkable increases in GM crop use, with Brazil overtaking Argentina in 2010 to become the second largest grower, planting 25.4m hectares containing GM seeds.

This market can only be expected to grow, as last year’s GM seed market was worth $13.2 billion, and the crops that grew from that seed were worth over $160 billion. Aside from financial and gastronomical benefits, the environment is also proposed to make slight gains by removing the need to clear forest for new farmland thanks to high yield techniques, a hypothesis named after the aforementioned Norman Borlaug.

This enthusiastic embrace has not been felt around the world however. Europe, whose vociferous liberals are characterised by hardnosed groups such as Greenpeace, has worked hard to slow the establishment of GM crops despite lacking convincing evidence to support their claims.

To date, the proposed health risks associated with the consumption of GM foods have fallen flat; a 2008 report by the Royal Society of Medicine concluded that over a 15-year consumption period, no ill effects were detected, a conclusion consistent with findings by the WHO, OECD and European Commission.

It had also been suggested that we apply the precautionary principle; that there is too much potential for currently unknown risks to emerge. Yet, regardless of the potential risk involved, it is an argument made with a full stomach. The position of denouncing a GM solution while simultaneously lamenting third world hunger is untenable in the face of a swelling population.

While disputes concerning the health fears of GM crops might fall flat, there are definite difficulties concerning an increased agrarian monoculture. The mid-90s saw the displacement of over 150,000 small farmers in Argentina at the hands of larger farms looking to cash in on the soya bonanza.

Monoculture farming also has severe consequences on biodiversity, so much so that “unless the rate of plant genetic loss is halted or slowed substantially, as many as 60,000 plant species, roughly 25% of the world’s total, could be lost by the year 2025”, according to the International Center for Agricultural Research. Solutions to these issues are clearly related to agricultural practices, rather than inherent issues with the crops themselves being artificially engineered.

Corporate fears are indeed

understandable as companies begin to push for gene patenting, the morality of which is not to be taken lightly. The vast majority of those utilising GM crops are farmers living in developing countries, which assuredly does nothing to alleviate fears of corporate bullying.

However, internal pressures are forcing governments to invest in their own means to increase their agricultural productivity. Both Brazil and China have seen local researchers engineer crops for native planting: soya beans in Brazil and rice and maize in China.

According to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a non-profit that monitors the use of GM crops, the GM rice varieties have the potential to provide benefits of over $4 billion to 150 million or so Chinese rice farmers. Even Monsanto, an agri-tech company more at home in the courtroom than the farmyard, have donated technology to Water Efficient Maize Africa (WEMA), a partnership funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the goal of developing and deploying droughttolerant maize royalty-free to small farmers.

There is still a long way to go in the development and implementation of GM technology, but in the midst of a population explosion, the father of the Green Revolution himself agrees “it is a change in the right direction, but has not transformed the world into a Utopia”.w

Formulae for life Patrick Hull on connecting scientific principles to everyday life, from the organising principle of chaos to the principle of uncertainty upholding reality.

Patrick Hull Contributor Looking in on the scientific world from the outside, it is sometimes hard to appreciate if there is any point to it all. The white coats, protective goggles and sterile atmosphere make it hard to believe that there is a human connection. But on closer inspection, it is possible to find a fundamental connection between scientific law and human behaviour, sometimes in places where you expected it least.

That includes the Leaving Cert exam hall and the Book of Formulae and Tables, a small and unassuming paperback, roughly 100 pages long.

Over time, it has earned a certain notoriety from students but, truth be told, the book is a work of art. Thousands of years of mathematical and sci-

entific study have been compressed between its covers: from the Pythagoras Theorem before the birth of Christ, right up to Einstein, relativity and quantum mechanics – ideas that are still being fully formulated in the present day.

The secrets behind mysteries of the universe like electricity and magnetism, concepts that took some of history’s finest minds generations to comprehend, are here condensed into a few lines of equations.

This is where the beauty of science and – in particular – physics lies. There is an innate ability to achieve the paradoxical; complexity in simplicity.

Large chunks of life can be described through a few Greek symbols yet none of the wonder is stolen away.

Take for example the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is essentially the study of heat and

how it interacts and works on the macroscopic scale and the Second Law is partially concerned with the effect of time on heat transfer. It can be stated that “in a spontaneous process, the entropy of the universe increases”.

In other words, when allowed to run free, the world tends towards disorder. If you have ever blamed yourself for having an inefficient filing system, or for never being able to find the car keys, now you know that it is not your fault, the universe has it in for you.

It is a simple and frustrating fact of life that the dropped glass always smashes into a million infinitesimal pieces, and that no matter how long you stare at them, the pieces are never going to spring together back again. The human desire to order things and keep life in boxes with labels goes against one of the funda-

Werner Karl Heisenberg mental laws of nature. On the face of things, our efforts are just a flimsy dam desperately holding back an onrushing tide of chaos.

It is a gloomy thought perhaps, and the Second Law has spawned interesting philosophical debate. Taken to its full conclusion the idea of entropy, or disorder, tends toward a universe where nothing happens. Everything becomes so spread out that there is no chance of any meaningful interaction ever taking place.

However, without entropy there’s no spur for anything

to happen. If the universe desired to be ordered, nothing would ever change. It turns out we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t, a succinct summation of the dayto-day disarray in most people’s lives.

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is another law that finds resonance in human experience. Most people’s acquaintance with Heisenberg is through Schrödinger’s thought experiment involving a cat in a box, used to illustrate the principle. Originally conceived with tiny sub-atomic particles in mind, it states that

Amateur astrophysicists working with Yale University and Nasa have discovered a remarkable new planet in orbit with four separate stars.

This planet is the first discovery made by a volunteer group called Planet Hunters who analyse data from Nasa’s Kepler mission and is also the first such star system ever found.

The planet, since dubbed Planet Hunters 1 (PH1), is a gas giant a little larger than Neptune.

It has been described as a circumbinary planet in a fourstar system, which means that it orbits around two central binary stars, which are in turn orbited by another two stars further out beyond the planet.

The exodus of the butterflies It has long been known that certain butterflies such as painted ladies travel to Ireland from Africa in spring to reproduce, flying north along a route well documented by lepidopterists over the years.

How the butterflies leave again in winter has remained a mystery, until now.

Ecologists in Spain recently amassed new data taken from

the 2009 migration south which shows that the butterflies fly higher, sometimes up to 1000 metres up, catching a ride on the faster winds.

The data was collected using radar and revealed butterflies travelling up 50km in an hour. This new information solves another mystery of the secret life of butterflies.

Cats not using eyes on roads Researchers at the University of Georgia gained a candid new insight into the private lives of cats during a recent study in which cameras were affixed to a group of felines living on the streets of the US city of Athens.

Of a total of 60 cats involved, it was found that 85% regularly took risks such as

running in front of traffic and 6% had more than one adoptive family from whom they regularly received food and shelter.

By far the most surprising discovery was that the cats consumed more reptiles than mammals or birds, with birds only making up 12% of their prey.

one cannot measure both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time.

More simply, it claims that the very act of observing changes the observed.

Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Big Brother will be aware of the truth in this idea. We could easily draw the conclusion that life in the house would be very different if there were no cameras filming, but without the cameras we have no objective proof of this.

Heisenberg also gets to the root of illusions about how we view other people and how we see ourselves. As hard as we try it will always be impossible to get to know someone on the deepest, most personal level. Conversely we’re always aware of people watching us, and as a result we cloud the waters above our innermost selves to deflect deep inspection.

The Book of Tables holds information about how to measure the acceleration due to gravity with only a ruler, a stopwatch and stone tied to a length of string. It will tell you how to measure the electrical force between two particles

invisible to the naked eye and separated only by the width of a human hair.

But it does not come with the most important warning.

Everything inside the book holds true only in an idealised environment. This is why in physics you come across such meaningless concepts as the frictionless surface, the rope without mass, a fall without air resistance. They make no sense in real life, but if you want your calculations to work out you have to pretend to believe. Otherwise your workings will spread over countless pages and finding the answer will still be impossible.

You could argue that life should carry the same warning. If you stopped and considered all the things that might go wrong when you leave the front door, you would spend your life crouched in the hallway under a table. Instead we idealise; the sun will shine, you will catch the bus, you will manage to meet at the coffee shop, she will kiss you, you will go home happy. In the end the calculations usually work out. And that’s the beauty of it all.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

21

Science

Nobel prizes in the sciences: a roundup Deputy Science Editor Stephen Keane reads the roll of honour

T

he announcement of the Nobel prize recipients each year is always looked forward to with much anticipation, and this year was no exception. Beginning on 8th October with the announcement of the prize in physiology or medicine, the week saw the recognition of the efforts of just some of our world’s finest in the form of a medal, a diploma and a cash prize.

Beginning in 1901 with the bequest of Alfred Nobel, the man who discovered dynamite, the prize has long been viewed by many as one of the highest accolades available.

The original prize was split across five areas for achievements in physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace, with an additional prize in economic sciences being established in 1968 by Sveriges Riksbank, the Swedish central bank, in memory of Alfred Nobel.

The prize in physiology or medicine went to Sir John B Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent. In a nutshell, these two scientists have shown that adult cells can be

Illustration: Éna Brennan changed from their mature state into stem cells, and back again into another kind of adult cell. It had been previously thought that the transition from stem cell to mature cell was a one-way trip that occurred during an organism’s early development, so the discovery that cells are quite mutable was one of great importance to our understanding of cells and their application in medical therapies.

Gurdon’s contribution began in 1962 when he replaced the nucleus of a frog’s egg cell with that of a mature intestinal cell. The egg produced a healthy tadpole, showing that the specialised mature cell still contained all the information necessary to produce any other mature cell. The discovery also laid the basis for later animal cloning experiments.

While Gurdon showed that cell types are mutable, it wasn’t until 2006 that Yamanaka showed that the process could be achieved without direct mechanical manipulation of the cell nucleus. By introducing only four new genes into a mature cell, he was able to reprogram mature cells to become pluripotent stem cells with the potential to become

another kind of mature cell.

It was a discovery that was immediately hailed as major breakthrough and has since found applications in new methods of examining disease mechanisms.

The prize in physics was awarded jointly to Serge Haroch and David J Wineland on 9th October for independently discovering experimental methods that allow the measurement and manipulation of individual quantum mechanical systems, a feat previously thought impossible.

The quantum systems studied are typically a superposition of two states which collapse into one state when observed. A popular example of this is the Schrödinger’s Cat experiment, in which a cat in a box is considered to be both alive and dead at the same time until someone opens the box to find out.

Wineland found a way to avoid this collapse by isolating an ion in a trap using electric fields and manipulating it by firing photons at it in a laser. Haroch, on the other hand, took the opposite approach, by trapping a photon between mirrors and firing ions at it. Both scientists work

in the field of quantum optics, the study of the interaction of light and matter, and each of their methods have allowed them to measure individual properties of the quantum systems such as their energy opening up a whole new field of experimentation. It is hoped that in the future it will have an important bearing on everything from computing to horology.

The next award announced was the prize in chemistry, on 10th October. It went to Robert J Lefkowitz and Brian K Kobilka, in recognition of their success in mapping how a family of molecules called G-protein coupled cell receptors (GPCRs) work.

These receptors are found throughout our bodies and are responsible for us being able to sense light and smells among other things.

Most physiological processes in our bodies occur by using these receptors, and roughly half our medications work through them.

While their existence had been inferred, GPCRs remained a mystery for many years. Until Lefkowitz and Kobilka began their work, it had been well established that

chemicals interacted with cells to bring about changes in the body such as the onset of fear. It was unclear how this information from the chemicals passed through the cell wall to trigger any changes.

The discovery of the receptors that enable this transfer is what earned the two chemists their prize this year.

Lefkowitz began working in the 1960s and was joined later

by Kobilka. By studying cell interactions with adrenaline, they were able to determine that seven interlocking proteins exist that transmit the messages using G-proteins inside the cell.

The genius of their discovery came when they noticed that the same structure existed in other receptors that performed different functions such as the light detecting cells in our retina. From this, they concluded that there was a complete family of receptors that performed different tasks but operated in the same way.

In 2011 Kobilka went so far as to take an image of a GPCR transmitting information using X-ray crystallography, a feat thought to be nigh on impossible when he began work over two decades before.

These two chemists’ work has had an incredible impact on modern medicine and underpins much of our current understanding of the human body.

Finally, on 15th October, the prize in economic sciences was awarded to Alvin E Roth and Lloyd S Shapley for their contribution to matching theory, a branch of game theory dedicated to pairing up groups with their least-worst partners.

The basic theory was laid out by Shapley in the 1960s with the Gale-Shapley “deferred acceptance” algorithm.

It is in essence a set of rules that allows for the most stable couplings in a group; for example, if a group of 10 people were to pair off for marriage, the Gale-Shapley algorithm would produce the greatest number of stable matches.

It does this by allowing one half to propose to the other in a series of rounds. After the first round, anyone who receives more than one proposal defers acceptance of their preferred partner and rejects the others who then propose to someone else in the next round. This continues until everyone has a part-

ner. The deferred acceptance also allows a person to reject a proposal received in an earlier round in favour of a more attractive one received later on.

The process can take several iterations but has been shown to produce the best outcomes, albeit generally favouring those making the proposals. This algorithm is of particular use in systems where the market does not rely on money to moderate itself.

Practical uses came to light in the 1980s when Roth began to see its relevance in assigning newly qualified doctors to hospitals for internships. Here the hospitals offer placements to doctors with each listing their preferences in order and proceeding in the same manner as the marriage proposals above. The algorithm has also found uses in assigning children to different schools, donor kidneys to patients and a raft of other business applications.

Speculation and rumour are rife in the months before the Nobel prize announcements and, although it is only a few weeks since this year’s season, next year promises to be just as interesting.

A Neutron Walks into a Bar …

A new book answers the biggest questions in the universe in less than 140 characters.

Anthea Lacchia Science Editor Did you know that the mantis shrimp has the most advanced eyesight in the world? Or that, if the DNA in your body were put end to end, it would reach to the sun and back over 600 times?

These and thousands more scientific facts form the body of A Neutron Walks into a Bar … : Random Facts About Our Universe and Everything In It, a new kind of science book

born on Twitter.

It all started from a tweet written by Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, a TV and radio presenter and postgraduate student in Trinity, explaining how glowsticks work.

This inspired a discussion between Ní Shúilleabháin, the Irish science teacher and blogger Humphrey Jones, and the Irish dentist and science communicator Paul O’Dwyer.

Together they came up with a crowdsourcing project called Science140, seeking to collect science definitions and explanations in 140 characters or

less, the length of a tweet.

The project ran from April to June 2012 and was coordinated online by Jones and by the science blogger and former Trinity student Maria Delaney. “We had a different theme every day for a number of months,” explains Delaney.

People from all over the world became engaged and tweeted their favourite science facts, hoping to be included in the final product.

“The final tally was staggering with thousands of tweets – over 60,000 words worth – written by hundreds of con-

tributors.

The team spent many hours intensely reading tweet after tweet trying to pick the best for the book. This was a difficult job considering the high quality of the submissions we received. Everyone certainly rose to the challenge of condensing complicated topics into bite-size science. I think it’s the first book to be written on Twitter.”

This quirky and informative book is the product of their labour, and Dr Aoife McLysaght officially launched it in the Science Gallery last week. “It’s

great because on Twitter a lot of people talk, discuss, complain, but not a lot of people do things,” McLysaght commented.

All proceeds from sales of the book are going to the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland.

“One of the tweets stated that Ireland has the highest rate of cystic fibrosis in the world, with approximately one in every 19 Irish people carrying the CF gene,” explained Ní Shúilleabháin while speaking at the launch.

“That’s why we decided that

all the proceeds should go to cystic fibrosis research.”

The latest best thing to come out of science tweeps, this book incorporates thousands of science facts, ranging from more serious explanations of how the universe works to light-hearted quips and pub-suited banter.

“It’s suitable for all ages and all levels of knowledge. It has something for everyone.

We’re all delighted with how it looks. It’s hardback and has a lovely feel to it. I think it’s a good toilet book!” said Ní Shúilleabháin.

Not only does it aid charity, but it is the kind of entertaining book you can pick up and flick through anytime. You are sure to find out something new every time you open it.

What started off as a unique social media project has turned into the ideal Christmas stocking filler.

A Neutron Walks into a Bar … is available online and in bookshops around Ireland. To find out more, visit www.science140. org

Interview

Sport

Three-timeAll-Ireland camogie champion Cathriona Foley talks about challenges she has overcome on and off the field.

p.24

DUFC centre Paddy Lavelle tests the Ballymena defence. Photo: Peter Wolfe.

Try, try and try again

Dublin University Football club maintained their 100% record in Division 1B of the Ulster Bank League, beating Ballymena 25-11 in College last Saturday.

L John Colthurst Copy Editor

ike Blackrock before them, Ballymena Rugby Football Club came to College with plenty of history to parade before the Museum Building looming just beyond the rugby ground. The club has turned out not mere players, but figures of historical standing in the Irish and global game, such as Dr Syd Millar and Willie John McBride; from the surrounds of Slemish Mountain, former stomping ground of St Patrick, they combined as coach and captain of the 1974 British and Irish Lions to tour South Africa undefeated. Like the exploits of their fabled forerunner, their endeavours have passed into legend.

They won the All-Ireland league in 2003 and some of their most prominent latter day Irish internationals include David Humphreys, Paddy Wallace, Andrew Trimble and last year’s Ulster player of the year, Chris Henry. But like Blackrock, it was a case of recent history repeating itself here as the Students passed another test, albeit also passing up an opportunity for another bonus point.

Ballymena had lost their first two matches by a combined 85-8, whereas Trinity followed up their 29-11 bonus point win over Blackrock with a dogged 22-16 victory in Dungannon’s Stevenson Park and another promising performance in the Leinster Cup semi-final, reported in brief on p.23. Ballymena kicked off towards the Hamilton, with the wind at their backs and a bright sun in Trinity’s eyes.

After the usual back and forth of boot to ball as each team tried to find their feet and field position, a breaking ball was hacked down the field and the Ballymena cover hassled into touch on their 22 by winger Niyi Adeolukan.

An early marker – of red hue – was the overthrown Trinity lineout, which signalled much struggling at the set pieces; another was the penalty won at the breakdown a few phases later by number eight Jack Dilger, from which Trinity went quickly, spread the ball wide and then knocked on.

From a strong scrum platform, the Ballymena 13 broke

through the tackles of both Trinity centres, with fly-half Cathal Marsh penalised for not rolling away from the eventual tackle. The Ballymena man also failed to immediately roll away, although he had more legitimate cause as his heavy limp deposed.

The kick at goal missed just to the right of the posts from a central position just inside the Trinity half.

The subsequent 22 kickoff inevitably found out the same man, who took time out from his treatment to catch the ball, kick it back and then finally find respite on the sidelines, his injury hobbling his team’s back play for the rest of the game, with a kick-first policy effectively replacing him.

Losing one attempted trick lineout at halfway, Trinity got away with another just five yards from their line, Dilger claiming. With their clearing kick quickly returned, flyhalf Cathal Marsh then made a sure touch up towards the halfway line, and this time Trinity disrupted Ballymena’s lineout, forcing a knock-on.

This only served to show the other face of the set piece coin that was Ballymena’s currency for the afternoon.

They pushed Trinity off their own ball and drove towards their 22. A knock-on hardly stopped their momentum as their forward drive continued, with flanker Brian du Toit and McLoughlin doing well to secure the ball at the base of the scrum going backwards, and Cathal Marsh giving his forwards a fillip with a good clearance.

From more sterling set piece service, lock Max Waters and du Toit did well to hold up one Ballymena runner, winning a scrum. Turning this one, Ballymena then sent their number 4 straight through the Trinity line and 22, only for du Toit to shortcircuit what was building up to a very big charge, winning a penalty just ten yards in front of his own posts.

Waters won the subsequent lineout on his 22 and the other Ballymena lock then gave away a very foolish penalty to allow Trinity send the ball into opposition territory. After losing consecutive lineouts,

Adeolukan stretched over the touchline to try to keep the next kick in play, passing to fellow winger Neil Hanratty, who weaved through the wandering defence, only for play to be called back for Adeolukan’s flailing foot in touch.

Ballymena again lined up their big runners from this lineout, with Dilger bouncing off one, but centre Paddy Lavelle bounced in to intercept a pass.

McLoughlin quickly kicked in behind and the covering Ballymena defence kicked the ball out at their 22. Winning their own ball in the air this time, Trinity then showed just how wasteful their lineout had been as their maul made up the whole 22 yards to the Ballymena tryline, although they now couldn’t get the ball back to ground.

When Ballymena did clear, Hanratty ran it right back at them, and past a few of them as he broke inside their 22.

McLoughlin passed cleverly inside to Dilger, who also got the ball over the line but could not ground it. Du Toit was next to make a break, with Dilger held up over the line once more. Trying, trying and trying again, Trinity finally got their try as hooker Warren Larkin burrowed over to the left of the posts, with Marsh converting – the score 7-0 after 30 minutes.

Ballymena kicked deep from the restart and McLoughlin insouciantly let the ball bounce over his shoulder and the dead ball line, casually setting up a scrum in the middle of the pitch. Although this was provisionally Trinity’s, Ballymena quickly made it their own, turning over the ball and winning a penalty from retreating second-row Jack Kelly, struck well by Scott Gibson to make it 7-3.

The next Trinity lineout was a textbook throw from Larkin to Kelly and, having mastered the walking part of the process, the maul was up and running, Ballymena yielding another 20-odd yards and a penalty. With Trinity applying pressure in the Ballymena half, their 12 was penalised and sent to the sin bin for hands in the ruck. Marsh’s kick, from the righthand

touchline, was just held up by the wind and perished on the lower lefthand post.

Ballymena kicked deep and Trinity were penalised for coming in the side of their own ruck. From far out on the righthand side, Ballymena’s kick dropped just short of the posts, Dilger kicking it through them and out for halftime. Prop Martin Kelly and flanker Pierce Dargan were replaced by Shawn Pitman and Alan McDonald respectively.

McDonald made an immediate impact with a driving tackle, but his teammates were then penalised for piling in. A great kick from the Ballymena fly-half set up a lineout just five yards from the Trinity line. With Trinity’s coach clamorously calling the Ballymena lineout, and the Ulstermen apparently calling his bluff, Kelly followed the seer’s prophecy and fatefully stole the ball. Unfortunately McLoughlin didn’t see the barriers to his clearing kick, which was blocked and bounced into the exposed Adeolukan’s hands, who certainly did see what was coming before he was dumped into touch.

The resultant lineout was unopposed and hooker John Andrew soon scored after Trinity gave ground tackling too high. Although the conversion was missed, Ballymena led 8-7 with about half an hour to go.

With the ball having been kicked back to Ballymena, McDonald put in another thundering tackle, the ball being awarded to Trinity after it became unplayable. The scrum was clearly a talking point at halftime and it was a turning point here as Trinity now had a platform to play from, halfway into Ballymena territory.

After Lavelle tore inside, tying up defenders, Larkin and Dilger carried it on right up to the opposition tryline. With the forwards having done the vertical work, the backs moved it horizontally, Marsh’s quick hands putting Adeolukan in at the lefthand corner.

Leaving it to the forwards to score closer to the posts might have been a consideration, but

Marsh stretched the play and himself to convert from the far touchline, making it 14-8.

Dilger, after throwing himself headlong about with reckless abandon, was soon replaced by Dargan, and Lavelle likewise nearly played himself off the pitch, sticking his nose in and getting it bloodied; although his white jersey had a few more red details than his teammates’, he stayed on. Outside centre Ciaran Wade and full-back Dave Fanagan were replaced

by Ariel Robles and James O’Donoghue respectively.

Trinity were now well on top at the scrum and it showed as Pitman started to show up and show off in loose play, shimmying and sidestepping with the spring in his step. From another Ballymena kick into Trinity’s half, adroit handling by Robles angled Lavelle into some space, with du Toit and Pitman pushing on beyond the opposition 22. Such was the rush towards the posts that the ball was rushed out of a ruck under the posts and spilled.

The same spirit, however, saw Trinity bundle Ballymena off their own ball. A brilliant ball-and-all tackle on Marsh sent the ball bouncing back out of the 22. Robles, covering across, collected the ball, but kept to its trajectory as he ran back and across the oncoming defence, despite the cries of “forwards!” from the sidelines. Like a pinball shooting out of a slingshot, on seeing an opening he suddenly surged straight from the Ballymena 10-yard line back into their 22, with O’Donoghue on his shoulder and Hanratty slashing in sharply. Back under their posts, Ballymena conceded a penalty, converted by Marsh for a 17-8 lead.

Ballymena’s number 4 won the high kickoff and replacement hooker Paddy Carroll was penalised for hands in after ruck was called, Gibson’s second score restoring the one-score differential at 1711. A retributive run by Carroll established play back in the Ballymena half. Another scything tackle by McDonald allowed Waters get his body over and his hands on the ball, winning a penalty straight in front of the posts, about 25 yards out, which was simply stroked over by Marsh for a 20-11 scoreline.

Having kicked first and left any questions of the defence until later, Ballymena now had to answer. Although their blindside flanker did break through the first line of the Trinity defence, Robles’s tackle resulted in another penalty for the Students. The Trinity throw was crooked at the corresponding lineout,

but defensive plays by Hanratty and then McDonald and Martin Kelly (back on for loosehead prop Ian Hirst) together pushed Ballymena back.

Collecting a clearing kick on the lefthand touchline of the Ballymena 22, Adeolukan passed to O’Donoghue towards the middle, who in turn passed to Robles. Standing about 25 yards out in the inside right channel, Robles stood up and then skinned the stray defender, who was still strolling out by the time Robles touched down. A quick conversion attempt was missed, Trinity concerned with the bonus point for the season for a fourth try rather than the cosmetic two points for a conversion on the day.

Jack Kelly, supported by his two lifters, claimed the kickoff high in the air and, even after a maul formed around him, was still the man to break out of it and back to halfway. After the ball was spread to the far left touchline, stretching play, Marsh cut right through the defence coming over, bringing the ball up towards the 22, twisting left in the tackle to pop the ball inside to Pitman powering through. Fanagan, at scrum-half in place of McLoughlin, grubbered in behind and McDonald charged on to the ball and seemingly inexorably onwards to the line.

Somehow he was stopped, and Martin Kelly after him, the ball nearly buried so hard was the drive and the number of players in the vicinity. After enough time for a television match official to check the video just in case, the ball was extricated and Marsh beat the last couple of Ballymena defenders with his miss pass.

So long had the wide players been waiting that they missed a beat, Robles knocking on as the bonus point opportunity knocked.

Given that the top three teams in this division last season finished on 57, 56 and 55 points respectively, they aren’t opportunities to pass up too often. Next up are Bruff down in Kilballyowen Park, County Limerick, who have lost their last two matches 46-3 to league leaders Malone and 42-10 to fourth-placed UCD, but beat Ballymena 25-5 in their opening match.

Trinity are second, two points off the pace, although the three teams they have defeated have lost eight of the nine games they have played between them. Trinity have beaten what was put in front of them, but the toughest tests have not yet been put up to them.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

23

Sport

Trinity were blown away by a strong Tralee team, but they are only winding up yet.

T Amy Codd

he first team of the Dublin University Ladies’ Gaelic Football Club were ground down by their opponents from Institute of Technology Tralee in difficult weather conditions at the University of Limerick Sports Grounds last Thursday.

The team’s first outing together with new faces, including freshers to the senior ranks, meant meshing together each other’s individual strengths to form a coherent unit on the go as the team faced a Tralee side that had already played two matches together in the competition.

Trinity faced into a strong wind in the first half which allowed Tralee move the ball quickly into Trinity territory with long passes from the Tralee half-back line to their half-forwards. The Tralee forwards also judged the slanting wind well to take their points from positions across the pitch – from as far back as the 45 yard line.

The Trinity defence, supplemented by Amy Codd in a sweeper position, were put under pressure by attacks from Tralee’s midfielders and off the ball runs by the halfforward line. Tralee got their scoring underway with some well taken points.

Goalkeeper Clare Foley’s kickouts travelled well despite the wind and allowed midfielders Jacinta Brady and Karen O’Shea to link up and bring the ball to trouble the Tralee defenders. Wingforward and new player Lucy Mulhall constantly made runs deeper into the Tralee defence and remained strong under pressure.

It was difficult to judge for taking points and a number of balls dropped short into the Tralee goalkeeper, although

TCD

the forwards persevered and were rewarded with their first scores.

Trinity suffered a blow in the closing stages of the first half when wing-back Faye Kearney received a yellow card and was sin binned for a foul on Tralee’s goalbound full-forward. The resulting penalty was converted and Tralee were to add a further goal before halftime as Trinity were put under sustained pressure and had little opportunity to advance forward.

Trinity began the second half with the aim of meting out similar advances with the help of the wind but this proved difficult due to strong Tralee defending and the tendency of the ball to drift wide from all but the most unpressured shots.

With Faye Kearney restored to the field, the team advanced confidently and this granted two more points. Sarah Cotter and Amie Giles were strong in central defence and managed to reduce Tralee’s scoring opportunities to less than that of the first half but two frees and other points from play added to the halftime deficit, which proved too much for Trinity to make up.

Nonetheless, the pace of play was maintained by all of the team, including substitutes, until the end, with the side’s final point coming in the last five minutes of the game and pressure on the Tralee forwards including an excellent diving save from Clare Foley spoke of promise for the rest of the season.

Facing difficult opposition such as this in the Division Two league will benefit the team, who include in their aims for this season to capture the elusive Lynch Cup in March.

IT Tralee

0-05 2-13 Teamsheets IT Tralee TCD Clare Foley Maeve Breen Amie Giles Rachel Coleman Horgan Faye Kearney Sarah Cotter Grainne Barrett Jacinta Brady Karen O’ Shea Sarah Dempsey Siobhan Melvin Lucy Mulhall Jessica Comerford Amy Codd Marie Murphy Subs: Petra McCafferty Aoife McGovern Ellen Beirne Emma Jones Joyce Cunningham Evelyn Kimmage Francis Fallon

Leonie Higgins Paula O’Sullivan Rosie Young Martina O’Brien Muireann Duneen Sarah Miley Kathleen Martin Ailish Considine Megan Fitzpatrick Mary Herlihy Maria Quirke Aoife Newell Sarah Cunningham Aoife O’Driscoll Miriam O’Keeffe

Sport In Brief

TCD vs IT Tralee ladies’ Gaelic football report

Rugby

Brave Trinity go down fighting in Templeville

T James Hussey Deputy Sports Editor

he reality of life in the highest echelons of Irish club rugby was made abundantly clear to this year’s talented Dublin University Football Club team in a match that, in retrospect, the students could have put beyond their opponents before an injury time onslaught.

Competing in the Leinster Senior Cup semi-final against reigning All-Ireland league champions, St Mary’s, the Trinity side were underdogs from the outset. DUFC have started the year with a series of exhilarating wins however and this match, coupled with the peculiar atmosphere generated by knockout competition, provided the perfect opportunity for the city centre club to test their mettle against an extremely physical, well-organised and experienced St Mary’s team.

Despite several forced changes to the DUFC lines, the club’s lauded strength in depth was again to the fore, with a number of notable performances from players usually used as substitutes for the rough and tumble of league competition.

The match was punctuated by incredible bouts of physicality, with DUFC matching up with the veteran St Mary’s pack that laid the foundation for last year’s Division 1A triumph. The sides entered the half-time break level on a scoreline of 6-6, Trinity’s points coming from the boot of full-back James O’Donoghue.

It was not until the 65th minute that the game would open up and DUFC’s characteristic fast, flowing play came into effect. The exciting style of rugby that has marked victories over Blackrock and Dungannon in Division 1B saw the students slice through the St Mary’s cover. Wing Neil Hanratty was on the end of a string of passes after the Templeville Road side coughed up

possession from an ineffective kick. The number 14’s 50-metre break was brought to an abrupt end just short of the line, but captain Michael McLoughlin’s exquisite pick and dive gave DUFC an allimportant lead.

Crucially, a short range penalty gave DUFC the opportunity to extend their lead to an apparently insurmountable 10 points. The kick was pulled agonisingly wide of the upright, however, and St Mary’s capitalised on a rare linebreak to score a very Trinity-esque try, levelling the scores in the process.

The final ten minutes was a cagey affair, with the experience of St Mary’s telling in the tight, hard yards game they resorted to. An 82nd minute penalty for the home side gave them a valuable advantage, with the score forcing DUFC to open the game in what the referee designated as the match’s last passage of play. With the students essentially chasing the game, a careless pass in the Trinity half led to a St Mary’s interception, the Ulster Bank League champions left with an easy run-in to put a flattering gloss on the scoreboard.

The palpable sense of relief felt by the large St Mary’s crowd in attendance was testament to the challenge presented by DUFC. Speaking to Trinity News after the game, captain Michael McLoughlin dwelled briefly on the team’s disappointment.

“With the game level after 80 minutes it’s disappointing the way we lost in the end.

They kicked a long range penalty to take a three point lead and we had to attack their line. After winning the restart, we went on the attack and threw an interception.

There’s nothing to say except we blew it really, we have to learn how to close out games on this level.”

Basketball

Match report: Trinity vs Swords: 63-58 Aron Coyle

Dublin University Basketball Club travelled to Swords on 17th October for their second game of the season. It was a close affair, but Trinity eventually ran out 63-58 winners in a game that had a number of twists and turns.

Trinity got off to a perfect start, with intensive defence proving a shock for the Swords team. Colin O’Rourke grabbed a number of steals, leading to fast break points, and Trinity ended the first quarter leading by 10.

The second quarter started with more of the same, but then Swords started to get to grips with the high intensity

and clawed their way back into the game by playing a strong inside game and limiting Trinity’s scoring to a poor five points. Swords cut the lead down to three points, as the sides went in at halftime with the score at 26 to 23.

Swords dominated the boards in the third quarter, and as a result Trinity found it hard to find scores. Swords used this domination to reel in Trinity and take the lead for the first time. This quarter ended with Swords up by five.

Having surrendered a big lead, Trinity had a lot to do in the final quarter and they stepped up big, with some

huge scores from Daniel Darby and Théo Deleligne pulling them back into the lead. They got a six-point lead with three minutes remaining, and held out to win in the end.

A somewhat fortunate victory from what was a disappointing performance, but a win nonetheless, and that made it two wins from two games. It was a good team effort to rally back in the last quarter and shows how the team mentality has changed for the better since last season. On the night, the big performers for Trinity were Théo Deleligne scoring 21 points, and Daniel Darby with 18.

Hockey

2012 hockey intervarsities under way in Cork Hayley O’Donnell

The first XI of the Dublin University Ladies’ Hockey Club (DULHC) is down south competing in the annual hockey intervarsities competition, hosted this year by University College Cork (UCC).

While Trinity’s previous endeavours in recent years have not reaped the rewards that they perhaps deserved, this year DULHC enter the competition with renewed spirits after a tough domestic start.

One hopes that the intervarsities can once again prove to be the catalyst to kickstart a good league campaign.

The competition entails three qualifying matches and the finals day. DULHC looks forward to taking the field with UCC, Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in what will no doubt be three very competitive matches.

Pre-tournament predictions make for interesting

reading, with University College Dublin (UCD) touted as favourites; however, DULHC will look to overcome their arch-rivals once finals day comes around.

UCD are once again proving to be Trinity’s strongest competitor this year, having won last year in a clean sweep.

Other contenders vying with Trinity are QUB, the University of Ulster and UCC. The ladies’ team, coached by the former Irish international player Justin Sherriff, is powered by an influx of new players this year.

Nicola Walsh, Anna-May Whelan, Annabel Elliott, Avril Dooley-O’Carroll and Louise Madigan are all schoolgirls stepping up to the college mark for their first Intervarsities competition. Their ability to raise their game and become influential cogs within the squad is commendable and the future is in very

bright hands.

In last year’s competition, the Chilean Cup was won by UCD. The Chilean Plate was won by Trinity, who beat the National University of Ireland, Galway 1-0 in the final in a very competitive match.

While action takes place on the hockey field, there is plenty to look forward to off the pitch in Cork city.

The tournament coincides with the world famous Guinness jazz festival, which sees thousands flock to Cork from all corners of the globe to experience the sweet, smooth crooning of the likes of Sinatra. In the words of the great Eddie Condon: “They flat their fifths, we drink ours.”

In their first match, early Sunday morning at the Mardyke Grounds, Trinity lost 4-1 to QUB, Lisa Madigan scoring the consolation goal.

On Monday, they were drawn against RCSI and UCC.

TRINITY NEWS

Tuesday 30th October 2012

Sport

Rugby report as DUFC made it three wins from three in the Ulster Bank League. p. 22

Interview with Cathriona Foley Former Cork captain and three-time All-Star Cathriona Foley talks to Trinity News about the problems facing camogie, taking a break from her county team and her plans to run the New York City marathon this week.

T Sarah Burns Sport Editor

his year’s All-Ireland camogie final in Croke Park between Wexford and Cork saw a disappointing turnout of 15,300 – compare that with the men’s hurling final between Kilkenny and Galway, which could fill out the same stadium twice over. Over 82,000 turned out to see the Cats lift the Liam McCarthy Cup for the sixth time in seven years in September, but less than a fifth of that number came to witness the Wexford ladies pick up their third All-Ireland title in a row.

Among the sparse spectators that day was Cathriona Foley, former Cork camogie captain who is now in her third year of her PhD studying reproductive immunology here in Trinity.

Foley led the Cork team to All-Ireland glory in 2008, picking up three All-Star awards for notable performances throughout the 2007, 2008 and 2009 championship seasons. Despite these impressive achievements her name, along with many other camógs, continuously fails to win the same recognition or merit as hurling players such as Henry Shefflin or Joe Canning.

Attendance at the AllIreland final for both camogie and ladies’ gaelic football has never once gained even half the attendance of their male counterparts. Foley recognises this, but explains that it is not for a lack of history.

“The Camogie Association has been in operation since 1904, which is a hundred years and more.

So it’s not that it hasn’t been around for a long time and that there isn’t history there. I think it’s just because people don’t know the girls’ names, they can’t identify with any of the girls playing.

I think if people knew a little bit more about the girls playing and could identify with them, they’d find it more interesting to watch.”

From listening to Foley

it is clear that players such as herself find it frustrating that counties don’t get behind the women the same way they do for the men’s teams. While she was absent from the Cork lineup this year she noticed that “the standard this year especially was just so high. If people just took the time to appreciate it a little bit more and make the effort.

“The lack of support for people who play camogie, that don’t turn up on AllIreland day is a bit annoying. People could make the effort for that one day. The girls are only in Croke Park for one day of the whole year and there are only a select number of teams that get the opportunity.”

Dwindling attendance is just one of a number of setbacks that face camógs throughout the country and especially in rural parishes such as Foley’s Carraig na bhFear in Cork. She explains that “when I did start playing there was no camogie club as such in my parish so I actually played with the boys. A girls club was eventually formed for U12s.”

Despite this, Foley has since had to find a new club to play for at home as “the club I used to play for, Rock Bán, it would have actually folded last year just because of a lack of numbers, so a lot of girls now are focusing on study and also due to work commitments and as well for the summer a bunch of girls went off on a J1 so they had to decide to disband the club just for this year. They’ll see what the situation is like again next year.”

Foley herself has had to take a break from county play since the end of 2010 due to the demanding schedule required to complete her PhD. Looking back, she says “it was a decision that was kind of really made for me in a way. Because I tried in 2010, I did play that year but I felt that one night a week commitment wasn’t enough and especially at

senior level.

“The team were very good, they were still willing to accommodate me and everything, but I just felt in my heart and soul that I wasn’t able to perform to the level I was used to. It was just very frustrating for me.”

I wonder is a return to the county team a possibility for the future.

“I’d love to go back, possibly in 2014,” she laughs.

While Foley may be taking a break from Cork, she’s certainly not one to sit back and see her fitness deplete, as she has decided to run the New York City marathon on 4th November.

The 26-year-old originally took up the challenge as a means of keeping fit and as something to distract her from playing for her county.

But these motivations quickly transformed into something different. She explains that “initially I would have set a goal of a marathon way back last Christmas, just simply because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to play with Cork and I needed some other way of keeping fit.

“That was the first aim.

I started tipping away at the running twice a week, three times a week. Then around January, February I decided that this was what I wanted to do.

“As things developed, my brother was sick and he passed away then recently. So after that happened then it became a different motivation. I felt I was given this health and I’m so grateful for it and a lot of people don’t get this chance or opportunity.

“I just felt that the fact I was healthy, there was no better time than the present to do something like this. I thought it was a great idea to do it in his memory.” Foley’s brother, Daniel, who also represented Cork at underage level, passed away earlier this year after an ongoing battle with leukaemia.

While Foley will be running the marathon in memory of her brother,

On the rebound David Murphy of the DU Basketball Club explains how, with new coaches picked, the men’s team is ready to roll this season.

David Murphy Contributor The DU Basketball Club men’s team has undergone comprehensive change over the summer.

A dismal Dublin League campaign, followed by relegation at the Intervarsities in Limerick, led to the removal of Wesley Cooper as coach of the men’s A team.

This prompted a recruitment drive, resulting in the acquisition of Todd James as head coach and Marius Leonavicius as assistant coach. This year the team is justifiably optimistic in hoping for significant improvement on last year’s performance.

Throughout the 2011-12 season, the team fought hard in a very tough Dublin Division 1. Many games went down to the wire but, critically, Trinity came out on the losing side on all but two occasions. The issues with organisation and a general lack of cohesion in the squad were seen as part of the reason why the team struggled last season.

Cooper took over the men’s A team coaching role full-time after stepping in for the reasonably successful 2010 Intervarsities at the National University of Ireland Galway.

Cooper had previously been coaching the B team in College. During the

2010-11 season, the team gained promotion from Dublin Division 2 to Division 1 and maintained its A intervarsity status.

However, it is fair to say that the talent within the team was never fully utilised and they relied on defensive intensity to pull them through games.

All members of the team have been quick to express their gratitude to Cooper for taking on the job in Galway when they needed him. The former coach made enormous efforts to learn on the job for the good of his players, earning himself respect not only within the club but with other coaches as well. Despite this, the committee decided that results and performances on the court were what mattered, so after two years they parted ways with Cooper.

Over 25 coaches applied for the vacant post.

It became clear early on that James was the man for the job. He hails from the California in the US and was once the California high-school coach of the year, but moved to Ireland over 30 years ago.

Later, he coached in the Irish Super League with Killester, as well as playing in Dublin Division 1 at the tender age of 50.

For assistant coach, the team is also delighted to have the services of Leonavicius, a qualified basketball, strength and conditioning coach from the Lithuanian Academy of Physical Education.

For those uninitiated in the world of basketball, Lithuania is one of Europe’s and the world’s powerhouses of the sport.

Basketball is often described as Lithuania’s second religion. The Baltic nation has a rich history in basketball, providing many players to USSR sides before the breakup of the Soviet Union, and, out of the five Olympic Games Lithuania has competed in since 1992, they have come away with bronze medals on three occasions.

As such, having a Lithuanian on board the Trinity coaching ticket will add a new perspective to proceedings in Trinity basketball affairs. Leonavicius has also agreed to take on the B team and the freshers’ team for their annual tournament in November.

The club is overjoyed with the acquisition of these coaches, as it has never been able to entice coaches of such stature in the past. This difficulty in attracting coaching staff

has been due mainly to lower funding compared to other colleges like University College Dublin and the University of Ulster, Jordanstown.

It is fair to say that, in James, Trinity has one of the best – if not the best – coaches in the country guiding its way.

There are some very promising freshmen coming into the squad this year, as well as Erasmus students who will certainly bring something new and add an exciting spark to Dublin Division 1 and college basketball.

Performance in both the Dublin and college leagues and promotion back into the A intervarsities are the goals. Preseason training saw the laying down of the building blocks for a promising year. James brings an ethos centred around hard work, defensive intensity and intelligent use of the ball on offense.

Trinity beat Oblate Centurions 84-60 in Inchicore in their first game, followed by a 6358 defeat of Swords (p.23) and a 63-48 win over Dublin Lions in the cup.

Evidently the team has been invigorated by the recent changes and we hope for more results like this in the season ahead.

“

The girls are only in Croke Park for one day of the whole year

she has also decided to use it as a fundraiser for a number of charities that were related to his condition.

She explains that “a month ago, I just put up an event on Facebook saying that I was hoping to raise money for three different charities; the first charity is the Children’s Leukaemia Association in Cork, the second is Friends of Leukaemia Patients, they’re another Cork charity, and then finally the Medical Research Facility in Crumlin children’s hospital in Dublin.

“I put those three links up on an events page, invited all my friends and set targets of €500 for each of them over six months. Within a week the three targets were reached.”

So far Foley has

reached well above her initial target of €1,500, with €3,500 raised in total so far. “I think because Daniel only passed away in May, it’s still very fresh in people’s memory.

They’re still thinking about him. It was great to see everyone’s support and messages,” she says.

The Trinity Camogie team also enlisted their help, completing a “Runathon” in the Sports Centre last Friday. The event saw the girls run 26 miles throughout the day, with Cathriona completing the final half-hour of the run.

“I’m so lucky with the Trinity Camogie team here. They’re great altogether,” she explains.

Foley has been part of the Trinity Camogie team for the past two years, during which they were promoted to Division Two in 2011 for the first time in the

club’s history. That same year the side also made it to the final of the Purcell Shield, losing out to Dublin Institute of Technology in the decider.

Foley is departing for New York this Friday, competing in her first ever marathon only two days later. Alongside her will be thousands of other participants who will all hope to cross the finish line at Central Park. It will be watched worldwide by around 315 million television viewers; perhaps not what Foley might be used to playing in front of for Cork, but certainly something she could get used to.

If you would like to make a donation you can do so at: http://www.mycharity. ie/event/cathriona_foleys_ event2/