Trinity News, Volume 60, Issue 8

TRINITY NEWS

2nd April 2014

www.trinitynews.ie

NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR 2013 Illustration: Natalie Duda

Students spark controversy over publication of illegal drug recipe

E Catherine Healy News Editor

Study lists readily available products for use in “clandestine” manufacturing of mephedrone Scholars supervised by Trinity academic, say they take “inspiration from Breaking Bad” ditors of the Trinity Student Medical Journal (TSMJ) have been ordered to withdraw the publication after it published stepby-step instructions on making mephedrone from commercially available products. Trinity News understands that the Director of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning for the School of Medicine instructed the publication’s editorial team to recall all copies of the Journal on Friday, after it had been launched at a reception in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute on Thursday night.

The instructions were part of an essay - entitled “‘Inspiration from Breaking Bad’: The Synthesis of Mephedrone from LegallyAcquired Domestic Substances” – written by two scholars of the School of Medicine under the supervision of a toxicologist in the Discipline of Pharmacology and Therapeutics at St. James’s Hospital. It was featured on the front page of the Journal and had been recognised as the best piece of original research by the publication’s editorial team.

The essay in question details precise instructions for synthesising mephedrone from commercially available products. “In effect we proved that if someone is so inclined, they could circumvent laws banning not only this illicit substance, but also the heavily monitored chemicals used to create it, simply by using common, legal products,” its authors write in the introduction. “We researched the ingredients online looking for common household goods that contained the desired chemicals in high enough concentrations.” The essay explains

that all of the “very dangerous and potentially explosive” chemicals used in the study were sourced “from a variety of locations including hardware stores, grocery stores, pharmacies, and online agricultural and swimming pool chemical manufacturers.”

The research had been intended to have practical applications for Garda officials investigating illegal drug labs. “It will allow them to easily identify and track down clandestine labs that are trying to create mephedrone,” the authors go on to explain. “For police officers who encounter clan labs, the results of our research may allow them to quickly realise what substance they are dealing with from seemingly innocuous supplies that may be lying around.”

The publication of the study had been approved by the TSMJ committee, which consists of two directors, two editors-in-chief, one production manager, three members of the production team, 12 editors, 11 marketing team members, nine conference coordinators, a designer, and a photographer. The copyright page of the publication stated that “all published articles are decided by a panel of editors drawn from the medical student body of Trinity College Dublin. The authors, editors and publishers do not accept any responsibility for any loss or damage arising from actions or decisions based on information contained in this publication; ultimate responsibility for the treatment of patients and the interpretation of published material lies with the medical practitioner.” The Journal is only “intended to provide an inclusive

vehicle for students to communicate current medical research, opinions, and thoughts to other students, faculty members and faculty of affiliated hospitals and institutions.” In an editorial further on in the publication, the editors-in-chief praised the essay on mephedrone production

“

Chemicals were sourced “from a variety of locations including hardware stores, grocery stores, pharmacies, and online agricultural and swimming pool chemical manufacturers.” for highlighting “the issue of illegal drug manufacture and how it circumvents current drug control measures and endangers the lives of people around the world.”

The TSMJ has been running for 15 years and relies on financial donations from academics of the School of Medicine and the Department of Paediatrics; as well

Sarah Burns reports on Trinity GAA’s mixed season andhow they’re developD. Joyce-Ahearne considers where ing under new news might go as in this time of media leadership. flux.

Sport -p.21

InDepth -p.10

as professors in the Department of Medicine, the Radiology Department, the Professorial Surgical Unit, and the Department of Anaesthesiology in St. James’s Hospital.

In a statement issued on Sunday to Trinity News, the TSMJ editorial team claimed that the instructions contained in the controversial study were inaccurate.

“The journal was withdrawn from circulation because the article in question was published without the appropriate permissions and with significant scientific inaccuracies. It was therefore in breach of normal editorial guidelines with respect to both authorisation and content and was withdrawn. The editorial board of TSMJ accepts that the article was published erroneously and apologises unreservedly to authors, students, sponsors and readers for any distress that may have been caused.”

“The TSMJ editorial board would like to make clear that the article was included to highlight the important public health issue of illegal drug manufacture by dangerous methods that generate potentially lethal and uncharacterised products. In this case the article suggested that the final product could be mephedrone; an illegal substance. On reflection, the article was deemed incorrect, as the final product remains uncharacterised and its health risks are unknown. We would like to stress that the TSMJ does not condone either drug use or its manufacture and this was not suggested in the article. The editorial board takes responsibility for the publication error.”

Inside

LENNY ABRAHAMSON TALKSABOUT FRANK// THE IRISH LITERARY SCENE // DUBLIN THEATRE WITHOUT 10DAYS // GAMES USING KICKS TARTER.

Dylan Lynch looks at nature’s quirkier camouflage techniques.

Science -p.18

Manus Lenihan argues that The Phil has distorted the events surrounding the cancellation of the Nick Griffin invite.

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Comment -p.12

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

News

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What They Said

“ “ “ “ “ I think “The Trinity Identity Initiative” was a Playstation 1 game based on The Matrix.

Donncha, @DonnchaKnow

Last @Trinity_News production weekend of the year kicked off with another long,entertaining & eventful day in the office. Great issue ahead.

News Editor, Catherine Healy, @Chealy_

To finish the Tupperware experience, I had to come out to my aunt’s friends after being asked what my boyfriend was like. #TupperwareHell Katie Biggs @ShadieBiggs

Time machine, please propel me about seven weeks into the future, having gotten 1sts in my exams, and, while I’m wishing, won the lotto!

Don’t know if there is a “frape” equivalent on this social network space.

If so, here we go... #twacked ??

Simon O’Carroll @ocarros92

Caoimhe O’ Connell @OConnellCaoimhe

Provost refused to meet student representatives over cuts Provost waging “war of attrition” against officials opposed to slashed funding Lenihan feels “let down” by lack of consultation, regrets not taking direct action James Prendergast

Deputy News Editor Provost Patrick Prendergast refused to meet with the heads of the five capitated bodies to discuss unprecedented cuts to student services. Speaking to Trinity News, Tom Lenihan, SU President, said the request for a meeting was made by the Senior Dean shortly after an emergency meeting on 4th March with the Capitation Committee. The Provost only responded last Wednesday suggesting a meeting with ViceProvost Linda Hogan instead.

“I am very disappointed the Provost would not meet with us, especially given the fact that he made the decision to cut us in the first place,” Lenihan said. Though he told Trinity News that the capitated bodies will seek to combat next year’s proposed cuts and reverse this year’s cut, Lenihan said that the cut of 3.75% to the five capitated bodies - Trinity College Students Union (TCDSU), the Central Societies Committee (CSC), the Graduate Students Union (GSU), Dublin University Central Athletic Club (DUCAC), and Trinity Publications - is likely to remain in place. “This is an exclusively Trinity problem,” he asserted. “I can find no college where there has been an in-

crease in student numbers and a decrease in the capitation fee or core grant.”

Lenihan also criticised the lack of democracy at Board level. The new programme of “start governance” designed to “overhaul the committee structure in college” has, he said, diminished both the power of the Board and the importance of student consultation. “A lot of stuff is just rubberstamped at Board,” he claimed.

Lenihan said decisions are “done by consensus”, a consensus which is judged by the Provost, who is the chair. “We don’t have an independent chair, which is bad governance,” he added. Lenihan went on to say that College fellows have “less political clout” under Prendergast’s reign because “decisions are essentially initiated at subcommittee level” where neither the SU nor the fellows have representation. Decisions are then brought forward to Board, he said, and if there is any dissent it is argued that “this work has been done” and that further delay would involve costs. “Essentially if something is rejected by board it will be brought back and packaged in a different way until Board agrees,” he said. He claimed the Provost is engaging in a “war of attrition” against dissent. “The Provost will make comments and essentially it is recorded in the minutes that it is

approved,” he added.

Lenihan said he is deeply disappointed by the lack of consultation over the issue of cuts to student services. “The Provost has let me down,” he said. “The executive officers have let me down. I never expected diplomacy would utterly break down, i.e. with people just not communicating with you.” Lenihan particularly criticised the provost for not consulting with students. “There was not one time this year when he consulted with students on anything.” Instead, he said, College is “spending vast amounts of money on absolute waste,” such as on the Identity Initiative and the Genesis Project. Lenihan described the Genesis Project - which its website says “aims to create an integrated, user oriented academic and student administration service, facilitated by a modern student information system” - as an “unmitigated disaster”.

Earlier this year, Lenihan told Trinity News that the SU was likely to take “some form of direct action” if the capitation cuts were not reversed. Not taking direct action is his “biggest regret” of the year, Lenihan told this reporter last Thursday. He said he had strongly advocated the move but that it would be “very difficult to sustain direct action” at this point due to looming exams.

Socialists threaten to sabotage Phil recruitment drive Contentious debate reignites as Phil mulls re-inviting BNP leader to Trinity Meeting criticises “white upper/middle class” and “radical right-wing” Phil members, society responds James Prendergast

Deputy News Editor Trinity Socialist Workers Student Society (SWSS) is planning on discouraging students from joining the University Philosophical Society (Phil) during Freshers’ Week, Trinity News has learned.

At a meeting last Wednesday entitled “No Platform for Nazi Nick Griffin”, it was suggested that the SWSS “bad-mouth” the Phil to new students due to its refusal to rule out re-inviting the far-right BNP leader to speak in a debate on campus. In a statement to Trinity News, Owen McCormack of Trinity SWSS said the group want to highlight “the Phil’s irresponsible actions to next year’s freshers who may be unaware that the Phil thinks giving a platform to a Nazi is a good idea.” SWSS also intend to petition for a Students’ Union referendum to oppose invitations to Holocaust deniers.

The move comes after the Phil debated the motion “This House Would Re-Invite Nick Griffin” on 20th March. Speaking before the debate, Rosalind Ní Shúilleabháin, Phil President, said that the invitation that had been extended to Griffin in 2011 was withdrawn after College “pulled support” from the proposed debate following “personal threats” made to Phil members by “far-left” groups. She said opposition began in “Jewish lobby groups” when information about the invitation was “leaked” the previous summer. Griffin has been scheduled to debate the motion “This House Believes Immigration Has Gone Too Far”.

At Wednesday’s SWSS meeting, Paul Shields of the trade union SIPTU denounced the “free speech agenda” being used to justify the possible re-invitation. He said “radical right-wing” members of the Phil were trying to “kickstart their careers” in the Students’ Union. “People are being beaten up on the streets of Dublin and Europe” and far-right groups are saying “this is what young white people should be doing”, he added. John Molyneux from the Irish Socialist Workers’ Party said an invitation would treat the “lives of immigrants as pawns in a student career game”. He said that a visit by Griffin would drag the “name of the university into the

“

“However, in the view of SWSS, the 2011 invite was “part of a quite sickening media stunt to court controversy regardless of the real effects of legitimising the discourse of this Nazi”. According to Owen McCormack, the “average Phil officer” being generally “white upper/middle class individuals” would be “blissfully unaffected” should a visit by Griffin inspire “Irish racists to get organised”.

gutter”. Nick Griffin “is a Nazi”, “one of the hard-core followers of Adolf Hitler”, he emphasised.

He outlined the history of fascism in Britain and Nick Griffin’s links with it, including with John Tyndall’s National Front and quoted evidence of Griffin’s racism and Holocaust denial. He claimed that the recent Phil debate was “unfair” because the guest speakers, both of whom were for the proposition were given extra time.

In a statement to Trinity News, Ní Shúilleabháin said that “there were four speakers on either side of the debate; everyone had an equal airing”. “We widely publicise our debate sign ups and would have welcomed any SWSS members who wished to participate,” she said, adding that Ronan Burtenshaw, who led the “Trinity Against Fascism” group opposing Griffin’s visit in 2011, declined an invitation to speak at the debate.

While the motion was passed by the audience, she said this does not “reflect any opinion or policy of the Phil”, which as a student society is “unable to hold a corporate opinion” under CSC regulations. The “debate was simply a segway for a discussion on free speech,” she said.

Speaking at the debate, Dr Eoin O’Dell, a Trinity fellow and law lecturer, supported the Phil’s right to re-invite Griffin. “Hecklers should never have veto,” he said.

Having invited him, the Phil had the responsibility, O’Dell said, to ensure he did speak. He called the failure of the Provost to support the Phil “shameful” and said he should “redeem that shame”. In response to questions from Trinity News, O’Dell said “it is particularly disappointing when any university fails to protect freedom of expression” and “uncommonly wretched when that uni-

versity is mine”. He said he would be “very disappointed” should a referendum against Holocaust deniers succeed. Particularly in a university, he said, the best response to such a “hateful” view as Griffin’s “is to expose it through reasoned debate.” He said “we must not compel any opinion to silence, because we cannot infallibly know it to be false.” “Better to debate it, and demonstrate that it is false, or discover that there is some truth in it,” he insisted.

O’Dell was joined at the Phil debate by Vincent Lavery, a former Democratic activist, who also proposed the motion. Lavery called the withdrawal of the invitation a “shame on the Phil, the university and Irish society”.

The groups opposing the invitation were engaging in “mental masturbation”, he claimed. “Not one political official or academic said ‘stop this madness’,” he com-

plained. He declared “we do not have free speech in this country”, and said students are “scared of challenging their professors”.

However, in the view of SWSS, the 2011 invite was “part of a quite sickening media stunt to court controversy regardless of the real effects of legitimising the discourse of this Nazi”. According to Owen McCormack, the “average Phil officer” being generally “white upper/middle class individuals” would be “blissfully unaffected” should a visit by Griffin inspire “Irish racists to get organised”. “If they were black, Muslim, gay or an immigrant they might more plausibly argue they felt personally threatened by a course of action that would see a Nazi given a platform in Trinity,” he argued. SWSS would seek to “approach other societies and try to form a wider committee outside of SWSS to campaign against

a visit by this Nazi if it should happen,” he said.

In her statement to Trinity News, Ní Shúilleabháin said that SWSS should be free to exercise their right to freedom of speech. However, she said that “their comments have been quite nasty and not within the spirit of the student society community in Trinity.” She said she felt “quite hurt by their comments about my social background and that of other Phil Council members.” She pointed out that both her parents are public servants from “working-class backgrounds” and that she has “held down a part time job my entire way through college.” She said that neither of the two current Phil officers who spoke for the opposition and proposition would “describe themselves as upper- or middle-class”, while Paul Behan who spoke for the proposition “is LGBT and specifically spoke about reconciling his sexuality with his views on Nick Griffin’s right to speak.”

Ní Shúilleabháin also dismissed the possibility of the SU being mandated to campaign against Griffin being re-invited to speak in Trinity. She told Trinity News that the “SU have no jurisdiction over the operation of student societies” and that the Phil is “only answerable to the CSC”. She said that “the CSC Constitution clearly outlines the right of societies to free, unrestricted promotion of their activities to any potential members.” Should Trinity SWSS “follow through with their planned tactics”, she said the Phil “will be contacting the CSC for advice and, if necessary, intervention, to prevent harm from coming to ourselves and so we are not impeded in promoting our society”.

Speaking to Trinity News, SU President, Tom Lenihan, said he is personally opposed to giving a “platform to fascists” but said sabbatical officers should refrain from telling students what constitutes free speech. However, he said a visit by Nick Griffin would “incite controversy” and create “bad will” in college. Opponents of a visit by Nick Griffin are welcome to put forward a motion on the issue at SU Council to “encourage a healthy debate” but he said the situation is “a bit up in the air” since an invite has not been issued.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

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Campus building for Catholic institute opened despite opposition Premises opened by Minister Quinn, funded by generous endowment Senior academics who raised concerns over faith-based teaching sidelined

C Catherine Healy News Editor

ollege celebrated the opening of premises for a new institute dedicated to “education and research in theology in the Catholic tradition” last Monday, despite significant academic opposition to its presence on campus. The campus building shared by the new Loyola Institute and the Irish School of Ecumenics (ISE) since the beginning of this academic year is now to be known as the Loyola Institute – Irish School of Ecumenics Building.

The Loyola Institute was launched as a new department of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (FAHSS) in November 2012 after a merger with the Jesuit-run Milltown Institute. It currently offers a Moderatorship in Catholic Theological Studies, as well as a joint honours degree combined with other disciplines, and took its first intake of students at the begin-

ning of this academic year.

However, a leaked copy of minutes from a meeting of FAHSS in October 2011 obtained last year

by Trinity News indicated that a number of faculty members had objected to the founding of the institute. A ‘reserved item’ not present in the minutes published online revealed that senior academics felt that the introduction of faith-based teaching 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 long-term costs. Senior academics felt that the process had been “deliberately opaque and noted that there had been no public announcement” and nine heads of Schools requested that the Dean specifically indicate “the procedure that has been fol-

lowed in bringing this Institute into the University and into our Faculty”.

Opposition to the institute dates back as far as February 2011, when Michael Gleeson, former College Secretary, advised Board that the merger would result in College receiving a financial gift to support initiatives in the School of Religions and Theology and provide for the cost of a new building on campus. Minutes from the same Board meeting noted opposition to the move from Dr Sean Barrett and Dr Melaine Bouroche.

Milltown Institute’s incorporation into Trinity went on to be approved at a Board meeting in June 2011, where it was decided that the institute would be named Loyola as use of the word ‘Catholic’ would confer rights and obligations to the Catholic Church regarding academic work. Trinity News understands that Milltown

had originally approached UCD about a merger but that the University eventually rejected the proposal due to the objections of staff members.

Despite this opposition, College went ahead with an official opening for the controversial institute last week. Speaking at the event, Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairí Quinn, congratulated the Loyola Institute and ICE for enabling students to “address religious identity, human rights, and peace building”. “We live in a multicultural society in which the study and understanding of religions and diverse cultures are important,” he said. Quinn was joined by Professor Linda Hogan, Deputy President of College, who praised the opening of the building as “important milestone for the study of religions and their interrelationships within Trinity.”

Negative online reactions to new Trinity logo Rebranding exercise criticised on social media Students vent grievances on TN Facebook page

T Catherine Healy News Editor

here has been a mixed reaction to the new blue and white Trinity crest given preliminary approval

by Board last Wednesday. The revamped logo is set to be unveiled when College launches its new brand image in September as part of a strategic plan for 2015-2019.

In a statement to Trinity News, Bernard Mallee, Director of Communications and Marketing, said: “As part of ongoing consultation, the new logotype will be shared with the College community over the coming weeks.”

However, discontent has been mounting online after Trinity News shared an image of the logo on its Facebook page. In a comment liked by 21 people, one disgruntled student commented: “‘We must do something, this is something, so we must do this’ - what rubbish. Trinity is a centuries old institution. In people’s minds it is steeped in tradition, and its branding should reflect this. This jumped up iOS7 monstrosity does not suit at all…I don’t see why the crest needs to be changed.” The point was reiterated by another commentator: “The problem with this is that the whole point of the traditional/historical look is that it never wears out its use. You update the logo now to fit with ‘modern times’ and in ten years it’ll be outdated

and ugly and need to be changed all over again.”

Other students questioned the significance of an open book replacing the bible featured in the old crest. “Removing the bible from the crest of a university to make it less value laden by removing references to Christianity is a laughable when said university is called Trinity (as in ‘the holy trinity’) anyway,” one student remarked. Another student complained: “It looks awful. This ‘rebranding’ exercise is utterly pointless and stupid, but no doubt someone’s being paid a bundle for it and can put it down on their CV for the next job. I’m an atheist and even I’m offended by vandalising a 400 year old symbol of the college.”

Brian Lucey, a professor in the School of Business, also used social media to criticise the proposed change over the weekend. “[Chancellor] John Scattergood presented to the Fellows a long, detailed, arcane and fascinating presentation on the various arms, crests and armorials of the college and the university,” he wrote in a blog post on Sunday.

“We are now to move from this longstanding, widely used and ancient looking crest to one that frankly looks like it was created in MS Paint. There’s a bizarre argu-

EDITORIAL STAFF

Editor

Elaine McCahill

Deputy Editor

Tommy Gavin

Art Director

Charli Douglas

Online Editor

Matthew Mulligan

Irish Copy Editor

Niamh Ní Dhomhnaill

News Editor

Catherine Healy

Deputy News

James Prendergast

Student Affairs

Aonghus Ó Cochláin

InDepth Editor

D. Joyce-Ahearne

Deputy InDepth

Michael Lanigan

Comment Editor

William Foley

Deputy Comment

Conor McGlynn

Science Editor

Gavin Kenny

Deputy Science

Conor O’Donovan

Sports Editor

Cal Gray

Deputy Sports

Jennifer McCahill

Photography Editor

Atalanta Papas

Copy Editor

Caoimhe O’Connell

Printed at The Irish Times print facility, City West Business Campus, 4000 Kingswood Rd, Dublin 24.

Trinity News is partially funded by a grant from DUPublications Committee. This publication claims no special rights or privileges. Serious complaints should be addressed to: The Editor, Trinity News, 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

ment from the brand consultants that we need to move from yellow and blue as it represents “value” (as if that was bad) brands such as Ryanair and Ikea. If TCD were as successful in its field as they are in theirs then I would be a happy camper.”

The blog post continues: “We have spent the equivalent of 20

PhD fees or the cost of two postdocs on a casual rebranding. The evidence from internal surveys is that the academic staff (those much vaunted frontline workers) were in the majority (50-80% depending on the question) happy with the visual identity of the college. One wonders why that was ignored?”

Trinity News is a member of the Press Council of Ireland and supports the Office of the Press Ombudsman. This scheme, in addition to defending the freedom of the press, offers readers a quick, fair andw free method of dealing with complaints that they may have in relation to articles that appear on our pages. To contact the Office of the Press Ombudsman go to www.pressombudsman.ie

College has hired 70 JobBridge interns since 2011 15 interns employed at the end of placements TCD granted 200 internship places by government

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Catherine Healy News Editor

0 JobBridge interns have worked for periods of up to nine months in College since August 2011, Trinity News has learned. Out of the 70 interns that have commenced internships with Trinity through the programme, 25 are currently active in their placements. To date, only 15 interns have obtained employment within College directly after the end of their internships.

In response to a query from Trinity News last week, the Communications Office stated that “the vast majority of interns taken on by Trinity have been in research laboratories located both on campus and in St. James’s Hospital. Trinity College Dublin has mostly hired interns on a ‘Research Assistant’ capacity.” It said that interns employed by College have benefitted from working in areas as diverse as the School of Psychology, the Department of Clinical Medicine, the School of Dental Sciences, the Discipline of Radiation Therapy, the Department of Zoology, the GeneSIS project, and Student Counselling.

As Trinity qualifies as a large host organisation, it has been granted a maximum of 200 internship places under the JobBridge programme. Trinity News understands that College has advertised a total of 112 internships out of its quota of 200 positions since August 2011. The scheme was due to come to an end on 30th June, 2013, but has been extended with no current fixed end date. The Department of Social Welfare has also recently announced that host organisations in the education sector may take

“

“As Trinity qualifies as a large host organisation, it has been granted a maximum of 200 internship places under the JobBridge programme.

Trinity News understands that College has advertised a total of 112 internships out of its quota of 200 positions since August 2011.”

on interns during the summer months if they are in a position to offer a quality internship. The last placement advertised by College on the JobBridge database was for a nine month administrative internship in the School of Dental Science. According to the post – which was created on 24th February but has since been removed the successful applicant will gain practical experience in “filing, minute taking,” “multi-tasking, prioritising, organising, attention to detail, computer use,” and “experience of a busy office environment, working to deadlines and managing workloads.” Among the candidate requirements listed in the advert were “good written and oral communications skills”, “organisational skills”, “good attention to detail”, and “flexibility to work in a team and on own initiative”.

According to College, however, only a minority of placements are in administration. In most of these cases, it states, “a third level qualification was not necessary within the internship specification”.

The claim is not at odds with past JobBridge adverts uncovered by Trinity News. In a post uploaded in January, for instance, College sought a research assistant in breast cancer to process blood and samples from breast cancer patients in the Department of Surgery at James’s Hospital.

The intern was required to have a BSc in biological sciences or a relevant discipline. Another advert for a mental health research associate in August asked that applicants have a third-level degree

in health sciences, sociology or psychology. In February, College sought an unemployed graduate of psychology, social studies, or OT to help run the Parlour Project as part of a “community development” programme. The successful candidate, the advert in question stated, “must be outgoing and tenacious, and will require excellent written and verbal communication, adherence to strict confidentiality policy, ability to design promotional materials ideally, strong interest in volunteer management/community development, flexible approach, and basic MS Office skills.”

In a statement to Trinity News, Caoimhe Ni Lochlainn, College Press Officer, said that “a substantial number [of interns] went onto

outside employment connected to their JobBridge/Trinity experience and the reference they gain, as did a number of interns go onto start scholarships here at Trinity College and elsewhere.”

Her statement claimed that the “Trinity experience with this scheme has been a positive one for both mentors and interns.” It cites one mentor as having commented, ‘’I think JobBridge is excellent. The interns are committed and keen to learn. As they are working in an environment that promotes education, I think they can really pick up new skills and experience.” The intern the mentor worked with “went onto to gain a good internship-related position in an outside organisation”. Speaking to Trinity News

on Thursday, Tom Lenihan, SU President, said he was shocked by the figures. “Trinity’s role in Irish society should be to lead by example, to employ people in the right way,” he said. “We claim to be re-imagining our identity when what we actually stand for now is the exploitation of workers.”

JobBridge is the national internship scheme that provides work placement for those in receipt of social welfare for a minimum of three months. Full-time interns receive ¤50 a week from the state on top of their social welfare payments, which means that interns under the age of 25 earn only ¤3.75 an hour for the duration of their placements.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

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Michael Lanigan goes undercover of the night to the Phoenix Park.

InDepth -p.6

News In Brief

Academics unhappy with new Trinity title

James Wilson Staff Writer

Disgruntled academics have spoken out against College’s official title being changed to “Trinity College, the University of Dublin”. The move was initiated by the controversial “Trinity Identity and Initiative” launched last year by Provost Patrick Prendergast, at a reported cost of ¤100,000 to students and taxpayers. In a divisive move that has led to complaints from students and staff members over a lack of consultation, the initiative concluded that the absence of the word “University” from the College’s official title is a hindrance to the recruitment of overseas students, particularly those from Asia, and recommended that from now on the institution should be known as

“Trinity College, the University of Dublin” in official communication.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Dr Eoin O’Dell, chair of the Trinity Fellows and a professor in the Law Department, said that many academics believed that it was crucial that they still be allowed to use the internationally recognised term “Trinity College Dublin” or “TCD” for research publications as, “The computer is stupid and it can’t deal with variations. The geometric argument is, given we have coalesced around a standard of ‘Trinity College Dublin’ in the last 10 years, anything to change that would be wasteful and dangerous.” He cautioned that there would be “some ambiguity as to which will be the default name and which will be the exception”, before conceding that “until we get the official minutes or a communication from the provost we are a little in the dark”.

O’Dell’s concerns were echoed

by Brian Lucey, a finance professor in the Department of Business, who, writing on his blog, gave short thrift to any attempt to change the College’s name.

“TCD, Trinity College Dublin, is a brand,” he wrote. “It’s one that has stood the test of time for literal centuries. It is, along with a very few others, one of the few global brands we have for Ireland. We are told that we have to change the name to Trinity College, The University of Dublin, as people in [China and India] get confused. Hmmm. Do they get confused as to what MIT is?

Or Caltech? I doubt it.”

A final announcement about a change of name is expected to be made sometime in September following additional consultation, although it is understand that the new name will be used in all recruitment, marketing, press releases and fundraising henceforth.

College football players granted right to unionise Catherine Healy News Editor

Survey shows rise in parttime and adjunct lecturers

Elaine McCahill Editor Provisional results from a survey carried out by the newly formed Third Level Workplace Watch indicate that third-level institutions are to the forefront of the shift towards precarious employment in Ireland today.

Results indicate that the majority of teaching work is carried out on the basis of 6 and 9 month contracts. As a result, a substantial amount of responsibility is placed on part-time lecturers and teaching assistants.

Third Level Workplace Watch has found that a considerable amount of teaching-work is also carried out by lecturers on the basis of hourly-paid contracts, by so-called adjunct lecturers.

Currently, the hourly rate of daytime pay for day-time lectures in UL (University of Limerick) is ¤50. However, delivering lectures is not the sole responsibility of adjunct lecturers with preparation, guidance, assessments etc all being incorporated

into this hourly rate. As a result of all of these duties being incorporated into hourly pay for lectures given, the reality is that the rate of pay is much closer to the minimum wage. As Michael Flynn, who carried out the research, has noted ‘Apart from this, the hourly rate for tutorials averages between ¤20 and ¤30, but can be as low as ¤13 (the case with at least one humanities department); assessment per student is approximately ¤6.50 per student per semester. We know that on this basis, a part-time lecturer taking on a module with 30 students, lasting one semester – 12 weeks, with for example, two lecture hours per week and two tutorial hours (tutorials lasting for approximately 7 weeks of term) – will carry out all duties for less than ¤2000.’

Due to an hourly pay rate, the research and organising work carried out by ‘adjunct’ lecturers is not paid, but it is essential activity to all those that intend to remain employable. However, precariously employed lecturers only have a short time period in

which to conduct this research before resuming the hunt for elusive short-term contracts.

The role of lecturers on permanent contracts, or contracts of indefinite duration (CIDs), is typically divided between teaching, research and administration – with teaching assuming approximately 40% of the workload. This usually involves the delivery of 4 or 4.5 modules per year. However, part-time or adjunct lecturers would have to take on 20 hours of teaching time in order to make up the same salary as a junior lecturer on a permanent contract.

The survey carried out by Third Level Workplace Watch has also uncovered a sizable gender gap.

Women appear more likely to be in hourly-paid work or to report being in precarious employment for 10 years or more (sometimes 20 – 25 years). Currently the maximum contract offered by UL is 5 years and the majority of lecturers rely on short-term contracts or part-time hourly work and are unemployed for the summer months.

Lenihan rules out running for Fianna Fáil in by-election James Prendergast Deputy News Editor SU President Tom Lenihan has ruled out running in the upcoming by-election in Dublin West.

“If Fianna Fáil was to approach me I would absolutely rule it out,” he told Trinity News last week. “I don’t agree with the policies they’ve brought forward, I don’t think they should be put back into government this time.”

When asked if he might run as an independent candidate, Lenihan said he would “be concerned that I would just be considered to be Fianna Fáil.” He also ruled out running for another political party, saying that he was “not sure if I could offer much to politics at this point in my life.”

Lenihan’s father, the former Finance Minister Brian Lenihan, held a seat in the constituency until his death in 2011, and the past three generations of the Lenihan family have had a member in the Oireachtas.

Last month, Lenihan withdrew from the election for Vice-President of Campaigns of the Union of Student in Ireland (USI).

In his manifesto, he had said, “I have no ambition to run for national politics”, and “I am not a

member of a political party and have never been active in one”.

The vacancy in Dublin West occurs after the resignation of Independent TD Patrick Nulty

who admitted to sending a number of inappropriate social media messages, including one to a 17 year-old girl, allegedly under the influence of alcohol.

A US federal agency has ruled in favour of college football players at Northwestern University, Illinois, who are seeking to unionise. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) agreed last Wednesday that student athletes funded by the university qualify as employees and should have the right to collective bargaining with their employer.

The campaign to unionise football players was led by the College Athlete Players’ Association (CAPA), which brought the case to the NLRB along with Kain Colter, a former Northwestern quarterback. The group wants colleges to guarantee that they will cover sports-related medical expenses for current

and former players, ensure better procedures to reduce head injuries, and potentially allow players to pursue profitable commercial sponsorships.

Testifying during last month’s hearing, Colter said, “It’s a job, there is no way around it. You fulfil the football requirement and, if you can, you fit in academics.”

Attorneys for CAPA argued that college football is a commercial enterprise relying on the labour of players to generate huge profits. One said that players for the Northwestern Wildcats earn "their compensation with blood, sweat and tears". Northwestern countered that the college is “not a football factory” and that their players’ academic work comes first. However, Peter Sung Ohr, the NLRB’s regional director, ruled in favour of the players, citing their commitment to their sport and the fact that scholarships were tied directly to their

performance on the field as reasons for granting them the right to unionise. “Players receiving scholarships to perform football-related services for the employer under a contract for hire in return for compensation are subject to the employer’s control and are therefore employees,” he stated.

Northwestern issued a statement shortly after the ruling saying that it would appeal the decision. The ruling comes as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the leading university sport organisation in the US, continues to fight a class-action federal lawsuit from former college players seeking to profit from the billions of dollars earned from live television broadcasts, memorabilia sales, and video games.

Report highlights increase in youth deprivation due to recession Aonghus Ó Cochláin Student Affairs Editor 18% of Irish youth are reportedly suffering deprivation, being unable to afford items considered essential, according to a recent European study. The report, which charts the changing social situation of young people aged between 18 and 29 across the EU, shows this number is more than double the number of the previous report in 2007.

The Social Situation of Young People in Europe study was compiled by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) in collaboration with the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI). Its findings are based off of data collected in 2011, showing an increase of youth deprivation from 7% of the previous report in 2007.

According to NYCI senior researcher and policy officer, Marie-Claire McAleer, this means that 18% of young people in Ireland “cannot afford keeping their house warm, buying meat

or fish at least every second day (if they wanted to) and/or buying new, rather than second-hand clothes”. Young people in large households, such as those living with their parents, partner and children, were found to be the most likely to be in this category.

While down from 45% in 2007, 42% of Irish youth are also reported to be living with their parents. Commenting on this figure, Ms McAleer remarked that “an increase in youth unemployment and cuts in social welfare for young people in successive budgets has made it more difficult for young people to afford to leave home and live independently.” She went on to add that there is a need to address the “serious housing shortage here in Ireland,” calling for the development of an integrated housing strategy by the government.

Another of the survey’s findings was that 51% of young people in Ireland find cost to be a significant barrier to healthcare.

This figure places Ireland the fourth highest in the EU. Ms McAleer attributed this to a limited availability of free healthcare compared to other parts of the EU and the rising cost of

health insurance. “Obviously, the current system is not working and needs to be replaced by a system that provides greater equity and access to health care for all,” she said, adding that “we acknowledge that this is an issue that the Government is currently examining and we await with interest the publication of the white paper on the proposed universal health insurance model.”

More positive findings of the report show that 39% of Irish youth are involved in a club or society and 71% playing a sport or exercising at least once a week, with 38% of young people involved in some form of political activity. Across the whole of the EU, more than two thirds of young people are generally optimistic about the future according to the report. However, the report also found that young people are less likely to trust institutions. Overall, the EU members that have seen the greatest increase in deprivation among youth have been Spain, Cyprus, Portugal, and Greece.

Setanta Centre, Nassau Street , Dublin 2 Phone: +353 (1) 6799117

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

InDepth

As Gaeilge: Gambling, alcoholism anddepression are problems our sporting heroes have to deal with as much as anyone else, but are we encouraging the culture of silence by making Gods of them?

This issue, Frances Mulraney deals with the culture of silence and the sports stars who have spoken out.

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Illustration: Marina Pearl

The garden of earthly delights

O Michael Lanigan Deputy InDepth Editor

Michael Lanigan investigates prostitution in the Phoenix Park. nce darkness descends upon the Phoenix Park, an ominous cloud of silence hangs over the surrounding area, broken only by the odd jogger or a few people making their way home towards Chapelizod Road. Still, if you are aware of the gay-bashing gangs that have been rumoured to roam the grounds, or the many accounts of sexual activity beyond the Wellington Monument’s fencing, then this emptiness does not give you the sense of being alone.

Venturing out to the park at night, intent on observing a hotspot for cruising in Dublin, I found there to be a certain degree of menace projected upon the surroundings, especially after November when Gardaí discovered the charred remains of a homeless man, which although unrelated to the area’s prostitution, still provides sufficient enough of a reason for the park being somewhere you might not want to find yourself after hours.

That feeling of there being something lurking around every corner is not exactly paranoia, because oftentimes there is something there. Most times, it is completely benign, though strange to say the least. For example, when I ventured up to the park intending to observe the activities of Dublin’s male prostitutes, which the park is renowned for playing host to, I nearly fell over a man crawling out from behind a hedgerow carrying a large plastic bin bag, who made himself scarce rather quickly thereafter.

Between six and eight, there is a heavy flow of traffic on Chesterfield Avenue, eventually thinning out by about nine. At this point, a few noticeable vehicles can be spotted on the park’s main road, turning off, usually to its left hand side, towards Magazine Hill, the Polo Club, Furry Glen, the Papal Cross car park, or other such secluded spots, which one does not typically consider part of a daily commute. Within a short space of time, Garda vans begin to patrol the area, pulling up next to small groups of people lingering, or stalling cars in the aforementioned desolate locations.

In summertime, these checks are done as early as six, which seemed slightly surprising until a friend of mine pointed out to me that Furry Glen was often an afternoon hotspot. Seemingly, it is common for park goers to be propositioned by men on the job, while out on a peace-

“

“Daytime activity appears to have petered out with the removal of the public toilets on Burg Quay. All exchanges are now, by and large, conducted in the park under the cover of darkness for most of the year, no longer around the Wellington Monument, but in tucked away cul-desacs, to avoid the Gardaí on the beat up and down the main avenue.”

ful walk. However, this daytime activity appears to have petered out with the removal of the public toilets on Burg Quay. All exchanges are now, by and large, conducted in the park under the cover of darkness for most of the year, no longer around the Wellington Monument, but in tucked away cul-de-sacs, to avoid the Gardaí on the beat up and down the main avenue. However, on a typical weekday, if you can reach a cruising point before the vans, then chances are you can spot the image of fogged up car windows, or a vacant vehicle situated

by Magazine Hill, right before the pathway which leads to pick up spots around the fort, out of plain sight and only reachable by foot. The meetings are swift. The cars are in and out of these areas typically within a twenty-minute timeframe. But given the circumstances of most people present – the threat of surveillance, as well as the taboo attached to male prostitution – it should come as no surprise whatsoever that this is the case.

Regarding this point, and digressing for a moment, I must mention that, for the past few months, I have delved into the matter of sex work in Ireland, and have spoken with and encountered a number of people who are, or have been involved in the trade. However, this research had by and large focused on female sex workers. Even in the vast majority of the reading material available for public consumption, there is seldom any reference to men other than as clientele. At present, there are only about 14 men on the Escort Ireland website operating in Dublin, out of some 360 advertised services in the city. Online forums and specialist sites for “dogging” and No Strings Attached meetings would on occasion contain a few men offering their service. But most were simply giving pointers as to the cruising hotspots in the greater area, which named a few places other than the park, with the second most common place mentioned being the underpass on Pearse Street.

However, my chief interest was not in the online meetings, but in the on-street workers, whose state I can only describe as being on the periphery of an already marginalised group in Irish society. Despite having seen in recent times a significant increase in public discourse regarding sex

work, giving many female workers an opportunity to step up and discuss their experiences, a similar platform has yet to appear on the male front.

This facet of the trade at times felt borderline impenetrable.

From my initial attempts to speak with members of several sex-work support networks, what became clear was that I would be better off to try contacting homeless groups, such as Focus Ireland, or health services for victims of HIV. Still, even within these circles, the people with whom I managed to converse with reiterated the same statements. Usually the desperation of those offering sexual services was so severe that they were reluctant to come forward, even in private. The word “shame” was ubiquitous, and after looking into old studies – conducted by people such as Dr. Ian McCabe, Evanna Kearnis and the East Coast Health Board – the reasons for this became incredibly clear.

Back in 2011, McCabe interviewed twelve male prostitutes, out of whom ten identified as heterosexual. The ECHB found that five of their twenty-seven participants identified as such, while Kearnis in her book Rent from 2000, came up with similar findings, noting that many had girlfriends and in one case, two children. On top of this fact, all of those interviewed by McCabe noted that between 45 to 90% of their clients showed clear signs of being married men. Thus it is obvious why so few were willing to come out of the shadows. Most of the workers find themselves afflicted with depression, a condition which becomes exacerbated furthermore by a sexual identity crisis. Often, their cases are further complicated by a heroin addiction. These males, typically coming from inner-city Dublin where, during the 1970s and ‘80s, the class A drug was easily obtained, their stories are a far cry away from the more middle-class escort services, who often lend their voices to campaigns for legalisation.

Taking this into account, and having spent the much of my time in Dublin being related accounts of spotting men at work in the Park, hiding amongst the trees and dashing between vehicles in its parking lots, I chose to make the journey out to the park and see for myself how shrouded this world was. With a small group of friends, we drove

“

"Back in 2011, McCabe interviewed twelve male prostitutes, out of whom ten identified as heterosexual. The ECHB found that five of their twenty-seven participants identified as such, while Kearnis in her book Rent from 2000, came up with similar findings, noting that many had girlfriends and in one case, two children."

out to the park on a relatively quiet Monday night. When on foot, there was scarcely anyone to be spotted standing out in the open. All signs of life came from of the occasional car, flashing their headlights at us once as we drove down the main avenue, before shooting past and cutting off towards Magazine Hill.

When we went up to the Hill car park, two cars had already been situated there for some time. The first was steamed up, while the second, a jeep with slightly opaque windows, showed clear signs of activity from within. Waiting patiently for a few moments, a small light flickered once, then twice and then disappeared again. At the time, none of us present took this to mean much, until we were questioned

by Gardaí up by the Papal Cross park during their efforts to clear the area for the night. Having explained our reasons for being in the park, they mentioned how the exchanges are initiated through a Morse code of sorts, in which flashing headlights or a lighter once meant “giving” and lashing twice meant “receiving”.

It is a weird feeling, to find out, retrospectively, that you were propositioned. But, as an outsider, the whole mood around the park leaves you on autopilot, neither feeling shocked nor repulsed.

It was interesting that, contrary to my expectations of spotting men blatantly loitering out in the open, all parties were now conducting their services from inside cars. Given the dangers that are already present in this high-risk work, it was, in some small way, reassuring to see that these men were at least taking some measures to ensure their safety since working in the city centre seems no longer an option. However, this small improvement falls far too short when we look at the bigger picture. When you mention the park to a great many people in context of male sex work, either they pass a humorous phallic-related remark, or recoil in fear of the potential dangers involved. Yet in the midst of the quiet meetings taking place, the only prevailing feeling is one of misery. One is struck by a sense of pity that one must bear witness to these couples of worker and client, whose desperation and need lead to them retreating into what is frankly one of the loneliest places I have ever seen.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

Fionn Rogan examines the fabric of the broken society that allowed his bike to be stolen.

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InDepth

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Laochra Caithréimeacha an Spóirt Cearrbhachas, alcólachas, an galar dubhach agus eile - bíonn na fadhbanna seo ar ár gcuid laochra spóirt chomh maith le duine, ach an bhfuil muid féin ag cothú cultúr an chiúnais trí déithe bheaga a dhéanamh díobh? An t-eagrán seo tá Frances Mulraney ag plé le cultúr an chiúnais agus na laochra spóirt atá tar éis labhairt amach.

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Frances Mulraney Staff Writer

s maith is cuimhin liom an t-ionadh a bhí orm is mé ag seasamh os comhair chúl an leoraithe a bhí in úsáid mar stáitse ag deireadh shamhradh na bliana 1998. Ní raibh mé i mo chónaí sa tír ach le cúpla mí an t-am sin agus bhí mé fós ag dul i dtuiscint ar na cluichí Gaelacha agus an nós a bhí ag na himreoirí a lámha a leagan ar an liathróid. Cé nár thuig mé na rialacha ar fad, bhí a fhios agam go maith go raibh rud éigin speisialta ag tarlú os mo chomhair agus buaiteoirí Chorn Mhic Chárthaigh ag ceiliúradh i bpríomhchearnóg an bhaile bhig seo in Uíbh Fhailí.

An bhliain chéanna bhí an-rath ar mo chontae féin, Cill Dara, a bhain amach Cluiche Ceannais na hÉireann sa pheil ach gur chaill i gcoinne chontae dúchais mo sheantuismitheoirí, Contae na Gaillimhe. Tar éis dom na blianta a chaitheamh ag tabhairt tacaíochta d’fhoireann sacair nach raibh thar moladh beirte, ba é seo an chéad dheis a bhí agam a bheith páirteach i gceiliúradh spóirt. Sul i bhfad ghlac mé le himreoirí na gcluichí seo mar laochra nua i mo shaol, is thosaigh ag tabhairt ómóis don aclaíocht agus do na scileanna a thaispeáin siad le linn dráma na himeartha.

Agus ní mise an t-aon duine a bhíonn ag breathnú ar na himreoirí seo mar fhathaigh an tsaoil chomh maith len iad a bheith ina lúthchleasaithe. Tugaimid ar fad ómós do na daoine seo a chaitheann go leor dá gcuid ama ag traenáil amuigh sa bháisteach agus ag ithe go sláintiúil agus muid féin inár suí os comhair na teilifíse cois tine le cupán tae agus cúpla briosca. Déanaimid dearmad gur gnáthdhaoine iad chomh maith agus go bhfhéadfadh siad na fadhbanna céanna a bheith acu féin is a bhíonn againn ar fad. Is mic, deartháireacha, aithreacha agus cairde iad a mbíonn gnáthdheacrachtaí an tsaoil ag cur isteach orthu chomh maith le duine.

Tá laochra spóirt áirithe sa tír seo agus tuigimid ar fad go bhfuil fadhb ar leith acu. Tá deachuimhní againn ar an an scil a bhí leithéidí George Best agus Paul McGrath ar an bpáirc sacair, cé go dtuigimid a gcoimhlint i gcoinne an alcólachais. Tugadh aird ar leith ar a gcuid fadhbanna is iad ina réalta móra sacair i Sasana agus cé nár chabhraigh sé ach an oiread go raibh scéalta á scríobh fúthu sna tablóidigh leis an saol agus a mháthair a chur ar an eolas faoina gcuid fadhbanna, ar a laghad chuir siad seo a muintir agus a gcuid cairde ar an eolas freisin.

Ní mar sin a bhíonn i gcásanna eile, faraor, agus bíonn imreoirí astu féin is iad ag streachailt lena gcuid fadhbanna, idir alcólachas, chúrsaí meabhairshláinte is chearrbhachas, agus iad ag cur an dallamullóg ar na daoine a gcasann siad leo ó lá go lá - a dteaghlaigh, a gcuid cairde agus a gcomhghleacaithe. Nuair nach mbíonn siad ag labhairt faoi na fadhbanna seo agus nuair nach dtéann siad sa tóir ar chabhair, is féidir leis na fadhbanna dul in olcais agus in olcais is gan a fhios acu féin nó ag na daoine thart orthu cén chríoch a thiocfaidh leo.

Is cróga an duine a bheartaíonn go bhfuil sé ag iarraidh seasamh amach ón slua, gan an gnáthnós a leanúint agus a admháil go bhfuil cabhair uaidh ach is é sin atá á dhéanamh ag roinnt imreoirí peile agus iomána le cúpla mí anuas. An tseachtain seo caite, seoladh suíomh idirlín nua leis an imreoir peile Uíbh Fhaileach Niall McNamee. Roinnt míonna ó shin, scríobh Niall a chéad bhlag ag admháil go raibh fadhb aige leis an gcearrbhachas, rud a chuir isteach go mór ar a shaol go dtí go raibh air dul i bhfolach ar na bainc agus ar na daoine eile a raibh fiacha acu air. Bíonn Niall ag scríobh go macánta faoin tréimhse a raibh andúil ollmhór aige sa chearrbhachas, faoi na laethanta ar chaith sé leath dá chuid pá ar na capaill, na madraí agus ag cur geallta ar thorthaí cluichí. Le linn an tréimhse is measa dá andúil dhíol sé a charr leis an airgead a thiomsú le fáil réidh leis na haisíocaíochtaí ar fad. D’fhág sé an t-airgead sin ar fad leis na geallghlacadóirí.

Bíonn McNamee ag scríobh faoin mbaint atá idir an Cumann Lúthchleas Gael agus an cearrbhachas. Cé go ndeir sé go bhfuil go leor daoine ann a d’fhéadfadh dul chuig na geallghlacadóirí, cúig euro a chur mar gheall ar chapall agus an áit a fhágáil arís, aithníonn sé go bhfuil fadhb ann i measc na n-imreoirí, is go bhfuil sí seo ina cuid de chultúr an spóirt.

Dar leis, tá an cearrbhachas ar cheann de na hábhair cainte is coitianta i seomraí feistis an CLG agus tá sé deacair éalú uaidh má tá dúil agat ann.

Aithníonn sé chomh maith go bhfuil dlúthbhaint idir an cearrbhachas agus an t-alcól is deir go mbíodh sé ag ól le hiarracht a dhéanamh a chuid fadhbanna a chur i bhfolach ina intinn féin agus smacht a choinneáil ar a chuid mothúchán. Dhá bhliain ó shin, nuair a thuig Niall go raibh sé in am aige a admháil go raibh fadhb

aige agus cabhair a lorg, d’éirigh sé as an alcól ag an am céanna, ar eagla go dtosódh andúil eile in ionad an chearrbhachais nuair nach raibh sé in ann geallta chur a thuilleadh.

Fear cróga eile a labhair amach ag deireadh na bliana seo caite is é Conor Cusack, iar-iománaí le foireann chontae Chorcaí, agus ba iad a chuid deacrachtaí leis an dúlagair agus a mheabhairshláinte féin ábhar a chuid cainte.

Is iontach an dul chun cinn atá déanta aige agus an chrógacht a thaispeáin sé, cé go ngoillfeadh sé ar dhuine a bheith ag léamh faoi na mothúcháin a bhí aige agus a chuid pleananna lena lámh a chur ina bhás féin.

Déanann Conor tagairt don iomáint agus don bhaint atá idir an spórt agus a fhéiniúlacht féin.

Mothaíonn sé go raibh sé ag cur béim mhíshláintiúil ar an nasc sin agus go raibh sé go ag brath ar an spórt amháin leis an bhféiniúlacht sin a thabhairt dó. Níor bhain sé an sult céanna as a bheith ag imirt go dtí gur labhair sé faoin a chuid mothúchán agus a thuig sé an fhéiniúlacht atá aige taobh amuigh de chúrsaí spóirt chomh maith. Ón am a scríobh sé a chéad bhlag, tá Conor tar éis labhairt amach go minic faoi fhadhbanna meabhairshláinte agus scríobh sé blag eile faoina ghnéasacht.

An féidir go bhfuil muid ar tí cultúr an chiúnais a athrú? Buíochas le leithéidí Néill agus Conor tá níos mó á rá faoi fhadhbanna sóisialta agus an CLG agus tá antóir orthu beirt le dul timpeall na tíre ag labhairt faoina a dtaithí. I mí Eanáir na bliana seo, bunaíodh clár nua idir an CLG agus an Rannóg Sláinte Poiblí le dul i ngleic le fadhb an struis. Tá an clár seo á reáchtáil mar chuid den tionscadal GAA Healthy Club a seoladh an bhliain seo caite. Eagraíodh clár sé seachtainí i gceithre chlub i ngach aon chúige faoi na bealaí gur féidir linn déileáil le strus.

Agus an clár á sheoladh, labhair oifigigh an CLG faoin méadú teagmhála a tharla idir an pobal agus na hoifigí i bPáirc an Chrócaigh i ndiaidh fhoilsiú scéalta Conor agus Alan O’Mara (cúl báire Chontae an Chabháin) ach go háirithe. Is freagracht nua é seo ar an CLG agus ceann nach mbeifeá ag súil go mbeadh sé ar eagraíocht spóirt ach tá siadsan sásta a ndícheall a dhéanamh le meon sláintiúil a chothú i measc an phobail.

Cuireadh tús leis an tionscadal GAA Healthy Club i mí an Mhárta 2013 le tuilleadh cabhrach a thabhairt do chlubanna áiseanna maithe meabhairshláinte a chur ar fáil dá mbaill le cois na n-áiseanna atá ann le haghaidh gortuithe fhisiciúla. Ina measc seo tá cláir ann le déileáil le cásanna féinmharaithe. Chuir 60 club iarratas isteach ar an gclár agus roghnaíodh ocht gcinn déag dóibh siúd le páirt a ghlacadh i gcéim a haon den chlár a bheidh ar siúl go ceann dhá bhliain.

Ach tá go leor fós le déanamh.

Níl ach 18 gclub ar an gclár seo faoi láthair agus tá os cionn 2,300 club sa chumann timpeall an domhain. Is céatadán fíor-bheag é seo agus tá géarghá lena fheabhsú agus leanúint ar aghaidh leis an gcaint agus leis an bplé atá tosaithe ag imreoirí cosúil leo siúd a luadh, ach go hairithe i measc daoine óga.

Cuireadh scéim nua i bhfeidhm an tseachtain seo caite in Ollscoil Chathair Bhaile Átha Cliath.

Tógadh an cinneadh go mbeidh lógó na heagraíochta Please Talk le feiceáil ar éadaí spóirt na gcumann uile san Ollscoil. Cé gur bealach é seo le taispeáint go bhfuil tacaíocht ar fáil má tá sé ag teastáil, ní bheidh sé go hiomlán éifeachtach mura n-athraíonn meon na ndaoine chomh maith.

Mar a deir Conor, tá cultúr na tíre tar éis an iomarca ama a chaitheamh ag tabhairt an teachtaireacht mhícheart do dhaoine óga in Éirinn. Bíonn meon an ghaiscígh ag teastáil ar pháirc na himeartha ó am go céile ach is ann a ba cheart é a fhágáil. Ní chaithfidh imreoirí óga a bheith ag troid agus ag dul i gcoimhlint le fadhbanna an tsaoil ina n-aonar. Buíochas leis na daoine cróga a labhair amach agus leis an tús atá curtha ag an CLG le hathrú an chultúir, tá tuiscint níos fearr againn ar fad ar na fadhbanna seo.

Beidh cuimhní maithe agam i gcónaí agus meas agam i gcónaí ar na hiománaithe iontacha a bhí ag seasamh os mo chomhair an oíche sin in eireaball an tsamhraidh agus mé óg. Tá sé in am againn anois áfach stopadh de bheith ag déanamh déithe bheaga de dhaoine agus cultúr nua a chruthú ina mbíonn chuile dhuine in ann a chuid fadhbanna a phlé.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

8

InDepth

A lament for a stolen bike Fionn Rogan mourns the theft of his bike and the society that let it happen.

I Fionn Rogan Contributor

had my bike stolen at the start of the month. That’s a funny way to put it. ‘I had it stolen,’ almost as if I had arranged it with the thief, that he would take my bike and I’d never see it again. It’s a curious feeling to find your bike stolen.

I suppose the general reaction might be ‘Fuck. Fucking fuck fuck fuckity fuck.’

You might kick the wall, curse your sore foot, damn the wall and think foul thoughts about the miserable prick that made off with your bike. Then limp towards Front Arch perfecting your aggrieved sour puss to file your complaint. A sympathetic but ultimately helpless security guard will join you in your grumblings, help you curse the immoral bastard that took your bike and then you’d go about your day progressing from apocalyptic fury to aggressive anger to intense annoyance and finally to just being mildly miffed.

I didn’t react like that. It was half ten on a Sunday morning.

The sun was peaking out from behind some unconvincing clouds.

Town was quiet, College was sleeping and I’d promised myself a quick ‘gym’ before work.

I’d locked my bike in the sea of bicycles outside the sports centre the night before. Walking towards the gym, dodging the night’s puddles beneath the Dart-line Bridge I actually prepped myself to say ‘hello’ to my bike. What a mad fucking thing to do.

Just like walking by a friend in the street, I planned out my customary nod, a cheeky wink and mouth a ‘hello’, ‘good morning’, ‘how’s the sprockets?’ ‘Fine day for a cycle, pity I’ve got work, eh?’ All this for a bike, nothing more than two wheels, a frame and some fancy bits. So you might imagine finding it missing from its spot beneath the bridge would come as a bit of a shock to me, someone who fully subscribed to such ludicrous personifying nonsense.

You should understand that my bike was my favorite thing I owned. Perhaps that doesn't mean anything. Surely it’s absurd to invest so much emotion and feeling in something so insignificant as an inanimate product. I mean it's only a thing. An object. A bike.

Who could frankly give a shit? I suppose I do. I realise and fully appreciate that it's a silly thing to care about but I would be fooling myself if I didn't say I loved that bike. The bike had achieved a status above being more than a mere

“

"I stared at the empty space along the railings where its sleek matte black frame had once occupied. I probably wasn’t able to fully grasp the reality of the situation for a minute or two. And then, ready to accept that my bike was gone, I turned about and proceeded to walk into the gym before heading to work. The anger never came. This surprised me at first. I couldn’t muster any fury or hatred for the person who took my bike..."

object. I had the bike for a little less than three years and in that time I must have covered at least five thousand kilometers happily propped up upon its saddle.

People don’t spend that kind of time with anything without forming sort of bond with it. The bike had accompanied me on some of the happiest days of my life and, understandably, through association it evolved from simple thing to cherished possession. A mythic identity was cultivated whereby I equated the bike and spending time on it with being happy, free and being just generally optimistic.

The bike offered a sense of freedom, a means to entertain my half-baked ideas about how to spend a day. I’d often get mad notions such as, ‘I want to have lunch in Stephen’s Green today.’ This bizarre want would be acted upon and I would pack a ham roll into a bag and I would set off from Clane and cycle to Stephen’s Green. Eat my roll and cycle home. An eighty-kilometer round trip.

I spent a week surfing in Clare last August. The week before my departure I felt it would be appropriate for me to at least spy the Irish Sea before peering over the Atlantic for the week. That resulted in a one-hundred-andtwenty kilometer journey on the hottest day of last summer. Leaving my home at ten to eight in the morning, I didn’t return till half five that day. Apparently I risked going into cardiac arrest with that stunt.

The 21st of December 2012, widely prophecised as the end of the world. I spent it atop the Dublin Mountains hurtling down the mountain-bike tracks at Ticknock. If the world was going to end, well at least I was happy whilst it went about its apocalyptic business.

So you might appreciate that the bike was something more than just another thing I owned.

It was never just a mode of transport. I didn’t look upon it as just another possession, a thing, an object, a bike. It was special and it occupied a certain role in my life. It gifted me an extra degree of independence. It was a means of expression because it allowed me to exercise my desire for adventures, which helped to define me as a person.

I realise these are all qualities that can be attributed to any bike but that bike is special because it was the first thing I owned that

I really truly loved. It’s perhaps best summed up using the German term, gestalt. It was more than the sum of its parts. It had a mythological currency that I happily bought into.

How did I react then when I found it missing that Sunday morning? It might be fair to say I didn’t. Primed to greet my bike with a courteous nod I was surprised to find it missing. Not shocked. I remember thinking, ‘How curious. I wonder where it’s gone.’ Almost as if it had undone itself from its giant FUCK-OFF black lock, and gone for a leisurely morning pedal about campus.

I stared at the empty space along the railings where its sleek matte black frame had once occupied. I probably wasn’t able to fully grasp the reality of the situation for a minute or two. And then, ready to accept that my bike was gone, I turned about and proceeded to walk into the gym before heading to work.

The anger never came.

This surprised me at first. I couldn’t muster any fury or hatred for the person who took my bike and I suppose it probably comes down to the fact that I understood why they took my bike.

It was a thousand euro bike. It was incredibly well kept. It was slick, well made, attractive and a damn good bike. If I were to steal a bike, I would probably steal mine too.

I commend them on their choice.

Congrats. Bravo. No, I never got angry because my bike was stolen but that’s not to say I was a picture of calm that day. There were two elements to this episode that stoked the ire within me.

The thief decided to leave my bike lock and helmet locked to the railings, almost as a perverted calling card. The lock was fine, un-tampered with but the straps of my helmet were sheared through. Absolutely, steal my bike, you might eke out some utility from the crime but to break my helmet and leave it there for me to discover is an exercise in pure badness.

With that act the thief exemplified the idiom ‘adding insult to injury’ and that is intolerable.

I imagine they thought to themselves as they cut through the strap ‘Fuck you, random stranger’ and they were right, fuck me, I am a random stranger. I don’t know the thief and I imagine they don’t know me. There was no motive for vandalizing my helmet other than badness and that made me angry. What made me

“

The thief decided to leave my bike lock and helmet locked to the railings, almost as a perverted calling card. The lock was fine, untampered with but the straps of my helmet were sheared through. Absolutely, steal my bike, you might eke out some utility from the crime but to break my helmet and leave it there for me to discover is an exercise in pure badness.

With that act the thief exemplified the idiom ‘adding insult to injury’"

angrier however was the almost universal acceptance by friends, family, security, Gardaí and I that this was just the way things went.

What did I expect? If I rode a bike in town I was to assume automatically that it would be stolen at some stage. I was clearly being ostentatious and foolhardy to cycle such a nice bike and leave it in town.

What sort of prick was I? People consoled me with words of wisdom stemming from experience that went along the lines of, ‘Oh I had a bike stolen in town before. You know it’s just a part of living in Dublin. A learning experience, yanno. Sorry about the bike man.’

Frankly I think it’s ludicrous that we allow ourselves to equate blatant lawlessness with just another facet of city living. It appears we’re the assholes for wanting to keep our bikes. How foolish and naïve are we? This attitude requires a serious overhauling. Stealing is stealing and is not just another aspect of life that we blindly accept because it operates on some random lottery based notion whereby it’ll happen to you but you can never tell when. This ‘accepted-truth’ of urban living needs to be tackled and thrashed.

I’ve resolved myself to the fact that I’ll probably never see my bike again and that’s what makes me angry. Not that I won’t see it again, but that I accept I won’t see it again. That’s bollix and frankly we need to re-evaluate that perception very quickly. Possessions I deem to keep are not transient and if they get stolen I don’t think it’s too much to expect that something more than filing a report would be done in order to return it to me.

Perhaps my lament for a stolen bike is over the top and ridiculous but the message rings true that a general tolerance for crime is a worrisome prospect for any society and should be considered with some degree of serious thought. Such attitudes do not bode well for the development of a healthy and functioning community.

As citizens we are charged with living by the law of the land and when certain laws are allowed to slip, its consequences can be severe. Whilst human behavior may exist in the grey area, law operates on a black and white basis and that requires the strictest enforcement.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

9

InDepth

Who speaks for Ireland?

Orla Ní Dhúil looks at the disconnect between Ireland’s legacy media and its young people.

D Orla Ní Dhúil Staff Writer

o you feel as though mainstream Irish media represents you and the issues that matter to you? If not, then you are not alone.

There is a well-documented disconnect between many young Irish people and their government; a study in 2007 had Ireland’s young voter turn-out the lowest in Europe. But what is less well-documented is the disconnect between much of Ireland’s youth and its media. Though the political apathy is of course a problem in its own right, it is also in part a knock-on effect of a media that does little to prioritise issues that affect younger demographics.

This was well demonstrated by the Pantigate incident that has been unfolding since January, which has brought the issues of homophobia and censorship to the forefront of national debate.

It has also shown that the priorities and loyalties of the Irish media do not align with those of much of the population. The issues of homophobia, the Iona Institute and other parties involved have been and will be discussed elsewhere but what is more significant to me are the actions of RTE in its role as state broadcaster during the scandal.

There was a lack of transparency from the beginning which made many people uneasy. When the final figure of the settlement of ¤85,000 was revealed many people were outraged. RTE has received over 850 official complaints regarding this pay-out for a comment which received zero audience complaints on the night.

The general frustration and outrage was expressed on social media platforms and described on RTE a week later as “Twitter lynch mobs”, though it was more akin to an unfiltered Letters to the Editor page. One upload of the section of interview edited out of RTE’s digital archive has been viewed on Daily Motion 27,360 times at the time of writing. This is higher than the average rating of 18 of RTE’s 20 most watched programmes. Perhaps this is not that surprising given that, according to the Irish Digital Consumer Report in 2013, 53% of Irish people aged 16-25 and 43% of Irish people aged 26-34 now consume the majority of their TV content online. I spoke to the chair of Ireland’s top journalism degree, Dr

“

"Pussy Riot and Hollaback are two groups that have big youth followings but their treatment on RTE was cringeworthy at best. Brendan O’Connor’s interview of Pussy Riot in February was widely considered an embarrassment as he failed to discuss their activism, their feminism or their experiences of prison."

Jane Suiter, who has written for a number of publications, including The Financial Times, to get her perspective on how Ireland’s traditional media have struggled to entice young audiences.

“Yes I think traditional media are struggling with how to win audiences among young people.

The Irish Times, for example, has hired a few younger writers who attempt to engage with issues relevant to younger readers but the success is patchy.”

However Dr Suiter felt that journalism has had to become partially about entertainment rather than purely information.

“Journalists are increasingly utilising social media as a source and reference for news and current affairs; this allows more direct access for all citizens as the shift in news production becomes more bottom up. Younger people are more likely to be engaged in social media and this is thus a source of influence.”

So young people looking to get involved in debates and commentary on current affairs now need no more qualification than an internet connection. Social media, particularly Twitter, is the primary news outlet for many young people all over the world, including Ireland.

Ireland has 600,000 daily Twitter users, making us the 10th highest country in the world for Twitter users per capita. This is a fact that journalists and broadcasters alike have been struggling with for a number of years. While this presents its own set of quality-control challenges, is an open more inclusive discussion not generally preferable?

The guests and debates on RTE only continued to highlight this disconnect in the weeks that followed Pantigate. Pussy Riot and Hollaback are two groups that have big youth followings but their treatment on RTE was cringe-worthy at best. Brendan O’Connor’s interview of Pussy Riot in February was widely considered an embarrassment as he failed to discuss their activism, their feminism or their experiences of prison but rather made inappropriate jokes and asked questions about Madonna. Last year, Ryan Tubridy interviewed the head of Irish Hollaback, Aimee Doyle, and suggested that she should find street harassment

complimentary.

When asked Hollaback said: “It was quite clear that Ryan didn't take us seriously and was determined to present us as a group concerned only with "wolf-whistles", rather than a group concerned with street harassment and its place within rape culture.

It was a frustrating experience, as we felt that there was a deliberate attempt to twist our words and redefine our experiences. It seemed that our attempts to challenge the status quo were unwelcome to Ryan, who of course benefits from that status quo."

Just this month RTE came out with a new TV show, The Centre, that focuses on a working class community centre trying to “grab grants” by ticking “diversity boxes”. I watched the first 10 minutes of the pilot which was all it took for the show to be massively classist and transphobic, not to mention anti-traveller and dismissive of Muslim women. Rather than spreading the things that would offend people out, RTE decided to put all the things you might hate about them in one convenient place.

In February, UCC held a Journalism Conference where the issues surrounding sexism in Irish media were addressed, like the fact that 98% of opinion columns in the Irish Times are written by men. Audrey Ellard Walsh, a Cork journalist covering the event, referred to traditional news outlets as “legacy media”, which is an interesting term.

Legacy is what traditional media has to offer. Reputation, authority and trust are vital for any news outlet and it is the advantage that they still have over blog and purely online-based publications. However what online journalism has to offer is an accessibility and diversity of voices that is seriously lacking in much of Ireland’s “legacy media”.

But Dr Suiter believes that “online journalism” as distinct from journalism as a whole is an increasingly outdated concept. “In many ways almost all journalism is now online to a greater or lesser extent. The question is from where does it emanate? The traditional news organisations tend to have greater resources, more trained and experienced journalists and thus have a higher level of credibility with the public. The

“

"Legacy is what traditional media has to offer.

Reputation, authority and trust are vital for any news outlet and it is the advantage that they still have over blog and purely online-based publications.

However what online journalism has to offer is an accessibility and diversity of voices that is seriously lacking in much of Ireland’s “legacy media”.

challenge for them and indeed for democracy is to ensure that these advantages are leveraged, ensuring high quality, questioning, well-researched journalism that engages with the audience.”

The BBC could be seen in some ways to reflect this. It is one of the most highly visited online sources of news, on its own site and across various social media platforms, but also maintains its tradition television and radio mediums. It combines new techniques with a reputation that is trusted. But more importantly it provides context for its breaking news, something which can be lacking in Twitter headlines.

At the end of our interview, Dr Suiter expressed optimism for Irish media in the future, that it would figure out how to adapt and change. This week The Irish Times saw changes as John Waters left their employment and the website hosted a respectful and engaged article at the Lady & Trans Fest at Seomra Spraoi.

Are we about to see a seismic shift in Irish media? Will ‘legacy’ outlets catch up with the needs and priorities of a very different country? I am not sure honestly.

Most of the time in Ireland, to poorly paraphrase Yeats, change comes dripping slow. I do think that local, home-grown media still has value in an increasingly globalised word. So if Ireland’s media does change, hopefully it will be for the better.

Photo: Dargan Crowley Long

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

10

InDepth

Keeping it hyperreal InDepth Editor, D. Joyce Ahearne, considers the role of the media in a world continually becoming more and more online.

P D. Joyce Ahearne InDepth Editor

rint, as a medium for news, is dead. News never waited for anyone but before the Internet we often had to wait for it. But news finds us now, seeking out our online presence. To use print as a means of disseminating news today is a postmodern statement of futility. Online offers endless space and endless time. One would think that this is a development without downsides for media outlets, but questions have to be asked about how we use the Internet to inform ourselves and others.

News online is accessed through one of two ways; we can still seek it out on specific media sites in the same we way we used to buy the paper but now it also comes to us, through our news feeds on Facebook and Twitter.

That news can come to us is a symptom of the mass migration of the digital age. Like the news, we too have, in our millions, moved online.

There are people alive today using Facebook who have no memory of the world being a place without it. Online is as normal, if not as real, as real life to people who don’t remember a time before social media, and also for many who can.

To use the vocabulary of the French theorist Jean Baudrillard, we now have a hyperreality alongside the real world, one that we engage with every time we log in and one that engages with us through our newsfeed.

What then are the consequences of a hyperrealty in which individuals inform themselves and gather their news about the real world? In what ways do our online selves interact differently with online news than we interact with news in the real world?

Another of Baudrillard’s ideas is “the loss of the real”, the increasing influence of virtual reality in our lives and the blurring of the distinction between the real and the imagined, reality and illusion. Social media is a frighteningly clear example of both hyperreality and the loss of the real. Worrying enough as this is as a social trend, when it becomes the means by which we inform ourselves for the real world, the fabric of that real world comes into question.

The building blocks of hyperreality for Baudrillard are signs that “mask the absence of a basic reality.” These are signs that disguise the fact that they don’t actually correspond to anything

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"CollegeTimes. com is an example of a system of signs masking absences passing as media, a “simulacrum”.

The “reality” of CollegeTimes. com is not that of an underlying reality, but of other signs. By disseminating ideas like “Most Attractive Personality Traits in A Woman” and “The 29 Most Annoying Things Girlfriends Ask” online, they promote a narrative with no basis in reality but which is designed to be shared and liked by people online."

real. Peter Barry gives the example of idealised images of masculinity and femininity that pervade society. These are signs for which no original exists but which people strive to imitate. Thus the sign, the imagined, becomes the reality and the real is forgotten.

For the individual, their Facebook profile is a means by which they can construct themselves as they wish. They can commit acts which often have no basis in reality. They can become friends, join movements and like things, previously held to be events that all presupposed coming into contact with something real, something tangible.

We’ve reached a period where social media is an established institution, part of everyday life, what Baudrillard might call the

“precession of simulacra”. On an individual basis, this means Facebook precedes us; it’s waiting for us to sign up with an outline of a profile picture that we substitute for a picture of ourselves.

People also access news online.

A danger arises when the media is doing the same as the individual, when media outlets are themselves masking an absence of reality online. If this is how people are getting their news, then there is a serious disconnect with the real world.

News, the news we choose to engage with online, just becomes another facet of an online reality that exists without any grounding in either the world of the individual or of the events in which they exist. What people like and share online is part of their online per-

“

"We’ve reached a period where social media is an established institution, part of everyday life, what Baudrillard might call the “precession of simulacra”.

On an individual basis, this means Facebook precedes us; it’s waiting for us to sign up with an outline of a profile picture that we substitute for a picture of ourselves."

sona and by choosing what they want to be seen to know, informing oneself can become synonymous with accessorising one’s online character.

CollegeTimes.com is an example of a system of signs masking absences passing as media, a “simulacrum”. The “reality” of CollegeTimes.com is not that of an underlying reality, but of other signs. By disseminating ideas like “Most Attractive Personality Traits in A Woman” and “The 29 Most Annoying Things Girlfriends Ask” online, they promote a narrative with no basis in reality but which is designed to be shared and liked by people online.

There is no such thing as the “most attractive woman” or the “most annoying girlfriend” but in an online world such ideas have weight when no-one’s idea of themselves has much grounding in real life either, when their online personas are designed to hide what they perceive to be their real life absences.

People don’t want to be the “most annoying girlfriend” but because no-one can ever really say what makes a girlfriend the most annoying, the best thing is to subscribe to an online definition of what that is, and apply it to oneself, or rather to oneself online.

Though the Internet is not the first spectre to incite questions over mass media it is a particular issue that has no real precedent.

It poses issues that have never before encountered by those engaging with media and those in charge of it.

Obviously responsible journalism, as ever, stays the same.

Report the facts and don’t make things up, but in an environment of simulation, the means of communication are just as important as what’s being reported. When the individuals and the media are both operating on assumptions on what the other wants their reality to be, then reporting the facts becomes more complicated.

Baudrillard’s famous claim that the Gulf War never happened highlights the layers of complications that arise from journalism in the digital age. Though the first Gulf War undeniably took place, the framing and reporting by media meant that the only consciousness that we, the masses, had of the war is what they chose to show us. Subsequently, we were bombarded with what they wanted us to see.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

Conor McGlynn makes the case that the resignation of John Waters marks a step towards a new liberal censorship.

11

>>

InDepth

p. 14

Editorial

Elaine McCahill Editor

It’s hard to believe that this is my final issue as editor of Trinity News. It doesn’t feel like almost eight months since we stayed up all night in the Publications Office piecing the first issue together and taking an incredible last minute photo of Front Square packed with freshers, brilliantly lit by the morning sun.

It’s been quite a year though. Under my leadership Trinity Publications including Trinity News have overhauled financial management and as such hopefully secured the future of Trinity Publications as a whole. We printed eight print editions this year, which was less than last year but this allowed us to maintain the brilliant tn2, while also offering our writers to submit to our website and allow time to develop our online presence. I believe we’ve had great success with this strategy and I believe we struck a balance across the board. Huge thanks to our Online Editor, Matthew, who endured many hours uploading articles, adapting the website and increasing the both the online readership and presence of both Trinity News and tn2.

Of course, as many will know, we ruffled many feathers this year, not least those of a certain longhaired columnist who shall not be named. However, while these situations were not entirely desirable, they illustrated that we were doing a good job and they also served as a great lesson for our editors on how to handle those kinds of circumstances.

We have broke stories that have garnered national attention, written incredibly detailed features in InDepth, expressed a diverse range of opinions, as well as had a booming Science section and diverse Sport pages. There have been long nights, stressful days but incredible highs as well and I couldn’t have done it without my incredible team. We had a relatively rocky start but we got through it and worked together and trusted each other and went on to build even further on the established Trinity News brand and bring our website and readership to never before seen heights. In all of my time in student journalism, I have never seen such consistently ground-breaking stories whether it was unpaid interns, books being banned, graphene condoms or gender issues within the charity sector. I am incredibly lucky to have worked with such a talented group of people and I can’t thank you all enough

“

"Of course, as many will know, we ruffled many feathers this year, not least those of a certain longhaired columnist who shall not be named.

However, while these situations were not entirely desirable, they illustrated that we were doing a good job and they also served as a great lesson for our editors on how to handle those kinds of circumstances."

for the hard work and dedication that you put in so that we would publish a paper that not only had consistently engaging content but one that looked beautiful as well.

I can’t thank Charli, Attie, Natalie, Aoife and Maria as well as the rest of the Art team for contributing such beautiful photographs and illustrations that made the paper so beautiful, not least the cover of this issue.

I can’t thank the senior editorial team, Tommy, Catherine, Matthew, Dylan, William, Gavin and Cal, as well as all the sub-editors and staff writers enough. Your dedication, drive and passion are what keeps the institution that is Trinity News alive and what will keeping it driving forward into the future. I hope that you have all enjoyed this year and feel that you have gained both skills and experience from it.

I would also like to extend sincere thanks to the Publications Committee for all of their support over the past number of years. Publications has been the lynchpin of my college experience and the support of previous committee members and editors have been central to that. Little did I know when I joined the editorial team of TCD Miscellany back to in 2009 under Conor James McKinney and Martin McKenna, that I would be sitting here, looking out onto College Green, writing the last editorial of my year as editor of the flagship title. It has been an incredible honour and privilege to edit the 60th volume of Trinity News but of course, the time will always come to pass on the baton.

At the Trinity Publications annual general meeting on the 19th March, Catherine Healy, our current news editor, was elected as Editor of the 61st volume. I would like to wish both Catherine and her incumbent Deputy Editor, D. Joyce Ahearne the best of luck for the year ahead. Of course, neither of them need it as they both have shown incredible diligence, creativity and dedication to their sections this year. They have been incredible section editors as illustrated by their own work and also their encouragement and support to both new writers and current members of staff.

This year, we set out to engage both the student body and staff with engaging, interesting and informative content. I hope we achieved that and that this year we printed stories that informed you, made you laugh and even irked you a little bit. If so, then we did a good job.

Dear Editor Letter to Trinity's Library Keeper in reponse to students having to pay a fine to enter the library upon forgetting their student card.

Dear Mr Peare, On Friday, 21 March, I found myself paying an arbitrary sum of money to enter the library without a student card. The library entrance fine is often spoken about and universally resented. This fine is completely unjustifiable.

If there was a policy of denying students entry for forgetting their student card it would be understandable, if unfortunately uninnovative in its approach. However, it is clear there is a system in place that allows for students to be recognised and let into the library despite not having their card that could be used effectively for free. The fine's only justifiable premise appears to be as a punitive reproach on students who forget their student card: a

“

"The library entrance fine is often spoken about and universally resented."

condescendingly censorious reason. I do not know how much money your system raises, I do not suspect it is considerable in the grand scheme of the university's revenue structure.

What I do know however, is that to hard up students, who are often already in debt through paying university fees and trying to find the capital to live in Dublin, this fine feels like a considerable amount of money. Indeed, in reality, the fine predominantly punishes those who do not live in walking distance of campus, invariably those who cannot afford to live near it, those who feel the fine's sting most keenly.

I would strongly urge you to reconsider this policy of unnecessarily punishing students.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

Comment

Maxime Bercholz argues that the SU should focus less on changing the world and more on student stuff like library hours.

p.14

The Phil have distorted the real story about the Nick Griffin affair Manus Lenihan, former TN Comment Editor, who helped to campaign against the Phil inviting Nick Griffin to speak in Trinity, gives his side of the story in response to recent claims.

I Manus Lenihan Staff Writer

n 2010, 214 million people around the world lived outside of their country of origin. Most were forced to leave because of economic and political forces beyond their control. Migration is one of the great issues of our time and it’s vital that we discuss it. I have done so many times, in my political activity, in my work, in college; with immigrants, with emigrants and with people who have never left their home. If I was organising a formal debate on migration, say in a university debating society, I would first and foremost invite actual migrants.

I would not invite, say, someone with a neo-Nazi past. I would not invite someone who had devoted their entire life to politically attacking non-white people.

One autumn as I began my third year in Trinity I learned that the Phil had invited Nick Griffin, the British National Party leader, to propose the motion that “immigration has gone too far.” I was one of the many students and political activists who decided to pressure the Phil into cancelling the invitation. I’m proud to say we succeeded, but at the time I argued that there had to be a large anti-racist, anti-fascist demonstration on the night of the debate. This would send a clear message that Griffin was not welcome and, if possible and if numbers were big enough, prevent him from speaking.

Recently, a friend, who was also active in this campaign, forwarded me an email from the Phil advertising a debate on the motion that “This House Would Re-invite Nick Griffin.” The email included a lot of pious wind about “our values of balanced discourse and debate”, but ironically it also included a run-down on the Nick Griffin affair that was distorted and mostly incorrect. This “balanced” e-mail included, in all, two half-sentences that entertained the vague possibility that there might be something wrong with giving free publicity to racists. The e-mail started badly by claiming the Nick Griffin affair happened in 2012 – it was in fact in 2011. Then it got worse. The invitation apparently only got “some media coverage from farright and -left organisations”. I originally heard the news from the Union of Jewish Students, who made the first call for the Phil to deny Griffin a platform.

Very soon afterwards Love Music Hate Racism organised a gig down the road from Trinity to protest against the invitation.

I’m happy to say many left-wing organisations, along with their members on campus, expressed

“

“Recently, a friend, who was also active in this campaign, forwarded me an email from the Phil advertising a debate on the motion that “This House Would Reinvite Nick Griffin.”

The email included a lot of pious wind about “our values of balanced discourse and debate”, but ironically it also included a rundown on the Nick Griffin affair that was distorted and mostly incorrect.

This “balanced” e-mail included, in all, two halfsentences that entertained the vague possibility that there might be something wrong with giving free publicity to racists.”

anger as well.

It’s true about the far-right groups, but it wasn’t what you’d call “media coverage”. A shower of racists called Democratic Right Movement Ireland, who among other things have called a friend of mine a “mongrel” for his ethnicity, were drooling with glee all over their appalling online forum. The invitation was a major encouragement to them and a validation of their ideas. In the email, Trinity Against Fascism is described as a “small group of students”. TAF in fact snowballed to a membership of around a hundred students in a few short days. TAF “contacted the Phil’s sponsors”. Yes, that’s right – TAF let KC Peaches in on the fact that their money was helping to publicise Nick Griffin. As I remember, KC Peaches – not a “far-left organisation” – threatened to withdraw funding.

But TAF gets off lightly in the email next to these sinister “far-left organisations” which are never named in the e-mail, but which appear never to do anything except “threaten” people. Now, I am a proud member of what is probably one of these “far-left organisations”, the Socialist Party.

I never came anywhere close to “threatening” anyone. Neither did any of my fellow party members, or anyone I know. A worker on campus who was a member of another “far-left organisation” brought the matter to his union, which as far as I know also put some pressure on college authorities. The night before the Phil announced that the invitation was withdrawn, some anti-fascist activists held a mildly rowdy protest at a Phil meeting. I wasn’t there, and I feel that a few leaflets and a bit of chanting outside the front doors would have done the job.

But to this day it makes me very happy to think of working-class anti-fascist street activists intruding on the genteel and rarefied atmosphere of a college debating society, with its suits and bells, its minutes and formulas, and dragging them very harshly down to earth.

During the campaign we were criticised for portraying the Phil and its membership as privileged and disconnected from the real world, and I expect to get some stick for the paragraph above. But class really is an unavoidable issue here. People who were mostly rich and upper-middle-class were giving a racist publicity, for their own amusement. Griffin’s visit would have helped to encourage or organise racist elements in Ireland, so poor and downtrodden migrants would have paid the

price for the Phil’s xenophobia freak show. And I remember Phil members getting in a massive flap over the possibility that the Graduates’ Memorial Building might be damaged if there were protests.

And then there’s the claim that cancelling the invitation “ultimately garnered more media attention for Nick Griffin.” This claim is made because it’s a repeat of a line of argument that we kept hearing at the time: that when racists are denied a public platform they exultantly claim the “moral high ground” and “victim status”. The argument goes that if you debate them publically, you can expose their ideas as false, but if you deny them a platform they become “martyrs”. In other words, defeat is victory and victory is defeat. But this argument, as well as being obviously farfetched, contradicts itself. If the racists claim “victim status” then this presupposes that some harm has been done to them. This is true; harm has been done. When an invitation to speak is withdrawn, or when an anti-fascist demonstration dwarfs anything they can muster, they have been defeated and humiliated. The anti-fascists are stronger than them, and won’t give them an inch. It seems that nobody supports their ideas. They can’t even get a hearing. All their grueling, time-consuming political activity seems pointless. All their horrible fantasies are revealed to be unattainable dreams.

On the other hand, if the only opposition the racists come up against is a witty and watertight seven-minute speech by a young person who was the brightest pupil in the class two years ago, followed by a show of hands, then that’s a victory for them. In fact, they can look at the crowd and see who’s voting in their favour, and then try to recruit those people after the debate. Even if the opposing speaker were some absolutely brilliant anti-fascist expert, what matters is that the racists have spoken in a prestigious public forum. Racist cranks and convinced fascists raise their heads.

They come out from behind their keyboards. They become bolder, they organise, they mutually reinforce each other, they get active.

Violence follows.

So victory is victory, and defeat is defeat. The only question is: do you want to facilitate a victory for politically organised racism, or help to defeat it? The Phil e-mail begins with a quote from Oscar Wilde, which is a parody of the old saying attributed to Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson, the one

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“So victory is victory, and defeat is defeat. The only question is: do you want to facilitate a victory for politically organised racism, or help to defeat it? The Phil e-mail begins with a quote from Oscar Wilde, which is a parody of the old saying attributed to Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson, the one that goes “I disagree heartily with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Hang on a second. Would any reasonable person really defend to the death Nick Griffin’s right to spend his life encouraging racial hatred and violence?”

that goes “I disagree heartily with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Hang on a second. Would any reasonable person really defend to the death Nick Griffin’s right to spend his life encouraging racial hatred and violence? Of all the causes in the world for which you could give your life, you would die so that the right to freedom of speech can be dogmatically and ridiculously understood to mean the duty to give publicity to people with disgusting views, just to prove a point?

That’s not for me. If I had a hundred lives to give, I would not defend “to the death,” or even to mild discomfort, Nick Griffin’s right to blow his nose. The Phil, on the other hand, show a touching generosity when it comes to the democratic rights of fascists.

My message to them is: save your generosity for people who deserve it and who will not repay it with bloodshed. Use your resources to champion those who need help, not to arm the bigots who want to crush them. Mercy and generosity are admirable qualities. But mercy and generosity to racists and fascists means, by definition, cruelty and oppression to migrants, women, LGBTQ people, and the labour movement. Golden Dawn in Greece are suspected of having murdered dozens of migrants. It’s not a coincidence that the first non-migrant they killed, last September, was socialist Pavlos Fyssas. On Tuesday Showan Shattak, founder of Swedish group Football Fans Against Homophobia, came out of a tenday coma after being stabbed by fascists on International Women’s Day. In Hungary, Trinity graduate Márton Gyöngyösi stood up in parliament and called for a list of Jewish people in parliament and government. He’s not a lone eccentric; he’s one of Jobbik’s 43 MPs. If you oppose racism, sexism and homophobia, then you are in a struggle with fascists. Examples from around the world show that it’s not a formal debate over a podium, it’s a life-or-death struggle.

Thankfully, Ireland is no Greece, Hungary or Ukraine. There is no sizeable fascist or ultra-nationalist organisation here, even though there are deep and bitter wells of hate. Anyone who tries to tap into these wells will have to deal with a much bigger and better-organised network of antiracist and anti-fascist organisations. If, following this debate, the Phil committee decides that it would be a great idea to re-invite Nick Griffin, then we will convince them otherwise.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

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Garda abuses threaten democracy Niall McGlynn considers the disturbing consequences of recent revelations about Garda malpractice.

I Niall McGlynn Staff Writer

The recent controversy surrounding the Garda whistleblowers and taping of private phone calls in Gardaí stations has exposed a dangerous sub-current of anti-democratic practices within at least one of the organs of the state. An Garda Siochana are the law enforcement arm of the Republic, the organisation entrusted with the safeguarding of our persons, our property and our streets. That they be kept as free from corruption as possible is one of the primary ways in which our democracy can be safeguarded.

So the combined revelations of the attitude towards whistleblowers by the most senior figures in the force and the illegal taping of private phone calls made by persons being held in Garda stations represent a direct and dangerous threat to the functioning of our government and society.

It goes without saying that the vast majority of the Gardaí are honest and worthy defenders of public order, whose exemplary service has now been undermined and tarnished by the actions of a small cabal of their less worthy colleagues. The powers of the Gardaí are such, however, that even a small proportion of the

force can cause immense damage if they misuse them. The taping of telephone conversations is a case in point. Leaving aside the troubling fact that the Attorney General herself will apparently not discuss certain matters with the Taoiseach by phone, the danger to ordinary citizens who find themselves, for whatever reason, making a phone call from a Garda station is clear. Any conversation taking place outside of an official interrogation made on record should be confidential. The implications of taping if someone is talking to their solicitor are huge.

Leverage, additional suspects, and a massive advantage for the prosecution could all be gleaned from just a few minutes of the conversation someone might have with their solicitor.

The whole point of solicitors being able to speak in complete confidence to their clients, whether by phone or in person, is to ensure that they can provide the very best legal defence. By undermining this, and by apparently actively using the information illegally obtained through this violation, the Gardaí responsible are destroying a fundamental right of the people they are supposed

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“The vast majority of senior Gardaí are completely honest, but even a handful of individuals violating the law has the potential to destroy an awful lot of lives, and further damage the foundations of democratic government.”

to protect. By denying people the right to a fair trial, they violate not just their basic rights and constitutional protections – they are putting every citizen’s rights in danger. Our protection from an Orwellian style police state is only as strong as the protection we are afforded when we are at our most vulnerable, when we need legal counsel.

Every person on this island, regardless of what they are charged with or accused of, has a fundamental right to be protected from the state, and to full and proper legal protection, without the risk of their conversations being secretly used to convict them. The fact of the matter is that any convictions secured through the use of information obtained through phone taping are illegal, and should not stand. We expect such methods to be used in places like Russia and China, where we justifiably condemn them. We should not tolerate them here.

The Garda Representative Association (GRA) and the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (ASGI) have both said that their members were not aware of any phone taping and that the decision to do so must have

come from further up the chain of command. Combined with former Commissioner Callinan’s and current Minister for Justice Shatter’s evident disdain for whistleblowers and transparency generally, this would imply a worrying concentration of undemocratic practices and attitudes in the senior ranks of An Garda Siochana.

Again, the vast majority of senior Gardaí are completely honest, but at this level, even a handful of individuals violating the law has the potential to destroy an awful lot of lives, and further damage the foundations of democratic government. Accountability, transparency and unbiased legal practices keep our law enforcement honest, and keep all of us safe from arbitrary and unfair legal proceedings.

There are a few simple and direct steps which can be taken to improve the situation and to prevent these kinds of dangerous lapses in constitutional protection. First, the Garda Ombudsman must be made into a fully independent state body, with the power to investigate, question and review both people and documents without interference. To this end, the Ombudsman should be re-

moved entirely from the remit of the office of Minister for Justice and should answer to either the Supreme Court or to a panel of senior judges and legal figures. It should not be in any way answerable to the cabinet. A Daíl Committee should be established to review the Ombudsman’s work and to coordinate with the Judicial panel on major cases of corruption or malpractice within the force. This committee should not contain any members of the government, either at cabinet or sub-cabinet level. It should be chaired by either the sitting or a former Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil. In this way, the Ombudsman will have maximum discretionary power while still being answerable to the people through their representatives and judiciary.

With these steps, the Ombudsman can become an effective guardian of democracy and of the rights and legal protections of all citizens. Given the ongoing string of revelations surrounding both An Gardaí Siochana and the government, we should not be surprised if the case for these reforms and many more gets stronger over the coming weeks.

Let’s not pick sides on Israel-Palestine In a response to an article in the previous issue of TN, Ryan Connolly argues that the one-sided perspectives on the Israel-Palestine conflict do more harm than good.

I Ryan Connolly Staff Writer

have always found it difficult to understand why the unending debate surrounding Israel and Palestine is one of the most heated and controversial of our time. No other on-going conflict anywhere in the world seems to generate such a huge amount of debate in the public square, with various countries in the West as well as their citizens taking a firm stance on one side or the other. It is certainly good to bring situations like this into the public eye, to debate them, and to bring to light any war crimes and other injustices that may have been committed.

But I find that the extremely divisive debate on this issue serves only to polarise opinion, painting a black and white picture where a more nuanced one is required.

Moreover, Western countries and organisations choosing sides only risks prolonging the conflict rather than resolving it.

In the last issue of TN, Oisín Coulter wrote an article calling for TCDSU to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

He raises many fair points with which I have to agree, especially regarding the role academics, both in Trinity and elsewhere in Ireland, have had working on projects listed as ‘security’ and ‘aerospace’ with Israeli companies and institutes. If our student fees are going towards developing equipment for a foreign military

engaged in dubious activities, we have a right to know about it and to have a say in it. He is also right to draw attention to the huge number of Palestinian civilians killed by the IDF during various military operations, as well as the discrimination they face in the West Bank and Israel itself.

The problem I have with Coulter’s article is the same problem I have with most articles taking up the cause of either Israel or Palestine: namely, the strong tendency to depict this conflict in a onesided manner by downplaying, glossing over or even denying the reprehensible actions committed by one side or the other. Furthermore, most such articles don’t attempt to understand where the other side is coming from, and propose confrontational solutions that are unlikely to help the situation. Most articles defending Israel would have us believe that the country is a beacon of justice, democracy and freedom in the Middle East with an unblemished record. Most of those defending Palestine take the view that all Palestinians are innocent lambs, helpless and alone against a powerful aggressor. The former ignore the Israeli government’s discrimination against Palestinians in areas such as water distribution, building permits and forcible relocations to make way for illegal settlements, not to mention large numbers of civilian

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“Singling out one side or another for boycotts, sanctions and other punitive measures without even acknowledging that that side might also have legitimate concerns, grievances and difficulties is not a good way to earn their trust and secure cooperation for a genuine peace process.”

casualties during military actions such as Operation Cast Lead and more recently Operation Pillar of Defense. The latter casually gloss over the huge number of rockets and mortar shells fired at Israeli civilian centres by Hamas and their allies Hezbollah in Lebanon (over 15,000 altogether between 2002 and 2013 according to CBS News) and suicide bombings carried out by groups such as Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, again often in civilian areas.

Granted, the number of Israeli casualties is much lower. But the Amnesty International report on Operation Cast Lead in 20082009 found that both sides in the conflict were guilty of war crimes, stating that “both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides have failed to investigate the violations of international law, including war crimes, committed by their forces. The responsibility now lies with the international community to take concrete steps to ensure justice and redress for the victims and accountability for the perpetrators on all sides.” It concluded by stating that peace would only come about if justice was achieved for all victims. If we genuinely want peace and an end to injustice in Israel and Palestine, a new approach is required, one that is less confrontational and adversarial and more committed to honesty. Singling out one side or another for boycotts,

sanctions and other punitive measures without even acknowledging that that side might also have legitimate concerns, grievances and difficulties is not a good way to earn their trust and secure cooperation for a genuine peace process. Turning a blind eye to the wrongs of one side or another sends out a signal that we tacitly approve of such actions, whether they be drone bombings or rocket attacks. Most important of all, we need to see where each side is coming from and try to understand their concerns.

Israel, for example, is a country surrounded on all sides by hostile nations such as Egypt, Syria and Jordan amongst others, which have all tried to invade several times in the past, as in the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, amongst others. The people of Israel live under constant threat of rocket attack, and even if the new Iron Dome defense system means that casualties are now few and far between, there is nonetheless an atmosphere of fear in the country. Is it so hard to understand then that the people of Israel have an extremely defensive attitude and are unlikely to cooperate with foreign measures intended to coerce them into an agreement without acknowledging their own losses, or their fears and concerns?

On the other side of things, supporters of Israel need to develop

a genuine concern for the plight of ordinary Palestinians who are living under a discriminatory regime, many of whom have lost loved ones, including children, to indiscriminate bombing during IDF military operations. If there is no willingness amongst Israel and its supporters to reach out and seek an end to injustice and a peaceful resolution, more Palestinians will be driven to join military groups and take part in violent reprisals, perpetuating the cycle of violence.

So what should be done on our part? The wrongdoings of both Israel and Palestine should still be brought to light, and justice sought for their respective victims. But instead of engaging in a polarising debate where the only goal is the defeat of a chosen opponent, those advocating for Israel or Palestine in the public square should stop demonising their opponents and try to understand one another, acknowledge that neither side is perfect and try to move on. Perhaps together, groups fighting for Palestinian rights or security for Israel can influence the Israeli and Palestinian governments by showing that there can be mutual understanding and agreement. Partisan debate, on the other hand, will only serve to further polarise the two sides and make peace and justice more distant prospects.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

Comment Editor, William Foley entreats you to abandon all hope.

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p. 16

Troubled Waters In the wake of John Waters’ resignation from The Irish Times, Conor McGlynn cautions against instituting a new era of censorship in Ireland.

L

Conor McGlynn Deputy Comment Editor

ast Friday, it was announced that the columnist John Waters would stop contributing pieces to The Irish Times. Waters’ weekly column featured in the Friday paper since 1991, and dealt with a wide range of topics, from religion and politics to music and literature.

His columns have not appeared for the last couple of months, the stated reason being that he was “on leave”; but on Friday it was confirmed that he had left the paper. The reason for his departure is presumed to be the controversy from the fall-out of the RTÉ homophobia affair. Waters and a number of other journalists were accused of homophobia, live on RTÉ’s Saturday Night Show, by Rory O’Neill, a drag artist known as Panti Bliss. A legal dispute followed, resulting in RTÉ issuing an apology and making payments to the defamed parties.

This whole affair has already generated a huge amount of comment and discussion in the media, and I will not address it very much here. Regardless of one’s feelings on the matter, however, it should be acknowledged that Waters’ departure is injurious to the Irish broadsheet press. Waters was a discordant voice in the increasingly one-way discourse of the Irish media. He gave voice to a viewpoint that is now often marginalised in public debate. In short, he was willing to challenge the consensus view.

Waters has often been attacked in the media for his views. He propagates opinions that are unpopular amongst what has been termed the “chattering classes”.

He represents a broadly socially conservative outlook, informed by his Catholicism, about which he often writes. He is opposed to gay marriage and abortion. However, his defending of unpopular positions has also led him to champion causes and groups which are neglected by the political system, such as his fighting for the rights of single fathers.

Many commentators, not least of all some at his former paper, will be glad to see Waters go. He does not share many of their “liberal” views. His opinions and writings have been censured as harmful

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“This whole affair has already generated a huge amount of comment and discussion in the media, and I will not address it very much here. Regardless of one’s feelings on the matter, however, it should be acknowledged that Waters’ departure is injurious to the Irish broadsheet press. Waters was a discordant voice in the increasingly one-way discourse of the Irish media.

He gave voice to a viewpoint that is now often marginalised in public debate. In short, he was willing to challenge the consensus view.”

and damaging, and as inappropriate for public broadcast.

Not all viewpoints and opinions should be shared, or should be allowed to be shared. Rounding up a lynch mob or calling for attacks on ethnic or social groups should not be permitted in any circumstances. Further, while some views may be tolerated they should not be legitimised or given a platform by public or prestigious institutions. University debating societies, for example, should not provide a forum for fascists and racists for the amusement of their members. However, this should not be interpreted as an excuse to exclude any and all who deviate from the consensus view.

The problem is, however, that there is no fine dividing line between these different brackets.

There is no convenient demarcation between who should and who should not have a voice in public discourse. We cannot draw a distinct boundary between fascism and incitement to hatred, or between the dangerous and the merely unpopular. Over the past few months, arguments have been made that Waters, and those who share his views, should not have a place in the public discourse, and, further, these views should not be tolerated at all in society. According to certain commentators, in The Irish Times and elsewhere, if a person does not share their liberal views then they should be silenced altogether.

These attitudes are far more dangerous than anything John Waters has to say. Most people are critical of the power and influence the Catholic Church had in Ireland in the mid-20th century.

However, often they misascribe the problems of such institutional hegemony to being somehow intrinsic to the Church itself. This is too simplistic a picture. The danger, both then and now, is in having an unassailable consensus; a dominant viewpoint against which it is impossible to go without being ostracised by the community. We may not agree with all of what John Waters writes or broadcasts. However, to think we should is to misunderstand

the purpose and role of the media in an open society. The media should not act as echo chamber for prevailing opinion. It should not reinforce confirmation bias for any one ideology. It should instead strive to give as complete a picture as possible of the range of divergent viewpoints in our society. Columnists and commentators should reflect a wide variety of opinions and views. Not all

viewpoints will get a voice on the national stage. However, deliberately to exclude contrarian viewpoints is not only bad journalism – it is also bad citizenship.

The closed society is one in which dissenting viewpoints are not tolerated. There is little point in having dethroned Catholicism from its central place in Irish culture if we are going to replace it with a self-appointed consortium

of liberal high-priests, gatekeepers for what views are right and proper. In the 1960s, the Catholic Church in Ireland prevented guests who it felt would be morally destructive from appearing on RTÉ’s Late Late Show. Having freed ourselves from one form of censorship and suppression, we should not be so eager to jump into the constraints of another.

I don’t want to change the world…

The SU should be focusing more on student issues like library hours, and less on unachievable political campaigns. Maxime Bercholz isn’t looking for a new Ireland, he’s just looking for a new SU.

W Maxime Bercholz Contributor

hen I arrived in the Lecky library one morning a few weeks ago, I picked up a leaflet about a student referendum that had taken place three days beforehand, on whether the SU should adopt another long-term policy; this time, in favour of changing the treatment of asylum seekers in Ireland. A noble idea, I thought. A few hours later, at twenty to four, I was disrupted in my work by the library’s deafening closing bell. Forced to pack up and leave my spot in the Lecky, I found that the so-called twenty-four-hour library was, needless to say, completely full.

Studying back at the house was not really an option: I can’t even fit a desk into my bedroom. By relating this account, I am not here asking for compassion, but simply pointing to a situation which I am

sure many other students have to cope with. Indeed, many times I have seen people trying to study on the floor of the twenty-fourhour. When this is better than home, it is clear that there is a serious problem.

As such, I decided to look on the SU’s website for our representatives’ recent achievements and current objectives on student issues like the opening hours of our libraries. All I could find is a page with two campaigns fighting a duel over the student services charge and the grants campaigns.

I don’t think that such issues shouldn’t be addressed – on the contrary, I think they should be met head. But they are national issues, and that’s what the Union of Students in Ireland is for. TCDSU has other, local responsibili-

ties which it has been neglecting.

The truth is that the SU isn’t concerned enough with the concrete, day-to-day problems that affect us Trinity students. In addition, it seems obvious to me that our student representatives — who, as their title indicates, represent only a tiny fraction of the Irish population — could achieve far more with regard to local issues compared to the treatment of asylum seekers and the like.

That the SU has been too politicised is a fact. It cannot govern Ireland! While the abortion debate concerns female students as much as any other woman in the country, the latest referendum on asylum rights clearly shows that some of us completely miss the point of what the SU is about.

This is a matter for political par-

ties and civic associations. Like it or not, the SU is neither. The misrepresentation of its role partly explains why, while fellow students at UCC, UCG and UCD and elsewhere have access to their libraries on Sunday (although, it is true, not all of their facilities), we at Trinity must wait until the end of February to avail of the same treatment. As for the Hamilton and John Stearne Medical libraries’ users, they’re still waiting. To some, my argument may seem overly concerned – perhaps even selfishly so – with a matter that is ultimately trivial. They may say that the rights of asylum seekers deserve our attention better than the opening hours of our libraries. They do, of course, but they have nothing to do with the SU, which cannot even do much

about it. My opinion is that we must be humbler and care a little more about those who experience difficulties in the College and the future of our university at large!

In a recent Trinity News article, for instance, D. Joyce-Ahearne investigated the Planning Group, a powerful decision-making body within the College which the SU has little clue about and even less power over. Meanwhile, we are asked whether the latter should campaign for asylum rights. Tomorrow, what will it be? Many have raised worries about the possibility of Trinity being privatised. Why are we not talking about that – us, students, the SU and the College administration?

Writing articles in our newspapers won’t do. The critique is correct, but not sufficient. In fact, all

of us have a share of responsibility in what the SU does and does not do, and not only because we elect it. How many of us have been to the SU Council, or attend it frequently? Why, oddly enough, are we not all entitled to vote in this assembly? I strongly believe that people express their opinions to the extent that they are given the opportunity and the power to do so. That’s how a union of students should work. We don’t elect our SU officers to think for us but to do what we’ve decided. But here’s the problem: we don’t decide an awful lot. If we’re not able to tackle the relatively small issues that affect Trinity students , then how can we expect to change the world?

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

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Comment

Why reality TV works Conor Scully with a passion for Geordie Shore and The Hills, makes the case for reality TV

R Conor Scully Staff Writer

eality television is the Marmite of our generation. Many people dismiss shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians or Beauty School Copouts as “vapid” or, as my sister-in-law says, “tripe that literally make me feel more stupid after I’ve watched them”. Yet for all the nay-sayers there are people, like me, who genuinely care more about Charlotte-Letitia Crosby (a cast member of Geordie Shore, famous for her lack of bladder control) than Crimea or what I call “that whole North Korea thing”.

While this is unequivocally a bad thing, reality still TV does have a lot going for it.

At a basic level, people enjoy watching TV. When I watch Charlotte urinate on a couch, and see her fall asleep, I laugh, I’m happy.

In season three of The Hills, Lauren famously – famous to reality TV fans at any rate – says to Heidi after a prolonged spat: “the only thing really that there is to do is forgive and forget. So I really do.

I want to forgive you, and I want to forget you”. My response is

to scream “SLAAAAAAAY” at my TV then use that line on all my friends for the next week. I think I’m hilarious, I’m happy.

It’s somewhat similar to the superficial enjoyment we get from pop music. Work Bitch by Britney Spears probably hasn’t affected my life in any meaningful way, and it probably won’t be me and Dane Dehaan’s first dance at our wedding. But that doesn’t stop me from going wild when it’s played in the club and yelling “YOU WANNA HOT BODY?” at my friends. Reality TV provides moment-to-moment satisfaction for us, and that’s to be welcomed.

People who are too busy reading newspapers and discussing politics generally characterise reality TV shows in a certain way. Their view is that reality TV shows are full of “common” people with low IQs, who either spend their days shopping and drinking coffee (Kardashians, The Hills), or drinking too much and going out and getting sick (The Valleys).

This, to some extent, is fair. But

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“What these critics don’t realise is that often these shows are an implicit rebuke to the very lifestyles they portray. While there are numerous shots in a typical episode of Geordie Shore of the cast dancing drunkenly, there are also as many shots of the aftermath.”

what these critics miss is that these shows examine deeper issues. A popular opinion of those who dislike reality TV is that it glamourises or encourages an unhealthy lifestyle. This view was brought up in Dail Eireann two years ago in relation to Tallafornia. The people who watch these shows – stupid people, if we are to believe the haters – are nothing but sponges who absorb everything they see on TV, and end up imitating it. They see Carley from The Valleys drinking three bottles of wine, and naturally they do the same.

What these critics – who probably haven’t watched any of the shows they criticise – don’t realise is that often these shows are an implicit rebuke to the very lifestyles they portray. While there are numerous shots in a typical episode of Geordie Shore of the cast dancing drunkenly, there are also as many, if not more, shots of the aftermath. We are shown the hangovers, the vomit and, more than once, the soiled underwear.

We hear cast members talking about how embarrassed they are at having done something stupid while under the influence. We see how relationships are soured by drunken remarks. It is incorrect to say that to present something is the same as endorsing it. No one who has watched Geordie Shore would want to live like the cast members – not after seeing all the terrible things that happen to them.

By sticking a group of people into a house together and recording them round the clock, Geordie Shore (my favourite show if you haven’t guessed) acts as a lens through which we can examine personal interactions. We watch as normal daily activities – things as small as sharing a couch or cooking a meal together – evolve into real relationships. We also see how relationships break down.

This does not necessarily have to involve huge shouting matches (which, though probably scripted, are still based on real feelings).

Instead, it’s the little things we ex-

perience ourselves – a dirty look, a roll of the eyes, dancing away from someone in a club – that can begin to fracture a dynamic with someone. An insight into such minutiae is only to be found on reality TV – Big Brother being an extreme example of this. This can’t happen in movies or on other TV shows – they don’t have the time to maintain a leisurely pace (though fans of Mad Men might dispute this). Essentially, “reality” TV (to use the sarcastic quotation marks often favoured by the naysayers) gives us the most realistic depiction of how we interact with others. It is a brilliant social experiment. There are many lessons to be learned from these entertaining shows. But they are lessons that many people are determined never to learn so that people like me, who love them, will probably always be made fun of for doing so.

A nation’s response to 24 seconds How does one develop a coherent moral response to a moment of violence? Frank O’Boyle takes a journey to the limits of intelligibility.

D Frank O’Boyle Contributor

uring St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Dublin this year a young man, thought to be Brazilian was kicked in the head and knocked unconscious. The moment was filmed and posted online and soon gained a great deal of traction on social media. What do we do when we see the actual moment of a kick to the head, captured on film? Our visceral response to such a concrete moment is surely perfectly justified.

Such damnable evidence, such cold-blooded footage seemingly reveals to us the truth of a horrific crime. He did it. We can see it.

The moment of impact, the collision of foot with face becomes an instant, eternally preserved, both shocking for its viewers.

The video is available for us to view over and over again. It is a lapidary yet abhorrent proof that, sometimes, our faculty of reason fails us. There is an infinitesimally small space between the past and the future, some like to call it the present, and it is here that reason gets displaced. It is as if there is not enough time to construct a logical sequence. Action, with all its lack of reason and richness, is the movement which escapes reason. Language seems to become inadequate and the individual’s sense of reason is caught up in the flux of reality’s constant movement from past to future,

with no collective sensibility. This seems to introduce a fundamental moral ambiguity – given the breakdown of reason engendered by being presented only with the raw moment, can we really find the moral resources to condemn the kicker?

It’s all very well asking whether if that had been my brother on the ground, would I dare be sympathetic towards the kicker? But can I be certain that if I were living the criminal’s life I wouldn’t have done the exact same thing? I can’t claim to understand the criminal, but I suspect his action was not driven by some sort of inherent evil. You might start wondering where this line of reasoning could possibly lead us. Everything would be different if we were in someone else’s shoes. Surely we can’t just let him get away with it because he has had a different life to those who have the ability to reason further and deeper. Surely we need justice. The criminal needs to suffer for that second he spent in action, horrific as it was.

I’m not so sure. This line of reasoning might keep the criminal at bay but the preserved moment will live on. The exact moment ultimately embodies an indefinable present where the mechanism of reason freezes, where kicking makes perfect sense and the body acts. Such a moment is situated

“

“The video engenders a certain sickness in our soul. But it is a sickness which is hard to articulate because the object which has stimulated it seems to slip the identifying tags of language which we would use to criticise it.”

a million miles away from the kind of public space constituted by our democratic institutions, where our collective reason has a space and a collective harmony is attained. It is this public space which, by virtue of his marginalised position in society, the criminal is denied access. Thus, he does not imbibe the norms and values many of his consider fundamental to human behaviour.

The cultural critic Alexander Stille claims that with the invention of print, people became far more critical. Universally accepted notions (philosophical, scientific, religious, political and cultural), once printed on the page, became susceptible to scrutiny. As a result, the way the world was viewed changed. The old, accepted truths were rendered merely into words on a page, and if they didn’t correspond with reality, ideas as radical as Copernicus’ heliocentric universe could replace them. Stille goes on to claim, however, that television creates for us an eternal present where things, through not being nailed to a page, escape the vulnerability of the written word. We simply cannot come to terms with them in the same way. As a result, Stille argues that watching television actually diminishes critical thought.

The video engenders a certain

sickness in our soul. But it is a sickness which is hard to articulate because the object which has stimulated it seems to slip the identifying tags of language which we would use to criticise it. All that we can manage is an inarticulate and instinctual revulsion. And, in a sense, who are we to criticise? We are a sick people, moving from the hyped up emotion of neknominations, finally called to a fatal halt, to the kicking of heads, nearly ending, too, in a fatal halt.

Stille shows us the problems that arise when criticism is rendered null and void. We have too much faith in what we see and feel.

What was seen was a kick to the head and what was felt was revulsion as we spooned down our dinner in front of an all too trusted screen. There is a defence for every party in that video, and the criminal will surely get his say.

Perhaps our desire to scrutinise his actions through language is fuelled by a desire to grasp the present, possibly, just to be sure of oneself amidst the fragmentation of internet meta-languages.

What we need is to be aware of what we are looking at and not just be physically repulsed by it.

The video doesn’t say anything.

There is no language to scrutinise, there is merely a man kicking another man’s head. I don’t

doubt that the criminal’s activity will be looked at closely, but I believe that the penal system should be under obligation to make public the analysis of such criminal behaviour, just as the video publicised the assault. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but our gut feeling is perhaps too convincing as a collective body for us to acknowledge and value these words. We may be, at some level, aware of the subsequent events in this saga: Garda investigations, arrests and controversial releases.

But altogether, our understanding of this horror is dominated by the video, perhaps to the exclusion of all else. There is a radical incommensurability between that video and everything else. Perhaps, one might argue, there is a radical incommensurability between any given moment and any other instant in time. If we cannot construct a new conceptual apparatus to confront this problematic, than we risk seeing the semi-spontaneous system of critical and analytic morality which has evolved over the last few centuries come crumbling down.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

Luke McGuiness looks at the slow uptake of technological innovations by College’s societies.

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Devil’s Advocate: The Futility of Hope Comment Editor, William Foley argues that we should dispense with hope and replace it with a secular faith born out of the universality of defeat.

T William Foley Comment Editor

ony Benn, who died last month, once said that “hope is the fuel of progress.” He was wrong. Hope is a cheap trick, self-conjured by a desire to anthropomorphise the cosmos – a plea, born of a nearsolipsistic narcissism, for the preferential treatment of providence. Hope is often treated as a mitigating factor in the passage of judgement on humankind. Yes, we may steal, maim and murder each other all the time – but at least we possess this faculty for glorified wishful thinking! In fact, to command someone to be hopeful – as the protagonists of our favourite uplifting films often do – is to enact an injunction which offends against the reality of our lived experience. Such injunctions, with which we are bombarded from every orifice of human culture, merely serve as a garish border encircling the black hole of our lives, a tawdry smear of lipstick round the bottomless maw which consumes all the detritus of our essentially futile and impotent existence. Hope is a tormentor, assaulting us with daggers forged from utopian visions of a better world which will never come, and sharpened on the grindstone of everyday misery.

Tony Benn, as I mentioned above, died recently. In this, he was not unusual or unprecedented. We will all die sooner or later, although we hope we won’t. This hope deludes many of us into a belief into the afterlife or reincarnation, and the fact that such wishful thinking can convert itself into an unassailable fact in so many people’s minds may give us an indication of just what it is that is so problematic with hope.

To be specific, there are two properties of hope as a human emotional faculty which make it so defective and inimical to our welfare. The first property is hope’s cruel and dishonest role in which every failure is made more crushing, every blow more devastating by the perpetual proffering of the counterfactual – the what-if alternative in which some imagined happy ending comes true. But it rarely if ever does. For most people, the diet of daily and reliable disappointment will only rarely be leavened by a morsel of good fortune. As such, for most of us, hope is not only probabilistically useless but functionally nasty. Hope is the tormentor who

“

“Hope that your favourite soccer team will arrest their fall down the table? Nope – they get hammered at home in the derby.

Hope that that teaching position is only a resting place on the path to literary glory?

Too bad – twenty years later and you’re still teaching geography to the brats while that manuscript yellows in the drawer.

Hope that the routine checkup will go fine?

No way – better make it to the Cliffs of Moher while you can still crawl.”

tantalises the starving prisoner with a juicy steak only to throw the meat to the dogs. Am I going too far? In a world where 80% of the population lives on less than ten dollars a day, I don’t think so. For the other 20%, hope not only reinforces but in many ways creates our defeats and failures.

Hope that your favourite soccer team will arrest their fall down to the bottom of the league? Nope – they get hammered at home in the derby. Hope that that teaching position is only a resting place on the path to literary glory?

Too bad – twenty years later and you’re still teaching geography to the brats while that manuscript yellows in the drawer. Hope that the routine check-up will go fine?

No way – better make it to the Cliffs of Moher while you can still crawl. Hope is the impotency which doubles back on itself.

The second harmful property of hope is the passiveness which it engenders. Like a prayer, it is an abnegation of will, a surrender of the soul. Hope encourages us to give up on ourselves and put our faith in some sort of cosmic guarantor. In the popular film series, The Hunger Games, the sinister dictator President Snow is constantly fretting about the possibility that the plucky Katniss Everdeen will provide hope for the downtrodden citizens, inspiring them to rebel.

In fact, the most well-calibrated systems of oppression function to constantly engender hope in their citizens. Probably the best example of this is the in the USA, where perhaps the most monstrously unequal class system in the developed world is sustained through the illusion, almost universally entertained, that, per the American Dream, anyone can rise up from rags to riches. The role of Hollywood in this ideological pacification is obvious. The director Steven Soderbergh said in a talk last year that “The other thing I tell young filmmakers is […] when you’re going into one of those rooms to try and convince somebody to make it, I don’t care what you’re pitching – it can be about genocide, it can be about child killers, it can be about the worst kind of criminal injustice that you can imagine – but as you’re sort of in the process of telling this story, stop yourself in the middle of a sentence and act like you’re

having an epiphany, and say: You know what, at the end of this day, this is a movie about hope.”

So hope makes our lives more miserable by taunting us with utopian scenarios and by engendering a passiveness that discourages rebellion against oppressive systems. As such, we should reject hope and replace it with two other viewpoints: firstly, a robust pessimism (or what appears to be pessimism), and secondly a strong faith in humanity. The connection between the two components of this new approach is not necessarily obvious – maybe even they seem, in principle, contradictory.

But the connection is there, and it can be revealed by a beautiful maxim produced by Orwell: “Any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”

This line is certainly pessimistic.

Some might see as a nasty and brutish take on the human species. But actually, as well as being empirically correct, its sentiments actually spring from a profound empathy, in fact a love, for humanity in general. This type of love is agape, one of the four types of love described by the Ancient Greeks. Agape is true, unconditional love. The notion has survived through the Christian notion of God’s unconditional love for all men and women as symbolised by Jesus’ willingness to undergo crucifixion to “atone for humanity’s sins”. But this is not an exclusively Christian notion. The idea of oikeiosis, which is a core precept of the Stoic philosophy, holds that there is a natural affinity between all persons. The historical development of the concept of a universal and unconditional love for our fellow humans reaches its apotheosis in the left-wing revolutionary movements of the twentieth century.

Che Guevara famously said “at the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”

That these movements combined such sentiments with brutal, and often summary, violence is not a contradiction. As Slavoj Zizek has pointed out, Christ himself augmented his message of universal love with a commitment to the use of radical violence. “I came not to bring peace,” he says in Matthew 10:34, “but to bring a sword.” The point of this exposition is to underline the connection between a

“

“So hope makes our lives more miserable by taunting us with utopian scenarios and by engendering a passiveness that discourages rebellion against oppressive systems. As such, we should reject hope and replace it with two other viewpoints: firstly, a robust pessimism (or what appears to be pessimistic), and secondly a strong faith in humanity. The connection between these two components of this new approach is not necessarily obvious – maybe even they seem, in principle, contradictory.”

commitment to radical egalitarianism – a commitment shared, in some form, by Jesus, the Stoics, and revolutionary socialists – and a feeling of universal, unconditional love for humanity. This love is not one that admits the shallow idealising of erotic love, but a love which acknowledges and embraces failure as an inevitable and inalienable feature of the human condition. This is the true meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross – not an erasing of sin (which is, in other words, moral failure), but absorption of sin into the human being who is the subject of universal love. Thus, the robust pessimism I spoke of above is really this kind of love. This was the perspective underlying Orwell’s dictum. Orwell, who went out of his way to experience the poverty of the downtrodden, and who fought for them in the Spanish Civil War, was deeply committed to radical, egalitarian politics. As such, his statement that everyone’s life is, in some way, a series of failures consists of an acceptance, and a celebration, of failure. This orientation towards failure as a fundamental constitutive principle of human existence is the essence of agape, and, as such, the essence of the “strong faith in humanity” which I mentioned above.

This faith is not the religious kind, i.e. it is not a kind of one-size-fitsall epistemic guarantor by which any fantasy can be raised to the level of fact. It is, instead, the type of faith held by teh boxer who knows they will win they fight.

Of course, this is not the kind of knowledge involved in knowing that one and one is two or that putting tinfoil in the microwave will cause a fire. It is rather the strength that carries us through a project or an ordeal. It is an emotional faculty which is rooted in activity. In this it is contrasted with hope, which is rooted in passiveness.

So hope is an exercise in vanity and in solipsism. It is a faculty whose logic entails that special pleading will bestow some sort of cosmic grace on us. It is an end to which we expect to be gifted the means, ex nihilo. The faith I have spoken about here, by contrast, is not an end but a prevailing bond underwritten by the universality of the human essence – that is to say, the universality of failure.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

Science

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Science in Brief Gavin Kenny & Luke McGuinness

The shrinking planet: Mercury The planet Mercury has shrunk by about 7 km since its formation at the beginning of the Solar System 4.5 billion years ago. This is the finding of a report published in Nature Geoscience last month.

Working on images obtained by NASA’s Messenger satellite currently in orbit around the closest planet to the Sun, the team of scientists measured huge scarp features and wrinkled ridges on the planet’s surface. These features, which formed as the planet cooled, shrunk, and buckled, allowed the group to estimate just how much this dense, rocky planet has actually shrivelled.

Before the 1960s realisation that

plate tectonics is operating on the Earth’s surface and is responsible for features such as mountain ranges and deep ocean trenches, some people believed that these features might have formed as our very own planet shrunk. Although the blue planet has indeed shrunk ever so slightly since its formation, we now know that this is not responsible for these features. Unlike Earth with numerous tectonic plates in constant, painstakingly slow motion, Mercury’s surface is composed of one single plate. The lead author of this high-profile study, Dr Paul Byrne, is a Trinity graduate

Does this make my antennae look fat?

Dylan Lynch takes us on a light-hearted tour of nature’s quirkier and lesser-known camouflage techniques.

W Dylan Lynch Staff Writer

hile we humans are always so busy trying to stand out, quite a few members of the animal kingdom spend their lives changing to blend in – well, it is a matter of life or death! Camouflage is one of the most widely used techniques in the wild to escape predators and lengthen one’s life expectancy.

The fair majority of animals have adapted and evolved to evade other animals – their predators.

A common example is the stick insect, or Pterochrozini. These insects mimic leaves and sticks to blend in flawlessly with their natural habitat. However, there are a few more ‘wacky’ cases that you may not have heard of.

One of the most interesting occurrences of ‘extreme camouflage’ is the insect Mesalcidodes trifidus, aptly nicknamed the ‘bird poo weevil’. This tiny weevil (which is a type of beetle) looks like a small black and white blob of bird faeces to any passer-by.

Even more amazingly, this tiny bug will cling to grass and drop off when it comes into contact with a passing animal in order to mimic faecal matter as best as possible. This small insect tries to mimic avian waste products as best it can, and in some cases has it been known to secrete a foul

smelling pheromone to ward of predators even further.

You may have heard of the ‘common octopus’, Octopus vulgaris, a species that can be found along the southern coast of England, and throughout the Atlantic Ocean. However there is nothing common about the way this cephalopod escapes predators. Nicknamed the ‘disappearing’ or ‘invisible’ octopus, this marine mystery has some of the greatest camouflage under the sea. Thanks to a trio of specialized survival mechanisms in their skin, they can blend in with multi-coloured coral reefs or the ocean floor, despite the fact that evidence that suggests they are actually colour-blind! The first of their mechanisms are known as chromatophores, which are small sacs of different coloured pigment that can expand or contract - thus changing the animal’s overall hue and pattern.

After that are iridophores, which can reflect light and also lend colouring to the display, and leucophores, which are white cells that provide a crisp background.

Furthermore, this invertebrate can use the muscles under its skin to create different the different textures of the area it is hiding

in. The combination of these advanced defence mechanisms coincides with the fact that octopi have been around for around 300 million years, and thus have had a long time to adapt the best camouflage techniques possible.

Possibly the most impressive case of camouflage is that of the mossy-tailed gecko, Uraplatus sikorae. This small gecko has dark brown/greyish skin and lives on tree bark, often mimicking the exact colour of the bark. It is nocturnal, and when it needs to blend in, it can raise the flaps on its back and cast shadows. These dermal flaps actually mimic the texture and appearance of the moss covered tree bark on which the animal resides. This makes it almost 100% indistinguishable from the tree it is resting on. But sometimes, maybe the best strategy isn’t to blend in but instead to look like another unpalatable (foul-tasting) organism.

Deception in animals has always been one of the most viable methods of evading predation. An animal will often create dangerous toxins so that if it is consumed, the predator will die.

To warn off another animal that might want them for lunch, they accompany these toxins with

brightly coloured skin or scales, and an unpleasant taste. But what if you don’t want to waste all that energy on synthesizing toxin? Mimicry is the process of one organism creating toxins and making itself a bright colour, and then another species just copies the colour! This means that the second ‘copy-cat’ organism doesn’t have to waste precious time and energy creating venom and toxins, and doesn’t have to worry about predation as much.

One example of this is the relationship of the venomous coral snake and the harmless red milk snake, which mimics the colour and patterns on the coral snakes scales. The milk snake steals the bright orange colour of the coral snake and lives in a similar habitat and thus is rarely bothered by any predators that can’t digest the toxin that it supposedly contains.

So whether it’s blending into the forest at night, or looking like someone else during the day time, there are some animals out there that will do anything to get away from their predators and stay hidden; on land and deep under the sea, in dense forests and out in the desert. When the situation is survival of the fittest, poor fashion sense is still inexcusable!

Illustration: James Ireland

Female-to-female HIV transmission A rare case of female-to-female HIV transmission was reported by the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in March. Although cases of female-to-female transmission are thought to be rare, the CDC considers it “likely” that a woman diagnosed with HIV in Texas in 2012, did contract the virus in the course of a six-month monogamous relationship with a female.

It is usually extremely difficult to confirm that HIV has been contracted by female-to-female sexual contact due to the innate difficulty in ruling out other ways the virus could have been passed on, such as injection drug use, heterosexual sex, sharing of sex toys and even tattooing or body piercing.

The woman in this case is thought

not to have had sex with a male in the previous ten years, as well as not having any of the other HIV exposure risks. Female-to-female transmission is possible because HIV can be found in both vaginal fluid and menstrual blood. Men who have sexual contact with other men remain most at risk of HIV contraction as the virus continues to spread worldwide.

A number of studies have attributed this, at least in part, to the higher likelihood of transmission of HIV by anal sex than by vaginal sex. A 2012 report in The Lancet concluded that if anal sex were only as risky as vaginal sex, the number of HIV cases in men who have sex with men would shrink dramatically.

Sunlight for safe water Researchers at Dublin City University unveil plans for a new water purification system powered by sunlight. Aidan Murray explores.

A

Aidan Murray Staff Writer

t a talk given to the American Chemical Society (ACS) in March, Dr Anne Morrissey revealed that her group at Dublin City University (DCU) has been working with high -tech materials to make water purifiers that are easy to use and work via the light of the sun. The fact that the proposed system uses sunlight means that it has a lot of potential for use in rural or developing areas.

The group’s focus has been on titanium dioxide (TiO2), which is a compound often used as a pigment to whiten products, from paint to toothpaste, food to sunscreen. The crux of the idea is that TiO2 can be used as a catalyst, a compound which helps speed up a chemical reaction, but which is not used up in the process.

This then helps to break down unwanted pollutants in drinking water, such as a pesticides or pharmaceuticals. Morrissey explained that current methods to remove these compounds can be very costly, and more importantly, often fail to fully remove the problem.

The first problem the scientists encountered was that TiO2 is generally only activated in the presence of ultraviolet light, which would require a specialised bulb to produce the required intensities of light. To tap into this potential at the visible range, the DCU-based group experimented with the shape of the TiO2. They discovered that the best results were obtained with nanotubes – tubes one thousand times thinner than a human hair. However, the TiO2 nanotubes were not sufficient on their own to purify the water. This is where graphene – a material that consists of a single sheet of carbon atoms – came in.

“Graphene is the magic materi-

al, but its use for water treatment hasn’t been fully developed,” Morrissey said. “It has great potential.” The group experimented with attaching their TiO2 onto graphene sheets. They discovered that the pollutants would stick to the graphene as they flow by, allowing the TiO2 to break them down. Morrissey and her group managed to successfully test their purification system on diclofenac, which is a non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug. Diclofenac has, for example, been identified as the leading cause of the 97-99%

“

“While early iterations of the device used iodine to help kill bacteria, the current system uses no chemicals. The newest version is essentially a series of filters. The initial filter is fairly large and standard, which is intended to remove the dirt particles from the water.”

decrease in the population of a species of vulture in India and Pakistan between 2000 and 2007.

Morrissey has big dreams for their system, “We’re looking at using the graphene composite in a cartridge for one-step drinking water treatment,” she said. “You could just buy a cartridge off the shelf and plop it into the pipe where the drinking water comes into your house.” Such a configuration would also help to ensure that the graphene and TiO2 stay in the system, avoiding any risk of them contaminating the water supply. It should be noted that the group do not envision this system as being the only method of water purification used, and sees it more as a finishing step, to catch the most dangerous pathogens.

Morrissey believes their system could see potential use in Ireland itself. Particularly in the more rural areas, where there are small water treatment plants, which only supply water to a few dozen homes. The group is cautious to not be too quick to call their system a success, as they first need to be certain that the system only produces benign byproducts when they break down these pollutants. Morrissey also feels it is prudent to ensure the newer graphene-TiO2 system is more energy-efficient than simply TiO2 with ultraviolet lamps.

The fact that the DCU-designed system is exclusively for finishing the purification of alreadytreated water could hamper the usefulness of the device in the poorest areas, where pre-treated water may not be readily available. However, for such regions, there is the LifeStraw – produced

by Vestergaard – a large plastic drinking straw that filters out 99.9% of waterborne bacteria and

viruses. While early iterations of the device used iodine to help kill bacteria, the current system uses no chemicals. The newest version is essentially a series of filters.

The initial filter is fairly large and standard, which is intended to remove the dirt particles from the water. The main purifying filter, which uses microfiltration, is a system of hollow nanotubes with 200 nm pores, which allow the water molecules to pass through while trapping the microbes.

With this system a person can drink directly from practically any water supply. The straw can filter about 1,000 litres, or what equates to drinking water for one person for an entire year. Vestergaard also produces a larger device, intended for homes, called LifeStraw Family, which can supply enough clean, purified drinking water for a family of five for up to three years. The domesticated cousin of LifeStraw, it boasts even smaller pores, thus making it an ultrafiltration system. The TiO2 -based system is not the only one to boast harnessing the power of the sun to clean water. It joins the Solarball as a water purification device utilising the rays of the sun. The Solarball is a large plastic “hamster ball” – designed by Australian industrial design student Jonathan Liow – intended to be filled with water and worn on the user’s head. The Solarball filters up to three litres a day, which corresponds to roughly the amount a person should drink in that time.

As technological innovation roars forward, quirky but potentially powerful new inventions, with the ability to revolutionise quality of life worldwide, are set to multiply – with Irish research at the fore.

Eight Easy Pieces Thursday, 13th March, saw the Science Gallery Mediators once again take the stage for the second series of Eight Easy Pieces.

If you have ever been to the Science Gallery, chances are you have spoken to one of the Mediators working the floor – “a crack team of science fans with a passion for talking about science and the arts, who love nothing more than to talk nerdy to you”, according to the gallery’s website. Eight Easy Pieces is an event organised by the Mediators, affording them a chance to present a talk on a topic they found particularly interesting but that is outside the scope of the current exhibition.

Presentations were limited to five

minutes, with speakers have free reign over that time, leading to not only different topics for each talk but also to completely different presentation style. Topics ranged from the future of fashion to the medical and scientific reasons that inspired myths such as vampires and werewolves, with slides, rubber ducks and a questionable choice of headgear punctuating the evening. The success of both the pilot event in December and this month’s event means that Eight Easy Pieces is set to become a staple of the Science Gallery’s event calendar, with a series taking place during the run of each exhibition.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

Science

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Pulling a sick day: How much do we know about being sick?

A recent study carried out in College concludes that most students simply don’t know what is responsible for their illnesses – bacteria or viruses. With over-prescription of antibiotics a growing worry, this is a troubling find.

T Sam Barrett, Beronica Garcia, Kristen Levermore, Luke McGuiness, Maeve O’Dowd Forrestal, Tomasz Pawlak Contributors

he long winter months are usually spent drinking tea and celebrating Christmas and the New Year. However, it is common for these normally enjoyable periods to be frequently punctuated with nasty colds, flus and “other” problems, with the Centre for Disease Control in the United States recording nearly 7,000 cases of the influenza virus in one week in mid-January last year. But how much do we really know about being sick? A survey of 149 senior freshman Science students at Trinity recently conducted by Prof Cliona O’Farrelly (School of Biochemistry and Immunology) and some of her students (see author list) displayed some remarkable results regarding exactly what students know about sickness.

Despite the fact that most sickness in the developed world is caused by either bacteria or viruses, only 32% of students knew if their sickness was due to bacterial or viral infection. This lack of knowledge is likely due to the fact that the differences are so subtle that even most GPs cannot distinguish between them based on symptoms alone, instead requiring expensive in-depth tests with long waiting periods to ensure accurate diagnosis. People will often refuse to wait this long and instead want immediate treatment – which is a problem, when we consider that although symptoms are similar, treatment of bacterial

and viral infection is very different. Most bacterial infections or viruses produce similar responses from your body’s immune system. 13.2% of students reported having a sore throat in the last three months, and 11.5% of students recorded having a raised temperature. Both are common to bacteria and virus-induced illness, and the majority of the same students said that they took only generic painkillers and had a day of rest. This trend marks a common attitude in medicine today: the treatment of symptoms, not of the cause. People want to recover and want their symptoms relieved, with very few caring what pathogen it is that they are infected with. It is also important to make a note of stigma associated with certain symptoms.

Depression, for example, is fairly common in humans due to conservation of energy and in the past, hiding away from predators (where we could recover, without getting in harm’s way from them).

Not surprisingly, this symptom was one of the least admitted to by the surveyed students – even though the survey was anonymous. It may be that the symptom seems too vague to define and therefore is hard to recall, or that it was simply suffered the least.

But should we care? The most common form of treatment for bacteria is the prescription of antibiotics. Antibiotics strip the

“

“Quite simply, many people do not know what they are infected with and we may only assume that as long as the symptoms are treated, they don’t care about the pathogen in question. Due to the pressure of getting back to health, many people are taking unnecessary antibiotics and this can lead to the evolution of superbugs, such as MRSA.”

body of many of its natural defences in an effort to kill the bacteria causing your illness. Viruses, however, cannot be treated with antibiotics. Viruses have a different molecular structure, method of infecting a host, and of reproducing and cannot be treated as a bacterial infection would be. Despite the two very different causes of illness, one in 20 students were prescribed antibiotics without having a definite diagnosis, with two virus-infected students even saying they had received antibiotics to “prevent” a bacterial infection on top of paracetamol for their current infection. The over-prescription of antibiotics is a common topic in newspapers today, with the overall economic cost and nutrient cost to patients being called into question, as well as emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria, which is a major concern of the World Health Organisation. In addition, there is a danger that bacteria could one day evolve beyond our common antibiotic treatments, leaving us in a very dangerous place.

But some people don’t get sick.

Ever. Out of the population surveyed, it was also noted that there was a great variation between households, in some cases only the participant became ill while in others the entire household succumbed to the bacteria or virus. Why would this happen, what could be the variation? One such possible explanation would be ge-

netics. Each person has a unique set of DNA and so each person’s immune system is slightly different. This phenomenon is accredited to the MHC (major histocompatibility complex), which is the major gene responsible for keeping us healthy. It is a polymorphic gene, meaning that the multiple forms of a single gene that can exist in an individual or among a group of individuals.

This variation in our species results in differences in susceptibility, meaning that each person has a different capability for fighting bacteria and viruses.

This phenomenon could be seen in the population surveyed, as 25% of participants reported that only a portion of the total number of people who lived with them were later infected by the same bacterial infection or virus. In such cases, the people in the household would probably be closely related and so would have a similar immune system.

However, if you live with an unrelated roommate, the probability of resisting certain infections increases, as your genes could vary greatly, making you less susceptible to catching that disease: not everybody in the residence would be infected by the same pathogen.

So what was the point of all of the group’s head scratching?

Quite simply, many people do not know what they are infected with and we may only assume that as long as the symptoms are

treated, they don’t care about the pathogen in question. Due to the pressure of getting back to health, many people are taking unnecessary antibiotics and this can lead to the evolution of superbugs, such as MRSA. There is also a genetic aspect to becoming sick.

Some people never seem to get colds while others seem to have chronic colds. We are of course not suggesting for a moment that just because you are genetically predisposed to fight off a cold that you will never get one; there are other factors to take into account, general health, stress levels and environment etc. The last, but not least, point this project had was to educate the general college population. If we taught just one person about how we get sick and they realised how certain medications are designed for certain illnesses, then we have done our job as scientists, because after all, knowledge is power.

Viral infections include: All colds and flu, most coughs, most sore throats and usually involve several parts of the body. Bacterial infections include: Strep throat, urinary tract infections, most ear infections, some sinus infections and are usually localized at a single point in the body.

Illustration: Natalie Duda

Are Trinity’s clubs and societies watching the technological revolution pass by?

Luke McGuinness ponders the slow uptake of technological innovations by College’s societies and offers some ideas for next September’s Freshers’ Week.

W Luke McGuinness Staff Writer

ith the advent of new technology, many parts of college life are becoming easier. Access through Blackboard to lectures notes, file sharing through Dropbox, and entry into college grounds through the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled student cards are just a handful of the many examples that could be offered. Both college and the students themselves are making the most of new software and products on offer, but it would seem that student societies here in the college have so far missed out on the benefits that this technological revolution could bring them.

In recent years, the processing power of small mobile devices such as iPads and other tablets has increased dramatically, meaning that the current pen and paper methods employed by societies in signing up new members could be considered slightly old-fashioned. For example, The Hist is one of only a few societies that collect data by computer. The membership fee is paid at the stall in Front Square, and the new member is issued with a ticket and directions to the society rooms, where committee members plug their information straight into stationary laptop.

This system seems to work, allowing a more detailed profile of each member to be built up. This

is, however, a notable exception, as most societies still employ the traditional pen and paper, “insert table in MS Word” approach, often limiting the details collected to a member’s name, student number, e-mail address, and occasionally their course.

There are some considerable drawbacks to this old fashioned, hard copy method. As mentioned, only a few select details can be collected on each student. This method would also seem to be inefficient, as all of the details must be transcribed into a spreadsheet or e-mail list at a later date, creating a lot of extra work for what is probably an already swamped committee. There is also the possibility that a sheet with some twenty or thirty members contact details could go missing, meaning that a society might lose out on being able to contact what could prove to be a large portion of their membership due to only having the one hard copy of records. While some systems employed by the larger societies are better than most, there still seems to be some room for improvement. Societies would benefit greatly from having more detailed information on each of their members in addition to the basics. For example, for an all-inclusive society like the Phil or the Hist, details of students’ courses

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In recent years, the processing power of small mobile devices such as iPads and other tablets has increased dramatically, meaning that the current pen and paper methods employed by societies in signing up new members could be considered slightly oldfashioned.”

of study could be collected. With this information in a spreadsheet, when a speaker/debate suited to a particular course is coming up, in addition to a general e-mail to all members about the event, a tailored e-mail could be sent to those who registered an interest in that particular area, providing a more detailed description. Additionally, with features such as Mail Merge from Microsoft, it would be possible to have the e-mail open with the student’s name, thus having the e-mail seem even more like a personal invite rather than just an open call. The same could be done by societies with a smaller focus group of students, but rather than taking a student’s course of study, details of which particular area of that society’s activities they are interested in could be collected.

This database of members could also be used to track whether or not a particular member has paid.

It could also be used to aid societies in offering four-year membership, as students’ names could be checked against records when handing out cards in subsequent years. One of the potential problems with this kind of system lies in collecting the information in a way that maximizes the benefits for both the society and the student, while also keeping the time needed to collect the data as short as possible, so as not to dissuade

potential members from joining.

In recent times, Google has lead the way in providing powerful, free, online tools, including spreadsheets, word processing and now even scripts. One of the less known tools, Google Forms, allows you to create, edit and publish your very own form online.

You can customise the wording of the questions; decide whether to provide a list of options or to leave them open-ended, and even the theme and colour scheme of the form itself. By employing Google Forms, a student’s name, e-mail address, year of study and other information may be rapidly gathered. A form may also have a number of pages that a student will be directed to based on their answer to a particular question: for example, if Science was selected as a student’s course of study, the form might link them to the page within the form where they can choose which areas of Science they prefer, be it Chemistry, Biology or Physics. It would even be possible to have a question dedicated to which committee/ society member signed the student up, and award a prize to the person who has secured the most sign-ups by the end of the week.

However, the beautiful thing about using Google Forms to sign-up students is its practicality. After the form is filled out, the

answers are filed straight into an accompanying spreadsheet. This would eliminate the need for the transcription of answers after the fact, reducing the human error aspect. The spreadsheet can be downloaded as an Excel file and put to working as outlined above.

All of the data collected ends up online and in the same place, so there is no searching for that lost folder of paper sheets come the end of the Freshers’ Week.

Additionally, Google Forms has the advantage of being mobile, meaning that committee members would be free to roam the stalls with a 3G enabled tablet, speaking to students and signing them up on the spot if they turn out to be interested. Google Forms can also be used by many people simultaneously, meaning that any number people can be signing up at the same time.

It seems that Trinity’s societies have some work to do in terms of catching up with the mobile technology revolution. Signing-up students using mobile technology is not the only area where societies could employ technology to make things easier for their committees and to increase their presence on campus, but as it is free and the old system can be reverted to if the technology fails, it seems like it might be a good place to start.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

Sport

Stephen Carton reports on DUAFC successful season as well as their recent win over the Dublin Rhinos.

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Photo: Paul Woods

Mixed season for Trinity GAA as it develops under new leadership Sarah Burns reports on a mixed season for Trinity GAA’s teams including the recent Ryan Cup Championship which was recently held in Belfast.

T

Sarah Burns Staff Writer

rinity GAA is one of the college’s largest societies, boasting five clubs, over 400 members, including a handful of inter-county players, and yet remains somewhat forgotten behind the likes of rugby and soccer. The GAA ban on foreign games, which was still in effect up until 1970, initially limited the sport’s development within the college. This was tied in with the fact that Catholics were restricted from attending Trinity by the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, until his death in 1973. However, this has all changed with 2013-14 capping off another successful season for all teams involved, most especially the Senior hurlers.

The side reached the final of Division Two of the Ryan Cup Championship in Queen’s University, Belfast only to be defeated 0-18 to 0-8 against NUI Maynooth. A comprehensive win over IT Tralee brought them to the final, however the Kildare outfit and in particular Paul Winters were too strong, giving them back-to-back Ryan Cup Division Two titles. No doubt, the Senior hurling team has benefited from the presence of Dublin All-Star Danny Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe has made a promising start to the season, scoring 1-5 for Dublin in last week’s Allianz League, Division One tie against Kilkenny at Parnell Park, while making easy work of Tommy Walsh, who was taken off at half-time.

As for the footballers, the senior team were defeated in the opening round of the Sigerson Cup back in February with a hard draw against last year’s finalists UCC. Added was the loss of Tómas Corrigan, recent graduate and full-forward for Fermanagh.

The ladies footballers, last year’s winners of the Lynch Cup made it to the semi-finals of the their league. The side had high hopes of placing in the top two of their tough Giles Cup Championship group, which included NUI Maynooth, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick and University of Ulster, Jordanstown. However, the step-up from the Lynch Cup

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“While Trinity GAA saw no silverware this year, the club will no doubt be happy with the progression made, particularly the men’s hurlers who saw many victories both at senior and fresher’s level. As for the footballers, the men’s team will hope to end their early exits from the Sigerson Cup, while the ladies will surely start next season back to winning ways.”

proved too much, with the team failing to achieve qualification, the first time their Championship campaign has finished early in four years. Meanwhile the camógs made it to the semi-finals of the Fr Meachair Cup, which saw them defeated by St Pats of Drumcondra.

While Trinity GAA saw no silverware this year, the club will no doubt be happy with the progression made, particularly the men’s hurlers who saw many victories both at senior and fresher’s level.

As for the footballers, the men’s team will hope to end their early exits from the Sigerson Cup, while the ladies will surely start next season back to winning ways, despite the loss of many senior players.

Trinity may not have the same GAA accolade as DCU or even UCD, however this seems to be gradually changing under the guidance of Conor Laverty, the college’s GAA development officer and Down footballer. With the likes of Sutcliffe, Corrigan, Cathriona Foley (Cork) and many more coming through the college and with the continuing expansion of Trinity GAA, the university seems set to rid its image of one that is traditionally centred around rugby and soccer.

Photo: Paul Woods

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

22

Sport

Failure Breeds Success Will Scott, assesses the impact of England losing out on the Six Nations championship, and takes a look at where the team can go next.

E Will Scott Staff Writer

ngland’s failure to win the Six Nations was good for England. This may be a surprising statement to come from the mouth (or pen) of an Englishman, but Test rugby like any sport, requires a certain amount of pain and disappointment to yield the best results.

This England team is a case in point.

An old coach of mine constantly referred to the need for a ‘pain anchor’. This is the belief that motivation is driven by past failures. Stuart Lancaster was quick to point this out in his meditations about England’s nearly moment. “Obviously you have got that frustration” he said “we haven’t quite got across the line this time, but in some ways you can channel that frustration into more positive performances in New Zealand as that is when this season finishes for us.” This points to an inescapable quality that all successful teams possess; the hunger to overcome failure.

Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player to have ever lived, once said: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games.

26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and

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“Many in these parts will have rejoiced at the pictures of the tuxedo clad England team watching Ireland beat France. This is precisely the place that England should look to when they regroup before their summer travels.”

missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” The ability to successfully deal with failure is the key to success in any sport. This England team have had their fair share of failure and disappointment over the last four years. Stuart Lancaster took over from Martin Johnson after an embarrassing exit from the 2011 World Cup. They flew home amid a tidal wave of accusations of arrogance, complacency and greed.

One player summed up the team culture at the time after the quarter-final exit to France with the words, “That’s £35,000 down the toilet”.

It seems as though Lancaster has created a culture that has renewed pride in the jersey and what it means to play for England.

This has been essential for the side’s responses to setbacks and failures. Take another recent failure. Wales destroyed England at the Millennium Stadium last year and with it destroyed any pretentions of a Grand Slam for the away side. Undoubtedly this provided the ‘pain anchor’ for this years campaign. Outgunned both physically and mentally Lancaster’s young side were dispatched

with ease. Despite the presence of 12 Lions England were able to assert themselves through their oppressive defence and willingness to counter from deep in their own half. This year’s championship brought a new set of ‘pain anchors’ that should provide plenty of whiteboard fodder for England’s coaches. The agonizing last-minute defeat to France was prompted by the loss of two tries in the first 17 minutes in Paris.

There was also a degree of failure in Rome. Despite the highest total score there since 2000 several chances went unconverted and the intercepted pass thrown

late in the game ensured any hope of erasing the points difference was lost. Memories of this championship will provide an anchor of titanic proportions as the team heads to New Zealand this summer. With some standout performances from the likes of Mike Brown, Courtney Lawes, Joe Launchbury and Luther Burrell there are some positives too.

Lancaster has cultivated a young squad with growing confidence and depth. Although we will learn more about them in the next 18 months, particularly with that trip to face the All Blacks, the foundation for a home World Cup

campaign has been laid. Many in these parts will have rejoiced at the pictures of the tuxedo clad England team watching Ireland beat France. This is precisely the place that England should look to when they regroup before their summer travels. When it comes to international rugby I am inclined to agree with Michael Jordan.

You must be prepared to miss a few shots or opportunities before you are ready to make the important ones. Under Stuart Lancaster this England team has taken another small step towards making these shots.

The setting of a nation’s favourite son Sports Editor, Cal Gray discusses what has made Brian O’Driscoll completely irreplaceable.

T Cal Gray Sports Editor

he English language has yet to invent the words that adequately describe how much Brian O’Driscoll means to this country, we have only ringing clichés, but I’m still going to try. When I was 11 I was at that awkward junction in a boy’s life where he needs something upon which to base the direction of the rest of his life, and I found rugby. More accurately, I found Brian O’Driscoll.

If you want to tie him to adjectives you’ll just echo every pundit from the last 15 years. Brave, tough, creative, genius. You’re still understating. I remember watching him play in 2007 and admiring the clinical nature with which he went about his job, never putting a foot wrong. But this is the case for so many international centres. Fergus McFadden & Jonathan Davies to name but two.

What has always separated Brian O’Driscoll is that little spark of magic he seems to possess, that completely intangible breath of brilliance that breezes through him when he calls on it. It is entirely inexplicable yet wondrous.

The try against Wasps with the delicious half volley, the out-thegate pass to Zebo against Wales in 2013, the ‘selfie’ pass against Ulster in 2007, and the pass through

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“It’s clear that the pre-text to our adjectives, ‘brave, tough, creative, genius’ must be ‘happy, down-toearth, well-adjusted and caring.’

He played every national game as if it were his last, and sadly the match on the 15th of March in Paris, the city where it all began for him in 2000, was.”

his legs against Munster in 2006.

O’Driscoll has always possessed this mesmerising ability to make the game look so upsettingly simple when we know it just isn’t, and this all comes from honed, mastered and hard-crafted ability. He has clearly worked so hard to be the best he can be, and in doing so he has provided us with endless entertainment, and numerous memorable wins, including the most recent victory against France to give Ireland the Six Nations trophy. The flicks and kicks and no-look passes have constantly baffled his opposition, and rugby as a sport is all about asking the opposition questions and hoping they don’t have the answers. Throughout his career, at club, provincial and international level, Brian O’Driscoll has always asked the question “What are you going to do about me?” No one has ever found the answer. A captain, a talisman, a prodigal son. A warrior, an inspiration, a revolutionary fighter. A born finisher, a hard shoulder you don’t want to run into, a man who is most at home grounding a ball beneath the posts.

I’m rambling. You see, while so many people have written about his talent on the pitch, to fully un-

derstand it you have to be given an insight into the man himself.

We go back to 2000 when Matt Williams was Leinster’s head coach. When the Australian found out that some Leinster players were planning to go to New York on their week’s rest from the Six Nations, he states “I called them in and laid down the law about the high standards I expected from them on their return. A few day later I received a photo of the group, with Driccy at its heart, all dressed in suits, in a classy Manhattan bar, with Cuban cigars and cocktails in hand. The caption read, “Don’t worry, Boss, standards remain very high.” I laughed long and loud. Naughty boys make the best rugby players.“ You can’t underestimate the importance of that cheek, that Irish charm that has endeared him to us and to the rest of the world. It has seen him dye his hair some awful colours, take countless photos with fans, and wind up winning best supporting actor for this magnificent photo in Temple Street hospital with a young patient and the Heineken Cup trophy. As well as some other gems taken with that same trophy. Last week over breakfast he also decided of his own accord to ring

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“O’Driscoll has always possessed this mesmerising ability to make the game look so upsettingly simple when we know it just isn’t, and this all comes from honed, mastered and hard-crafted ability. He has clearly worked so hard to be the best he can be.”

up Today FM’s Ray Darcy Show to speak to fans who had phoned in claiming they were upset they couldn’t get a photo with him after the Italy match.

We have so much respect for him for his ability on the pitch, but we have fallen hopelessly in love with him for the man that shines through his weather-beaten exterior. Carrying his daughter around the pitch after matches, making public appearances with his beautiful and charming wife, Amy Huberman, and remaining eternally modest and charismatic.

I urge you to look up ‘national treasure’ in a dictionary and note his picture beside the definition.

It’s clear that the pre-text to our adjectives, ‘brave, tough, creative, genius’ must be ‘happy, down-toearth, well-adjusted and caring.’

He played every national game as if it were his last, and sadly the match on the 15th of March in Paris, the city where it all began for him in 2000, was.

That talent with that charm, that leadership and that eternal grit to sacrifice blood and sweat for his nation. The question has now gone from “What are you going to do about me?” to “What are you going to do without me?”

I don’t think we’ll find the answer.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

23

Sport

Trinity squash - against the wall?

Will Trinity’s students embrace the opportunity to facilitate a renaissance in Irish squash and help to make Dublin a European centre of excellence for the sport? Mark Frank Kelly is hopeful in this personal evaluation.

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Mark Frank Kelly Contributor

an squash improve College’s standing as an innovative and creative force, a catalyst for economic, social, creative and intellectual growth and regeneration, both nationally and internationally? In this article I will answer this question with a resounding yes. However, despite an extremely colourful and successful year, with a recent win over UCD at intervarsities, squash at Trinity faces an uncertain future. Plans are afoot to build a new School of Business co-located with an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Hub, on the technology side of the campus along Pearse Street.

In and of itself, this is wonderful news for College but it does mean that demolition of the Luce Building is due to commence in September (when Trinity’s Strategic Plan 2014-19 will also be launched), leaving Trinity squash without a home.

Top-level, televised squash is now played on glass courts, with a white ball against a dark background. And the rules have changed to make the games shorter. It is perfect for TV, but developments in relation to realising the full potential of squash TV are, all things considered, I think it is fair to say, relatively nascent. If in doubt about the entertainment value of televised squash, I urge you to watch the Commonwealth Games in July or right now on YouTube, particularly if produced by psasquashtv. com.

Squash is certainly fighting a public relations battle but one way of winning it, as far as I can make out, is through mini-squash (MS). MS is the progressive introduction of fitness and generic squash skills to young people. It is approved by Irish Squash and a number of national governing bodies throughout the world.

Overall, MS is designed to be delivered in schools, clubs and leisure centres to meet key fitness and educational aims. Coaching is not only concerned with skills development: it is about pride and instinct, control and anger-management, talent and mentoring.

It is ultimately about leadership.

These are the sorts of universal challenges that every parent and coach faces up to, daily.

In my considered opinion, a professional focus on grassroots development, defining optimal strategies that enable effective participation as volunteers, can mean only one thing: the exponential and inexorable growth of squash. With this in mind, the values that sustain volunteerism (free will, commitment, engagement and solidarity) seek to engender a desire to contribute to the common good without expectation of material reward.

Squash is played in some 185 countries, on nearly 50,000 courts and unmistakably therefore, is a truly international phenomenon. Although only one of the reasons I love the game, such cosmopolitanism is very high up on my list. Interestingly, Dublin University Squash Rackets Club (DUSRC) 2013-14 Committee consists of no less than six nationalities, and that’s not including the Captain’s Vietnamese extraction. The club therefore benefits from a truly diverse international character. Squash players are generally warm-spirited people.

If my experience is anything to go by, wherever you go in the

world for a game of squash, all you need do is say you are visiting and a warm welcome will be given. Squash is a convenient game.

Only two players are required and the participants benefit from an intense, weather-proof work out in a short time – ideal therefore in between lectures or during lunchtime. Anyone who plays and enjoys squash struggles to understand why more people aren’t participating.

Squash is getting stronger. It is developing as a sport, largely as a result of social media campaigns and online sites, particularly those embracing squash as a tool for promoting healthier lifestyles and goals in general such as fitness work, mental training, skills development and nutrition (see www.squashskills.com as an outstanding example of one such online tool).

Irish universities are never going to emulate their American cousins by getting involved in high-visibility, semi-professional, mass audience competition, not that they would want to if given the choice. But they most certainly can be instrumental in resurrecting squash as a participatory sport in Dublin, Leinster and Ireland. DUSRC already works with a local school to introduce pupils to squash, through an initiative which also encourages students to obtain basic coaching qualifications and experience. The current and former Captains, as well as other DUSRC Committee members, are qualified coaches, registered with Irish Squash.

College is in a very privileged position with the recent election of Michelle Tanner (Trinity’s Head of Sport and Recreation) as

President of ENAS, the European Network of Academic Sports Service, which is the first Irish appointment to such a vital and prestigious role. The Network aims to foster the development of ‘sport for all’ in higher education.

Since 2001 ENAS is an official non-governmental organization with its own constitution. Its aims include the development of communication between academic sport services and the exchange of ideas and experiences of different countries in the field of recreation, health, culture and physical education.

Trinity’s Provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast, has recently highlighted the importance of sport to student development, explaining that employers specifically seek graduates who have ‘held leadership positions in clubs or societies and have taken part in a team sport. We know that active involvement in any club or society engages students in myriad life-skills including: management, communications, event organisation, fund-raising, travel, volunteering, community values and leadership’. As Honorary Treasurer and Secretary of Student Sport Ireland, it is clear that Tanner, a former international volleyball player with the Irish senior team, exudes passion and energy. During a recent conversation, she lamented the loss of Trinity’s squash facilities and in particular the extent to which participation will be affected by the cutbacks. On the positive side, she also enthused about the potential presence of courts at the Trinity Technology and Enterprise campus (T-TEC) on Pearse Street, which is situated alongside

a diverse array of creative multinationals and start-up companies.

I have recently spoken with Eoin Ryan, Resident Squash Coach at Sutton LTC where Ryan has been coaching squash for over 25 years and was named Irish Squash Coach of the Year 2013. He currently coaches over 120 junior players and his programmes have brought juniors from beginner to a national and international stage. Many of his players have competed and won at top European and International level. Two of his juniors are about to take up scholarships at Harvard and Drexel universities in the U.S. Drexel Squash Club has strong ties through volunteer work with Squash Smarts, a Philadelphia Youth Enrichment Program, which combines the sport of squash with academic tutoring and mentoring of underserved urban youth, in order to develop self-esteem and discipline through academic, athletic and personal achievement. Similar programs throughout America and across the world are supported by the National Urban Squash and Education Association.

Although Sutton LTC has recently received permission to build two new squash courts, supply is not meeting demand; there is a waiting list of 40 children owing to the shortage of facilities.

Ryan whole-heartedly endorses Trinity as an ideal central location for developing a squash centre of excellence in order to facilitate the growth and development of squash in Ireland.

Elvy Da Costa has been Trinity’s Head Coach for over twenty years. He has coached, guided and mentored the full range of

players from beginners through to world ranked international competitors. How best to describe him? Humility and patience immediately spring to mind. When asked about what he considers his role to consist of? ‘It is to support the student endeavour’. Stressing that some years there is more for him to do than others, he has been bowled over by the success of Trinity squash in recent years. In particular, the sense of team work amongst Committee members and their commitment to coaching City Quay National School children, he considers to be as strong a measure of the club’s success as anything else.

Da Costa has also helped to supervise and coach intellectually disabled students in collaboration with the Department of Sport and the National Institute of Intellectual Disability at Trinity. And it is in relation to such initiatives that Da Costa is most evidently passionate: ‘I cannot overstate what I have seen the participant coaches/assistants and players get from and develop, through these activities’. Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, Vice Provost for Global Relations has stated that College is well on its way to becoming a university of ‘global consequence’: ‘All those associated with Trinity, students and staff, past and present, home and abroad, will have a role in our Global Relations Strategy. Success will depend on the energy, goodwill and outwardlooking attitude of colleagues throughout the University’. Trinity could be missing out on a huge opportunity to host a sports event on the world stage. I cannot think of a better way to highlight Trinity College, University of Dublin

as a global brand than via a live streaming of a yearly squash tournament held on the Front Square.

I would be hard pushed to think of a more exciting example of student-led social entrepreneurship.

Back in 2012, an article in Trinity News ran with the headline ‘Pfizer set to stun with investment in Science Gallery’. The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht at the time commented that ‘The Science Gallery is fast becoming a leader in demonstrating how a major cultural institution can harness both state and private sector philanthropic support’.

Students of Trinity can aim just as high in seeking sponsorship and support for their chosen sport. This would unreservedly justify the 15% of staff and 10% of students who stated in a recent Identity Initiative survey (brainchild of Trinity’s communications and marketing team) that Trinity should aim to ‘be itself’, in addition to, or perhaps instead of being, more like Oxbridge.

The sport-in-a–room love affair I have touched upon here never ceases to amaze me. Like all good feelings, mine are deeply personal, connected to something much bigger than myself. The values of courage, creativity, respect, determination, inspiration, excellence not to mention reinvention, amongst many others, are the driving force of the sporting spirit but let’s not forget they are also metaphors for life. Trinity’s, Dublin’s and Ireland’s squash communities, I firmly believe, are fully capable of bringing about a renaissance, the nature of which I have alluded to in this article.

A review of the 2014 World Cup “top five” Louis Strange takes a look at five teams to “watch out for” at the World Cup this summer.

H Louis Strange Staff Writer

ere in Trinity, everyone’s favourite time of year is just around the corner – exam season looms on the horizon and essay deadlines rush towards us (as Douglas Adams said, “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”) Understandably, then, this column takes on a slightly gloomier note than usual.

This being the last issue of Trinity News before the summer hiatus, it seems only fitting to apply this gloominess to the much anticipated World Cup (or, to use its official title, “The 2014 FIFA McDonalds Budweiser Sepp Blatter World Cup™”) which also looms on the horizon. So, to get into the spirit of things, here are five teams to “watch out for” in Brazil – not predictions of this summer’s champions, as most publications shove down your throats, but rather predictions of the biggest potential disappointments in Brazil 2014. No. 1 – Brazil. Hosting your own tournament is usually a cause for great optimism, enthusiasm and rejoicing, particularly when you’re Brazil and your bench alone usually has more footballing pedigree than most continents. However, the buildup to the World Cup on a domestic front has been more social upheaval and fewer samba rhythms, more violent clashes between protesters and police and less carnival atmosphere. The pressure on Neymar and co. is already enormous, hardly helped by the Brazilian No. 10’s lukewarm start to life in Barcelona, where his dancing feet have been reduced

to minor twinkling in Lionel Messi’s shadow, and a team which does not measure up to the great generations of the past. If they do not win it – and win it with style – expect Brazil to descend into fullon national crisis.

No. 2 – Ivory Coast. Despite the abundance of talent produced on the continent, African teams have yet to really assert the dominance that they should in the World Cup. The Ivory Coast look set to continue that trend.

Haunted by failures past, this is the last chance for a talented but ageing squad to fulfil its potential. Although in Yaya Touré Les Élephants have the stand-out midfielder of this year’s Premier League and one of the best players in the world, he may not be able to paper over the cracks all on his own: Didier Drogba is not the unstoppable force he once was, Emmanuel Éboué has always enjoyed pissing about more than actually defending, and they have a guy called Barry in goal. No. 3 – France. At this point it must be admitted that impartiality has been thrown out the window – four years of studying French doesn’t come without a slight resentment of French culture, the French language and, well, everything French. However, the French national team needs little building-up when it comes to disappointment. Since the glorious, socially-unifying success of 1998 and the subsequent Euro 2000 victory, France have gone backwards, downhill and generally not in the right direction. In a very

French way, the leading lights in the group have been undone by sex or revolution, whether embroiled in an underage prostitution scandal or involved in open mutiny at the last World Cup. This French team still has a long way to go, both to get back to the heights of 1998 and back into the French public’s good books. No. 4 – Spain. Like Brazil, one of the favourites to win the competition, yet there is a sense that the reign in Spain is soon going to fall. Xavi is getting old, Puyol’s cascading locks are gone and La Roja have been forced into recruiting a Brazilian (Diego Costa) to play up front as a traditional No. 9. There are whisperings that tiki taka may be dead and that the big powers tired of being bored into submission by pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass…

No. 5 – England. Of course.

Who else. Although criticising England might not be strictly in keeping with the company line (this is Trinity News, after all) no list of disappointments would be complete without England. In fact, it would almost be a disappointment if England were not disappointing in Brazil. The last chance for a group of players – in this case, the word “team” is hardly appropriate – who have consistently underachieved at international level, failing to reproduce the performances which have led many of them to Premier League titles and Champions League trophies. The silver lining? England will be knocked out before having to play Germany.

TRINITY NEWS

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

Sport

Sarah Burns reports on Trinity GAA’s recent fixtures and their development under new leadership. p.21

Photo: Peter Wolfe

Close encounter between DUFC and Terenure FC Angus Lloyd reports on DUFC’s tight loss against Terenure in the Lakelands last week.

T Angus Lloyd Staff Writer

rinity made the short journey to Lakelands last weekend to take on the unbeaten leaders of the league, Terenure. The students, who began the game third from bottom, were looking to bounce back after their close result in the Colours match against UCD. As could be expected, the conditions were not favourable in Lakelands with a strong wind blowing down the field.

In the first half Trinity opted to play against the wind. The away side dominated possession but errors began to cost them dearly.

After just three minutes Terenure received a scrum in the centre of the pitch five meters from the line following a Trinity knock-on.

The home side were then able to spread the ball wide to their out-

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“Trinity came out fighting in the second half, dominating both possession and territory now that the strong wind was at their backs.”

half who crossed the whitewash all too easily for the students’ liking.

Following 15 minutes of Trinity dominating the ball, they found themselves with a line-out on their own five meter line. The lineout was turned over and the Terenure number eight forced his way over the line. Trinity responded quickly with wing Niyi Adeolokun and centre Paddy Lavelle making inroads in the Terenure defence resulting in three points from the boot of outhalf Sam Windsor.

Just before the break Trinity were dealt a devastating blow.

Centre Ed Barry again broke the defensive line but the offload did not go to hand and the resulting turnover led to Terenure scoring

Victory for DUAFC against Dublin Rhinos Stephen Carton reports on DU American Footba; Team’s recent win over the Dublin Rhinos and their stellar season so far.

A Stephen Carton Staff Writer

fter winning the SBC season opener with a 34-9 victory over the UL Vikings, Trinity were intent on continuing as they started for their second game of the season. The reshuffling of the IAFL conferences meant that Trinity would face the West Dublin Rhinos for the first time since their 2012 season. Both teams fought consistently for four quarters, although Trinity ultimately prevailed in a 27 - 0 victory.

Quarterback Dan Finnamore, now undoubtedly settled into the SBC and the Trinity outfit, found a target with swift-footed receiver David Lunn who caught a pass in the first quarter for a touchdown.

Running back Rob McDowell, true to form, also punched in two impressive rushing touchdowns, one of which was assisted by a devastating block from Alex Gurnee, flattening two of the Rhinos defenders.

Trinity’s disciplined and tight defense kept pressure on the Rhinos throughout, allowing them only one first down during the course of the game. Not to be out-done on the scoring front either, they also recovered a fumble which was returned for a touch-

down by Alex Gurnee in the second quarter. Safety Colm Ryan also made a critical interception and return during the 4th quarter, which gave Trinity’s offense key field position to run in McDowell’s 2nd touchdown of the game.

Despite what the scorecard would suggest, the game was tightly contested. Rhinos’ defense was characteristically tough and challenging, keeping the pressure on the offense throughout, recording a sack on Finnamore and forcing him to scramble on one occasion for yardage. Trinity only managed to execute one Point-After-Touchdown conversion and were forced to punt on 4th down multiple times. Rhinos’ offense ultimately failed to put up points however, and an error on their goal line resulted in a safety being scored for Trinity.

Throughout the game Trinity were plagued by penalties, with two touchdowns being disallowed due to minor infractions, one of which was an ineligible jersey number on a lineman, and three big drives downfield also being negated due to penalty calls.

Trinity maintained composure and did not become unnerved

however, performing right up to the fourth quarter. With less than two minutes on the clock and the scoreboard at 27 - 0, Finnamore took a knee and sealed the victory for TCD. This leaves Trinity with a perfect 2 - 0 record beginning the season, however there is still a difficult road ahead, with upcoming games against the Carrickfergus Knights and the Belfast Trojans winners of the Shamrock Bowl in 2012 and 2013. Trinity last faced the Trojans in the final of the Atlantic Cup in June of 2013, which resulted in a 23 - 0 loss.

Trinity’s next game is against the Carrickfergus Knights and takes place in the Trinity Sports Grounds in Santry, on the 6th of April with kick-off at 1PM.

their third try of the game in the corner. At halftime the students trailed 17-3 having dominated possession and playing all the rugby. It was clear that Trinity were trying to force their passing, leading to mistakes off which this Terenure side thrived.

Trinity came out fighting in the second half, dominating both possession and territory now that the strong wind was at their backs. Terenure only found their way into the Trinity half once in the second half but when they did they were clinical and scored their fourth try of the game. This left the students trailing 22-7. But Trinity refused to roll over and went back to dominating possession and playing some good expansive rugby, also lowering their

error count in the process. With twenty minutes to go the students finally broke down the Terenure defence. After going through what must have been 15 phases Jack Dilger ran a great line to cross the whitewash and score.

Windsor converted to leave the scores at 22-10.

Trinity continued to pressure the Terenure defence. With five minutes to go they got their chance, the students were rewarded a penalty with Sam Windsor kicking deep into the oppositions 22. The students mauled the ball to within one meter of the line before the Terenure openside flanker hauled down the maul. He was subsequently given a yellow card and sent to the sin bin for remainder of the match. Trin-

ity went to the maul again and the same result, and eventually awarded the penalty try after numerous infringements but it was too late to mount one last attack for the win. 22-17 to Terenure.

The result was extremely disappointing as Trinity had thoroughly dominated the best team in the league but 24 turnovers and a lack of precision cost them dearly. Terenure on the other hand were extremely efficient and clinical anytime they were given the opportunity. This is a lesson the students must learn as they go into their final four fixtures, where a massive collective effort is needed for the final few weeks of the season.