University Express Vol 25; Issue 10

University Volume 25 | Issue 10 | Tuesday 1st March 2022

Express

UCCExpress.ie

RAG Week 2022: What’s in Store?

Yesterday saw the Students’ Union welcome Owen Colgan back, for another performance in Devere Hall, following his “phenomenal performance’’ during Freshers’ Week 2021. Marcus O’Laoire then took to the stage in Devere Hall in the afternoon.

Society and club events during the week include yesterday’s Bingo Bangers with the Law Society in Gaia, today’s RAG race on main campus with BioMed Science, tomorrow’s Irish Céili with An Chuallacht at 1pm, and Abbaesque with the Commerce Society from 2pm, amongst other promising events.

Other events this week include a strong line-up for the New Bar in the Student Centre. The New Bar will host the Battle of the DJs on Thursday, from 12pm to 5pm, and welcome DJ Ken Perrott, Dashka, and Bongo Steve at other various times this week.

The Students Community Support (SCS), composed of volunteer students, have operated successfully over the last few years to support both students and the wider UCC community.

They are volunteering again this week to ensure a more enjoyable week for all.

Speaking in an email issued to all students in advance of RAG week, Interim Registrar, Professor Stephen Byrne, stated that he hopes students, “will engage with some of the many activities planned and safely enjoy Raise & Give Week in the spirit of Respect and Responsibility and that it will be particularly successful for the chosen charities.”

ORLA LEAHY News Editor

The SU have urged students to remember that the purpose of RAG is to support this year’s chosen charity partners. Students can donate to the Sexual Violence Centre Cork, Cork City Missing Persons Search and Recovery, and Age Action South on the Students’ Union iDonate page, or via the collection points around campus.

The complete line-up for RAG this week may be found on the Raise and Give (RAG) Week 2022, organised and facilitated by the UCC UCCSU Instagram page. Queries may be directed to the SU Ents Students’ Union and UCC Ents, began yesterday, and remains in full swing Officer, Luke Mulcahy, ents@uccsu.ie, or any of the SU officers. until Friday. This year’s charity partners include the Sexual Violence Centre Cork, Cork City Missing Persons Search and Recovery, and Age Action South. UCC societies and clubs have been invited to include their own events in the week’s line-up. All profits from the Students’ Union’s events will be donated to this year’s three chosen charity partners.

Sunday evening, the first night of the week kicked off with Shane Codd and Xero in Cyprus Avenue. Yesterday evening, DJ Eugene McCauley, with Ladrin and Emily Dunne, were also welcomed to the venue. Cyprus Avenue will open its doors again tonight for UCC students to attend Tommy Holohan’s gig. Tommy Holohan is well known for his performance at AVA festival last year. He will perform at AVA again this year, as well as at Life and Glitch.

Image Credits: UCCSU

2

EDITORIAL

Issue 10 |Tuesday 1st March 2022 | University Express

Editorial Team Editor-in-Chief – Imasha Costa (Editor@UCCExpress.ie) News Editor – Orla Leahy (News@UCCExpress.ie) Designer – Aoife E Osborne (Design@UCCExpress.ie)

A NEW ISSUE Hi everyone,

Features Editor – Maeve O’Keeffe (Features@UCCExpress.ie) Sports Editor – Sam Curtin (Sport@UCCExpress.ie) Opinion Editor – Claudia Zedda (Opinion@UCCExpress.ie) Eagarthóir Gaeilge – Caitríona O’Connell (Gaeilge@UCCExpress.ie) Online Editor – Edel Lonergan (Online@UCCExpress.ie)

Welcome back to another fabulous issue with amazing writing from amazing writers. This issue covers a range of different topics, from accessibility in UCC to Child Prodigies in Athletics. I am very delighted with everything that everyone has been writing about so far, giving voice to those that need it.

We now only have two issues left in this academic year, and my term as Editor-in-Chief is coming to an end rather quickly. I am very delighted about everything that I have learned and aimed to have gotten done over this past year, I have made such amazing friends and have learned so much from others that it has honed my skills as a writer and a journalist.

The University Express will be hiring soon, so stay tuned to our socials and the next upcoming issues for job opportunities, and you could join our next editorial team that is to come.

Marketing Executive – Imasha Costa (Marketing@UCCExpress.ie)

Until our next issue, Love and Solidarity,

Photographers – Méabh Lonergan; Jack Murphy (Photographers@uccexpress.ie)

Imasha Costa Editor-In-Chief

editor@uccexpress.ie

Byline Editor – Jack Coleman (Byline@UCCExpress.ie) (Deputy Editor) Food & Health – Nathan Carey (Food@UCCExpress.ie) Arts & Literature Editor – Cian Pierce (Arts@UCCExpress.ie) Gaming Editor – Chloe Barrett (Gaming @UCCExpress.ie) Music Editor – Florrie McCarthy (Music@UCCExpress) Fashion Editor – Claire Watson (fashion@uccexpress.ie) Film & Television Editor – Cormac McCarthy (Screen@UCCExpress.ie) Sexpress Editor – Emily Osborn (Sexpress@uccexpress.ie) Deputy News – Ciara Browne (Deputynews@uccexpress.ie) Deputy Features Editor - Sarah O’Mahony (DeputyFeatures@uccexpress.ie) Deputy Sports - Atakan Uzun (deputysports@uccexpressie) Staff Writer: Billy O’Connor

HAPPY RAG! Happy Raise and Give Week everyone! It’s exciting for RAG Week to be back for the first time in two years, and for many, myself included, it’s our first RAG Week since starting in UCC. There’s a fantastic line-up for the week, including several evenings of entertainment in Cyprus Avenue, Gaia, and many more locations, as well as numerous Socs and Club events, all in aid of three incredible charities. Read more about this year’s RAG on my cover story, why the SU chose the the Sexual Violence Centre Cork, Cork City Missing Persons Search and Recovery, and Age Action South as this year’s charities, what has inspired this year’s events, and the primary line-up for the remainder of the week. I hope you enjoy some of the socials in-store!

In news, Ciara takes a look at the impacts of COVID-19 on graduate employment rates. I review the key points of the Economics Society’s recent event on the Housing Crisis, an event of great relevance to students presently on the hunt for accommodation for next year. I also provide a snapshot of the first ever Intervarsity Law Summit, which the UCC Law Society spearheaded and hosted last weekend, featuring keynote speaker, former Uachtarán na hÉireann, Mary MacAleese, a distinguished panel of guest speakers, and the incredible Summit Gala, amongst other striking events.

With every issue in news, I am greatly impressed by the student-empowered initiatives and events across the university that I have the opportunity to cover. If you have organised something that you’d like us to cover, don’t be afraid to reach out!

In the meantime, happy reading issue 10!

Best wishes,

Orla Leahy News Editor

news@uccexpress.ie

Issue 10| tuesday 1st march 2022 | University Express

NEWS

3

Employment Rates Dropped for College Graduates during Height of COVID-19 CIARA BROWNE Deputy News Editor COVID-19 has changed and impacted employment within Ireland and has affected the Irish population as a whole, including graduates of third level education. The Higher Education Authority collects, analyses and disseminates student and graduate related data returned to the HEA from all HEA-funded institutions annually. The HEA leads the strategic development of the Irish Higher Education and research system with the objective of creating a coherent system of diverse institutions with distinct missions.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the implementation of essential public health measures to contain the spread of the virus, resulted in the largest monthly increase in unemployment in the history of the State, back in March 2020. By the week ending April 24th, there were more than 1.1 million people in receipt of State support interventions to the labour market. Prior to the outbreak, conditions in the Irish Labour Market were close to full employment with over 2.3 million people in employment, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.7% in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to the official government website.

Despite challenging circumstances, more than three quarters of higher education students in the class of 2020 had jobs after nine months of graduation. The figures are contained in the Higher Education Authority’s graduate outcomes survey for the class of 2020. Graduates were surveyed after nine months of graduation. Average full time earnings for younger graduates were just under €32,600. Information Communication Technology (ICT) or technology graduates were the highest paid with just over €40,500, followed by engineering (€40.845) and education (€40,300). Arts and humanities were at the lowest (just under €28,000). Overall, most of the class of 2020 were working or due to start a job (76%, down 4% on 2018 records).

Employment rates were highest among education graduates (93%) and lowest for arts and humanities (53%) graduates. The largest drop in employment was amongst undergraduates of arts and humanities, social sciences, journalism, and services including hospitality and tourism. While there was a sharp drop in employment for some sectors, unemployment rates did not rise to the same extent as many graduates went on to further study. The data also shows a strong relationship between Leaving Certificate points and earnings. Graduates who achieved more than 500 points had the higher salaries, and at the other end of the scale, graduates that received less than 255 points had the lowest earnings.

Of those in employment, almost two-thirds of graduates are on permanent or open-ended contracts, which is a slight increase to the records shown for 2018. These contracts are most common in ICT and least common amongst education graduates. There has also been an increase in the proportion of students pursuing further study nine months after graduation (14%, up 1% from 2018). The proportion of students pursuing further study was highest again for arts and humanities graduates and lowest for education graduates. In Ireland, the most common programme type is undergraduate honours degree (53%), followed by taught masters (23%).

Minister for Further and Higher Education, Simon Harris TD, said that information revealed in the study by the Higher Education Authority’s graduate outcomes survey provides new insights about the impact of COVID-19 on student employment and further study rates in Ireland, during a period of unprecedented change in key parts of the economy. Higher Education Authority Chief Executive, Dr Alan Wall, stated that the dataset will help institutions and other stakeholders in “providing students with appropriate career advice and relevant information on their course choices.”

Image Credit: Irish Examiner

4

NEWS History Made with the Inaugural Intervarsity Law Summit

Issue 10 |Tuesday 1st March 2022 | University Express

ORLA LEAHY News Editor

The Intervarsity Law Summit, spearheaded and hosted by the University College Cork Law Society, took place in the Rochestown Park Hotel in Cork, from Friday, February 25th to Sunday, February 27th. It is the largest ever student-empowered law event. The inaugural Summit brought together all seven university law schools and law societies in the country, as well as thirteen of Ireland’s leading law firms, and ultimately embraced the chosen theme of “Breaking Barriers: Let the Law Unite.”

saw firsthand the effects of violence on such relationships, and how relationships are pulled apart by violence. She learned that, “you can’t paint people with just one stereotype.”

McAleese’s father “respected education”, and when the new Education Act in Northern Ireland came in during the 70s, he looked at it as an opportunity for McAleese and her siblings to receive educational training that he did not himself. McAleese’s mother threw a priest out of the house, when he told McAleese that she would not make it as a lawyer because she was a woman, and had no family in the legal profession. Her mother then told her not to listen to him, and McAleese later qualified as a Barrister at Law, and was one of three women to be called to the bar in her year. Ultimately, her parents strived to create educational opportunities for her that they did not have themselves.

Bailey Lane, Auditor of the 92nd session of the UCC Law Society, first had the idea for the Summit back in April 2021.

Anna O’Doherty, the Summit Convenor for the UCC Law Society, Bailey, and a subcommittee composed of seven law students, have worked tirelessly to turn their vision for the Summit into a highly successful and prestigious event, one of the largest in this year’s legal calendar. Professor Crowley asked McAleese what barriers she believes lie ahead. She referred to the European Convention on the Human The weekend kicked off with the semi-finals and final of Rights of the Child. The convention changed the dynamic of parentthe Intervarsity Mock Trial competition. UCC took on child relationships, for the better. From here on out, children, Trinity College Dublin, and UCD took on NUIG in the semi- particularly adolescents, need to be provided with the information finals. UCC and UCD then progressed to the final. The final to allow them to develop ideas, opinions and freedom of speech. was judged by the Honourable Ms. Justice Mary C. Irvine, President of the Irish High Court, the Honourable Mr. Justice A united Ireland is an important ambition of McAleese’s. She Gerard Hogan of the Supreme Court, and the Honourable Mr. would love to see an Ireland created that is a “house” for all, a united Justice Liam McKechnie, formerly of the Supreme Court. Ireland which everyone contributes to. She stated that, “partition After a fascinating and engaging mock trial, UCC ultimately robbed us of the full potential for Ireland to work together.” succeeded in acting for the defence. Harry Emerson and Fabia “What advice would you give to our students?” asked Professor Shaw claimed the title as counsel for the defendant, with the Crowley. “Stand your ground, never ever be afraid to stand support of their witnesses, Heather O’Leary and Mark Cooper. your ground.” McAleese encouraged students listening to In the evening, former Uachtarán na hÉireann, Mary McAleese, stand up not only for their personal beliefs, but to stand up delivered the keynote address at this weekend’s historic, first- for those beliefs that others require help to stand up for. ever Intervarsity Law Summit. Mary McAleese was awarded Friday evening concluded with an excellent opportunity for the ‘Orientem Solem Award’, in acknowledgment of the barriers students and attendees to network, with a widely attended mixer that she has broken throughout her career as an academic, event. The event featured a raffle, in aid of the Summit’s charity author, barrister and jourrnalist, and for being an inspirational partner, the Aiséirí Aislinn Centres. Áiséirí Aislinn Centres figure to law students. McAleese was welcomed by opening function to support young people in Ireland who are struggling addresses from the Auditor of the UCC Law Society, Bailey with addiction. The Centres offer support services and counselling Lane, the Intervarsity Summit Convenor, Anna O’Doherty, to those recovering from addiction and to their loved ones. and the Dean of the UCC School of Law, Professor Mark Poustie. Professor Louise Crowley of the UCC School of Law The mooting quarter-finals, semi-finals, and final took place on chaired the event and introduced Mrs. McAleese to the stage. Saturday morning. The Honourable Ms. Justice Marie Baker of McAleese addressed attendees on Friday, February 25th, the Supreme Court judged UCC v. UCC in one of the semi-finals. between 18:25 and 19:25 on the first evening of the Intervarsity The Honourable Mr. Justice David Keane of the Supreme Court, Law Summit. McAleese spoke on a variety of topics, including Eithne Kavanagh of UCC, Claire Collins, a Barrister at Law in her childhood and education, growing up during the Troubles, Cork, and the Honourable Ms. Justice Helen Boyle of the Cork the future of Ireland and the future of children’s rights. Circuit Court judged the final. UCC’s Max Philpott and Eve McAleese grew up in Ardoyne, North Belfast, with 70% O’Shaughnessy were ultimately successful in the final against unemployment, which became known as “The Ardoyne” Trinity College Dublin’s Eoin Jackson and Anne Spillane. over the course of the Troubles. She and her family were the Following the mooting, a sponsored lunch and networking event first Catholics on their street in a primarily protestant area. took place with the law firms who kindly sponsored the Summit.

By growing up with many protestant friends, McAleese The event functioned as an excellent opportunity for law

Issue 10| tuesday 1st march 2022 | University Express

NEWS

5

Image Credits: Jonas Puidokas

students to learn more about the work of the firms, and to build connections, in advance of summer internship and traineeship applications.

The weekend peaked with the Intervarsity Summit Gala, which began with a prosecco reception, and was followed by a threecourse dinner in the beautiful Estuary Suite. Students continued to arrive for the afters of the Gala which featured up and coming band, the Off Beats, and late night DJ. Attendees enjoyed a highly atmospheric night of superior quality entertainment.

The weekend long event closed on Sunday with a panel discussion that embraced the Summit’s chosen theme. Gina Martin opened the discussion with her pre-recorded welcome video. Gina Martin is an English political activist and author. In her speech, she said that breaking barriers is, “actually really hard. It takes a lot of courage to break barriers.” she concluded by saying, “I hope that you go outside of the realm of what’s expected of you.”

Declan Walsh, Vice Dean for Internationalisation in the UCC School of Law chaired the live panel discussion, featuring Senator David Norris, who changed the Irish landscape of rights for LGBTQI+ individuals in Ireland with his case at the European Court of Human Rights, Norris v. Ireland, Dr. Rhona Mahony, first female Master of the National Maternity Hospital, and Colm O’Gorman, Executive Director of Amnesty International Ireland.

Key parts of the insightful and comprehensive discussion included Senator Norris speaking about his landmark case that changed Ireland’s perception of the LGBTQI+ community.

“I wanted to exhaust the domestic remedies’’, Senator Norris stated, prior to taking the case to Europe. He acknowledged the work of his team, and his “star witnesses.” O’Gorman acclaimed the work of Senator Norris, for the LGBTQI+ community, “it was massive.” He himself would have been unable to achieve what he did during his career without Norris breaking barriers.

Dr. Mahony has “been on the frontline of women’s healthcare” and has observed that women’s healthcare is often overlooked.

One of the largest barriers to women’s careers is that of childbirth. It is perceived as a problem, but in fact it adds to

women’s career landscapes, and they must overcome societal challenges, such as childcare. Dr. Mahony looked at whether fertility should be part of the workplace conversations. “It is about attitude and it is about culture.” By recognising our attitudes to societal and cultural issues realting to matters such as women’s healthcare, we can overcome barriers. Dr. Mahony spoke of the importance of early education for children. She spoke of the challenge of the pandemic for women with young children, trying to educate them. “It is time to start seeing the potential, the opportunity,” rather than the judgement that has led to failures in both education and healthcare.” Dr. Mahony praised the endeavours of the law students assembled, “it is so inspiring…to imagine the capability of this room.”

O’Gorman urged students to challenge injustice wherever they see it. He recognised the issue of class, and how barriers relating to this need to be broken. “If you seriously believe in justice, and you seriously believe in equality…have a finely honed eye and ear…there are constantly orthodoxies that need to be overcome.”

Dr. Mahony spoke about the challemhges associated with advancing technology. People have moved away from dense reading in favour of short slogans and tweets. She observed that institutions of state are fragile across the globe and that misinformation is an alternative to a physical weapon, “feeding people information…that becomes so sophisticated.” People need to be given the opportunity to critically think. One of the biggest challenges for the students assembled will be overcoming misinformation, and having correct information. She concluded by stating that the students assembled are facing a challenging world, with the climate crisis amongst other challenges, and she encouraged all to make good, kind decisions, “to accept all of us…get interested by people…most of all, make your mark…you hold society’s future, you hold the world’s future in your hands.”

As Bailey Lane concluded in his closing statement, “ní neart go cur le chéile.” The momentous inaugural Intervarsity Law Summit shone a light on the fact that together we are stronger, and that together we can overcome the barriers in life to create a better, more just society for us all.

6

NEWS The Economics of Ireland’s Housing Crisis Issue 10 |Tuesday 1st March 2022 | University Express

ORLA LEAHY News Editor

On Tuesday, February 8th, the UCC Economics Society held a panel discussion on Ireland’s Housing Crisis. The event was hosted by Chairperson of the Economics Society, Calum O’Donnell, and featured four distinguished guest speakers, including Counsellor Ms. Gillian Coughlan, the Lord Mayor of County Cork, Mr. Conor O’Connell, director of the Construction Industry Federation, Ms. Fiona Dunkin, policy advisor at Clúid Housing, an Approved Housing Body (AHB), and Mr. Hugh Brennan, the founder of Ó Cualann Housing. The panel discussion functioned to shine a light on the current barriers to housing in Ireland, and what we can do in Ireland to overcome the crisis.

What are the current problems?

Counsellor Coughlan drew attention to the fact that there are two key issues, demand and supply. The current demand for housing exceeds the rate at which houses can be developed. She noted that quite often the variety of services required to build housing are overlooked.

Services such as water, which would have been governed by the County Council, are now governed by other governmental bodies, such as Irish Water. Ultimately, whilst many consider housing to equate to homes, others equate housing to costs, such as mortgages, electricity etc. While demand for housing is very much there, smaller landlords view housing as commodities, and until society sees housing as homes alone, speculation will remain part of the cause for our housing crisis.

Mr. O’Connell notes that the law has a role to play, as regulations are constantly increasing which have a negative impact on the supply of vital products required in the construction industry. The over-regulation and centralisation of certain services, such as water, creates complications, which culminate in higher prices, negatively impacting the supply of construction services. Development costs, construction costs, and for social houses, the lifetime maintenance costs, all contribute to our current shortage of housing. Mr. O’Connell observed that, “we should not forget the policy mistakes of the past” and that currently, “our biggest obstacle is the regulatory system.”

Ms. Dunkin highlighted the prevalence of cost deficiencies, and

the lack of bulk production of housing. She suggested that the collaboration between local authorities within the construction industry to facilitate bulk procurement would overcome this difficulty. Ultimately, however, the vast numbers on social housing and HAP waitlists create a significant barrier. Clúid Housing strives to provide housing for life to those on waitlists.

Mr. Brennan spoke about the difficulties of developing affordable houses. In Ó Cualann’s most recent housing project, they succeeded in developing and selling A2 rated houses, 3 bed, 7km from Dublin’s city centre at €219,000. On the other hand, private developers, who are not AHBs, will add a margin to make as large a profit as possible, which ensures that houses constructed by private developers are more expensive. Furthermore, the cost of supplies, even basic materials such as timber, are reflected in the higher prices of privately developed homes. Complications arising throughout construction also hinder development, in particular where diversions arise due to the installation of water mains etc.

What are Ireland’s possible solutions?

Counsellor Coughlan spoke about the Affordable Housing Bill 2020, and praised the renovation home scheme, which she encouraged citizens to apply for. She also acclaimed the dereliction scheme, which facilitates the clearing of old, derelict houses, particularly in cities, in favour of highly functioning, accessible apartments. Ultimately, “Housing for All’’, is a work in progess, with Counsellor Coughlan, “welcom[ing] it, but that it will need to be nuanced slightly.”

Mr. O’Connell, acclaimed the endeavours of AHBs instead of social housing. 70%-80% of those renting houses want to buy their own houses, there were 3,100 houses commenced in Cork city and county last year. He stated that the continuation of such initiatives may eventually meet the demand for housing in Cork. Mr. O’Connell said that we ought to learn from our previous mistakes, for example, spatial and regional planning in Dublin failed us. With the mountains to the south, the coast to the east, the airport and port to the north, and pharmaceuticals and warehouses to the west, Dublin is overly centralised and such mistakes cannot be afforded in other counties.

NEWS

Issue 10| tuesday 1st march 2022 | University Express

7

Image Credits: UCC Economics Society

Cost rental, Ms. Dunkin stated, works to build up and develop a stock of affordable housing for those who do not qualify for social housing but are experiencing financial difficulty and cannot afford rent. Once Clúid pays off the mortgage, the rents decrease. Cost rental is supported by government funding, as laid out in “Housing for All”, to ensure that it is accessible to a broader group. Clúid focuses on home ownership rather than leasing, as Ms. Dunkin notes, “why lease it when you can own it?” It is more affordable to run your home, once you own it, rather than run a privately rented house. Whilst pro-ownership is optimal, the negative impacts on our social welfare system, such as pensions must be borne in mind and dealt with. The objectives of the scheme are ambitious, requiring serious “man power”, but may not be wholly sufficient to meet targets. 33,000 units per year does not incorporate latent demands.

Mr. Brennan has praised the “rebuild your own home” scheme. Under the scheme, housing is affordable where occupants are not paying 35% of their net income on home maintenance. Across Europe, the norm is 33%, whilst Ó Cualann believes that 30% or less of net income on home maintenance constitutes affordable. Accordingly, the

scheme almost meets Europe and Ó Cualann’s rates. Ó Cualann aims to increase home ownership, but rental schemes to offer increased security of tenure are also required. Mr. Brennan drew attention to BOK LOK which is based in Sweden, and profit greatly from apartments designed and marketed for a teacher and a child specifically. This highlights the potential for affordable private development in Ireland.

Were affordable housing truly implemented, disposable income would increase greatly, boosting Ireland’s economy. For example, in Ballymun, should affordable housing be implemented, an additional 13m disposable income would greatly boost the locality, with 60% of 13m spent in the location. Mr. Brennan also mentioned the important opportunity to enshrine the right to a home in our constitution.

Conclusion Mr. Brennan summarised Ireland’s needs in three parts, “the right housing, in the right location, at the right price.” Overall, retro-fitting, accessible, and environmental universal designs will form an integral part of the effective utilisation of Ireland’s resources to overcome our current crisis, according to Counsellor Coughlan. As Ms. Dunkin noted, “the decisions that we make will have impacts for decades to come.”

8

BYSTANDER FEATURES

Issue 10 |Tuesday 1st March 2022 | University Express

#YESITSABUSE – Identifying Red Flags of Abusive Behaviour MAEVE O’KEEFFE Features Editor

On the 21st and 22nd of February, UCC’s WiSTEM society hosted a workshop as part of Women’s Aid’s “Too Into You” campaign, followed by a talk with Mary Hayes, Project Leader of the “Too Into You” campaign. While some of the topics covered in Mary Hayes’s pertinent and insightful talk have been touched upon in previous issues of this section, she also highlighted some commonly overlooked red flags that can precede other abusive behaviours in relationships. Given what Hayes described as the “insidious” nature of abuse, what may initially seem like romantic or passionate gestures at the beginning of a relationship can actually be indicators of possessiveness or manipulation by one’s partner.

Love-bombing: Love-bombing is a particularly pernicious manipulation tactic used in the early stages of dating or relationships, because it can be irresistibly alluring. Essentially, love-bombing is when one partner “lavishes the other with their time, praise, and gifts” early on. This can involve excessive compliments, expensive gifts, spending lots and lots of time together, and indicating a desire to make the relationship serious or exclusive very quickly. Though these may seem like extravagant displays of romance, Hayes warns that this showering of affection and attention can actually operate as a “smoke-screen for abusive behaviour later on” in the relationship.

Love-bombing functions on the principle of reciprocity. If someone appears to be excessively loving and caring towards us, it is natural for us to feel like we owe them something in return. The love-bomber creates the illusion that they are the perfect partner. If you’ve been searching for love, when suddenly you encounter a partner who tells you that they’ve never met anyone like you before, and that they think you might be their soulmate, all while lavishing you with flattery and gifts, it is not surprising that you would be taken in by them. One might feel overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude and longed-for validation. And while these acts may indeed be reflective of sincere romance, they are often the actions of narcissists who manipulate their partners and make them feel totally dependent on them.

For instance, love-bombing can precede coercive control, or the insidious isolation of the victim from their support units. When the love-bomber waxes lyrical about how they want to spend all of their time with their partner, the victim of love-bombing may find themselves cut off from the friends they used to rely on, and if the behaviour escalates and becomes more abusive, the victim may feel like they have no other option but to stay in the abusive relationship.

Equally, the love-bomber may use their excessive gestures of affection to make demands of their partner, Hayes explained, giving the example of how the love-bomber might feel entitled to sex after buying their partner a nice dinner or expensive jewellery.

Negging: Negging is another form of emotional manipulation that is very easily dismissed as “slagging” or “banter.” Hayes described negging as back-handed compliments that undermine the receiver’s self-esteem, increasing their need to earn the approval of the manipulator. Hayes used screenshots of messages on dating apps to illustrate the issue of negging, with messages like, “You’re actually quite bright for a blonde,” and “I don’t normally like fat girls, but you’re actually pretty,” among the examples she gave the audience.

Like other forms of abuse, negging may seem harmless initially, but persistent insults masquerading as compliments can really damage the victim’s self-esteem, rendering them even more vulnerable to other forms of abuse in the relationship.

Gaslighting: Gaslighting has become a commonly used word in our modern vernacular, but many are not sure exactly what it means. Hayes described gaslighting as “an extremely effective form of emotional abuse that makes the victim question their own perceptions and judgement.” The abuser misleads the victim, creating the false narrative that the victim is being melodramatic, or is unreliable, unstable, or crazy, when challenged about their behaviour. The gas-lighter will deny any wrongdoing, and can even depict themselves as the victim, even when the evidence directly contradicts their version of events.

Gaslighting can involve making comments like, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” “You were so drunk, you definitely can’t remember what actually happened,” “You’re always twisting things,” or “I would never do that, why are you saying I would do that?” Gaslighting behaviour can vary from undermining the experiences of the victim, to claiming that the victim is mistaken, and that their perceptions and recollections are deceiving them. Sometimes the abuser might even deliberately hide their partner’s belongings, in an attempt to corroborate their false narrative that their partner is crazy or unable to account for themselves. This erodes the victim’s self of sense. As well as having an abrasive effect on the victim’s self-esteem and self-worth, and making them doubt their entire reality, gas-lighting can also inhibit victims from reporting their abuser, for fears that they will not be believed.

Although we must all strive to be vigilant to red flags like these, it is important to remember only to intervene if it does not put anybody at risk. Too Into You offer a 24 hour helpline service which you can contact by phoning 1800 341 900 if you are concerned that you or someone you know might be a victim of intimate relationship abuse. As well as this, there is an instant messaging service that can be accessed via the Too Into You website - https:// toointoyou.ie/. Women’s Aid will be launching their #YesItsAbuse campaign in coming days, so follow their social media channels for more insight into these issues and resources for victims.

10

FEATURES Bedtime Reading: The Facts and Fiction of Sleep

Issue 10 |Tuesday 1st March 2022 | University Express

MAEVE O’KEEFFE Features Editor

I have yet to seek corroboration from my parents, but from my own recollections, I have always loved going to bed. There were no nightly battles over brushing my teeth, or pleads to stay up late watching TV. I was quite content to be tucked in snuggly, chat to my teddy bears for a little while, or in later years, read a few chapters of a book, and doze off. I maintained this reverence for bedtime throughout my teenage years, even when tempted to stay up late cramming for exams, or scrambling to get homework finished. In leaving cert, I took my study of Shakespeare’s Macbeth very seriously, abiding by the idea of sleep as the “balm of hurt minds;” “Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care […] chief nourisher in life’s feast.”

Among my friends, it became a running joke that I could never stay awake past midnight, as the first one to doze off at sleepovers or in the car after a night out. I had a constant appreciation for the value of my eight hours sleep as an absolute minimum, with a regular, reliable, and sufficiently restful sleep schedule that I loved.

Until I came to college, that is, when sleep fell to the wayside for me, like so many of my peers. With quite a shock, I realised I could survive on very few hours of sleep. I discovered the wonders of caffeine, and soon felt dependent on my morning cappuccino to even be able to feign concentration in lectures. I found that an americano after dinner worked wonders in pulling me through a late-night study session in Boole Library, and yes, it was indeed possible to work a full day in my minimum wage summer job having not slept a wink the night before. Don’t get me wrong, I still loved waking up fresh as a daisy after a good night’s sleep, but it was becoming an increasingly rare phenomenon. There were just so many other things to prioritise, that eight hours of sleep didn’t feel all that important.

You see, the benefits of good sleep are largely hidden from us, when compared with alternative ways to spend your time. When an essay or assignment is due soon, it feels like a better use of time to stay up late working on it, as opposed to clocking out and heading to bed. Similarly, the short-term satisfaction of heading on a night out, binging one more episode on Netflix, or wasting another hour scrolling on TikTok feel more immediately rewarding than sleep.

Depriving ourselves of sleep is one of the most normalised ways in which we neglect our health. Eating an unhealthy diet or not exercising can often be perceived as personal failures, indicative of gluttony or laziness in a culture obsessed with diet. When someone voluntarily neglects their sleep, however, the fault is not placed on them, but is instead viewed as a benign side-effect of having a fulfilling and busy life. I do not mean to suggest that we should shame people who struggle to meet eight hours of sleep a night, but merely wish to highlight how blasé our attitudes can be when it comes to sleep deprivation.

Perhaps this is down to ignorance. We all know we should try to get enough sleep, but the effects of inadequate sleep are often so long-term that many of us wonder if we really need eight hours of sleep every night. Lots of people fail to realise that sleep is anything more than just a time to rest. Given the fact that we spend about a third of our lives sleeping, it makes sense that our body uses time spent sleeping to maintain optimum functioning.

The brain is reliant on sleep to recharge. When we are sleep deprived, we are increasingly vulnerable to reduced cognition and difficulty paying attention. Sleep deprivation also inhibits the brain’s ability to make new memories, meaning that what you’ve been told a million times by

parents, teachers, and lecturers is true; pulling an all-nighter before a big exam is probably not a good idea, even if it feels necessary at the time. In fact, according to Matthew Walker, author of the best-selling Why We Sleep, after 19-20 hours of wakefulness, an individual’s mental capacity has deteriorated so much that it is comparable to being legally drunk behind the wheel of a car. An estimated 20% of car crashes can be attributed to tired drivers. Even after losing one hour of sleep, as we do once a year when the clocks go forward for daylight savings, car accident rates spike. Though it would be practically impossible to monitor the sleepiness of drivers in the same way that breathalysers detect alcohol consumption, the comparison is important to keep in mind. You wouldn’t sit behind the wheel while intoxicated, and we need to view sleep deprivation in a similar light.

As well as this, there has been budding research exploring the relationship between sleep deprivation, a toxic protein called beta amyloid, and Alzheimer’s disease. Accumulations of beta amyloid protein are found in the brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s, but researchers are currently exploring how sleep deprivation can lead to a build up of beta amyloid in the brain.

Chronic sleep deprivation is therefore being investigated as a significant risk factor in the development of Alzheimer’s.

The risks of sleep deprivation extend beyond impairing our cognitive performance. Sleep is necessary for our optimum functioning of the immune system too. Sleep deprivation can totally deplete some of the body’s vital immune cells, with the connection between insufficient sleep and the development of the common cold and other ailments is well established.

Of course, I was oblivious of these health risks until I came to college, which, coincidentally, was when I began to neglect my sleep.

Perhaps my former prioritisation of a good night’s sleep is down to some of the frequently brandished pearls of wisdom I was solemnly informed of as a child. For instance, I was always led to believe that “An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after midnight,” and that, “early to bed and early to rise, makes a [wo]man healthy, wealthy and wise.” But is there any truth to these old phrases?

Research suggests that some of us are indeed night owls or morning larks by nature. While the majority of us will fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, it is genuinely more difficult for a night owl to go to sleep early, whereas morning larks find it unnatural to lie-in.

As well as this, one’s preference can change throughout the lifespan, with research also indicating that many adults of college-attending age are more likely to find a later bedtime more comfortable, so you’re not alone if your best-laid plans for an early morning library session often fall through in favour of the snooze button.

These differences are due to your circadian rhythm, or your body’s internal clock, which runs on a 24-hour cycle. This internal clock is in synchronisation with the rhythms of our environment. Cues such as daylight cause us to be alert and wakeful, and as the sun sets and daylight fades in the evening, the pineal gland in the brain releases melatonin, a hormone which makes us feel somnolent and sleepy. This explains why navigating a nocturnal schedule, due to shift work, for instance, can be challenging. Equally, many of you might be familiar with how jet-lag can throw your circadian rhythm into revolt, and make synchronisation of one’s circadian rhythm more difficult than usual.

On a more day-to-day level, however, sleeping in for hours longer on

Issue 10| tuesday 1st march 2022 | University Express weekends compared to weekdays is not helpful for the maintenance of regular sleep-wake cycles, and so trying to maintain routine in your sleep schedule is advised. Of course, this is easier said than done, particularly if you work night shifts in a hospital, or behind a bar, or are caring for a young baby who awakens frequently during the night.

Overriding one’s internal clock and circadian rhythms can not only cause insomnia, or make us feel drowsy during the day, but it also meddles with some other aspects of the body’s natural functioning. For instance, weight gain has been recognised as a potential consequence of insufficient sleep. When we are sleep deprived, our body may secrete the hormone ghrelin, which can lead to increased appetite. One’s metabolism can also be affected by restricted or disordered sleep, which may also contribute to weight gain. Aside from these explanations, some researchers proffer the simple explanation of how fatigue caused by sleep deprivation may render an individual too tired to engage in physical activity, leaving them susceptible to weight gain and its associated health implications, including increased risk of coronary heart disease.

Another more overlooked consequence of sleep deprivation is poor mental health. After even a single night of poor sleep, an individual can be left feeling angrier and more anxious, with poorer impulse control, all of which can adversely affect how they engage with friends and family every day. Our circadian rhythm plays a role in regulating some of the neural systems that influence emotion, so changes in mood and the exacerbation of mood disturbances is a natural consequence of neglecting your body’s circadian rhythm.

One of the most fascinating aspects of sleep is the study of dreams, and understanding why we dream. Dream interpretation is often used as a psychoanalytic technique, with the aim of uncovering how dreams reflect the individual’s unconscious drives, thoughts, and fears. In Sigmund Freud’s famous “The Interpretation of Dreams,” dreams were described as “disguised fulfilment of repressed wishes.” Though many psychologists since then have disputed the claims made about dreams by Freud, there is still little consensus over what precise role dreams play. Some argue that dreams have no real function, others understand their function as assisting in the consolidation of memories and processing of emotions. This might explain why so many people report having stress dreams before important moments in life, like dreaming that you lose all of your teeth while going through a

FEATURES

11

break-up, or tumbling off a mountain the night before a big exam. Thought of this way, we can understand sleep as helping us work through adversities and stressors, as well as regulating our body’s physical functioning.

Perhaps the frightening potential consequences of sleep deprivation may seem like drastic scaremongering, rendering my insomniac readers even less likely to get any shut-eye, due to preoccupations with the ramifications of their sleeplessness. Of course, this is not my intention. The effects of chronic sleep deprivation accumulate, but that does not mean that one cannot improve their sleep quality and duration. Aside from just avoiding all-nighters, the practice of what is known as sleep hygiene can help us reach that coveted eight hours of sleep each night. Sleep hygiene can mean different things for different people, so you may need to try out a few different steps before you find something that works for you. · Experts recommend having a fixed wake-up time and a nightly routine. Setting aside even thirty minutes before bedtime to engage in a relaxing activity like meditation can be particularly useful. · While many of us are prone to the pre-bedtime TikTok scrolls or Tinder swipes, looking at your screen right before bed causes mental stimulation which is not constructive to winding down, and the blue light emitted from the screen can inhibit melatonin production. · As well as this, getting outdoors and exposing yourself to natural daylight can help support your circadian rhythm. · Try to make your bedroom as calming as possible too, investing in black-out blinds and earplugs can help if you’re living in a noisy College Road house. · It may seem obvious, but cutting down on caffeine is one of the best ways you can possibly improve your sleep, even by limiting yourself to one cup of coffee a day, taken before lunchtime. · Though it might feel like you sleep like a baby after a few pints, in reality, alcohol can decrease the quality of sleep, so reducing alcohol can benefit your sleep. · Experts have also identified dining late as a barrier to good quality sleep, as the body is still digesting the food when you go to bed (so those vodka RedBulls followed by curry chips at 2am are probably not as good an idea as you might think at the time).

12

OPINION

Issue 10 |Tuesday 1st March 2022 | University Express

Our Own Doing

AOIFE E OSBORNE Newspaper Designer

When I say ‘accessibility,’ a lot of you are probably imagining physical supports and signs like designated parking spaces, wheelchair ramps and the like. And while these are all absolutely valid representations and it’s no secret that large areas of UCC’s campus are highly inaccessible and not wheelchair friendly, there’s also the issue of accessibility for students with many students with what are called ‘hidden disabilities.’

When I was in my First Year at UCC, I’d come into a totally unfamiliar environment following a gap year after a stressful Leaving Cert. For context, I actually essentially homeschooled myself through my Sixth Year at secondary school due to debilitating depression and anxiety. Looking back now, I think coming back into a classroom environment was a cross between being constantly triggered and reminded of my school days, while still processing a severe mental illness in a challenging environment. I never missed tutorial or group project classes, but I struggled with attending lectures and more often than I’d like to admit, I found myself relying on notes from my wonderful friends and PowerPoint presentations which were uploaded to Blackboard afterwards. To this day, I’m still not entirely sure how I managed to get through the year academically but one thing I’m sure of is that if I’d had access to online lectures, everything would have been so much easier.

Though I’ve now grown to love lecture halls most of the time, there are still days when they’re just too loud, too busy, too noisy and I am too much - well, myself. I’m too aware of my surroundings to pay attention to the lecture, being surrounded by people makes me uncomfortable and I hate trying to keep up with listening to what the lecturer says and taking notes and understanding the content of the lecture. This has become particularly true after returning to ‘normality’ so quickly after restrictions were lifted - I’m still waiting for my social stamina battery to recharge, I haven’t fully acclimated to being around large crowds of people yet and like many, I’m still worried about the virus which makes it hard to fully relax in a lecture hall, nevermind actually enjoy it.

I was curious to see if I was the only one of my friends who felt this way, so I decided to ask the question to as many people as I could. My fellow Express colleague, the wonderful Caitríona O’Connell shared my opinions. ‘Online lectures are the reason I’m able to get the most of my college experience to be honest, because I can go at my own pace. Having dyspraxia, my ability to take down information is quite a lot slower than the average student so being able to slow down means I’m able to take everything in. I can pause if I need a break or to look something up, rewind if I didn’t get what they said or just need to clarify a point in my head. They’re also the best study aid possible because you have the points right in front of you instead of rushed notes that make no sense.’ Caitríona noted that like me, she doesn’t think she’d pass her modules without online lectures. And from what I saw when I popped a question box on my Instagram story, we’re not alone in loving the choice to log on.

Several people contacted me to tell me that they found online lectures helpful for many reasons - be that revision, or illness or even transport issues. As someone who lives at home and is very fortunate to have a patient guardian taxi service and a reliable bus route, accessing campus isn’t a problem for me but for those who live more rurally, or can’t afford outside accommodation, I can completely understand that studying online is more feasible and financially advisable, particularly given the high fees students already pay for classes. On the subject of money, a friend of mine who asked to remain anonymous admitted to working during the day and then catching up on his lectures when he gets home. ‘Between fees and rent, I can’t afford to work full time,’ he told me. ‘Back before online lectures, I’d dodge classes all the time to pick up extra shifts to avoid borrowing from my parents or worrying them. Since they started recording them, I can balance my work and education - my grades have gone up, and my stress has gone down. But now I’m worried about next year, and the prospect of them being removed - I know we throw the phrase ‘lifesaver’ around as a joke when describing online and recorded lectures, but for me, that’s exactly what they are.’

Some of the other responses I received were truly shocking. The other day, a friend of mine asked how my work with the Express was

Issue 10| tuesday 1st march 2022 | University Express

OPINION

13

come back to bite you in your behind. Whilst I can understand how frustrating it must be for lecturers to only have a percentage of students turn up for lectures if a student fails an exam because they don’t attend class either in-person or online, (read this next line in your best Cork Mammy voice, if you will) ‘tis their own doing. It is a lecturer’s responsibility to teach, and a student’s to study; whether inperson or by screen, does it matter which platform the student chooses when they are paying upwards of three grand a year for the pleasure?

If anyone, of any position of power or influence, is reading this little musing, I hope you take the time to consider it. If you’re a lecturer, I hope you take the time to consider recording your lectures where possible, upload them and work with your students who are unable to attend. If you already do, I hope you continue what you’re doing - I speak for all my fellow students when I assure you that we appreciate it more than words. If you’re in a position to advise on the upcoming academic year, I beg you to keep recordings of lectures on the table for the future. The pandemic may be almost over, but there is no respite for students living with difficulties and disabilities. We will still need these supports whenever normality resumes and removing them is just another mark against UCC’s track record for accessibility. And if you’re a student, make your voice heard. Take to Twitter, your lecturers, your friends, your department, the Student’s Union or indeed, news outlets. It’s your education, your exams, your fees; after all, the customer is always right.

going. I told her about this article, and her response angered me. She is currently living with chronic and persistent pain and is seeing a host of specialists as she waits for a diagnosis. As I edit this, she’s currently in A&E after another rough night. She wished to emphasise that the Spanish Department has been outstanding in their support, going above and beyond to make sure she can keep up with her work from home and for that, she is eternally grateful. The Irish Department, however, has left her hanging in the lurch, with one lecturer going so far as to dismiss her autoimmune condition and instead of telling her that she’s not sick, she’s lazy. Sadly, she’s not alone. In the course of research for this article I had students tell me certain lecturers refused to help students who were not coming to in-person classes - including those who were isolated with COVID-19. I have been told countless stories of lecturers being hostile towards students who tune in online, which I believe we must agree is unacceptable.

I do also want to point out, however, that my own lecturers don’t appear to have an issue with online lectures. They appear to agree with me that actually, for whatever reason a student doesn’t attend an in-person lecture, if they can catch up afterwards with an online recording then it’s all the same - and in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t actually matter. I don’t know if anyone else had this growing up, but my mother has a phrase which I’ve adopted; ‘tis your own doing.’ For anyone who’s not heard it, the saying is applied when the consequences of your actions - or indeed, lack thereof - have

14

30

BYLINE VOLUME 7 ISSUE 9

15

EDITORIAL

16

Issue TEN Hello! Welcome to another edition of Byline. By the time you read this, the troubling news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be widespread.

War in Europe is never something I expected to see in my lifetime and it is quite scary to think about. My support is with Ukraine as they try and fend off the scourge of Russian imperialism. I just hope there won’t be a catastrophic loss of life as a result of this aggression, but that seems like the most likely scenario which is a tragic thought.

Life goes on here at Byline, however. We have another enjoyable issue for you. I wrote about a topic that is near and dear to my heart - the esports community within UCC. Other articles include a sourdough starting tutorial, a look at new cloud gaming technology and some lessons that both STEM and Arts students alike can learn from. And as always, so much more! I hope you enjoy this issue.

Jack Coleman Byline Editor

byline@uccexpress.ie

HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED FOOD INSECURITY DURING THIS ACADEMIC TERM?

WE are a group of students carrying out a research study on the levels of food insecurity in UCC and its impact on students.

We would be really grateful if you could fill out this survey.

Your contribution will be anonymous.

For more information, please email 119708581@umail.ucc.ie

Gaeilge

18

Imeachtaí Seachtain na Gaeilge CAITRÍONA O’CONNELL Eagarthóir Gaeilge

Agus Seachtain na Gaeilge ag teacht inár dtreo, seo agaibh na himeachtaí a bheidh ar siúl i UCC de chuid na Cuallachta. Más rud é go bhfuil cúpla focail nó líofacht ar fad agat, tar chuig na himeachtaí iontacha a bheidh ar siúl le linn na céiliúradh. Tá na hamanna agus áiteanna ar champas fós le teacht agus mar sin coimeádaigí súil ar na meáin shóisialta le haghaidh níos mó sonraí!

2ú Márta 7ú Márta 8ú Márta 9ú Márta 10ú Márta 11ú Márta 14ú Márta

Céilí ar Champas (Aontas na Mac Léinn X An Chuallacht) Comórtas Sacar Pop-Up Gaeltacht Ceardlann Amhránaíochta Oíche Chultúrtha Tráth na gCeist Ciorcal Comhrá Coirm Cheol na Cuallachta Saol Ó Dheas ag craoladh beo Seoladh Iris Gaeilge Breac Bál na Gaeilge

gaeilge

19

Gradam na Gaeilge

CAITRÍONA O’CONNELL Eagarthóir Gaeilge Tá Gradam na Gaeilge á chur ar fáil arís tar éis dhá bhliain de bhriseadh. Seo gradam a chuireann Ionad na Gaeilge Labhartha ar fáil chun céiliúradh agus aitheantas a thabhairt do mhac léinn de chuid na hollscoile atá ag déanamh a ndícheall chun an Ghaeilge a chur chun cinn san ollscoil.

‘Táimid an sásta go bhfuil Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh chun an Gradam seo a íoc as seo amach.’

Deir mhuintir Ionad na Gaeilge Labhartha go bhfuil siad “thar a bheith buíoch den Dr. Diarmuid Ó Mathúna a thug urraíocht €1000 do Ghradam na Gaeilge ar feadh sé bliana. Tá an-chreidiúint ag dul dó as an tacaíocht fhadtéarmach san a choimeád an Gradam sa tsiúl. Táimid an sásta go bhfuil Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh chun an Gradam seo a íoc as seo amach. Tá an Gradam ar oscailt do mhic léinn cláraithe uile na hollscoile. “ De réir coinníollacha an Gradam, níl cead ag an mac léinn iad féinig a ainmniú don duais, caithfidh siad a bheith ainmnithe ag duine éigin eile. Scríobhann an duine sin tuairisc (dhá leathanach A4 as Ghaeilge) ar son an mac léinn fiúntach chun chur in iúl cén fáth go mbeadh an Gradam tuillte ag an duine sin. Chun chur isteach ar an nGradam, chaithfidh an mac léinn fiúntach an Ghaeilge a chur chun cinn ar fud na hollscoile. Is féidir leis seo a bheith trí imeachtaí trí Ghaeilge a eagrú leis An Chuallacht nó An Cumann Drámaíochta (ní leor a bheith ag freastal ar imeachtaí Gaeilge amháin a bheith i gceist) agus tógfar aon saghas imeachtaí san áireamh, más imeachtaí ceol, amhránaíochta, rince, spórt nó ócáidí sóisialta a bheadh i gceist. Tógfar eagrúchán imeachtaí d’áitritheoirí Áras Uí Thuama san áireamh. Más rud é go bhfuil an mac léinn gníomhach in eagrúchán imeachtaí Seachtain na Gaeilge nó Spraoi Cois Laoi mar shampla, nó páirteach i ndíospóireachtaí Gaeilge, chabhróidh se sin lena gcás chomh maith. Cuirtear sríbhneoireacht trí mheán na Ghaeilge san áireamh, más scríobh drámaí, prós, filíocht nó sna hirisí agus nuachtáin ar champas atá i gceist. Níl cead mac léinn a ainmniú don Gradam má tá sé buaite acu cheanna. Bronnfar an Gradam roimh dheireadh na bliana acadúla 2022.

An dáta deireanach le cur isteach ar an nGradam ná Déardaoin 31ú Márta 2022. Seol aon iarratas chuig g.labh@ucc.ie nó tabhar isteach chuig an Ionad Labhartha é. Tuilleadh eolas ar fáil in Oifig na Gaeilge Labhartha, Seomra G02, Áras Uí Rathaille, COC.

Byline focus

20 UCC’s Rebels: An Overview of Esports in UCC JACK COLEMAN Byline Editor

University College Cork is a place of many hobbies, there are societies and clubs that cater to the majority of interests. One that is near and dear to my heart is the esports scene in UCC, which currently operates under the banner of the Networking and Gaming society (Netsoc). I’m using my Byline piece this week to chronicle the history of esports in UCC as well as speak about the present and future of the scene.

few tournaments in late 2017. Though, participation does not always increase from split to split as people tend to be more enthusiastic about playing in September versus in February. Since ICE became defunct in 2021, the online marketplace GamerStore has sponsored collegiate esports and are financially backing Legion Collegiate, the governing body of Irish collegiate esports.

The esports scene in UCC came to life in 2017 with the founding of Irish Collegiate Esports (ICE), formerly the national body of collegiate esports in Ireland.

UCC teams generally compete under the banner of the UCC Netsoc Rebels since esports became an official part of Netsoc in 2019.

However, there have also been UCC teams that operate independently of Netsoc such as the successful UCC ZEN Valorant team. Though UCC has had a lot of very successful teams, the college’s trophy case is quite sparse. UCC recorded their first collegiate victory during the 2019 ICE Winter Siege where the Rebels saw off local rivals CIT in a hard-fought final. They wouldn’t be able to replicate this success going into 2020, where they finished runners-up in both Siege tournaments that year. Siege was retired after the final tournament in 2020 but will be returning this split. Perhaps UCC will make a comeback?

The esports scene in UCC came to life in 2017 with the founding of Irish Collegiate Esports (ICE), formerly the national body of collegiate esports in Ireland. One of our current players on the League of Legends team Aaron “Manixous” Manning participated on the first-ever UCC League of Legends team back in 2017. 1,500+ days later, he would play again for UCC as they won their first-ever collegiate League tournament, but we’ll get to that. The collegiate esports scene in Ireland has certainly grown since those first

UCC has been less successful in Counter-Strike, with the team’s career-best being the quarter-finals on three separate occasions.

The first instance came in 2019 when the Rebels’ first and second teams, captained by A1DO and Otter respectively, both escaped group stages in second place only to fall to UCD and TUD in the quarter-finals. Otter’s Rebels lineup once again made it through groups in Spring 2021, defeating UCD in the Ro16 before falling to the DCU Titans in the quarters. In the most recent collegiate split,

21

byline focus Finally, we come to my beloved League of Legends. League of Legends has long been the most popular Irish collegiate game.

With tournaments going all the way back to 2017, Irish collegiate League has a rich history. It took two years for a UCC lineup to make it out of the group stage amidst the Dublin dominance led by Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin and Technological University Dublin. Coincidentally, this was also my first split on the roster. The team fell to eventual runners-up TUD Apes T1 in the semi-finals. The team would not be able to replicate this success for the next two splits. However, with the addition of Erasmus student Rok “Gtrik” Fiser in Winter 2021, UCC were able to win League of Legends collegiate for the first time in the team’s history. The finals versus the dominant Technological University Dublin went all the way to five games and ended in a dramatic fashion with UCC coming out on top. As an added bonus, we will now be able to compete in the Amazon University Esports Masters next month against the best collegiate teams Europe has to offer. Exciting times.

The future of esports in UCC looks bright with all of our teams becoming more dedicated and competitive. With wins in Siege and now League, it’s proof that Cork can compete with dominant megacolleges like TUD. Often, as is the case in Rocket League, it’s a matter of a few games that separate UCC from another trophy. As it is my final year in UCC, I hope to leave League of Legends in UCC in a good spot with an active community. This split, we have our first League of Legends B team in over two years. We have teams competing in every main game and each of them is competitive.

Legion Collegiate Winter, the UCC Netsoc Rebels (under the new leadership of AnkleJoints) fell to Maynooth in the quarters. Hopefully, UCC CS:GO can kick on and break the quarter-final curse this Spring.

Rocket League in UCC has always been very active (hell, even I played a split on the third team last year). The team had a rocky start, failing to make it out of groups in their first two splits. However, with the addition of players like DLynch and Finbarr the team has improved greatly. In Rocket League Winter in 2020, UCC Netsoc Rebels Epsilon narrowly lost out to WIT in the quarter-finals. In Spring 2021, Epsilon would once again be eliminated in the quarters, this time by eventual champions NUIG. In the most recent split, Winter 2021, Epsilon would defeat QUB and NUIG in the playoffs before a heartbreaking 4-3 loss to old rivals WIT in the semi-finals. They would go on to handily defeat DCU in the third-place playoff to confirm their status as the third-best team collegiate Rocket League team. Hopefully DLynch, Finbarr and Anthony can kick on this split and bring home a trophy for UCC.

The only thing that’s really lacking within UCC esports is a cohesive community, communities tend to exist within their own game but they don’t tend to spread across games.

The only thing that’s really lacking within UCC esports is a cohesive community, communities tend to exist within their own game but they don’t tend to spread across games. I believe some kind of restructuring of our community is necessary but the specifics are complicated.

Should the UCC esports community be pursuing their own separate society or club for awareness purposes? This is a complicated question as the community has been relatively successful under Netsoc, albeit with a lack of actual communal spirit as I mentioned earlier. I firmly believe there are more players interested in esports in UCC than there are current players, but it can be difficult to find where the esports community is housed in UCC. It’s an interesting debate to have and people have different valid opinions on it.

Valorant is the youngest game in the Irish collegiate lineup, having only had two splits so far. The big rivalry in Irish collegiate Valorant is between our own UCC ZEN and the NUIG Griffins. NUIG got the best of UCC most recently in Legion Collegiate Winter, winning the finals 2-1 in a very hard-fought game. Unfortunately, UCC ZEN will not be competing in Legion Collegiate Spring so we may never see the rematch. However, UCC will continue to be represented by I personally am just happy to have won a collegiate tournament Ethi’s UCC Netsoc Rebels who were knocked out in the Ro16 in before I finish my undergraduate, here’s hoping we can win Winter but are looking to improve upon that performance this Spring. another split before I leave and make Ireland proud in Europe.

FILM & TV

22

The Resurgence of Comedy in Irish Film and Television CORMAC MCCARTHY Film & TV Editor

For a long while there, it seemed that Ireland’s international reputation for comedy would lie in the hands of just Father Ted, Mrs Brown’s Boys and Pat Short. All institutions unto themselves, however, it is nigh time for some fresh blood to be thrown into the mix.

the faint of heart and may lean more towards the dramatic side, are still two films that deserve a watch. The kitchen-sink realism of each intertwines with a wonderfully witty tone which makes the more poignant moments so wonderfully true to life.

And from this dearth in good quality Irish comedy, there comes a new roster of fresh minds eager to entertain and delight. Each film not only entertains but also celebrates all of the quirks to Irishness without ever veering towards a hint of Paddywhackery.

It’s not just films where we are seeing a blossoming new landscape for Irish comedians and comics, there are numerous television pieces that deserve to be celebrated.

A common theme throughout all of Irish comedy is the underdog and their efforts to succeed in the big bad world. Redemption of a Rogue and Deadly Cuts are two such films. I mention these two in particular as they are both available to stream on Netflix.

Derry Girls is now nearing the premiere of its third and final season. It is no secret to regular readers of the Express of my love of this show. It perfectly captures the madness of adolescence while never forgetting the deep horror and confusion that The Troubles brought to the North. It is a revelation.

Both black comedies deal with characters out of their depths while struggling to keep it all together. Deadly Cuts concerns a group of salon workers who take on the local mob in hilarious fashion in order to defend their local community. It is as hilarious as it is endearing. The cast has such wonderful chemistry together. I would nearly want to have a haircut there myself purely for the banter that occurs between them.

Graham Norton’s book Holding has finally been adapted into a tv series, premiering on ITV in three weeks time. The program concerns a murder in a breezy village in West Cork. If it is as anyway as charming as the novel, then It is sure to be a hoot. It features the comedic talents of Siobhán McSweeney, Charlene McKenna and Michael Fry.

Redemption of a Rogue was the winner of Best Irish Film at the Galway films festival. This dark and often sometimes unnerving comedy concerns a son’s return home to see his dying father in West Kerry. A credit that must be given to the film is its pitchperfect tone. The characters discuss sordid details of death in such a dry tone that it never once seems overdone or excessive.

Other comedies include The Drummer and the Keeper and Extraordinary. Two films about unlikely friendships and the trouble it causes for them. Two quite lighthearted films that highlight the busy burgeoning world that is Dublin city.

Dead Lies the Island and A Bump in the Road, while not for

For the more light-hearted comedy enthusiasts, there are the comedy efforts of sibling actors Brian and Domhnall Gleeson in Frank of Ireland. Set in Dublin, it tells the tale of thirty-something musician Frank whose efforts to finally put his life finally on track are often foiled by his own inability to focus or to not fall into every hijinks that come his way.

We would be remiss, of course, if we didn’t mention the efforts of impressionist extraordinaire, Oliver Callan. While Callan could never be accused of being up-and-coming, his tv show Callan’s Kicks has been praised as being a springboard for young Irish comedians to flex their comedic muscles. It is a marvellously biting satire of Irish life and is streaming currently on RTE Player.

FILM & TV

23

Lights, Camera, Music – The importance of a film’s soundtrack CORMAC MCCARTHY Film & TV Editor

Next month will mark the 1000th week in a row that the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction has rested in the top 100 soundtrack album charts. An incredible feat of an estimated 8 million units sold, it speaks to the enduring quality not just of the songs themselves but also to the association they have with the films themselves.

In recent years, there has been a certain boom in the number of films using a soundtrack in place of a score to convey the mood of a film. Filmmakers such as Edgar Wright and James Gunn are two such filmmakers who have managed to master the art of the musical compilation.

Gunn’s Guardian’s of the Galaxy varied collection of 70s and 80s soul-pop perfectly highlights the care-free nature of Peter Quill as well as being his very last connection to the real world. Gunn carries this over to the sequel where the songs chosen are deeper in subject matter and shows Quill’s growth as a person.

It asks the question: Would the film be of the same quality if not for that particular arrangement of songs?

Edgar Wright’s talent for soundtracks was perfectly illustrated through his film Baby Driver. Here, the music itself dictates both the pacing and the direction of the film.

The film’s many car chases and exciting moments are edited to the beats of the song playing. Genuinely, it is as exciting as it is fascinating to watch. The technical mastery from the filmmakers is a sight to behold.

It asks the question: Would the film be of the same quality if not for that particular arrangement of songs?

The answer is of course, absolutely not.

Songs such as Dick Dale’s “Miserlou” and Chuck Berry’s “You never can tell” are so intensely associated with the film their opening chords instantly brings to mind the scenes in which they feature.

When used correctly, the soundtrack can perfectly capture the tone of the film as well as the personality of the characters.

Of course, this means more than the tired cliché of the nerdy characters walking in slow motion to the beat of a hip-hop song, to highlight them going out of their comfort zone.

The soundtrack can often make a break a film, instantly setting the tone, guiding the audience through the film.

The soundtrack can often make a break a film, instantly setting the tone, guiding the audience through the film.

This is especially true for films such as Grease, Saturday Night Fever and Purple Rain, where the iconography of the pop songs chosen for the film carry the weaker plot and unpolished characters. The audience is so enthralled with the songs themselves that they do not care about such menial elements.

After all, what is more of an icon of 70s Disco culture than John Travolta strutting down the street to the opening riff of the Bee Gee’s “Saturday Night Fever”?

What really is quite special is when a single artist is chosen to write and perform the entire soundtrack album. Notable examples include Simon and Garfunkel’s work for The Graduate and Queen’s bombastic scoring of Flash Gordon.

The concept itself was initially used as a means of promotion within films where musical artists, by having their songs featured in a film, could expand their audience. It quickly evolved to become the art form that it is today, where the songs are so carefully picked and expertly chosen for having just the right mood.

Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Zemeckis were perhaps the strongest early proponents of the soundtrack. Their wide range of musical knowledge assisted them in perfectly conveying the tone and mood of the film. The soundtrack to Scorsese’s Goodfellas perfectly captures the devolution of Henry Hill’s character from a young man eager to prove himself to a deranged, drug abusive madman.

Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Zemeckis were perhaps the strongest early proponents of the soundtrack. Their wide range of musical knowledge assisted them in perfectly conveying the tone and mood of the film. The soundtrack to Scorsese’s Goodfellas perfectly captures the devolution of Henry Hill’s character from a young man eager to prove himself to a deranged, drug abusive madman.

Here the artist’s own style of playing often defines the tone of the film. Simon and Garfunkel’s softly spoken American folk perfectly captures the sense of Ennui within the film whereas Flash Gordon’s flamboyantly camp plot is complemented by Queen’s operatic gaudiness.

Like it or not, music is a universal element of our part of day to day lives.

Like it or not, music is a universal element of our part of day to day lives. So, it seems obvious that it should reflect accordingly in cinema. A song can catapult a film into cinematic hall of fame.

After all, Mike Myers, upon hearing that the producers were thinking of cutting Bohemian Rhapsody from the opening scene of Wayne’s World, threatened to leave the film. He explained that no other song would work as perfectly for the scene. The producers relented, and the rest is history.

FOOD & HEALTH

24

The Art of Sourdough NATHAN CAREY Food and Health Editor

About halfway through each semester, with exams looming and assignment deadlines galore, I tend to procrastinate. I’m sure that I’m not alone in this sentiment. Some folks like to watch Netflix, read a book, or just spend a few hours doing absolutely nothing. While all valid, my escape of choice usually involves baking. It can be cakes, cookies, or other sweet treats but more often than not I’ll end up baking a loaf of bread. This process became almost ritualistic during the course of the pandemic, breaking up monotonous days of sitting at my desk from dawn until dusk. Baking bread lends itself perfectly to a work from home lifestyle – checking in on a rising dough every couple of hours, giving it a fold here and there. The rise of baking in quelling anxiety and filling the procrastination void was supported by worldwide yeast shortages in late 2020 and early 2021. This shortage led to its own interesting consequence, an explosion of homemade sourdough. If you’ve been following my articles through the last few issues, you’ve no doubt heard me rave and ramble about my love for fermented foods. Sourdough was one of my original entry points to this wonderful world of microbes. I would spend hours researching the methods and practices of a host of professional chefs, online content creators

and anecdotes from everyday people on online baking forums.

I started chronicling my sourdough adventure on Instagram and before long I had people messaging me about my starter and how I got my loaves to rise. While the process is fairly straightforward, there are so many variables that can affect the outcome of the final product. Here, I’d like to share some of my tips and techniques for perfecting a sourdough loaf.

The first ingredient in any loaf of sourdough is the starter. This is arguably the most difficult part of the process and is where most problems arise. The bread we usually eat is leavened using some form of fast-acting (usually dried) yeast. This yeast is concentrated and ready to lift any loaf in a matter of hours.

In sourdough baking, starter takes the place of commercially packages yeasts. Starter is a mixture of water and flour that is left at room temperature and ‘fed’ for several days. This process allows naturally occurring yeasts present in the flour to grow and prosper and create a symbiotic community of wild yeast and lactic acid. When fed, the yeasts and lactic acid producing bacteria feed on carbohydrates in the flour and produce carbon dioxide, creating the characteristic bubbling of starter. Once acclimated, sourdough starter can last for months or even years.

FOOD & HEALTH

25

Sourdough bread

Ingredients: 1tsp salt 100g starter 125g water 300g strong white flour • Add flour, starter, water and salt into a large bowl. Mix well by hand or use a stand mixer.

SourdougH Starter To begin, on Day 1 place 25 grams of flour into a jar or container with a lid. It’s best to use unbleached flour or organic as these blends are more likely to have more natural yeasts present. Add 25 grams of water and mix well.

Place a lid loosely onto the container and leave it at room temperature for 24 hours. On Day 2 add 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water into the container. Mix well and cover again for 24 hours. On Day 3 remove all but 50 grams of the mixture. Add in a fresh batch of 50 grams of flour and 50 grams of water. Mix well and cover for 24 hours. You may see the pattern that’s emerging here – feed, remove and feed again. This is the basic method of preserving your starter. Days 4, 5 and 6 will be the exact same as day 3, keeping 50 grams of mixture each time before adding the feed. As the days progress you will see the starter become bubbly and it will rise and fall in the container. This is indicative of an active starter. By Day 7 your starter should be ready to bake with. After baking, remember to feed your remaining starter. It can then be placed into the fridge and fed once a week. When you’re ready to use it again, take it out of the fridge and feed it for 3 days before baking.

•

If kneading by hand, tip out onto a floured work surface and knead for about ten minutes until the dough is soft and elastic and there are no dry spots remaining.

•

To ensure the dough has been kneaded sufficiently, tear off a small bit and spread it out thinly between your fingers. If light can shine through the dough, it is kneaded enough. If the dough rips, continue to knead until it passes this ‘windowpane test.

•

Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and allow to rest undisturbed for 3 hours.

•

After 3 hours, knock the dough back out onto the counter and knead for 1 minute. Shape the dough into a tight boule and place it into a bowl (seam side up) lined with a clean dishtowel coated with flour (or use a proofing basket). Cover loosely with cling film.

•

This second rise will take much longer than traditional bread, anywhere from 5-10 hours at room temperature.

What I like to do is place it into the fridge and allow the dough to rise slowly overnight. If you use the fridge method take the dough out of the fridge 2 hours before you want to bake it.

•

Preheat an oven to 220 degrees Celsius and place a baking tray and a smaller tray filled with water into the bottom of the oven. The tray full of water will create steam and allow the bread to rise evenly.

•

When the larger baking tray is heated through, take it from the oven, dust with flour and carefully tip the boule of dough out onto it. Using a sharp knife slash lengthways across the top of the dough to give room for rising.

•

Place the dough into the oven and bake for around 35 to 40 minutes until golden brown.

•

Remove the loaf and allow to rest on a wire rack until completely cooled (around an hour).

If your starter doesn’t make the dough rise the first time around do not fret! When I started my sourdough journey I created some very dense frisbee-like loaves the first few times. Minimal rising is almost always linked to how active your starter is. To ensure a successful loaf, feed your starter roughly 2-3 hours before you plan on mixing the dough. This is when the starter is most active and the largest population of wild yeasts are present. Once you get the hang of things you can start customising your loaves with different flours or add-ins. Using some rye flour in place of white flour creates a nuttier, more complex flavour for example. If your loaves still aren’t coming out great, there are countless resources online to help you on your way. If you’re a fan of physical reading check out ‘Flour Water Salt Yeast’ by Ken Forkish. This book helped me immensely when I was getting started. Whether you get stuck in baking sourdough bread or just admire the work from afar, we can all agree on the satisfaction of creating something so tasty from 4 simple ingredients.

As always if you make any of the recipes featured in the Express, we would love to see them!

You can post a picture on Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #ExpressCooks.

MUSIC

26

Taking “Take Me To Church” to the Music Theory Classroom FLORRIE MCCARTHY Music Editor

If you don’t know me personally, then I should tell you I’m currently in a band – cool, I know. We’re called Violet Club, although I don’t really like the name at all, and so far we only really do covers. In fact, basically, our biggest musical vision is playing songs that the people want to hear, and which work well in a gig-type setting and would (hopefully) sell the venue on bringing us back for another gig. I am quite pessimistic about this sentiment, assuming most songs of this mould to be pish-posh as part of a general built-in no-logic-needed agenda I have as a music nerd against pop music.

Generally, this begrudging box of mine gets checked – damn four-chord songs – but the odd time it is left empty and I am pleasantly surprised. More and more of the songs that we have been learning recently have stood out and impressed me with curious landmarks of careful, considerate, artistic production or songwriting. Today I listened to “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne, 2009, definitely at least 4 times while trying to make out a chord sheet for it in a transposed key for our singer.

I didn’t know the song that well at all anyway but if you do, maybe you never noticed the stacked harmonies on the vocals in the chorus, blended in a really nice way, production-wise, that makes it a lot easier to listen to the same four-chord cycles over and over again. That and the fact that I’m an absolute sucker for a tambourine filling up space in any song(observe closely next time you notice and you’ll see what I mean – completely levels it up).

But another song we’re doing at the moment which I would before have written off as a generic “pop hit” if somewhat thoughtfully written, but out of which I have been digging more and more gold is “Take Me to Church” by Irish rockpop heartthrob Hozier from 2013. We must all remember the absolute chokehold the thoughtful music video had on pop culture upon release and the hauntingly broken vocals that drowned the country at the time have pervaded in shops and Spotify playlists alike since then. As well as being an entertaining song just at the surface level, though, the structure and finer details have much to satisfy someone looking for detailed and nuanced artistry in their listening.

First of all, something I can barely get over is the fact that the verse is written in a 3/4, or “three over four” time signature. I’ve been telling every musical friend I meet on the street. For the non-musical, most “normal” popular music these days follows a pattern of four beats in a “bar”, a musical word, where you can normally feel the strong beat on the first beat, or the “one”, of each bar. In contrast, if you can imagine what a waltz sounds

like, this song format has a 3/4 time signature as a rule.

As I was walking along college road listening to the song for the first time in a long time I was expecting to count the standard four-beat pattern but was caught off guard when I noticed the first chord held for two beats, followed by only one beat of another chord. This might not land for non-musicians but I personally was shocked, as we really don’t find that much pop, if any, written in 3/4.

It’s really the rhythmic aspects of the song that have intrigued me so much. There is a degree of swing to the vocals that are scattered all over the song, in the most teasing style. For example, in the most standout lines of the entire song that surely ring out in everyone’s mind when reminded of the track, “Take me to church/I worship like a dog in the shine of your light” we find probably the most swing; where every other syllable is longer, heavy and accented (“worsh-“, “like”, “dog”) and all others in between shorter and bouncy (“-ip”, “a”, “the”) to account for the room already taken up, it means that the subdivisions of the beats, called ‘semiquavers’ in this instance, are not falling in perfect quarters of the note but are pushed back to create a delayed, rolling sense. There are other points in the verse where he does this to certain degrees. Initially, I found myself annoyed and perplexed as to why he didn’t do this throughout because I think it would fit the tune really well.

However upon more listening and thinking it occurred to me

27

that we also have to accept that actually this frustratingly teasing, barely-there balance between swung notes and straight movement is in itself the stylistic expression, choice and control that makes it so masterful and creates what musicians would call the “pocket”. This pocket is so gentle and teasing and all over the track he pulls and pushes his vocals back and forth to create the most subtle swing.

Hozier is one of those artists I’ve kept meaning to get into for ages. I still haven’t listened to his most recent full album, Wasteland Baby (2019), but I keep hearing snippets around the place by which I find myself intrigued in passing.

Enter another of my music endeavours. I am also part of a little club I set up last year when I was in my first year that my friends and I call “Album Club”; a book club but for albums, as you may have guessed. We all submit three albums and spend 2 weeks on each album, rotating through each person and this week we find ourselves sitting on Silk & Soul by Nina Simone (1967), suggested by film editor Cormac McCarthy. It hasn’t really resonated with me at all until very recently when I have started to learn more about her background and how much of her music is an expression of her activism and fiery personality, and I have generally become very excited about its potential, alongside a general soul kick I currently have and a newfound obsession with Stevie Wonder, to help me get a better grasp of the cultural foundations of soul in America in the 40’s up through to the ’70s and ’80s.

So, you can imagine my shock when perusing Wasteland Baby a little more, after already thinking the intro from “To Noise Making” from Wasteland Baby sounded a bit like that

MUSIC of “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”, a cover on Silk & Soul and then seeing the top track of Hozier’s album being called “Nina Cried Power”. I was flabbergasted; with giddy joy, I felt fate teasing me. Instantly I seemed to know it was going to have something to do with her, in the same moment that I suddenly recognised so many soul and gospel influences throughout Hozier’s music. The 1-2 triad pair movement glistening up and down through big vocal ensembles in “To Noise Making(Sing)”, the gentle shakers steadily taking up space in “Movement” and “Talk”, and giving just a touch of simple, delicate dimension to the soundscape just like the aforementioned tambourines in “Stacey’s Mom”. As soon as this dawned on me I was sure exactly what Hozier was doing and where his inspiration came from. The lyrics of “Nina Cried Power” unsurprisingly mention other giants of the era such as James Brown, B.B. King, Billie Holiday, Curtis Mayfield and many others within and without the African-American cultural mind space. It is absolutely dizzying for this music writer to see this song so packed with these people whose music has had the biggest impact on the artist when I find myself falling into a hole of this very same magical world.

absolutely nobody could describe “Take Me To Church” as not being ‘soulful’, though that particular word mightn’t intentionally relate a likeness to our specific genre.

It’s everywhere. Wasteland Baby has lots of specific references and a more mature, finished interpretation of the foundational materials that Hozier has clearly spent so much time with, but that’s not at all to say that the same sentiment isn’t also present on his debut self-titled album; there is less diversity of tone, in my opinion, but the crunchy guitar and heavy chord movement just have a somewhat watereddown, less mature flavour of that same introspective heavy hitting. And absolutely nobody could describe “Take Me To Church” as not being ‘soulful’, though that particular word mightn’t intentionally relate a likeness to our specific genre.

The more I look at this, the more genius I see, and I find myself unbelievably excited to go digging further.

GAMING

28

The Long Debated Dilemma Of Physical VS Digital Gaming CHLOE BARRETT Gaming Editor

The two main formats when purchasing a game usually consist of a digital version or a physical alternative. Both are equally popular and personal preference plays a large role in deciding which method to go with. For myself, I tend to lean towards physical games if the option is there, but I am not opposed to buying a digital version now and then.

A physical version means you go into a game shop, reach for the box with the game disc inside, then take it home. Boom, you own it! Depending on the gaming system, sometimes your save file is stored on the actual disc, which means you could insert it on another console and have your saved file pop up.

Or, it is kept on the console itself, in which you could loan it to a friend without the fear of possibly having your progress deleted.

On the other hand, a digital version is usually bought on the online store from your console. After purchasing it, a download will begin directly to your menu and you will be able to play it once the loading is complete. Depending on which system you are using, it can be possible to transfer the game to a different console, but this can sometimes be complicated and very dependent on what system you are playing on.

There are many pros and cons for the digital vs physical debate, but here are some of the main ones that I could think of:

Convenience: Convenience is another factor in favour of digital. It is much less hassle to just open the menu and select the title, rather than having to fumble with game cards or discs. You cannot lose a digital download either unless your console is stolen, but your account and data can usually be restored in this case. If you are bringing your games on the go, it can be far too easy for a small game card to slip out. They are better for the environment too. Especially for a console like the Nintendo Switch, where the game cards are tiny but the boxes large. If you worry about your environmental footprint, this may be your ideal choice.

Pricing: Ease of Purchasing: For purchasing a digital copy, you own the game instantly. There is no requirement to visit a store or shop online and have to wait a few days for it to be delivered. Of course, this method is easier than the physical alternative. Preordering is also handier when doing it digitally if you cannot wait to play. Usually, the game will be unlocked to your region at midnight, so if you are willing to stay up and instantly begin gaming, digital may be for you. But, some people feel that you do not personally own the game by purchasing it digitally. When you can feel the box and cartridge in your hands, there can be a sense of ownership that comes with it. You can also sell these in the future if you feel the need to, putting the money you saved away for a newer game, but you cannot do this as easily with digital copies.

Having the game box as a collector’s item is an option that often appeals to gamers, particular those that display them.

In my experience, mainstream physical games are reduced more often than their digital counterparts. While some indie games are cheaper and sometimes limited to the digital format, popular titles do not get the same benefit.

For example, a two-year-old game may be reduced in a store down to €40/50, while the online store retails it for the original price of €60. This can happen due to a multitude of reasons, such as limited shelf space or even a nearby gaming store having more competitive prices. A digital store does not have to worry about these things as usually there is one main store for the console, hence no competition.

You can get pre-owned physical games for a cheaper price too, so there are quite a few options for you to choose from.

Overall, it is up to personal opinion. There are countless benefits and negatives to both methods depending on which angle you are looking at the decision from. Perhaps a digital alternative will be the future of gaming as we know it. Whatever happens, it will be interesting to see.

GAMING

29

Is Cloud Gaming Viable For Current Gamers?

CHLOE BARRETT Gaming Editor

Cloud Gaming is a relatively popular way of playing a game, but some consoles are only beginning to use it.

For example, when a Guardians of The Galaxy game was announced at E3 with the choice to play it on the Switch, some people cheered – until they saw the hidden Cloud gaming logo conveniently placed in the bottom corner.

Gaming on the Cloud is a way for consoles that may not be able to power certain games due to issues like graphics to join in on the fun and experience the game for themselves. It looks like a normal game, but it is run on a server. This cloud server streams the visuals and content of the game to your screen, while whatever controller you are using to input commands gets sent back to the Cloud. For all this to happen, you must maintain a strong internet connection, otherwise, the server will be unreachable or the game will be incredibly laggy. To define it, think of streaming a movie, such as the interactive shows on Netflix. You are pressing the buttons yourself, orchestrating the commands, which the Cloud server receives and processes, then the visuals get sent back to you with the choices you made.

Honestly, it is a good idea. In the long run, when it is perfected, it could be a very beneficial method of gaming. Even the factor of not needing to download the actual game is a big plus, you could easily be sparing 40GB of storage just by streaming your

instant game. It would also save on money as there would not be a need for hardware upgrades or even frequent console purchases. For some, buying a new graphics card would not be a big deal, but for others, it can be a costly spend, especially if it is only for a specific game or two. But, even where Cloud gaming is currently, it can be expensive. Your internet connection needs to be incredibly strong to encounter no lag, and for the average household in Ireland, our WiFi might not be up to scratch without some drastic improvements, especially for rural users. This also means that if your internet cuts out or if your nearby network is being serviced, you have no way to play the game. In a more portable format, Cloud gaming is often also accessible on your mobile device, which is one of its selling points. Not everyone’s 5G mobile data can handle streaming a game in the quality the developers intended, though.

Even though I would love to play the brand new Guardians Of The Galaxy game, and other popular franchises such as Hitman 3 on my Switch, I think I will have to pass. It is an idea that is not accessible for the average gamer, but hopefully, in the not too distant future, it will become a viable option. At least I can watch Youtubers play the games that I cannot, and my internet will surely thank me for it. (plus, they’re probably better at the game, anyway!)

SEXPRESS

30

my journey with my vagina RACHEL DEASY Student Contributor

Hi. Having a vagina can be hard.

I have spent the last ten or so years of my life trying to understand my relationship with my vagina and my sexual health. It has not been an easy road, and unfortunately, I am far from finished my journey, but I have become a lot more comfortable speaking about my experiences. Thus, I think it is important that I share my experiences so that other people who are assigned female at birth know that they are not alone and that sexual health does not have to be a scary or intimidating concept.

For many, the idea that sexual health might terrify an individual may seem strange, because at our age we live in a relatively “progressive” society, however, it is important to remember that sexual health does not just start once you begin having sex. For many, sexual health begins much earlier and for me, I became fully aware of the importance of sexual health when I hit puberty.

There are also pressures from society on people with vaginas to do, or use, or be certain things. Whether it be shaming people for using pads because they are immature, or not sustainable enough, to doctors not taking your concerns seriously. This is my experience coming to terms with my sexual health.

When I was thirteen, I became aware that I had what is called a vaginal band when I began menstruating. A vaginal band is essentially a bridge between the anterior and posterior vaginal wall in the middle of the vagina. At first, I told nobody because I did not know that it was “wrong” (as I would come to refer to it for years). But because I did a lot of water sports, I would need to use tampons when my period came. Inserting them would be no issue, however, removing them could lead to twenty to thirty minutes of pain and wracked sobs as the end of the tampon would get caught on the band and cause it to pull on the sides of my vagina. Eventually, I told my mother who tried to figure out what was wrong but had no idea what to research. A lot of sites were sending her to sexual activity advice pages where it would say “don’t worry, it’s just your hymen, you just need to push past it!”. I went to my GP but because I was so young, they did not want to use a speculum and could not identify the problem. They advised that we see a specialist, but I refused as I was ashamed and terrified.

So, I spent the next four years living with this vaginal band. I continued to cry in pain when I had to use tampons. I continued to hide away from discussions about sexual health and sexual activity. I continued to believe there was something wrong with me. As I got older and began making more female friends who were quite open about their sexual health, I began to speak to them about it more. This helped in some ways as I finally began to deal with all of the emotions that I had repressed, however, it also cemented the idea in my head that my body was “wrong”. It was not until I was nineteen and had a partner who loved me regardless of whether I could have sex that I gathered the courage to go to a gynaecologist.

This began the process of removing my vaginal band, but it was not straightforward. I ended up having to come to Cork to get it done. I was incredibly nervous because of how private a person I was, and the concept of being in a room, unconscious, with a bunch of people examining me was terrifying but the gynaecologist who did the operation and organised the whole thing was incredible and really helped me through it. He not

only explained everything clearly (both what it was but how it could have occurred) but was also exceptionally understanding when it came to my fears. I came out of that surgery feeling exceptionally relieved and proud, but my vagina did not feel like my own anymore. I had to look after stitches for a week or two and spent the whole time exceptionally aware of the fact that there had been a whole team of people encroaching on something that I was not comfortable sharing with people.

As time passed after my surgery my outlook on sexual health took a change for the better.

31

As time passed after my surgery my outlook on sexual health took a change for the better. I began to encourage myself to be more open about my experience and to look after myself.

But I was still terrified of being examined. I know that it is important to get regular check-ups from your gynaecologist, but I could not bring myself to do it. The thought of being back on a gurney made me want to scream in terror and weep like I did when I was thirteen. Hence, it is no surprise that when I experienced spotting during the pandemic I procrastinated going to the doctor for as long as possible.

Eventually, fearing an issue with my previous surgery, I contacted my GP and scheduled an appointment with her. She was fully aware of my history and my fears and was exceptionally kind in how she spoke to me. When it came time to examine me, she went to insert the speculum. I had been terrified of this piece of medical equipment since I first saw it at thirteen. And so, when the pain began, I felt like all my fears had been realised but I just told myself to push past it, that I had to do this for my health.

But the pain was so intense I ended up screaming and she had to stop despite my attempts to continue. My GP informed me that this was not normal (which I was honestly relieved she confirmed, because if that was what it was meant to feel like, I may never have attended another appointment again).

She referred me to a specialist after taking a sample using a simple cotton swab which brought me to tears, making me feel like that same thirteen-year-old girl on the bathroom floor.

I was sent to a different gynaecologist in my hometown so that I could be put under and examined without being in pain. My experience with this doctor was the complete opposite of the previous. During my consultation with him, prior to my surgery, he kept trying to put me on birth control and kept ignoring the actual reason for my visit. I was also shocked that he never once mentioned the potential side effects of any of the forms of birth control he wanted me to take. All he wanted to talk about

SEXPRESS

was how the length of my periods was “wrong”, the heaviness of my flow was “wrong”, and my body was “wrong”. I wanted to curl into a ball and die. It was also clear that he had not read the reference from my GP as he was completely unaware that I had been in too much pain to examine while conscious and had no knowledge of my previous surgery. My parents and friends suggested that I go to another doctor but honestly, I could not afford to and knew I would take it as an excuse to delay the procedure even longer than I already had. So, I went for it.

On the day of the surgery, he completely forgot the reason why I wanted to have the exam as he was busy planning on putting a contraceptive coil in me which I had decided I did not want.

Upon waking up from the surgery he shamed me for not getting the coil before even mentioning the diagnosis and source of my pain. The aftermath of this surgery was not like that of my previous one. While my surgery three years ago felt like a personal triumph, this felt like a personal hell. The diagnosis is one I am still trying to wrestle with and may take me years to fully come to terms with. The doctor told me that my vagina had become so dry since the last surgery that it was bleeding and grazed and cut. My body was trying to protect myself from my fear. Make my vagina as inaccessible as possible so it could not be invaded again. So that I did not have to go through that trauma again. Even despite the anaesthetic, once they began the examination despite being unconscious, I tried to get up.

All because I did not want anyone to see what was “wrong” with me.

So, if you are struggling, know you are not alone. You are not wrong, your body is not wrong, no matter what anyone, including a doctor, says. We have to be brave and look after ourselves.

FASHION

32

Fashion Statement, or Deathwish?

CLAIRE WATSON Fashion Editor

Trigger Warning: Discussions of mental health related topics, including eating disorders.

A strike of that familiar G-note, and suddenly it’s 2006 again.

The early 2000s’ emo scene freed many of us from soul-sucking days spent in sweaty uniforms, struggling through crowded school hallways. Pop in those earphones, and suddenly there’s a door to feel all that pent up rage you’ve been waiting to let out.

Oversized tees, scooping to the side and riddled with holes.

The asymmetry and jaggedness of these looks chewed through the marketed trends of the times. Primarily black, splatters of neon colours added a startling contrast to these outfits, bringing an energy that allowed them to express their anger, while they performed their sadness under sweeping fringes.

With every music scene, there is a look. Whether that’s monochromatic marching uniforms, striped shirts, crusty band tees, or even vaudeville costumes, though an emo’s closet is plentiful, it is at least recognisable.

Is it time for emo to make a comeback? My Chemical Romance sure thinks so. Or did emo never die? Well, you might have to ask Ryan Seaman and Dallon Weekes about that one. While not proclaimed to be emo, bands like Will Wood and the Tapeworms and Mother Mother are definitely influenced by old school emo, with the former taking on that dark, vaudeville aesthetic, and the latter dipping into the edgier vein of emo.

There are a plethora of emo artists, old and new, to see live, just what to wear?

While emo grew from the 80’s punk scene, this article will be a dive into more recent waves, starting back in 2005, with the unholy emo Trinity.

Vaudeville Then, there was the whole carnival subculture of a subculture that celebrated petticoats and eccentric lace.

Resist conformity.

Reject artificiality.

Wreak havoc.

Early emos sought to combat the fake happiness that was advertised across billboards and dressed in bright, sparkly colours on 00s TV. As My Chemical Romance so boldly put it, “It’s not a Fashion Statement, it’s a Fucking Deathwish.”

Everything about the craze rejected a marketed idea of happiness and embraced anger and sadness. Paramore’s “Misery Business” encapsulates both the anger of the movement, as well as those infamous fringes. Their lyrics are so fuelled by spite, and this translates well into the outfits.

Back in the good old days, right back to “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out,” Panic! At the Disco merged a strange twist of vaudeville and steampunk aesthetics with the current grunge scenes, creating a bizarre, visual celebration of death. If the world celebrated life, then emos did the exact opposite.

Urie’s iconic red suit and top hat underline the emo’s convergence of modern and vintage aesthetics, giving the artists a timeless feel. With red being the only pop of colour among a sea of black, vampirism was central to the emo aesthetic. If you couldn’t grow fangs then spikes and studs would suffice.

Studded belts were a great way of adding an edge to an outfit And why should you stop at just one? Layer them belts up!

I’m not going to let myself give Urie all the credit. My goto artist when I was a wee emo was Icon For Hire. Ariel Bloomer was my fashion role model. The pink hair, her crazy tights, the tutus and the corsets- there was such a campiness and theatricalism to her look that I adored.

33

FASHION

community. Weight should have nothing to do with fashion, and there is no need to be skinny to dress emo. I think the subculture has definitely grown from this dark period, but it is This vampiric vein of the emo subculture was a spectrum, something to watch out for when admiring emo mood boards with one end being the frilly gothic and the other being the on sites like Instagram and Tumblr. There is a way to use the blood-sucking monster. Though the dress seemed so specific aesthetics of decay, without harming ourselves and others. from the outside, on the inside there was such a fluidity of Anyway! Back to the cool, light, and happy things. expression, which leads me to an important point: androgyny.

Gerard Way and Gender

I will be shouting this from the rooftops, but we’d be nothing without our lord (or lady, if he would prefer to be called) Gerard Way. Way is an undeniably androgynous figure, blurring the boundaries between masculine and feminine. He uses his music career to outwardly express his femininity through makeup, long hair and the sheer campiness of his performances.

There were no guidelines for who wore what. Hairstyles, accessories, shoes- nothing was gendered.

While glam-rock is suddenly relevant again, Way’s marrying of glam-rock aesthetics with the distressed punk’s, defined a whole subsection of emo fashion. This convergence was a way of bringing colour and uniformity to the distressed looks.

Though while we’re discussing freedom of expression, there were of course some flaws within the community.

Emo in 2022

Flannel. Black jeans. Black converse. Black eyeliner…

Sometimes I look around and can spot in an instant someone who used to be an emo kid. Or at the very least I can tell who watched Dan and Phil and called themselves an emo kid.

These past years have seen every trend, big and small, making a comeback. Yet emo seems to be slipping through the cracks, while punk and goth aesthetics climb back into popularity.

If emo were to become as big as it once was again, I believe we’d be calling it something along the lines of emo!core, and merely mimicking the past trends. But so much development happened to emo, it changed and expanded so much that it can’t be reduced to just the occasional flannel and pair of black jeans.

No matter how emo looks, it always has the same valueanarchy. It embraces feeling sadness and anger and expressing those through art and presentation. But to step away from the controversies of the movement, we must embrace our physical selves alongside our emotions.

While it’s debated whether artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Willow are the new faces of emo, there is something in the way that they present that pays homage to emo dress. I can’t not write this article without shedding light on Florence Pugh’s latest mop look.

The emo subculture hasn’t been without sexism. In fan communities, there are a plethora of nasty stories involving artists and female fans. While the truth of these is often disputed, there has been an obvious, yet silent, movement to overlook female artists like Hayley Williams, Ariel Bloomer, and Amanda Palmer, to name a few.

The Dark(er) Side of Emo

Briefly, I want to discuss the relationship between the emo subculture and pro-ana- anorexia. This of course will be triggering for some readers, so you can skip this next paragraph if you need to.

There was a tendency in emo fashion to romanticise illness, using motifs of sickness and death to inspire lyrics and internal fashion trends. While this skeletal and vampiric imagery could be completely innocent, it wasn’t difficult to marry this to a twisted idea of thinness and beauty. There was a terrible celebration of eating disorders within the

While a lot of emo’s aesthetics were truly androgynous, there was the upkeep of the twisted idea that masculinity is powerful and strong, while femininity is dainty and weak.

Emo girls were shy and tucked their sleeves over their hands, while emo boys were studded with piercings and platform boots. Of course, it wasn’t practised by everyone, there was still a binary being upheld in many spaces.

Androgyny was often the only way for girls to escape this.

Regardless of gender, isn’t there something so rebellious in embracing femininity? Not as a way to oppose masculinity or the patriarchy, but as a way to express a different kind of power.

It’s not just softness, it’s harshness. And this isn’t something restricted by gender, or to AFAB people. The rebellion that comes from presenting as feminine is so unapologetic and guiltless.

The new phase of emo will take the artificial idea of femininity that has been marketed towards us, chew it up and spit it back, all while embracing a non-binary view of feminine aesthetics. And, of course, all this while have to be done with layers upon layers of black eyeliner.

arts & literature

34

What STEM and the Arts can Learn From One Another Cian Pierce Arts & Literature Editor

STEM; Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

These fields of study are pushed on us from a very early age, schools favour stem subjects allocating them bigger budgets, spaces and overall, more time is offered to their teaching. This emphasis on STEM education, especially in public schools can lead to a degradation of the status of arts subjects such as music, art, etc. and many other areas of the arts that are a vital part of literature, culture and entertainment, which has the unfortunate consequence of leaving arts programs underfunded or cut from curriculums. For this article, I sat down and spoke with a handful of current UCC students to get their opinions on the divide between STEM and the Arts, and the pressure to prioritize one over the other.

Do you feel there is pressure on people (especially minorities and women) to go into STEM fields as opposed to the Humanities?

Yes, 100%. It comes from the ongoing mentality that the Arts aren’t useful, therefore if you study the arts /you/ are not useful. This pressure doesn’t just come from secondary school stem talks, or parental pressure, but also from inside universities. When I was in first year of my course (BA English) we had a careers talk that discussed how English was great for economics. What?! And on places like UCC Confessions or social media in general you get posts from STEM students (and sometimes exasperated Arts students) about who there’s no careers in the Arts and your study is wasted if you don’t do a Master’s (which many can’t afford to do). It’s great to be encouraging STEM and to make the field of study more accessible to minorities and women- but the way that it’s being done is making the Arts and Humanities seem like a less desirable and worthwhile thing to study. ~ Claire Watson

With school’s lesser enthusiasm for the Arts, there is an implicit narrative that the Arts are somehow lesser, unnecessary, unprofitable in the long run or just a general waste of time.

Students are often discouraged from taking arts subjects because they suppose the skills aren’t transferrable to work outside of school beyond further study into arts, this leads to students who are uninterested in STEM studying those subjects for three or four years in a way that doesn’t further their interests or future.

What makes the situation worse, is that when education begins to devalue the arts, it trickles down into the population and society as a whole will begin devaluing the arts. This has been evident over the course of the past two years with the treatment of the entertainment industry along the course of the pandemic.

As an Arts/Humanities student, do you think education is becoming more STEM-focused?

I definitely feel education strongly encourages people to enter STEM fields, at least in Ireland. Likely because a lot of major companies set up shop here, it’s a pretty stable area to get work in, but I also don’t think everyone can do STEM or is capable of it - preferably we can have an equal spread in all fields. ~ Kate Rasmussen Some of the common rhetoric used to uplift STEM at the expense of the Arts is that “STEM subjects get better jobs”. The argument follows that STEM subjects and degrees are a “good investment” that will offer higher returns. This “return on investment” argument leads to students being discouraged from engaging with arts studies, and worse, it makes studying arts subjects in further education more expensive. However, an education in the Arts/Humanities is worth way more than meets the eye as their pursuit of greater understanding through literature, art, politics, language, and philosophy, for example, can have monumental impacts that shape both the individual and wider society.

What do you think STEM could learn from the Arts/Humanities and vice versa?

What Humanities could learn from Stem [is] bringing Humanities into the future through technology. ~ Barra O’ Drisceoil STEM could learn from the Arts/Humanities how to think more outside the box, be more creative and analyse situations more critically. ~ Connor Healy Though they’re often described as opposite ends of the spectrum, STEM and the Arts/Humanities have always gone hand in hand. When both are valued and held in equal regard, we are then able to understand more about each other and the world around us. At the end of the day, we need to realize that one field of study isn’t better than the other and we should work to dispel the toxic attitudes perpetrated because there is more to life than just employability and job opportunities.

arts & literature

35

Poet’s corner This issue, I winning poet his romance, Chile, or his

wanted to share one of my favourite poems by the 20th century, Chilean, Nobel PrizePablo Neruda. In “If you forget me,” Neruda emphasizes the need for reciprocity in though the subject of the poem isn’t completely clear, it could be his home country lover and third wife, Matilde Urrutia. Regardless, Neruda’s work will never be forgotten

Si tú me olvidas Pablo Neruda (Published 1963) Quiero que sepas una cosa.

Tú sabes cómo es esto: si miro la luna de cristal, la rama roja del lento otoño en mi ventana, si toco junto al fuego la impalpable ceniza o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña, todo me lleva a ti, como si todo lo que existe, aromas, luz, metales, fueran pequeños barcos que navegan hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.

Ahora bien, si poco a poco dejas de quererme dejaré de quererte poco a poco.

Si de pronto me olvidas no me busques, que ya te habré olvidado.

Si consideras largo y loco el viento de banderas que pasa por mi vida y te decides a dejarme a la orilla del corazón en que tengo raíces, piensa que en ese día, a esa hora levantaré los brazos y saldrán mis raíces a buscar otra tierra.

Pero si cada día, cada hora sientes que a mí estás destinada con dulzura implacable.

Si cada día sube una flor a tus labios a buscarme, ay amor mío, ay mía, en mí todo ese fuego se repite, en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida, mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada, y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos sin salir de los míos.

If you forget me

I want you to know one thing.

You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land.

But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.

Issue 9| MONDAY 14TH February 2022 | University Express

SPORTS

37

The Five Drivers To Watch In The 2022 Formula 1 Season ATAKAN UZUN Deputy Sports Editor

Anticipation is building ahead of the 2022 Formula 1 season. There is less than a month to go until the first Grand Prix of the season in Sakhir, Bahrain, on Sunday, the 20th of March. Testing ahead of the new season has begun. With the various driver changes and regulation changes, who are the drivers to watch closely in the 2022 season?

LEWIS HAMILTON finished in fourth place at that race, which was his best finish since the 2014 Undoubtedly, if one is to exclude Max Verstappen, the driver that will be season. He continued to strengthen the brilliance which shined throughout most intriguing to watch, this season, is Lewis Hamilton. The 7-time F1 his F1 career in the second half of the season, securing a podium finish at the world champion, who narrowly missed out on his eighth world championship Losail circuit in Doha. After a returning season under his belt, Alonso will in 2021, with factors outside of his control, playing a significant role in the be eager for his Alpine to improve their car and fight with the teams at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, will be eager to come back even stronger in the 2022 front. Last season, Alonso showed that he had the ability to fight with the best season. He clinched 8 wins throughout the season and brought the title battle to drivers throughout the field. Now he just needs the car to fight at the front. the final race, and narrowly lost out in the final race, after going into the final ALEX ALBON race at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, level on points with Verstappen.

After being dropped by Red Bull at the end of the 2020 season, Albon will be While many thought that Hamilton may call it a day, after the disappointment looking to show his true ability at the Williams team, which he joins, alongside of that race, and the circumstances in which now-former race director, Nicholas Latifi. In his first two seasons in F1 in 2019 and 2020, Albon showed Michael Masi decided to bring the safety car in, he proved those doubters that he had the ability to be a complete driver, and showed solid wheel-to-wheel wrong and is back and ready to fight for a record-breaking eighth world title. combat with the other drivers. However, after switching from Toro Rosso The eagerness of Hamilton to fight for the 2022 title was further cemented to Red Bull, mid-way through the 2019 season, he failed to show consistent by his statement, at the launch of the 2022 Mercedes car, in which he said, speed to fight at the front with the likes of Verstappen and Hamilton. He meant ‘if you think what you saw at the end of last year was my best, wait until you that he was replaced by an experienced driver, Sergio Perez, who, himself, see this year’. Given Hamilton and Mercedes’ track record, in past seasons, I struggled on a number of occasions to match the raw speed of Verstappen. believe it is Hamilton’s title to lose this season. Combined with this, Mercedes Given the latter, I believe that Albon will be a driver to watch this season. will undoubtedly give Hamilton, a solid car under his armour, to fight for the Joining a Williams team that will be looking to improve on its inconsistent win at every race, and the overall championship. As the reasons, that I have performances during the 2021 season, without the pressure of a pressurised outlined have shown, Hamilton will not want to give up another opportunity environment like the Red Bull team, Albon will have the freedom to show to clinch a record-breaking eighth world championship without a fight. his ability as a car. History has shown that drivers have excelled in these CARLOS SAINZ scenarios. For example, after Alpha Tauri driver, Pierre Gasly was dropped A driver that went under the radar, throughout the majority of the duration

by Red Bull, at the halfway point in the 2019 season, he has delivered, of the 2021 F1 season, was Ferrari driver, Carlos Sainz. In his debut season arguably some of the best performances in that team, since Sebastian with the Ferrari squad, Sainz scored 4 podiums, including a second-place Vettel, clinching three podiums, including a win at the Italian Grand Prix finish in the Monaco Grand Prix, as well as a podium in the chaotic Abu in 2020. There is no reason why Albon cannot repeat the feat of Gasly Dhabi Grand Prix, which completely went under the radar, given the title and out-perform the Williams car, to score regular points for the team. fight between Verstappen and Hamilton. This allowed him to clinch the 5th PIERRE GASLY place finish in the championship, his highest finish in an F1 championship, One of the stand-out drivers of the past two seasons has been Pierre Gasly, outperforming, team-mate, Charles Leclerc. I consider Sainz to be a driver the Alpha Tauri driver. Since being dropped by the Red Bull team, Gasly has to watch this season, for various reasons. One because he has a season secured three podiums, including a win, with the Alpha Tauri team, which under his belt at the Maranello squad, which is always a tough team to usually competes with the fifth or sixth fastest car throughout the field. His settle into. He will be looking to build upon the 2021 season, and deliver consistent form throughout both seasons was evident, both in qualifying further consistency in 2022, with his contract being up at the end of 2022. and race-day. Gasly will be hoping to continue the form that he has shown Second, because he drove with a team, which was continuing to develop in the in 2020 and 2021, and push on with Alpha Tauri. I regard him as a driver to 2021 season, due to its abysmal 2020 season. Furthermore, Ferrari continued watch for various reasons. One because he is eager to show, the Red Bull to improve its development throughout the 2021 season and ended up securing team, what they have lost, since dropping him in August 2019, as their driver. a third-place finish in the constructors’ championship, after finishing in sixth With his contract expiring at the end of the 2023 season, Gasly will be hoping place in the 2020 season. If Ferrari continues this development trajectory, to secure a call-up to the Red Bull team, alongside Verstappen. His best they are likely to be a force to be reckoned with this season. This gives Sainz, opportunity may come, if Perez begins to show inconsistent form in the 2022 a great opportunity to fight for the world championship with Mercedes and season, and is unable to match the pace of Verstappen. Second, the Alpha Tauri Red Bull. With an improving Ferrari team and car, and Sainz, improving team has gradually improved its car in the past two seasons, and will likely as a driver, this makes for a great combination, going into the 2022 season. further improve, this season. Given his eagerness to re-join Red Bull and the FERNANDO ALONSO improving Alpha Tauri team, with himself and Yuki Tsunoda being retained When discussing drivers to watch in any season, one can never exclude 2-time in 2022, Gasly will be hoping to fight, closer to the front, on a regular basis.

F1 champion, and F1 legend, Fernando Alonso from the conversation. After coming out of retirement to join the Alpine team, alongside Esteban Ocon in 2021, Alonso appeared to struggle, early on, in the season. But this was to be expected, given that he retired at the end of the 2018 season and the cars have evolved, since 2018. The turning point of his season was the Azerbaijan grand prix. After a late restart, due to a red flag, during the race, Alonso drove superbly to gain three places at the start, finishing in seventh at the end of the race. At that point, it was his best finish of the season in a struggling Alpine, whose performance was certainly below their expectations, given their speed in 2020.

After that race, Alonso went on a four-race scoring streak, including a seventh-place finish at the British Grand Prix circuit, and played a starring role in the victory of Ocon at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Alonso, himself,

38

SPORTS

Issue 10 |Tuesday 1st March 2022 | University Express

The Price of Prodigy: Child Athletes in Elite Sport AOIFE E OSBORNE Newspaper Designer

This weekend saw the conclusion of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, which saw the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) come second only to Norway in a total medal count. However, the ROC’s Olympic quest was undoubtedly tarnished by one blemish; a failed drugs test by one of the team’s star figure skaters, fifteen-year-old Kamila Valieva.

Valieva failed a screening from a sample given on Christmas Day 2021 however due to backlogs at the testing facility in Sweden due to ongoing COVID-19 tests, the results only came to light on the 8th February.

Incidentally, this came just one day after the ROC won a gold medal in the Team Figure Skating event, in which Valieva made history as the first woman to land a quadruple jump at an OIympic games. The media speculation that followed raised stark questions and concerns about Valieva’s coaches, in particular Eteri Tutberidze. She is infamous in her brutal and harsh coaching methods, which include restricting athletes diets and even limiting their water intake. She has never taken an athlete to more than one Olympic Games with many of her skaters retiring before the age of 20, citing physical and emotional exhaustion, injuries due to overwork and mental illness.

Many figure skating experts have noted that it’s unlikely we will see Valieva at the 2026 games in Italy, with the ROC’s skaters following a theme of arriving as a rising star, only to crash and burn, never to be seen again But Valieva is just the next in a long line of Russian skaters to crumble under pressure, and indeed the next in a series of questions surrounding minors at elite level sport, such as the Olympic Games. When you think of child athletes, it’s almost too easy to recall stories of training camps in Russia and China, where children as young as four work for hours every day. We imagine shadowy figures threatening to beat their students, we think of small food portions, and the tears when they fail to place at championships. And this is a reality of these Olympic breeding grounds, it’s not the only way in which children are failed by a system which values medals more than their own wellbeing. Back in 2016, the American Gymnastics world was rocked by the Larry Nassar scandal, when more than five hundred girls accused him of sexual abuse framed as physiotherapy. At the time of his arrest, Nassar was treating girls as young as five for what he called osteopathic treatments.

The scandal lifted a cloak on years of covered-up allegations, child abuse and corrupt internal workings. It was discovered that many women who had spoken up against Nassar found themselves being dismissed, discriminated against or even phased out of the competition circuit altogether.

In 2020, a Netflix documentary surrounding the Nassar story and the issues at USA Gymnastics was released, entitled Athlete A in honour of Maggie Nichols, one of the first athletes to be taken seriously in the investigation against Nassar. But the documentary goes deeper, and examines the toxic culture surrounding the organisation of USA Gymnastics as a whole.

‘If you look back at teams from the 50s and 60s, they look like grown women - they are grown women,’ says former Olympic Gymnast Jennifer Sey in her interview for Athlete A. And indeed, Sey raises a valid point.

Turn back to the Gymnastics competitions at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. The youngest overall champion was nineteen-year old Natalia Kuchinskaya. At the next games, the youngest individual champion was Tamara Lazakovich at eighteen-years-old. The next Olympics, in

1976, is where it gets interesting. In 1976, the host city of Montreal and indeed the world were taken by storm by the performance of a tiny, slight fourteen-year-old by the name of Nadia Comaneci. Not only did Nadia leave with three gold medals, she was also the first to land a perfect score on a multitude of exercises. Jennifer Sey notes that after Comaneci’s win there was a flurry of young girls who wanted to be gymnasts, and a swift change in dynamics ensued. ‘What emerged was an aesthetic that was very very young, childlike. And so, it created a very dangerous environment because eating disorders became very prevalent, delaying menstruation and delaying maturation...I think people really believed that for the more difficult skills to be performed you had to be tiny.’

When taking Sey’s expertise into account, it’s impossible to ignore the similarities between her views and the events surrounding the ROC Figure Skating Team at the moment. A former student of Tutberidze has since moved to Israel to seek treatment for an eating disorder. She is reported to encourage replacing food with powdered nutrients, and to avoid swallowing water - instead, her skaters are asked to hold water in their mouths, and then spit it out. These techniques are alleged to help athletes prevent pubertal growth spurts which would hinder their ability to land the physically demanding quadruple jumps which frequently feature in her athlete’s programmes. Not to mention the emotional and verbal abuse the team is set to divulge on its athletes; after Valieva’s disastrous free skate on the 15th February, Tutberidze’s first words were not of sympathy or condolence, but of criticism and annoyance. Shortly after while awaiting her result, Valieva was seen in tears - she had been the favourite for the gold medal, and following a series of falls she ended up in fourth place. Her teammate Alexandra Trusova was similarly distraught, explosively angry at receiving second place. Meanwhile, the gold medalist Anna Shcherbakova (also from the ROC) stood alone. Viewers were left in shock, wondering what on earth is going on within the world of Russian figure skating.

There is no denying that young athletes exhibit great levels of star quality and talent, but they are also the ones to suffer when their physical and mental health comes under strain. When adults compete, they have the space and capacity to make their decisions and act in their best interest the best example of this being when Simone Biles made the decision to withdraw from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, citing mental health issues.

With the conesus being that Valieva would have taken the drug under the instruction of her coaches, serious questions have been asked about who prescribed a fifteen-year-old a heart medication. Though Valieva’s drug screening at the Beijing Olympics was clean, many regarded it as a step too far and called for Russia to receive an outright ban from all Olympic Games. But does the problem really start and end with the ROC? Had Valieva’s test result from December not come to light, she may well have passed through the games unscathed and her coaches would have avoided the scrutiny they find themselves under. Had Nassar’s victims been silenced, there’s no knowing how long he would have continued his work with USA Gymnastics. How many more times must children be failed in the name of medals and awards - and for the athletes, their guardians and coaches, and the countries they represent, are the accolades worth the price of prodigy?

SPORTS

Issue 10| tuesday 1st march 2022 | University Express

39

MotoGP 2022 Season Preview ATAKAN UZUN Deputy Sports Editor

We are getting closer to the start of the 2022 MotoGP season. The first race gets underway, this coming weekend, on the 6th of March at the Losail circuit in Qatar. Furthermore, the grand prix of Indonesia makes its debut on the MotoGP calendar at the Mandalika circuit, two weeks later, while a return to the Termas de Río Hondo after three years, due to the pandemic, will be witnessed at the beginning of April. Other new additions to the calendar are the Grand Prix of Finland in KymiRing in July, while the grands prix of Japan, Thailand, Australia, and Malaysia, return to the calendar after three years of absence, due to the pandemic, in September and October, alongside the existing races from previous years.

The reigning champion is French rider, Fabio Quartararo, who clinched the title at the Misano circuit in October, and the reigning constructor’s champions are Ducati. There are a number of rookies, including 2021 Moto2 champion, Remy Gardner, who has joined the Tech3 KTM squad and is joined by the runner-up, Raul Fernandez, while Marco Bezzecchi, Fabio Di Giannantonio, and Darryn Binder also join the 2022 MotoGP grid. After retiring at the end of the 2021 season, Valentino Rossi’s new team, the VR46 will debut this season, under Bezzecchi and Rossi’s half-brother, Luca Marini.

The 2022 MotoGP season makes for an interesting season for several reasons. First because other teams, such as Honda, have made progress throughout the winter, which was shown in winter testing. Honda has dramatically altered its bike ahead of the 2022 season, and has made it more rider-friendly. While Marc Marquez is not yet, back to his oldself yet, given the severity of his injuries, his teammate Pol Espargaro topped the recent pre-season test ahead of the season. Following the test, he said, ‘I’m feeling pleased. Things have turned completely. Now I can apply my riding style, my rear brake which I missed so much last year.

I can ride as I like, the way I have all my career. The most important is that where I struggled the most, places like this where the temperature is high, we are still competitive’. Ducati has also made progress, building upon the performances of the 2021 season, where it clinched the constructor’s championship. Meanwhile, its riders, Francesco Bagnaia, narrowly missed out on the championship, last season, finishing in second place, while his teammate Jack Miller, finished in fourth place.

Their improvements throughout winter testing and the past few seasons, surely makes the Bologna squad, the favourites ahead of the 2022 season. This is further backed up by the struggling Yamaha team in winter testing. Despite winning the championship with Yamaha, last season, Fabio Quartararo does not appear confident

about his chances, this season, and the M1 Yamaha bike. The new bike simply doesn’t go any faster than the old one – and in fact might be the old one in a slightly new wrapper, according to The Race’s sources in the paddock – something that has left its riders rather frustrated. “To be honest, I don’t know where we can improve,” said Quartararo. “When you start to feel the front moving around everywhere, the rear spinning on the limit, yourself touching the elbow everywhere, it’s difficult to find more”. This makes for an intriguing 2022 MotoGP season.

A second reason is that it is the first full-season in which Marc Marquez will be competing since his title-winning season in 2019. His 2020 season was over, as it begun, after a dramatic fall at the Jerez circuit in Andalucía. He was unable to compete in 2020, after that crash, due to him, breaking the humerus in his right arm. He struggled to regain fitness ahead of the 2021 season, due to the sensitivity of the injury in his right arm. He missed the opening two races at the Losail circuit in Qatar, and it took time for him to build up his ability to fight at the front, given the severity of his injury. However, after clinching a win at the Sachsenring circuit in Germany, Marquez clinched another win at Misano and Austin.

He was forced to miss the final two races of the season, to focus on rehabilitation, ahead of the 2022 season. He ended the year, with four podiums, including three wins, finishing in 7th place in the championship, with 142 points. Third because the MotoGP grid is filled with just three world champions, Marquez, Suzuki rider, Joan Mir, and Quartararo. After the retirement of nine-time world champion, Valentino Rossi, Marquez is now the main star of the MotoGP grid, with seven world championships. How MotoGP can cope with the loss of the Rossi name, this season, remains to be seen. However, with the sport, growing ever closer between the teams, it is unlikely that his retirement will dramatically affect the popularity of the sport.

If I were to pick my favourites for the 2022 MotoGP championship, I would pick Bagnaia and the Ducati squad. After impressing in his debut season with the team, he will be hoping to push on throughout the 2022 season and better his second place in the championship, last season. If one is to believe the evidence from winter testing, Yamaha seems to be on the backfoot. Quartararo does not seem to be confident about the improvements made to the bike during the winter period, and it appears, it is ‘in with the old, and out with the new’. The revived Honda squad, under Marquez and Espargaro, will also be the ones to watch. Marquez will be eager to regain the form that he formed before suffering injury and challenge for the championship, under an improved Honda team and bike. All these variables make for an intriguing MotoGP season.

University

Sports

UCCExpress.ie

Volume 25 | Issue 10 | Tuesday 1st March 2022

Cork City Season Preview SAM CURTIN Sports Editor

As of the time of writing, Cork opened their campaign with a stunning 6-0 win against promotion rivals Bray Wanderers at the Carlisle Grounds.

By the time this edition is out, we will know a lot more about Colin Healy’s Rebel Army when they take on Galway United coached by former titlewinning player and manager John Caulfield. It should be an emotional night at Turners Cross for what is the opening home game of the season for a young exciting side which Colin Healy has built since coming into the job in late 2020.

By now we are beginning the former City and Ireland player stamp his blueprint on the team with a team full of young, hungry players looking to make their mark on such a big club. A club that has endured a remarkable fall from grace since winning the league in just 2017.

With issues on and off the pitch that have been well documented in this paper in the past, the focus is rightly turning to the football and the potential of this team for the season ahead. Many punters are tipping Cork to be in with a least a shout of a promotion push and with the squad assembled being one of only four full time professional outfits in the division, this should be the minimum target.

Indeed some of the signings that have been brought appear to be very astute with the likes of experienced defender Ally Gilchrist somewhat of a coup considering he was a vital cog in Shelbourne’s title-winning season last year. It is perhaps the young bucks that fans may be most excited by however with Barry Coffey returning on loan again until the summer from Celtic. Coffey who is 20 and has the same birthday as this author coincidentally has lit up Leeside since his arrival. The midfielder already has two goals this season through a brace scored in the Bray route. Whether Cork can retain his services until the end of the season could be the difference between battling for promotion and possibly becoming champions.

Kevin O’Connor returning is also an important signing as the left-back returns for his third stint at the club. It is a position which Cork have struggled in the past couple of years with the likes of Ronan Hurley not hitting the heights that were hoped. A recognised goalscorer is also something Cork have needed and in Dylan McGlade they may have finally found the answer. The former Bray man struggled last season but looks to have made great strides and a hat trick on the opening height should give the confidence and belief necessary for a clinical goalscorer. If these aspects come together then Cork will surely be there or thereabouts come to the business end of the season. There is a lot of football to be played before then, however, and a good start will be crucial, something which has not happened in the past three seasons where Cork was forced to play catch up from the getgo. Healy won’t be afforded the same kind of patience this time around.

As for the league itself, the permutations for promotion are worth a look.

One could argue that finishing first is almost easier than being promoted through the play-offs due to teams who end up in them having to win three games in order to go up. As a result, there is no real reward for coming 2nd or 5th which shows how competitive it is expected to be this season.

The main contenders appear to come in the shape of Waterford and Cork in Munster who amazingly have no team in the Premier Division, that is a discussion for another day however. Galway and Treaty United also look well placed to contend with both looking to build on impressive seasons in 2021.

Overall, it promises to be an exciting season with Cork looking to channel the spirit of 2011 when they were promoted as champions in Tolka Park through a last minuted header from Graham Cummins. If this season is anything like that in terms of drama, we are in for one hell of a year. It’s good to be back.