The University Times, Vol 3, Issue 5

Tuesday, January 24, 2011

The University Times Irish Student Newspaper of the Year

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THE ROAD AHEAD: IRELAND’S PATH TO RECOVERY Special Economics Supplement With articles from Sunday Business Post Editor Cliff Taylor, Ronan Lyons and Dr Piero Formica

The University Times

Magazine

The University Times

2012

Trinity Economic Forum

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Interview with the Rubberbandits/Photo essay from George Voronov/An open letter to Wacka Flocka Flame/An inside look at Raidíó na Life

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Lecturers break with Croke Park over staff firings

Understanding Islam: Tariq Ramadan addresses the Hist

» Firing of three Trinity staff members is deemed “completely unnacceptable” by Secretary General of teachers’ union Rónán Burtenshaw Deputy Editor

Photos: George Voronov RENOWNED ISLAMIC intellectual Tariq Ramadan visited Trinity College last Thursday, delivering a talk entitled “Attitudes to Islam in the West”, hosted by the College Historical Society. In a wide-ranging and interesting talk, the Swiss scholar, who is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, discussed how Islam is generally perceived and

misunderstood by those in the West, and argued that it is unfairly treated as dangerous alien culture.

A sometimes controversial figure, Ramadan lived up to his image as an atypical standardbearer for Islam by suggesting that Muslims could successfully integrate with European society while respecting other religions and

cultures, drawing on his own interpretation of the Qur’an and denouncing the beliefs of Muslim extremists. He also fielded questions on homosexuality, stoning and suicide bombers, maintaining his image as a moderate voice for Islam.

Cormac Shine

THE IRISH Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) told The University Times on Friday that they were “stalling all further engagement with the Croke Park Agreement process” in the wake of compulsory redundancies in Trinity College. The announcement is expected to be made official with a press release on Sunday evening.

One lecturer represented by the union in the School of Social Work and Social Policy was made involuntarily redundant on June 30th.

Another lecturer was dismissed on December 29th.

A union staff member in the library was issued with a notice of compulsory redundancy this week after protracted negotiation with the college.

The three staff members were on contracts known as ‘contracts of indefi nite duration’ (CIDs). Under the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 an employee is entitled to a CID after working one or more fi xed-term contracts for a continuous period of four years. The lecturing

staff had been employed by the university for at least ten years, The University Times understands, with one substantially exceeding this.

Speaking to The University Times IFUT General Secretary Mike Jennings said, “two people have already been made redundant and a third person has been issued with redundancy notice. Th is is completely unacceptable and has caused a lot of hardship for all involved.”

He also said that the staff members involved had received letters of support from inside the Department of Education. The Department has yet to come out with an official stance and any outcome promises to have widespread ramifications for relations between the public sector and the government.

The cases are subject to ongoing Labour Relations Commission proceedings where IFUT are expected to argue that college was obliged to provide an alternative position to the permanent staff members should their current position expire. College may attempt to draw a distinction

between permanent contracts inside the university – with many permanent staff on contracts of defi nite duration which state that employment continues until a specified retirement date.

Another point of contention is the wording of the employees’ contracts. The documents say that the positions are “supported” by a specific stream of “non-core funding”. The letters of dismissal issues by the college to the staff members said that the positions were conditional upon this funding.

The two sides in the dispute will likely debate the meaning of these terms.

The Croke Park Public Service Agreement is a non-legally binding deal between the Irish government and public sector sector unions. The Agreement is of enormous political significance and acts as the mechanism for implementing austerity measures and reform tied to the EU-IMF bailout without the threat of widespread industrial action. Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin

continued on page 2

Myers attacks College and anti-fascist groups over Griffin invite debacle

President Higgins to open Trinity Economic Forum

Jack Leahy Deputy News Editor

Leanna Byrne News Editor

IRISH INDEPENDENT journalist Kevin Myers has criticised both College and the anti-fascist groups who opposed Nick Griffi n’s invitation to speak at a University Philosophical Society debate on immigration.

Speaking to The University Times, Myers claimed that the blame for the withdrawal of the invitation was ‘largely the responsibility’ of College authorities who he believes influenced the decision made on public order grounds.

The conversation occurred following the

publication of an opinion piece on the Irish Independent’s website in which Myers revealed that he had rejected an invitation from the College Historical Society to speak on the proposition side of a debate positing ‘that this house would place no limits on the freedom of speech’. The post, entitled ‘TCD denies free speech to right-wing speakers’, compared speaking on the subject of free speech in Trinity to ‘discussing virginity in a brothel’.

Myers also criticised student activist groups Trinity Against Fascism and Students Against Fascism for their role in the cancelled

invitation. When asked if he would place a portion of the blame for the withdrawn invitation on those who protested, Myers said that the groups had ‘no right’ to demand the invitation be withdrawn. ‘[Those groups] chose not to allow freedom of speech to someone who is entitled to utter his opinions. They have no right to demand from the College or the State the power to censor opinions they don’t like.’

In response to a popular anti-fascist protest that right-wing extremists should be denied a platform by the College lest it be used to incite racial hatred, Myers

stated his belief that Griffi n’s potential to incite racial hatred was vastly overstated by those who stood in opposition to his visit.

‘It’s not complex; is this man entitled, in a Western, European democracy, to speak his mind? Of course he is. Is he entitled to make statements that incite racial hatred? No, he is not, but is he likely to? I’ve seen and heard him a number of times on the television and radio, and he has never said anything that might be construed as incitement to hatred.

‘He’s not some little Nazi that we’ve dug up from a hole somewhere - he’s the

person we’ve seen in the media.’ He added that ‘freedom of speech, not Nick Griffi n’ was the major issue at play in his decision to reject the Hist’s invitation and that he was ‘indifferent’ as to whether or not the College or any student society chose to extend the invite again.

When asked if it would be fair to say that he would not been accepting an invite to speak in Trinity for a long time to come, Myers responded ‘yes, that would be fair to say’.

PRESIDENT MICHAEL D. Higgins will be visiting Trinity College Dublin on the 3rd and 4th of February to open the inaugural Trinity Economic Forum (TEF).

Th is will be President Higgins’ fi rst visit to any third level institution in Ireland as President.

The concept for the forum was developed by two economics students who felt that “much of the political discourse surrounding Ireland and its economic well-being was backwardlooking, and ultimately still framed in reference to the

2012

Tickets on sale Wednesday February 1st @ 11am: €60/58 for members

long-dead Celtic Tiger”.

“TEF brings students from across every university both north and south,” Seán Gill told The University Times. “The whole idea is to try and develop solutions from the ground up and open discourse on an undergraduate level. The President spoke in his inaugural address about building the youths so we asked him if he would like to come along for the opening address on Friday, so we’re looking forward to that.”

TEF hope that some of their delegates will be making the decisions that will shape the Ireland of the future and that the spirit of

the Trinity Economic Forum will inform their decisions.

The idea for TEF came to co-founders Seán Gill (3rd year Economics and Maths) and Gary Finnerty (2nd year Economics) separately last year. They envisioned a summit where students could come from all over Ireland to discuss the issues facing us and the fractured state of economics globally.

The third co-founder, Patrick Lynch (4th year Economics and Business), was brought on board to help with the organisation of the Forum. More students were brought in to coordinate PR, event co-ordination and logistics.

Tuesday, January 24 2011 | The University Times

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TIMESNEWS Contents

TIMESFEATURES

RoryO’Donovan and Ciaran O’Callaghan write about the seven wonders of Trinity i.e. rumoured locations where only the brave have had sex Rónán Burtenshaw examines the questions that arise from his news story regarding the firing of academics

A week in the life of Trinity’s Twitterati Rob Farhat Huw Duffy @huwduffy

Applications sent off, Marmite restocked: back to the tweeter machine.

Pithiness levels rising steadily.

NUS UK President Liam Burns writes about the UK student movement after the reintroduction of fees Hannah Cogan examines the conduct of cyber warriors, Anonymous, and concludes that they do more harm than good Rob Farhat continued Economise This

TIMESSPORTS The Trinity Player brings some exPremiereship expertise UT Sports We preview this year’s Six Nations tournament and make some interesting predictions In an Olympic year Ronan Richardson tries his hand at football, and it turns out to be the funniest trial so far

The University Times

Magazine

Tommy Gavin spent some time in Raidíó na Life to see how the station brings Gaeilge to the city George Voronov presents a stunning photographic essay Shauna Watson interviewed the Rubberbandits and found in them in typically lively form The Culture section features the best student writing on film, fashion and theatre

Credits

EDITOR Ronan Costello DEPUTY EDITOR Rónán Burtenshaw NEWS EDITOR Leanna Byrne FEATURES EDITOR Rory O’Donovan OPINION EDITOR Hannah Cogan SPORTS EDITOR Matt Rye DEPUTY NEWS EDITOR Jack Leahy DEPUTY FEATURES EDITOR Tomás Sullivan DEPUTY OPINION EDITOR Max Sullivan PHOTO EDITORS George Voronov and Joseph Noonan Magazine Editor Tommy Gavin Magazine Deputy Editor Luke O’Connel CULTURE EDITOR David Doyle CREATIVE DIRECTOR Dargan Crowley-LOng WEB EDITORS Peter Twomey & Melanie Giedlin

@ acowardhyding

Darragh Genockey

.@garyred how do you justify proposing a constitution that lets you run for an extra term and would give you a pay increase for doing so?

I’ll know I have become a sensible adult when I am in bed before the phone sex chatline ads come on.

Aoife Crowley

Hannah Cogan @aoifemcrowley

@genockey

@coganh

Sent my da links to streaming sites yesterday, and text him just now “Newcastle 3-0 Man U! Madness!” He just replied “Cant get it up”.

Aoibhín Murphy continues her historical exploration of sexuality, this time examing the historical perceptions of gender

TIMESOPINION

Fiona Hyde @robfarhat

Donate the price of a pint (or more!) to @Trinity_ News vs @universitytimes annual match. All proceeds to TCD charities.

Things I have learnt watching the primaries on @CNN: James Carville is clearly Professor X.

Teachers’ union anger at firings Hopes high for continued from front page confirmed the government’s support for the Agreement at the end of December, saying “it is working, and it is common sense to keep it.”

IFUT initially did not sign up to the Croke Park Agreement, citing the “loose wording” of the document.

They agreed to participate in the process after clarifying the implications of the document to their satisfaction with the Department of Education in 2011.

The most significant concessions from public sector unions in the agreement were to enhance productivity and flexbility in work practices and reduce the number employed in the public service on a non-replacement basis. In exchange the government agreed not to introduce any further pay cuts or serve permanent public

sector staff with notices of compulsory redundancy.

Previous Labour Court rulings, in addition to employment guidelines offered by government bodies the National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) and Citizens Information, indicate that CIDs are permanent contracts. In addition Provost Patrick Prendergast reaffirmed this when questioned on the status of the contracts during the course of the recent election campaign.

In the wake of the redundancies the Head of the School for Social Policy, Eoin O’Sullivan, circulated an e-mail among staff members in the school saying that he and his predecessor had repeatedly told staff on CIDs that they were permanent because this was the indication given by college.

An Irish Universities Association (IUA) statement

issued in the wake of the Croke Park Agreement in 2010 denied that the agreement “casualised university labour”. In the process the IUA “[sought] to establish that tenure is consistent with the established corpus of employment law and, in that context, refers to the duration of contract.” These compulsory redundancies are likely to re-open the debate about the nature of tenure and job security in universities.

The University Times understands that the positions occupied by the staff fall under the remit of “non-core funding”. They were tied to specific streams of “noncore funding” but it is unclear whether this funding was derived from public or private funds. The phrase “external funding” was used

by College in correspondence with the staff members and IFUT. A request to the

College to define “non-core funding” and clarify the nature of the funding for these positions was declined.

In the past core-funding has referred to the funding provided by the students enrolled in the college - although how this has been allocated within the college has varied. As of July 26th, 2011 the college had 2,860 full-time staff, of which 1,726 were deemed to be “core-funded”.

College declined to respond to a series of questions asked by The University Times in the interests of “staff confidentiality”.

“Some of the matters raised are subject to ongoing Labour Relations Commission proceedings which is the appropriate forum, but which also precludes the College from further comment.”

UCD referendum to propose abolition of Ents Officer position Leanna Byrne News Editor UCD STUDENTS’ Union is set to hold a referendum on a proposed new constitution. The referendum is expected to coincide with the SU sabbatical elections on the 29th of February and the 1st of March.

A constitutional review committee have deliberated over the past number of months. The committee consists of nine members including USI President and former UCDSU President Gary Redmond. The committee is expected to

present the final draft of the proposed constitution in the next coming weeks.

According to The College Tribune, the amended constitution would lead to the abolition of the Entertainments, Campaigns and Communications Officers.

The Entertainments Officer would be replaced by an ‘Entertainment Manager’ who would be appointed on a three year contract that the SU Council reviewed annually. The “Events Coordinator” is expected to be scrapped to put in place an “Ents Executive”. This body would organise on-campus

events, whereas the Entertainment Manager would have the responsibility of organising off-campus Ents events. The Ents Executive is not expected to receive any pay.

These amendments are to ensure that losses are eased and to remove the possibility of making profit off the back of Ents events.

The proposed constitution will cut SU financial support to campus radio station Belfield FM within two years. Also, tougher checks would be put in place to ensure sabbatical officers are doing their jobs, with a

possibility of docks in pay if class-reps are not satisfied with how superiors are performing. In addition, a referendum on affiliation with the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) would be required every four years.

If approved, the constitution will introduce a new system of class representative voting. A number of class reps will be voted in from different class groups, but not all reps will be expected to attend SU Council. The majority of class reps will attend individual College Councils that represent their schools or faculties.

FEE member in alleged assault on IT Tralee SU President Leanna Byrne News Editor FEE MEMBER Nicolas O’Donnell has been put before a disciplinary committee in Tralee IT following an assault complaint that was put forward by the SU president Michael Thomson. O’Donnell has criticized Thomson’s move in an article published on the FEE (Free Education for Everyone) website, claiming that the union is “undemocratic” and has actively discriminated against him because of his involvement in FEE. In an article that was published on the 19th of January 2012, Nicolas O’Donnell said Tralee SU ‘set out to censor, discredit and alienate its biggest critics’. O’Donnell outlined how he was ‘excluded’ from the national student protest that took place on the 16th of November last year. He was informed that he would be prevented from attempting

to board the buses to Dublin in an email sent eight hours prior to departure.

However, O’Donnell disregarded the email and arrived the next morning to take his place on the bus, but was ‘physically blocked’ at the stairwell.

When questioned about the incident President of Tralee IT Michael Thomson told The University Times that O’Donnell is ‘very hard to deal with’ and that the union feared that he would not stick to the route of the march.

“Students were asked whether they were going to stick to the route during the protest or not and last year Nicolas did not stick to the group, something he announced on his personal blog,” explained Thomson.

“I have a duty of care for students. If they are not going to stick to the route they cannot go. There were other members of FEE on the bus because they were going to stick to the route.”

On the 28th of November Thompson made a formal complaint to the college.

The complaint outlined how O’Donnell had “shoulder charged” Thomson, which resulted in serious injuries.

In response, O’Donnell said that this was this complaint was ‘an elaborate self serving fantasy; a pack of lies, completely bereft of any evidence’.

“At the hearing we both gave very different versions of events to a disciplinary committee,” O’Donnell told The University Times. “Mr. Thompson presented no evidence. Despite claiming to have sought medical attention for a serious injury, he did not present a doctor’s report or x-rays. He never reported the incident to the Gardaí.”

However, Thomson denied filing a complaint. College security were present when O’Donnell became violent and notified the college after the incident.

“The nurse called me in

and recommended that I see a doctor, who concluded that I had bruised ribs and strapped my rib-cage for a week,” said Thomson.

O’Donnell’s allegation that Tralee IT is undemocratic and excludes students has not gone unnoticed by other FEE members. Thomson has received numerous emails from students and staff highlighting their concerns. Despite this, the SU president believes that he made the right decision.

“When you are responsible for 200 students it entails much more responsibility than wearing a t-shirt.”

Thomson has also defended his treatment of FEE members in Tralee. Invited from the president have been sent for members to sit with the union due to the bad relationship that manifested last year. According to Thomson, the invitations were sent via facebook, where O’Donnell was the mediator of the page. The invitations were ignored.

repeat of RAG Week success

Leanna Byrne News Editor RAG WEEK 2012 is taking place from Monday, January 23rd to Friday, January 27th.

This year Trinity has managed to raise over €1000 before the week’s events have begun.

There will be a large number of RAG Week Fundraisers and all money raised will be donated to a number of Trinity based charities such as VDP, VTP, S2S, Suas, FLAC, Amnesty, Cancer Soc and the Student Hardship Fund.

Last year, RAG Week 2011successfully raised €16,000. Entertainments Officer Chris O’Connor hopes to surpass this mark as “the structure was put in place really well last year by Darragh Genockey to make RAG Week a continuing success”.

The old model was replaced last year by a new model that enabled students to set up their own individual fundraisers. According to O’Connor, this helps RAG Week gain more attention than the Ents Office could do alone.

“The fact that social media has such a massive role in the new model means that more people hear about it and they don’t have to be there to donate physically,” said O’Connor. “They can just do it online. Easy!”

Currently, O’Connor has an organising committee of 12 students that will be responsible for co-ordinating

the major events that Ents will be running. O’Connor assures students that any event that is organised by the SU will be going towards raising awareness and funds for different charities.

The chair of Trinity-Cancer Soc, Becca Roche, will be teaming up with Jack Cantillon will be “Joined at the Cuff” for RAG Week. For the entire week they will be handcuffing themselves together for every lecture for the whole day. Their aim is to raise €500 and they have also set up a gumball challenge to encourage more students to donate.

“I think this is a great time for all charity organisations in college to get some more exposure and to publicise why they raise money throughout the whole year,” Roche told The University Times.

Roche and Cantillon with be following an exclusive set of rules such as attending every lecture, even if they clash, and only allowing the use of the toilet if a donation is given.

Donations can be through mycharity.ie or to the fundraisers themselves.

O’Connor hopes that students will get involved as much as they did last year.

“It doesn’t matter if the events are big or small so long as people just know that anything they can contribute will go a long way towards helping to reach the end goal,” explains O’Connor.

Éigse 2012 ag tosnú ar champas AN TSEACHTAIN seo is cinnte go bhfuil aird chuile dhuine dírithe arSheachtain Phléarácaim (Rag Week). Ach, má tú fós beo an tseachtain seo chugainn (agus tá súil agam go mbeidh), is seachtain allmhór ífreisin, óir is Éigse na Tríonóide atá ann!

Is í Éigse na TríonóideSeachtain na Gaeilge Choláiste na Tríonóide; seachtain ina ndéantarceiliúradh ar ár dteanga féin agus ar ár gcultúr féin.

Tagann fórsaí an Chumann Ghaelaigh, Aontais na Mac Léinn agus Oifige na Gaeilge le chéile le scoth na n-imeachtaí a chur ar siúl, agus chuile rud trí mheán na Gaeilge.

Is deis iontach í an tseachtain le cibé Gaeilge atá agat a úsáid, fiú mura bhfuil ach cúpla focal agat.

I mbliana tá éirithe linn an t-uafás imeachtaí a bhrú isteach sa tseachtain. Cuirfear tús le himeachtaí ag 8.30 r.n. Dé Luain agus ní stopfaidh siad go dtí oíche Dé hAoine. Tá réimse anleathan d’imeachtaí éagsúla eagraithe agus is cinnte

go bhfuil imeacht éigin a thaitneoidh le gach aon duine ann. Mar shampla, beidh dráma Dé hAoine i bPlayers, beidh an scannán Harry Potter á thaispeáint againn Déardaoin, beidh Gairmeacha le Gaeilge Dé Céadaoin, díospóireacht leis an Hist Dé Máirt agus beidh an Seoladh Oifigiúil le haoi speisialta Dé Luain.

Ach, dár ndóigh is é An Gig Mór ar an Déardaoin le hAslan buaicphointe na seachtaine, níl ach €10 ar na ticéid agus beidh siad ar fáil ón Luan ag 10 r.n. i mBloc na nDámh, is cinnte gur oíche den scoth a bheidh inti!

An aidhm atá leis an tseachtain ná le daoine a spreagadh leis an nGaeilge a labhairt, go h-áirithe daoine nach labhródh í de ghnáth, agus cén bealach níos fearr le daoine a spreagadh ná le bricfeasta saor in aisce a thabhairt dóibh! De bharr sin tá sé eagraithe againn go mbeidh bricfeasta saor in aisce ar fáil, thuas staighre sa GMB, chuile mhaidin, do dhuine ar bith atá sásta an Ghaeilge atá acu a labhairt.

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The University Times | January 24 2011

TIMESNEWS

SU Elections 2012 - The candidates profiled

Rory Dunne President RORY DUNNE is a 21 year old Junior Sophister Immunology student from Co. Wexford. Dunne has been heavily involved in College life. He was Activity Leader, Soup Run and Public Relations Officer of Trinity VDP. Moreover, he sat on the Campus Resident Committee has an Ordinary Member, was the Marketing Secretary of the Dublin University Football Club and finally worked in the Accommodation Advisory Service.

Dunne feels the Student Union needs redirection

John Tighe President JOHN TIGHE is not your conventional candidate for the presidency of TCDSU. His CV is not laden with important-sounding positions and bureaucratic achievements.

Describing himself as a ‘student activist’, Tighe is more Joe Duff y than Ryan Bartlett in terms of the style of presidency he would uphold. A member of left-wing group Free Education for Everyone (FEE), a campaign that was set up to fight the privatisation of education,

Aisling Ní Chonaire Welfare Officer AISLING NÍ Chonaire is a 4th Year Psychology student who intends to run for the position of Welfare Officer.

As the only girl amongst a family of boys, she is a keen boxer, so is ready for a hectic election schedule! Apart from boxing, Ní Chonaire has been immersed in College life.

She held the position of Ents Officer, Vice Chairperson and fourth year rep on

in terms of the approach it takes with a wide range of college issues. He points to the establishment of the Meet& Greet service by Ryan Bartlett and notes, “Th is was a fantastic service which Ryan established after identifying a need from his own experiences”. Consequentially, he would love to see the Student’s Union continue to develop this Student Directed Services approach.

He believes the SU shouldn’t be something that’s just visible during campaign and awareness weeks; it should be there for students every day of every week. Therefore Dunne envisions creating services for students,

which would be both readily visible, and made a notable difference to student’s lives.

Where possible, these services would be staffed and run by students.

Dunne told The University Times that he will address several issues throughout the course of his campaign but took the time to highlight one in particular. He believes Trinity has one obvious weakness when compared to other colleges; the provision of opportunity through the Careers service. Dunne told us he wants to develop the CAS into a source of genuine opportunity. To this end, he envisions working in conjunction with the staff of CAS, to provide Trinity-exclusive internships in every area of academia. Furthermore he would endeavour to establish strong links with traditional and non-traditional sources of internships, directed towards all career paths. Dunne notes, “Our surroundings are littered with the country’s fi nest galleries and theatres” thus these could provide the perfect forum for Trinity

students to undertake work experience and internships in these areas. Closer to home, Dunne points to Trinity’s acclaimed Science Department and hopes to address the lack of internship programmes by building on this reputation. He hopes to achieve this by developing ties with International companies, with the aim of providing young Trinity scientists with the opportunity to develop their skills and to experience a professional environment.

Dunne points to appointment of a Vice-Provost for Global Relations by the Provost Patrick Prendergast.

Apparently this role was to enhance Trinity’s international reputation. Consequentially, if elected he would try to a maximise Trinity’s reputation in a similar manner by providing ‘J1’ and international internships through the Alumni network. Th is no doubt will require time and effort but Dunne is hoping that if achieved it will have a lasting success. He remarks, “It is about time something is Dunne about it in Trinity”

the raising of the student social charge and the re-introduction of fees. Tighe describes himself as having been involved in ‘many protests down the years from the protest at the Department of Finance protest on 3rd November 2010 to Shell to Sea.’ Put simply, John does not believe that modern student politics does enough: ‘I feel that the USI is not doing near enough to combat this threat (of third-level feels); having one major protest a year will not get you anywhere. Furthermore, I also feel that USI’s constant attack on the public sector is

irresponsible on their part as many parents are working in the public sector and any cutbacks in that sector will have a significant effect on the lives of these families and the children that are attending third level education. It creates a bubble that allows students to be attacked in isolation whereas we should be forging relationships with trade unionists and other workers to combat austerity.

Tighe cites the example of the TCDSU’s ‘Keep calm - Call your TD’ advertising campaign ahead of the national protest march on November 16th as the epitome of that which renders student politics ineffective: ‘I feel that the ‘Keep Calm’ campaign run in conjunction with the USI protest this year was irresponsible and ill-conceived. The students of Ireland should be angry because we and many of our parents and friends are paying for a crisis that we did not create while the people that put in this mess are living the high life.’

When asked what he would change in the College as a whole, Tighe roots his answer in concerns that have dominated the landscape of student politics for the last year: its democratic make-up and College’s much-derided allocation of funds.

‘In the college as a whole, I believe that college life should become much more democratic. Without the students there is no university and at the moment I don’t feel the students’ council is representative and very few people realise what it is doing on a weekly basis.

Furthermore, I believe that the apolitical nature of campaigns around campus needs to stop the cutting of education services from different departments as a result of the austerity measures being put in place by this government and the last one.’

No photo of Tighe was available.

the Pscychological Society.

What’s more, the 21 year old Dubliner is no stranger to the Student Union having spent two years as Class Rep. Ní Chonaire also has extensive experience in college welfare. She spent two years on the Welfare Team, one year on the Welfare Committee and is a trained peer supporter. Finally, she’s involved in the VDP Soup Run as Activity Leader, tasked with coordinating and organising over 600 volunteers. In light of this involvement it is no wonder she highlights her

passion for mental health, “I have been involved in mental health for the past three years both in college and with various mental health organisations outside of college. It’s an area that I have studied in-depth as part of my degree and have enormous interest, enthusiasm and drive for” If elected Ní Chonaire aims to continue the, in her words, the fantastic service that has been run by the current Welfare Officer, Louisa Miller. She would try to build on this by supporting features such as the Welfare Team, Peer Mentors and Peer Supporters, which she claims, “are valuable assets that I feel need to be continually supported in promoting student welfare”. Moreover, she would like to focus special attention on mental health to, “empower students in looking after their own well-being, as well as that of their friends” Ní Chonaire also points to the current challenges in welfare, noting that mental

health is not only an important college-level issue but a national one. She highlights the issue of suicide and particularly its devastating impact on a large numbers of Trinity students. As a result she promises to work towards ridding prejudice surrounding mental health issues by encouraging students to talk to a friend, family, a peer supporter, a counsellor or whoever they feel comfortable with. Ní Chonaire hopes that the wider college community will help with the aforementioned objectives. She notes, “Although these issues are something that must be addressed with a long-term perspective, the college as a whole has a responsibility to promote the notion that it’s okay to talk, to encourage mutual respect among all staff and students and to continue to keep student well-being at the fore”.

James Kelly President READING JAMES Kelly’s student CV reads like a manifesto in itself, and the 21-year old from Wexford is sure to run on a platform of a superhuman amount of extra-curricular responsibility.

Popular with societies, James’ 2010/11 academic year alone took in three positions with the Students’ Union, a sub-editorship in Trinity News and a contributor position in this very publication, the History Society (of which he is now auditor), DU Politics, DU Amnesty, S2S, and the Central Societies Commission.

Once you’ve recovered from the headache delivered to you by the above, you inevitably come to the conclusion that the Senior Sophister History and Political Science student is wellknown and well-liked on campus.

Skeptics, of which there are many in student politics, might dismiss Kelly’s campaign as the pursuit of the

Dan Ferrick Education Officer EVERY SABBATICAL officer election campaign features one of those candidates whose long-term desire to hold the position is a very poorly-kept secret. In that regard, this year’s Ryan Bartlett is 22-year old genetics student Dan Ferrick, running uncontested for the position of education officer.

The genetics student has been heavily involved in Student Union activities for a number of years, currently sitting on University Council as faculty convenor for Engineering, Maths, and Science (EMS) and campaigning for the construction of the pathway through Front Square as Officer for Students with a Disability in his third year.

Dan has been a committee member of the Food and Drink Society for two years and can add S2S mentor, class rep, Undergraduate Studies Committee representative, and Science Ball

Emma Walker Welfare Officer 20-YEAR OLD Spanish and Sociology student Emma Walker is running for the position of welfare officer after two years of high levels of activity in the SU, Trinity Ents, and CancerSoc, where she currently holds the position of secretary.

While her experiences in College societies do not necessarily pertain to the Welfare office, Emma’s case highlights the weakness of using society involvement as a measure of suitability for a salaried position in student life. Emma is currently employed as a special needs assistant and mentor for Spanish students in a Dublin boarding school.

Like a number of candidates running in this year’s elections, Emma is concerned with how the Union communicates with its members. However, what seems to worry her most is the knowledge that there

fi nal jewel of a crown of activities to which his previous college activities have led. However, Kelly is full of ideas as to how the SU can best use its existing structures to improve College life for its members: ‘There seems to be a disconnect between the SU and students. Part of this problem is because the work of the SU isn’t communicated to students, and part of it is that many students I have met feel like they can’t approach the SU, and this is something I want to change, and I hope to do this by running Presidential clinics where students can air their opinions and ideas on a one to one basis. Expanding upon this, I will implement office hours for Part Time Officers of the Union to ensure greater communication between the student body and the SU.’ In addition, Kelly has ideas for the traditional campaign target of Union transparency, as well as the ever-growing need to help students economise: ‘Transparency within the Union is so important to

these proposals, and if elected I plan on implementing new ideas to improve transparency and bridge the gap between students and the SU.’ ‘One area where the SU can help students in a more fundamental manner is by making sure students get value for money. I will bring a number of ideas to my campaign, and if elected, my term as President, which will ensure students will get the best deal. Improving the Deal of the Week and bringing in new cost-saving measures such as a supermarket deals.’

Interestingly, he is the only candidate for a

sabbatical position who refers to modifying the SU constitution as a means to improving the way in which it operates, advocating a fundamental rather than functional reform where required: ‘If elected I will set up a Constitutional Review Group to assess the current SU Constitution. The last time the Constitution was revised was in 2009, and most changes were cosmetic. Th is Review Group would look at the Constitution within the changing framework of TCDSU.’

2012 organiser to a glittering student-life CV. A connoisseur of student politics and familiar with the intricacies of College processes, Dan believes that while the role of education officer necessarily involves large amounts of committee and policy work, individual case work should be the priority.

‘The most important part of the job in my opinion is the one-on-one case work, where students can come to the education office with any of their academic issues or problems. In my role as EMS convenor, I’ve had people come to me directly with problems and queries regarding their course, and the issue is usually that the information is not readily available and often very hard to understand’.

Ferrick believes that the education officer should follow in Stephanie Fleming’s footsteps as welfare officer and cater to off-campus students by working a late evening during the week.

‘As an education officer

I’ll guarantee that the office will be open late at least one night a week from 6 to 9 and weekends when needed to facilitate students especially those off campus with any of their academic concerns’ Engaging with ever-present concerns regarding the way in which limited College funds are allocated, Ferrick insists that, if elected, he will lobby College authorities until he’s blue in the face should the quality of education suffer as a result of funding cuts.

‘The job of Education

Officer happens very much behind the scenes on the various college boards and committees. Over the past few years Higher Education like all facets in Irish life has been hit by spending and budget cuts. Trinity in the past has proved herself to be very wasteful with money, if elected I will work tirelessly that if cuts do occur it is not the quality of education we as students receive that suffers.’

are students on campus who are unaware of the existence of the welfare officer - an essential and free service whose importance in student life is beyond question.

‘Being someone who has been involved within the union for the past two years, I can see how much work goes into maintaining and building on the high level of care that is given to the students in every aspect.

However, while it is important to be constantly making new projects and aiming higher, I believe it is essential to make sure that the whole university campus knows the small things that each officer does. It is shocking to hear some people question what each position entails, in their 3rd or 4th year in the university.

Th is is why, as a candidate for welfare I want to make it my promise, not policy, to make sure all those who enter into the incoming 1st year will know exactly what I do, and what I can give and hear it from me personally.’

A number of candidates have indicated a willingness to increase the number of services provided by the Union so as to increase the number of students who come into contact with the Union and its officers. If elected, Walker would look to provide a comprehensive fi nancial guide to help students adjust to an economic climate proving increasingly difficult for students: “I believe not just the Union, but also the college itself, can do more to provide students with an end of this hazy tunnel. While

grants are being cut, and the living prices rising, as one of my policies I will work with the university to provide a budgetary leaflet on college, accommodation, city life – going out, food, and transport - different to that of the SU diary as it would very economically and numerically based. It would delineate a clear difference between the different places to shop, different areas to live in, and the different transport options. It is so important for us as a College community to look after our own.

Overleaf: Haughey, Cogan, Hagan, Bennett and Whelan

Tuesday, January 24 2011 | The University Times

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TIMESNEWS

ANDREW HAUGHEY is from Dublin and contesting this year’s race to become the Student Union’s Welfare Officer. Haughey lists water sports and reading as some of his favourite activities; but chiefly highlights his passion for helping people. Indeed, the third year Chemistry student is an elected member of the college Welfare Team.

Building on these

James Hagan Communications Officer JAMES HAGAN is a 21 year old Senior Sophsiter, English Student from Dublin.

He has a keen interest in music, reading and socialising. Hagan has demonstrated his interest in all aspects of college life by his involvement in College Societies.

His list of activities include, a Staff writer for The University Times for three years, SU Class Rep 09/10, Committee member of LGBT society 09/10, Committee member of Literary Society 09/10, Arts Block Coordinator for

Dave Whelan Ents Officer GIVEN THE propensity of the Ents race to get heated, your journalistic disposition dictates whether you breath a sigh of relief or a cry of frustration at the news that David Whelan is uncontested in the race for Ents officer.

Hailing from Laois, Whelan currently occupies a management position on Chris O’Connor’s Ents exec and is frequently designated as the go-to man for organising class parties. With an Ents-dominated CV also boasting the position of

experiences Haughey notes some of the changes he would implement if elected. He was particularly inspired by his involvement in Mental Health Week, stating, “Working at the stands, we were asked to promote the college health services and an incredible amount of people didn’t know that students of Trinity can avail to free counselling.” He notes that most students know about the free doctor service, but believes the counselling service is equally as important. Secondly,

SU Rainbow Week 10/11, Class Rep 11/12 and Deputy AHSS Convenor 11/12 Hagan opines that the communication between the student body as a whole and the representatives they elect is a weak point in the system at the moment. He states, “I believe that a solution to this problem is to take better advantage of the internet and multimedia technology available to us and make it a central pillar of how the system works.” To improve this Hagan points to two possible developments. “The communication cycle which needs to be strengthened can be divided in to two main strands.

Firstly, the student body communicating their needs and opinions to elected representatives and, secondly, elected representatives, especially sabbatical officers, providing information about how decisions being made in college and at a national level will affect students.” He believes that a “central, well maintained, frequently updated and heavily advertised online system of communication” would be the best way of strengthening the flaws in the communication cycle at this point in time.

Hagan highlights his concerns about the lack of contact students get with the SU, “whatever the achievements of the SU, many students never even come in to contact with it”. He believes, this problem has improved in the last couple of years due to the services provided, pointing to the implementation of the deal of the week which meant that more students read the weekly email in. Therefore he believes an expansion of services will help to create more contact points between students and the structures of the SU. Hagan feels that the

number one problem facing students is the lack of considerable electoral representation in college structures.

He believes that most difficulties in making headway in all other issuses stems from this handicap. To illustrate this point it was noted, “student vote in the decennial Provostial election counts for 2-3% of the overall vote, yet a sizable amount of college’s funding stems from students. Th is effectively means that we experience taxation with inadequate representation. Th is means that it is harder for students to make the powers that be in college listen to our requests, be they the implementation of Christmas exams or connecting smartphones to the college network. Th is is just one, albeit an extremely important, fact of life in Trinity which debilitates students” Consequentially, If elected, Hagan promises to make sure that The University Times analyses the underlying structures that make it harder for students to get what they want and tracks development in the structure of college as it continues to implement its strategic plan

2010/11 JCR Ents officer and this year’s DUBES ents officer.

‘I was elected JCR Entertainments Officer in Trinity Halls in. In this position I organised all events for Halls residents throughout the year ranging from the orientation weekend to the fi rst ever refreshers week in Trinity Halls and of course the renowned Hall Ball!

I am currently enjoying my position as the DUBES Entertainments Officer. As one of Ireland’s largest societies there is great pressure to impress, but along with the fantastic committee I have had a great time organising the trips to Krakow,

which will be the cheapest international DUBES trip ever, our ridiculously cheap trip to Galway, and the much anticipated BESS Ball.’

Armed with a wealth of experience in organising class parties, Whelan wants to put his wisdom to use, citing efficiency within Ents planning as his prime focus if elected. ’Having worked with many class reps this year on Trinity Ents I noticed that the current system for booking class parties is inefficient. I’d like to see more choice of nights out for class reps trying to organise parties for their class and for this to be made much clearer and easier for the reps themselves.’

However, Whelan would look to expand Ents’ reach in the Dublin club scene, with only the ‘MadHaus’ event at The Village on Camden Street currently hosting the only major and consistent Ents night. ’Trinity Ents has produced an incredible night in the form of MadHaus, however I would like to add to this with a wider offering giving access to every club

in Dublin to the reps who work so hard for their respective classes’.

It is, however, a defi nite sign of a man running unopposed that, when asked what he would change about college as a whole, his responses is to challenge the sanctity of the Pav. ‘The only thing Trinity requires is a top class student bar capable of hosting the best talent that Trinity and the world has to offer. Before coming to Trinity I was told the Pav was a mythical place where students were drawn in search of quality drink deals and a Coppers-esque guarantee of a big crowd every night of the week.

The renovations have been unfortunate, and while there is nothing better than lying out in front of the Pav with a few beers as term ends, there is defi nite scope for an alternative. It’s time we had our own area to watch our own bands and DJs play which can welcome students for lunch and coffee during the day, and a few stiff refreshments at night.’

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“Aside from one townhall at the start of this year, students haven’t been given a forum to directly ask questions of the Provost, and College has no incentive to answer. The Communications Officer, both through the University Times and SU Townhalls, is in a fantastic position to facilitate these exchanges and it’s something I’d like to prioritise”

jurisdiction, and specifically that of the Communications officer, is the way in which College combats its propensity to misspend. He considers the SU capable of providing College with a constructive proposals that ensure College’s fiscal allocation policies are conducive to the needs of students.

‘In terms of the college as a whole, trinity is entering a crucial phase in its history.

Over the past few years, the college has slipped down the international rankings, primarily but not exclusively as a result of funding cutbacks. In that context, the college administration must focus heavily on achieving more with little.

The college must strongly resist cutbacks but at the same time position itself to deal with such cutbacks.

The college administration must ensure that primary services to students, such as library opening hours and class times, are protected from cuts. Both the college administration and the SU must work together to formulate innovate and creative responses to help deal with the funding cutbacks.

Failure to do so will exacerbate Trinity’s decline, a state of affairs no one wants to realise.’

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namely a lack of transparency and accountability, is wholly diminished. My election manifesto contains specific measures which I believe will go a long way toward diminishing the information asymmetry within the SU.’ The former Blackrock College student believes that SU officers are essentially facilitators of the will of their constituents, and wants to use the position of communications officer to give those without positions or officerships in the Students’ Union a greater representation in its decisionmaking processes.

‘SU officers are elected student representatives, and as such, are obliged to act in a manner which aligns itself with the needs and wants of students. With that in mind, my campaign will focus on utilising the potential of the Communications office to function as an impartial intermediary between the students and the SU, ensuring ordinary students have a far greater say in how the SU conducts its affairs’.

Another major issue that Bennett wants to bring into the Students’ Union

in a great position to help make sure students’ positions are recognised, and those political responsibilities should be just as important as a flawlessly-edited UT” If elected, Cogan promises to encourage more public interaction between the college administration and the student body. She believes whilst the Student Union leaders can express views on college policy directly to the administration, most students don’t have the same opportunity.

She stated,

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MULLINGAR NATIVE Owen Bennett is running for the position of Communications Officer having been heavily involved, as deputy editor and co-founder, in the rise of The Bull, the only student-run business and economics newspaper in Ireland. Every inch the businessman, Bennett says the decision to found the publication was born of ‘a huge market for economic and business news within the college’ Involved in College journalism since his fi rst year, the Junior Sophister Philosophy and Economics student now combines his role in The Bull with the position of business editor in Trinity News. If elected to the communications office, Bennett would use the position to target what he regards as the foremost issue in Trinity’s student representative body: transparency.

‘I am standing on a platform of direct democracy, ensuring that the issue which blights the SU,

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of the Student Union. To this end she highlights the needs for more transparency and accountability in the SU. One of the ways she envisions this being achieved, includes “publishing a full breakdown of the budget and Student Union expenses- students should be able to see exactly how their €8 is spent”. Moreover, she advocates “better and more accessible coverage of council meetings to help students understand what their class reps and faculty convenors are or aren’t doing”. Cogan also alludes to the importance of the Communication Officer in the wider arena of Irish student politics.

She notes, “external communications should be given more emphasis, making the Student Union position clear beyond the walls of Trinity College. Part of the reason the USI’s ‘Stop Fees’ campaign was met with such hostility by the public outside Irish colleges was because the message was deemed simplistic; the Communications Officer is

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Join the best news team in student journalism,

Keating |

HANNAH COGAN is a Senior Sophister English and History student. As the current University Times Opinion Editor, she intends to run for the top position in the paper, the Communications Officer. Indeed, Cogan has been present in many literary endeavours throughout her time in Trinity College.

She is currently the Editorin-Chief of the Histories and Humanities Journal, Founding Editor of the Trinity Literary Review and Editor of The Attic. What’s more, when not clasping the journalistic pen, she was Debates Convenor and HMC for the Phil, Public Relations Officer for the Literary Society, and worked on David Norris’ campaign team over the summer. Not to mention the 21 year old Canadian is currently studying for her pilot’s license.

Cogan feels the role of the Communications Officer is vital to the success

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“After talking to Louisa Miller (current SU Welfare Officer) I was surprised to hear that an incredible amount of students came into her saying they can’t afford to buy food” He believes this position is wholly unacceptable and a program similar to the VDP Food Run should be established without delay, remarking, “The VDP Food Run was a fantastic idea, half of the food was for students. Th is really is the essence of the SU, students helping students”

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Andrew Haughey

Haughey aims to promote awareness about suicide and prevention around campus. Th is indeed is a national problem and the best way to solve it is improving individual college facilities.

Finally, the 21 year old, reiterates his delight at the success of this year’s Mental Health Wee, and believes SHAG week should be just as big a hit next year! To this end he hopes to organise an abundance of activities like, “Th ings to do during the week, like that fantastic talk on sexual empowerment, and more fun things that are going to get people talking, hopefully making them aware of safe sex.

Haughey believes these changes will help the college as a whole. For example, prompting the aforementioned objectives via improving posters and communication will help raise awareness of the issues like depression, suicide and sexual health. Lastly, he highlights another concern facing Trinity students, many can’t afford to eat.

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The University Times | January 24 2011

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TIMESNEWS

Tuesday, January 24 2011 | The University Times

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TIMESFEATURES

The Seven Wonders of Trinity

The things George has seen...

Features Editor Rory O’Donovan and Ciaran O’Callaghan list the seven most taboo places to have sex on campus. To the more adventurous reader, this is a throwing down of the gauntlet. UT accepts no responsibility for any misfortune that may befall you in the attempt of any of the acts below

I

N A VISIT to the Phil in December, Trinity graduate Dominic West, most renowned for his role as the character McNulty in The Wire implied his achievements at this university had gone beyond the academic sphere. He told a tale of cooking his girlfriend (now his wife) dinner and serving it to her on the roof of the GMB. He further suggested that the dinner had been so successful that the couple then indulged in some premarital dessert.

Students at Queens’ College, The University of Melbourne in Australia have, for generations, incorporated the idea of wondrous intercourse to their very own campus. In fact it is an established collegiate tradition that continues to be taken quite seriously by many past and current members of the institution. “Wonders” range from the glamorous: the top of the college’s architecturally stunning tower; the omnipotent Master of the College’s overly-expensive dining hall chair and the Master’s very own doorstep; to the not-so-glamorous: the laundry room. Rules apply and there are very specific and intricate terms and conditions as to what constitutes a wonder – as seedy as it sounds it is all very much true. One Alumni of the College, who – though currently residing on the other side of the world – will remain

anonymous, recently told us – “the greatest achievement in my undergraduate years was grabbing all the wonders. Crikey all the big fi rms love it”.

Inspired by West’s achievements and the standard set by other universities around the world, the question becomes palpable: What are, if there are any, Trinity College Dublin’s Seven Wonders? Research is needed …

Number Seven: Any Room on the 5th Floor of the Arts Block Precedence: The story goes that an adventurous Trinity couple, just last year, spent some quality time together in an unnamed room on the 5th floor of the Arts Block. The feat is all the more impressive considering the couple in question claim to have done the deed during the day with only a wedged-shut door separating them from the busy corridors.

Achievement Involves: Successful attainment of the 7th wonder is relatively simple and involves carnal knowledge of another being achieved in any available room on the 5th floor of the Arts Block.

For the Ambitious: Fornication in the ‘garden’ on the 5th floor, surrounded on three sides by glass, is to be considered an impressive achievement.

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Number Six: The Pool tables of the GMB Precedence: Legend has it that an infamous Irish politician once did more than just pot the black here. Th is feat is considered to be comparatively unimpressive when those involved are members of certain societies that allow them access to the keys to such areas.

Achievement Involves: Potting with a partner; ensuring the felt isn’t torn.

For the Ambitious: To be achieved whilst a Phil debate is in full flow.

Number Five: The roof of the GMB or Museum Building Precedence: As alluded to above – the achievements of McNulty. Again, for those with a key who can boast legitimate rights of access, the feat is practically void. Those with access to one roof should consider the other.

Achievement Involves: Both the successful preparation and service of a delicious meal, followed by the appropriate. Or just the latter.

For the Ambitious: The steps of the GMB or Museum Building Number Four: The Swimming Pool Changing Cubicles Precedence: A current student of our University, Tobias* told us “Well

swimming is boring and there was no sign which read ‘no heavy petting’ so I did the duty and did some casual petting … I’m not going to tell you whether the petting was heavy, I don’t know, it was essential that I had to be swift.” Evidently health and safety is quite problematic in terms of the logistics behind getting randy in the swimming pool area. Tobias digressed: “I wouldn’t recommend it; slippery is an understatement – its just there’s defi nitely something hot about a girl in goggles”.

Achievement Involves: A private workout with a partner in one of the smaller cubicles.

For the Ambitious: Undoubtedly the sauna/steam room. Atmosphere is a vital ingredient. But beware - there are no locks on the door for a reason.

Number Three: The Rose Garden Precedence: One couple, recently departed from our college, shared a story of an unplanned rumble in the rose bushes, inspired by an evening in the pav. ‘We were interrupted more than once by other couples scoring on the benches and had to wait for them to leave before we continued. It was weird for a time, I felt like we were creeping on them from the bushes’.

Achievement Involves: Getting down and dirty in

the bushes, or on the grass, or on one of the benches.

For the Ambitious: The crease of the Cricket Pitch, just around the corner, during a cricket game.

Number Two: The Library Precedence: A variety of couples – both past and present Trinity students – have shared their Library-located adventures with us, with the most popular location proving to be the Berkeley basement.

Achievement Involves: A un-literary revival to be accomplished within the confi nes of the Library, whilst holding a book.

For the Ambitious: Early Printed Books, just above the Book of Kells, whilst tours are in progress.

Number One: Underneath the Campanile Precedence: Archival Research continues. Expected to be completed by summer 2012.

Achievement Involves: Celebrating the most impressive of intimate wonders underneath one of Trinity’s greatest architectural wonders.

For the Ambitious: To arrive when the bell is ringing, during exam time… Th is negates the superstition that failure in fi nal exams is inevitable. Ding Dong.

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The University Times | Tuesday, January 24 2011

TIMESFEATURES

Conor Murphy Staff Writer

I

N CASE YOU didn’t notice any of the witty statuses on the matter, on the 18th of this month there was a‘blackout’protest carried out by major websites such as Wikipedia and Reddit.

Any attempt to access Wikipedia was met with a black page announcing their opposition to a bill called SOPA being considered by the American Congress.

The bill provoked multiple criticisms, with much attention focused on two clear shortcomings: fi rst, that it cannot work for actual pirates and second, that it includes a provision for the shuttingdown of sites that host links to pirate websites – as in, if I post a Facebook status that links to Megavideo, Facebook is liable.

Thankfully, just two days after the blackout, the bill was shelved, as a direct result of the pressure applied by sites such as Wikipedia. Th is provides a celebration of the web as a terrifically potent political force. Unfortunately though, it is as inevitable as daylight that we will see this bill rear its ugly head once again, all that is left to be seen is what choked acronym they entitle the draconian legislation next time.

Besides from those panicked hours, with deadlines imminent, when you were abandoned by your faithful aid Wikipedia, what does this American attempt to take us back to the good ‘ole Cold War days actually mean for us Europeans? What should terrify us is that the underlying structure of the modern Internet offers a far more viral opportunity for American imperialism than any Arab-hating, oil-hungry bulldog in

a General’s suit from the left wing nightmare of days gone by.

There are plenty of reasons for this: the basic hierarchy of web pages means most originate from an American government-run organisation called IANA. Even if foreign companies piggyback on local domains (.ie, .co.uk, .de etc.) and avoid directly being influenced by this organisation, they still have one fundamental weakness, an unprotected asset – their money. All of the major Internet ad companies – Google, Microsoft etc. – and all of the prominent providers of financial services – Paypal, Visa etc. – are based within the corporate behemoth of USA shores. That means any commands from draconian legislation such as SOPA will inevitably impact worldwide, but not locally. Advertising revenue provides 97% of Google’s money and a significant portion of the Internets’ at large.

If you cut out advertising (I’m looking at you Ad-Block) you cut out all of most of the viable business’s revenue.

Proposed Internet legislation involves cutting the fi nances of sites if the government can’t (or aren’t legally allowed to) take down the site themselves. What gives America this right?

Well, nothing, but nothing, or no-one, takes away that right either. The question of Internet legal jurisdiction is one that baffles everyone, “events on the Net occur everywhere but nowhere in particular,” a 1996 Stanford Law Review article said and that situation hasn’t been improved. So fi nancials are the easiest target to hit.

Whoever pays the piper can tell the piper when to get on his knees and blow, and these behemoth Internet companies are puckering up pre-emptively

already. If you really want to see how this can go straight from an ‘intellectual property’ issue to a global politics one faster than a Republican to a lynching, just look at what has ALREADY happened to Wikileaks. Funding has been decimated by the voluntary removal of basic fi nancial services by Visa, Paypal and Mastercard. Their explanation?

They heard that the state Department had sent a letter to Wikileaks asserting that some of Wikileaks activities were illegal in the US (despite being done outside said country). These companies hadn’t even received the letter let alone waited for a court order (which would never have come).

Many agree that there has to be a better way of policing the Web. Blanket attacks of whole web sites and preemptive censorship without allowing a defence are not the answer.

There has always been a dark side to the Internet, mainly driven by the absolute need for anonymity far beyond what we consider normal or allowable in society (as in, with a court ordered search warrant your privacy is largely irrelevant), there is a network of programs and services called TOR which enables military grade anonymity (the difference between anonymity and privacy is a subtle but powerful one) to be provided to the relatively untrained. It would come as no surprise that its two most famous groups of users are dissidents in countries like Syria and networks of child pornographers. There has been an aggressive response to the paoedophile networks by ‘hacktivists’ like Anonymous, however this has mainly been in the form of non-enforceable vigilantism.

To say there should be laws to make the Internet and its users answerable to the rest of society is simply fair. However the international dimension and the user-created content makes it a far more complex issue than just bulldozing through and banning sites if they have infringed material on them. YouTube has hundreds of hours of footage uploaded every minute, there is no practical way that this arena can be policed to the same level of scrutiny as physical society.

I don’t have the answer. It will undoubtedly be a complex one and it will be one that doesn’t include the removal of information from public consumption. There is talk of instituting Internet access as a human right, as much as having access to any information should be. Yet the Internet still needs to not be its own God, and neither should it be ruled by vigilantes or Republicans to the right side of Mussolini on freedom of information.

Anarchy is a dream of the fringes, it is the nightmare of the sane, as terrifying as any Orwellian thought police. The Internet is beginning to realise that our current situation is the pretty poor average of two nightmares and that proper international legislation is needed to ensure the freedom of downtrodden right wing countries like North Korea and China, but also enable proper investigations of the real criminals that would use the Internet as a potent breeding ground. Europe must lead the charge for good quality legislation, before the US Congress can assert their dominance to the detriment of honest internet users worldwide.

Problem of pirating should be tackled with scalpel, not hammer

The future of history Ciaran O’Callaghan wonders if our social networking histories become valuable historical resources

I

, LIKE MANY of my virtual friends, have recently succumbed to the demands of the omnipotent creator of our virtual world; I have updated my virtual life to the latest virtual model - the Facebook Timeline layout. I’m not saying that Zuckerberg made me install the new and most controversial platform, rather that, if I were to continue my virtual life this was the natural progression or evolution (what would Charles say?!). Initial skepticism aside, I must admit that I have taken to the timeline layout like a duck to water or, more appropriately, like a mouse to a mousepad. However, contemplating the future of mediums such as Facebook and Twitter in the virtual world can become quite a daunting and exciting activity. Will the historian (if the term continues to exist) of 3012 be employing the use Facebook as a primary source? Will professors of the post-postmodern history of Ireland quote tweets? The potentialities are limitless.

In terms of effectiveness in maintaining virtual predominance, the introduction of the Facebook Timeline is a shrewd tactic by Zuckerberg & co. People can now perceive, with great ease, how established their life is as a virtual being on Facebook. For example, why should one sign up to Google+ when they already have an existing account

on Facebook dating back to their “birth” into the virtual world in say 2007? There would be no point initiating into a new social networking site when one has already spent four years accumulating 576 “friends” on Facebook!

If the majority of Facebook users adhere to Zuckerberg’s developments, all users will soon have what is essentially an online chronology of their lives. To the academic of 3012, Facebook will be a database for a plethora of social history; people’s lives will be recorded and maintained – saved on an online ‘cloud’ for what could be forever.

‘Statuses’, ‘wall posts’ and ‘comments’ will provide the future historian with great insight into the language, colloquialisms, and manner of correspondence between virtual beings of our age. Pictures, profi les and albums can be used to show the contemporaneous fashions or trends. Great analytical discussion would follow: “It is quite evident”, the Professor of 21st century Irish History in TCD in the year 3012 will argue, “that Mr. Murphy in defi ning his status as, and I quote, ‘Out for the lash tonight, bring on all tha loose birds in Coppers.’ epitomises the fact that young professionals in Dublin during the early years of the 21st century frequented to Garda stations for the practice of ornithology.

There were 15 ‘likes’ for such a statement deriving from colleagues and friends.”

Successively, a historian who studies the pictures of Mr. Murphy will then formulate an antithetical argument, proving that in fact by “birds”, the young man in question meant women, and that “Coppers” was actually a very fi ne institution dedicated to providing the clientele (an abundance of sweaty-suited men) with popular music, culture and an ample dancing space.

Will books be used at all?

What benefit would there be in scrutinising a public figure such as Enda Kenny’s inevitably heavy physical memoirs, when there is an easily accessible format known as Twitter to analyse (Mr. Kenny does, like all of them, have an account)?

Historians will analyse the Twitter pages of The Econom ist for readily available snippets of the “buzz phrases” of the time – the economic climate.

D a t a on widely reported events,

whether i nt er n ational or national, polit ical or cultural, significant or insignificant, will all be so easily accessible for the future historian through the Twitter ‘log’. Further research into the

widespread responses to such events will be found on Facebook. Th is is/will be bizarre. All history, which is now being “made”, will be so accessible and, for want of a better word, present in futures years, to the extent that studying it in 3012 will be constant. All history is available to scrutinise – no research is needed, it is all there, all online.

Now there are obvious limitations. To name a few - not every Facebook user consistently updates their statuses or adds new pictures. The issue of privacy control also springs to mind. Moreover, Twitter does not provide in-depth discussion of the events that are reported by institutions or individuals. However, with the former having over 800 million active users (a nd con-

stantly growing) and the latter having 175 million, the concept becomes mindboggling. The future of the discipline of history could mean the actual degradation of the idea of history as everything that happened, is all stored online – in words, pictures and videos.

Will historians be needed?

My guess? As a Senior Sophister History student my answer is the exact defi nition of typical. Of course historians will be needed – perhaps their role will be less dedicated to research and more geared towards in-depth discussion and analysis of events. Moreover, though local histories may employ the use of Facebook, there will always be attempts to study the history that was not publicly reported. In fact the role is likely to become tougher. Though the history of now, the social history for example, will be so readily accessible, debate will continue. If not, well then a good historian will undoubtedly construct a debate. Perhaps such debate will consider as to whether or not Mr. Murphy’s aforementioned status was actually the result of a peculiar phenomenon called a “frape”!

Cliché needed: These are exciting times. What’s more, these exciting times are all slowly being recorded online. I fi nd it weird to think that only five or ten years from now (when I’m still on

the dole seeing as all I did whilst at university was predict what the future of the subject I was meant to be studying was – and of course the ever-present recession is still huge) that I will be able to look at my virtual life as a 17-22 year old. I will be able to see all the ‘old’ pictures of me and all the absolute shite that I felt the urge to update onto my page – my online self. Now imagine 60 years from now (touch wood), not only me, but my grandchildren (of which there will be heaps) will be able to see what an absolute fool of a human their ‘papa’ was as a teen. Hopefully they’ll dress like me.

So will the Facebook timeline be a good thing for the future of History? Will Twitter be a useful academic source? I like to think the answer to these two outrageous speculations will be yes. What matters is that for now, though I hate to admit it, Zuckerberg has done well. Give that lad a biscuit. The Facebook Timeline is a shrewd yet interesting development. Now, enough writing, I must go back through all of my past pictures and delete those in which I don’t look well and like all those in which I do.

The future virtual me will be grateful.

Tuesday, January 24 2011 | The University Times

8

TIMESFEATURES

It’s time to talk about suicide

Gender and Sex

Y

Trinity lost three of its students to suicide last term.

Such tragedy demands examination. Here, Welfare Officer Louisa Miller discusses suicide and how you might help prevent it

T

ALK IS THE tool of my trade. I encourage students to do it, I use it to console and reassure, and I leave my office door open to facilitate it. But in light of current circumstances among students of this college, I feel the need to write so as to communicate to the wider College community the depth of the a sadness with which we are faced.

Th ree students of this college have died by suicide in this academic year - and unfortunately we can be sure that many more have considered it.

Th is evening, I’ll be bringing a motion to Students’ Union Council that would mandate at least my next two successors to attend SafeTalk training and facilitate any students who wish to do so too.

Lasting about three hours, the training prepares anyone over the age of 15 to identify persons with thoughts of suicide and connect them to suicide fi rst aid resources. Given the tragic deaths that this academic year has brought, it’s quite literally the least we can do.

Admitting that you have considered suicide is one of the hardest things to do.

Bringing yourself to the conclusion that a friend who has been a bit down lately might be considering ending his or her life can be just as daunting.

It’s a common occurrence for a concerned friend to visit me in the welfare office.

When someone expresses a concern for a friend, I can advise them what to look out for and explain any behavioural changes that they report - but I can only help the people who come asking for

it.

If you notice a worrying change in someone - weight loss/gain, long hours spent asleep, a lack of motivation, anxiety, frustration, countless others - be over-cautious. Ask them how they’re feeling and go from there.

If nothing’s wrong then at worst you’ll encounter an awkward moment that can pass with a hurried change of subject. If you correctly identify signs of depression or suicidal thoughts and ensure that something gets done about it, then you can be complicit in the saving of a life.

The fact that this is not an easy thing to do is my reasoning for proposing that the role of the welfare officer includes mandatory safeTalk training.

During training, you watch different scenarios, analyse them, and practice how you might actually approach and react to the subject of suicide with someone you may be worried about. You are trained in active listening: noticing, analysing, and bookmarking changes for observation as opposed to simply hearing and responding.

Trinity is only so big, and though we can never have enough safeTalkers, the greater the number of students who are trained, the better.

However, all too often we do not see any signs at all of mental illness or suicidal

considerations. It’s too often the individual who has to handle these feelings alone, hiding their anguish from their friends and family. In these cases, the danger is significantly more acute and opportunities for intervention, regardless of the amount of training you have attended, rarely present themselves.

To any individuals who consider themselves of such a disposition, reading this article is the fi rst step towards help. In the case of someone suffering from thoughts of suicide brought about by mental illness or

itself. If talking’s not your thing, then keep a diary of thoughts and come show me whatever portion that makes you comfortable.

However, while my door is always open and my phone is always on loud, it doesn’t have to be me. Th is College provides a number of top-class and entirely confidential services to which, as a welfare professional, I am very grateful to be able to refer students.

You might recall receiving emails from Student Learning Development advertising workshops in referencing and other such academic matters. Look out for the fairly regular ones carrying not if icat ion of anxiety workshops and coping skills - the groups are small, and the advice genuinely effective.

One thing of which surprisingly few students are aware is that Trinity provides a free and accessible Counselling service. College’s counsellors make it as easy as possible to get the help that you need: they can usually take you at short notice if you require an emergency appointment, they have short lunchtime slots if you want to try out the service, and you can always come back to a different counsellor if you don’t quite click with your fi rst one.

Unilink, whose occupational therapists have addressed SU Council this

Bringing yourself to the conclusion that a friend who has been down lately might be considering ending his or her life can be daunting difficult circumstances, a problem shared is oftentimes a problem halved: it can be a burden lifted, an outlook changed, and a tragic death spared.

Never underestimate the power of conversation. People come into my office, as a safe place, and tell me things that they have never told anyone else. Most often, the relief expressed in their eyes, their faces, and their body language, comes across as a minor form of therapy. Articulating to someone trusted a thought that has resided in your head can offer you a fresh perspective in

year, provide help with functioning in a College environment with a mental or physical disability. If you’re in fi rst year, then the chances are that Student2Student have assigned you a student peer mentor. While their training may be limited, often they can help contextualise worries and Collegerelated anxieties. Niteline is a 100% confidential phone service open 9am-2am six days a week (Tues-Sun) for those of you who feel down at night time or fi nd it difficult to contact a service at the weekend.

The Chaplaincy in House 27 is one of the best services that College has to offer. The chaplains are compassionate listeners and have significant experience in helping students deal with mental health issues no matter what your religious dispositions. .

If you’re feeling suicidal, then Pieta House is a free service that specialises in the prevention of suicide.

It is a vital service that can make a cataclysmic difference at the moment where intervention feels impossible.

Bringing yourself to access one of the many services available to you can be enormously difficult. If you fi nd yourself with your fi nger hovering the ‘send’ button, consider this: so many people get relief from just sharing with someone what they’re going through.

So many people make it through to the other side that they never imagined could exist.

Please, talk. It will set you on the path to recovery and happiness.

A tribute to Hitchens “The noble title of ‘dissident’ must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement …”

Conor Murphy Staff Writer

W

ITH THAT HITCHENS challenged his readers (perfectly intentionally) to view his own contribution to the world with a critical eye. To look at what he did, why he did it and what he achieved. He was a writer to his core and thus his contribution will always be a peripheral one, however his role is as peripheral as George Orwell’s is to the government control debate – all conversations on the topic will always carry echoes of his voice.

He grew under the watch of his mother who gave him the simple lesson to be ‘never boring’, and he took that to heart. He entered Oxford and instantly became a strong advocate of far-left socialist policy and debated the political and Oxford elite about this during his years there. Th is was not ‘following in the family footsteps’ as his brother is currently a right-wing tabloid columnist in England.

After his ‘experimental’ years in Oxford he bounced from paper to paper, gaining a following and notoriety on the way, though his later years as a Vanity Fair columnist were what made him famous among the general public. Here was the place where some of his more public targets were crushed under the keys of his typewriter.

There was one man who was a constant itch for Hitchens, from his fi rst book in the early eighties, and who still tasted like venom upon

his tongue until his last days. Henry Kissinger. Viewed by most as a war criminal and yet never punished (and actually awarded a Nobel peace prize) no one begrudged Hitchens this particular life long crusade. What gave him his immense public profi le was his willingness to go after the largest and most worshipped of targets.

One case where he proved his ability to tackle any figure no matter how popular, was when he played devil’s advocate during the Canonisation of the revered Mother Teresa. The Catholic community looked on in horror as her character was savaged by both his arcane skill and journalistic thoroughness.

Although his target seems weak in comparison to his indignance, one can’t help but come away from assessing his argument (and subsequent book) with a slow nodding of the head, to his argument if not the wafts of vitriol that can come from so comprehensive a defeat of the deceased’s character.

However his real crusade was one against organised religion. He was one of the headsmen of the new wave of anti-theists, people who actively hate the notion of god rather than just abstain from belief. Richard Dawkins named the top four of this wave ‘The Four Horsemen’, if he had given them the more specific titles there is no doubt that among the Horsemen Hitchens was War. Obviously correct on the hypocrisy of modern religious figures even the most cold of us fl inched at his glee following the Death of Rev.

Falwell in America, on the day he died, on international TV. Yet Falwell was so vile a character and held in such esteem that Hitchens’ violent response was absolutely necessary to counteract the piss-sweet words dripping from Fox News’ hosts. Th is was a man who said the acceptance of divorce and homosexuality was what caused 9/11. Sometimes in the face of blind worship of pure evil a war must be waged. And that was Hitchens calling card throughout the majority of his years.

His polemics against the hypocrisy of religion left out the careful gosoftly arguments of Dawkins or Sam Harris and went straight for the jugular of the evil its belief has boiled on this planet for so long.

If you were to go to his grave in his adopted America and look down to his DNA you would see the makings of a man very different to his brash persona. Strands of a deeply socialist, caring man and an intellectual drive to defend the weakest on the planet form the structure of the veins, arteries, bones, brain and eventually cancer strangled voicebox that was the body and breath of Christopher Hitchens.

He has a following because he never followed the crowd, a strong socialist who supported the Iraq war, a stringent feminist who wrote a column titled “why women aren’t funny” and then reacted to the backlash by titling his next column “why women still aren’t funny”. Fox news saw his support of the Iraq war and called him a conservative, yet his dying breath still came from

the same far-left socialist body that had stood on soapboxes and sat in debating chairs in Oxford all those years ago.

People saw his cruelty of wit and ignored the reasoning behind it – it is the fi re that was loved, the merciless humour and the rigorous pomp.

He was wrong sometimes, his vanity got the better of him, yet he often realized that in reflection. In a heartwrenching and absolutely vital interview with Paxman in his fi nal months, he recalled his blinkered celebration of Mugabe’s usurping of the White Man’s dictatorial rule, while ignoring the insanity of its replacement.

His additions to the world in argument and prose are undeniable.

He was a favourite of those lucky enough to read his work with an open heart and curious mind, but the sweat-drenched nightmare of those who worked against the poor and down trodden at large. He makes the world impoverished by not being there where he liked it, at the centre of attention, as one of the world’s harshest and most unique dissident sons.

“Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.”

Christopher Hitchens: April 1949 to December 2011, Full Stop.

OU’RE WALKING DOWN Grafton Street in the middle of the day and you see an impressive figure coming your way; they’re dressed smartly and on trend with unisex chinos and a short sidecut. It’s a girl. Defi nitely. Or is it a guy?

Who knows? Some might say who really cares anymore?

Over the years, much confusion has been aroused by the question of gender and sex. Are they really the same or are we overlooking the aspects that defi ne both elements? Sex is the term used to describe whether someone is male or female but is essentially a physiological or biological term. However, it has recently been established that gender is defi ned socially by the cultural structures of the world we live in. A study by Sharlene Hesse-Biber in 2000 asserted that “gender is determined socially; it is the societal meaning assigned to male and female.

Each society emphasizes particular roles that each sex should play, although there is wide latitude in acceptable behaviours for each gender”. After all, it is our society that decided that women could wear dresses but men could not.

Th is gives rise to illustrating gender roles and restrictions in all sectors of society, giving us more of an idea of what we believe a man and a woman should be.

The idea that we as a species inhabit aspects of both genders is not a new phenomenon. We all know that both men and women biologically generate oestrogen and testosterone, the two hormones generally associated with women and men respectively – testosterone is a male sexual hormone and oestrogen is a female sexual hormone. Some people believe that gender is a result of “nature” or the effects of certain chemicals or hormones on the developing brain. Gender roles have been clearly outlined since the beginning of mankind when humans looked down and realised an obvious difference. In the history of social convention, men were seen to have a more considerable amount of power and as such were at the forefront of the political dealings that ultimately controlled society. Gender relations have developed considerably throughout the ages, according to The International Fund for Agricultural Development “Gender relations refer to a complex system of personal and social relations of domination and power through which women and men are socially created and maintained and through which they gain access to power and material resources or are allocated status within society”. However it can be seen clearly in most historical contexts and indeed today that women are considered to be subordinate to men a lot of the time. The status of women in our society has only really come under dissection within the last 50 years. Women were only awarded the right to vote in Ireland in 1928, whereas men have been allowed to vote since ancient Greek times when only men could vote as part of the Ekklesia or the assembly of “all citizens”.

The role of women during the 1950s was as a housewife, with many ad-campaigns portraying women as modest homemakers and men as burly breadwinners.

One vintage ad campaign reads; “The chef does everything but cook-that’s what wives are for”. In the political structure of Ireland, we are considered to be ahead of the curve having had not one, but two female presidents, but there is still a shockingly low number of females in the Dáil Eireann today. However more and more women are now becoming the centre of many prolific Irish businesses and are considered equal to men in the workplace and in the media, as Beyonce would say – ‘who run this mother? Girls.’ The term

“house-husband” is heard nearly as often as the term “housewife”, as stay at home fathers are becoming less and less unusual. Here we see that gender roles nowadays have been almost completely reversed, making it harder and harder to outline the divides of gender. So why do we continue to do so?

Androgyny is derived from the Greek words anér, meaning “man” and gyné, meaning “woman” and refers to the combination of masculine and feminine characteristics in terms of fashion, sexual identity or sexual lifestyle. In June Singer’s insightful book “Androgyny-The Opposites Within”, she maintains, “Androgyny refers to a specific way of joining the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ aspects of a single human being”. Singer believes that men and women contain aspects of both male and female characteristics. Since the 1960s, androgyny seems to be fashion’s latest fi xation with celebrities such as David Bowie, Lady Gaga and Brian Molko sporting androgynous looks. In spring 2011 Balenciaga sent a flock of androgynous-looking models, including the fierce and yet poised Jana K., down the runway as well as exceptionally androgynous ad-campaigns being displayed by leading designers such as Givenchy and Jean-Paul Gaultier. The idea of uni-sexuality or a-sexuality or sex that cannot or will not be defi ned is exceptionally interesting to people in regards to fashion and sexuality in general. Can the ‘noughties’ really be turning into the “Age of Androgyny”? It can be observed that identifying somebody’s sex by their clothes, hair, makeup or even facial features nowadays is becoming an increasingly difficult task.

Since time began, many men and women have come to believe that they were born into the wrong body and have longed to correct this by having transgender reassignment surgery or simply adhering to both entities and crossdressing. Transgender surgery surprisingly dates back to The Roman Emperor Elagabalus (204-222AD) who allegedly attempted transgender surgery but it remains unclear as to whether or not he was successful. Transgender laws and limitations can be very restricting for the minority who request them. The phenomenon of people who believe they are born into the wrong body seems to outline further the difference of the terms gender and sex. Though a person’s sex may be female or male, their gender as they view it could be of the opposite entity, which leads to confusion and distress. It is the theory of many that we are all born with the desire to be of the opposite sex to different degrees. Th is desire is heavily influenced by taboos and the social or cultural norms that are steadily changing as people’s minds begin to broaden. Are we finally accepting the presence of the opposite sex within us?

Essentially, we have all been influenced one way or another by the gender restrictions, norms and taboos outlined by our society. Is it time to rid ourselves of these limitations and simply adopt a mind-set which reflects our own desire, whether it is to be female or male or even neither or both? Should we, as people be able to choose our gender as we choose how we dress regardless of our biological makeup or orientation? Or are these restrictions essential to our society and culture? Do we need gender boundaries, or can we just call ourselves people? No defi ning terms like ‘man’ or ‘woman’, just people.

Aoibhín Murphy

THE RUBBERBANDITS

SHAUNA WATSON INTERROGATES IRELAND’S FAVOURITE RAP DUO

The University Times

Magazine

9

The University Times | Tuesday, January 24 2011

TIMESFEATURES

Is the Croke Park agreement in jeopardy? What effect do the staff dismissals have on academic tenure?

Deputy Editor Rónán Burtenshaw considers these questions and more

T

HE ‘CONTRACT OF indefinite duration’ (CID) dispute between IFUT and College has important ramifications for job security and the Croke Park Agreement. But it also raises other questions – some concrete and some more abstract – which we have been unable to answer definitively in researching the story.

Here are some of the most important.

Are ‘contracts of indefinite duration’ (CIDs) permanent?

This is the pertinent question of the dispute between IFUT and College. IFUT would certainly point to previous Labour Court rulings that afforded the status of permanency to the contracts and to government agencies in the area of employment using the term “permanent” to describe CIDs. College’s position on this is more interesting. The email by Eoin O’Sullivan to the staff members of his school clearly indicates that it was his view that college saw these contracts as permanent. Recently-elected Provost, Patrick Prendergast, said as much during the election campaign. So, has college’s position on CIDs changed? Has the Provost’s? And, if so, when?

College’s decision not to respond to question by The University Times for reasons of staff confidentiality and ongoing Labour Court proceedings makes it difficult to confirm what their arguments are. But correspondence on the matter we have seen indicates two possibilities: either CIDs are permanent but college is arguing that they can still make staff redundant if the stream of funding their job depends on dries up or CIDs are not permanent, they are somewhere between permanent and temporary contracts.

If college succeeds in arguing the second point either in the Labour Court or in a higher court at a later date then it has important ramifications for the status of people on CIDs across the public service (and, potentially, beyond).

If they don’t take this approach then there’s some questions to be asked in the university: can all permanent staff now be made redundant? If not, who can?

Over 1,100 of the staff College acknowledges as its 2,860 full-time staff are funded by “non-core funding”. Are these subject to compulsory redundancy?

The answers to these questions will resonate across Irish universities and the public sector at large.

deal under the understanding that they were – particularly based on government agencies’ stances and Labour Court rulings.

The Croke Park Agreement is not legally binding, and its process has involved different separate agreements (IFUT, for instance, did not sign up to the deal until bilateral negotiations with the Department satisfied them that the deal protected their members).

It may not be easy to find a clear, objective answer to this question. But in a bilateral agreement interpretation is often the important determinant. IFUT clearly believe that the redundancies were in breach. And there are strong indications that ICTU agree. That would be enough, if they were also seen to be serious breaches, to threaten the Agreement.

“Supported by” or “conditional on”?

A point of contention likely to be resolved in the Labour Court relates to the wording of the employees’ contracts. The documents say that the positions are “supported” by a specific stream of “non-core funding”. The letters of dismissal issued by the college to the staff members said that the positions were conditional upon this funding. The two sides in the dispute will likely debate the meaning of these terms.

What is core-funding?

There

might

be

a

definitive answer to this question – which we asked College – but none has been forthcoming.

In the past core-funding has referred to the funding provided by the students enrolled in the college – although how this has been allocated within the college has varied. Is there an established process for how this funding is allocated? This is now a very important question. If CID staff funded by “non-core funding” are vulnerable to redundancy is there a mechanism in place to make sure that funding cannot be reallocated to target a specific CID staff member?

College used the term “external” to describe funding tied to the contracts of the staff made redundant.

There are further questions here: what was the external funding? Will public sector unions consider “external” funding derived from the public purse different, in terms of application to the Croke Park Agreement, than that derived from private funds?

What is the status of tenure?

The debate around the nature of tenure is ongoing.

The Irish Universities Association – comprised of university Presidents – want to define tenure in line with currently existing employment legislation. The term ‘tenure’, they argue, dates from an era before job security was codified by this legislation and shouldn’t be seen as something with greater significance than job permanency. Its use now

is basically to be related to membership of a permanent academic club.

Lecturers’ unions and labour academics tend to tie tenure to academic freedom and argue that it has far greater significance.

The well-established argument for tenure being more than simply a permanent job is that academia is in a position where the need to work free from the threat of redundancy or sacking is especially important. The free pursuit of knowledge and information, the argument goes, could easily bring an academic into conflict with his or her superiors and they need to be protected from this by very solid job security. What is often pejoratively described as a ‘job for life’ is a way of ensuring academic freedom. And, following this logic, the recent redundancies threaten a wider principle of academic freedom by casualising academic labour and reducing job security for academics.

The issue of tenure has yet to be definitively resolved by Irish courts.

This dispute, however, could have important ramifications for the debate. College may seek to make a distinction between permanent contracts (definite and indefinite duration) or to define CIDs as a form of hybrid between temporary and permanent jobs within the university. If it successfully does so not only will a formal division be introduced between staff in permanent positions but those with permanent contracts that are not subject to involuntary redundancy will have a form of tenure while those on the other permanent contracts will not. It will no

longer be possible to argue that tenure – if it exists at all – is simply membership of a permanent academic club.

The debate on this issue will be forced into realignment.

What is the status of the Croke Park Agreement?

The Croke Park Public Service Agreement has been controversial from its inception. Those on the Right of Irish politics say it makes it impossible to cut wasteful spending in a bloated public service. Those on the Left say it formalises acceptance of austerity on behalf of unions and accepts that the public service are punished for a crisis that they did not cause. But, for those divorced from the ideological debate or looking for moderate or practical solutions that prevent further instability, its offer of relative industrial peace with reform and cuts is valuable.

On Sunday a group of seven Fine Gael TDs told the Sunday Independent that the deal should be scrapped altogether. This follows days of speculation that FG rebels have been putting pressure on Enda Kenny to scrap the deal and take on a more confrontational stance with public sector workers and their unions. However later that day Brian Hayes, Minister of State at the Department of Finance and one of the more Right-leaning Fine Gael front-liners, echoed his government colleague Brendan Howlin in dismissing as “nonsensical” calls for the deal to be annulled.

Both men said that, as long

as the targets were being met, the deal was working and should be maintained.

The Croke Park Agreement has, thus far, survived because it is part of a culture of consensus that has been highly influential in Irish politics since the Celtic Tiger period. It follows in the tradition of the corporatist ‘social partnership’ agreements between the economy’s big players – government, unions (ICTU) and business leaders (IBEC) – and fits with the narrative that “we’re all in this together”. It remains to be seen how long this culture can continue as Europe faces down a prolonged period of economic stagnation and political turmoil.

This dispute in Trinity is of enormous importance for the future of the deal, as much for the reaction of the parties involved to the Labour Court decision which will follow as the decision itself. (Much will depend on the question of CIDs and permanency, see above). Public sector unions entered into the agreement to protect permanent jobs in the public service.

Many of the staff they represent in the public service are on CIDs (another important question which may be answered soon is how many?).

If CIDs are permanent contracts and staff on them can be made involuntarily redundant then it will make the position of public sector unions within the Croke Park Agreement process increasingly untenable.

But the Agreement would also be put in jeopardy by any decision which recognises CIDs as permanent – and which the government enforces by

committing college not to make staff on them involuntarily redundant. If College has to retain CID staff even when the stream of funding which had paid for their contract dries up it will place on them significant financial pressures – pressures which would also apply to other organisations in similar positions. As the conflicting interests involved become more defined the resolution of the conflict in the consensus framework will similarly become increasingly difficult.

Could IFUT go on strike?

Attempts will be made to resolve this dispute in the Labour Court. There’s also a chance of intervention from the Department of Education. It’s likely that significant efforts will be made to prevent this.

But, at the moment, IFUT have stalled their engagement with a process designed to stop industrial action. How this dispute is resolved is important for the job security of staff members in many universities on CIDs. If this pattern of compulsory redundancies for CID staff continues there’s a strong chance.

Is there a larger process at play here?

Lecturers’ unions have argued for some time that there is a process of casualisation of academic labour, tied to the neoliberalisation of higher-level education,

IFUT General Secretary Mike Jennings (left) has said that the union will stall all engagement with the Croke Park agreement following the dismissal of staff in TCD.

Were the redundancies in breach of the Croke Park Agreement?

underway at the moment.

Certainly these redundancies, and the wider consequences for job security in the university, could be contextualised by other events. Last year a University Times investigation revealed a practice, sanctioned by college, where senior academics bought out extensive (or entire) teaching portions of their contracts with external research funding.

The investigation produced evidence of specific instances where Professors and other senior academics were replaced by contract lecturers who were not in possession of a PhD. In the course of researching the story, the paper spoke to some of those hired as contract lecturers to do replacement teaching and averaged the cost they were being paid per module to around €3,000. This contrasts with the yearly salaries of the Professors (€108 – 138k), Associate Professors (€79 - 105k) or Senior Lecturers (€70 – 89k) who they may be asked to replace.

Academic contracts in Trinity College are not specifically broken down by task. However, a notional division of tasks was articulated by Ned Costello, CEO of the Irish Universities’ Association at a September 23rd, 2010, meeting of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee of forty per cent teaching, forty per cent research and twenty per cent administration.

Unions that represent academics have strongly resisted a formalised breakdown of tasks in a workload model, but it provides a certain basis for comparison.

If we accept that the €3,000 per module model includes some administration, the lowest-paid Professor would have to teach eighteen modules a year to earn his or her salary, and this would be before any research.

There are questions about casualisation of labour, the relative importance of teaching and research and college funding which are relevant to the current dispute – and fit with a broader discussion of how college adapts to a firmly neoliberal political and economic climate.

There are plenty of other questions posed by the dispute too: have any non-union members on CIDs been made involuntarily redundant? What is the Department of Education’s position? Are there internal differences within the Department – as could be inferred from the letters of support Mike Jennings says were received from within the Department by the staff who had been made redundant? Perhaps the most interesting, and the one that could see this story prolonged longest is this: Could we see the issues brought up by this case end up before the High Court?

This depends on whether CIDs are seen as permanent.

Most public sector unions will have entered into the

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The University Times

Tuesday,January 24 2011 | The University Times

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TIMESOPINION

Positivity in the new year Jenny Duffy

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Moscow has seen the largest civilian protests since the Soviet era, with upwards of 50,000 people coming out against the Putin regime.

“Anonymous” need to play nice Hannah Cogan Opinion Editor

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n the aftermath of Wednesday’s SOPA/ PIPA blackout protests, the Internet amassed an unusual amount of goodwill.

The digital protest of more than 115,000 websites drew new attention to the value of information-sharing on the web, and even changed quite a few minds in the US Congress and Senate. Just twenty four hours later, the loosely-organised hacker collective Anonymous had launched #OpMegaUpload to full effect. Global internet traffic was fluctuating between 13 and 14% above average, with global network attacks up more than 24%, targeting sites including the White House, The FBI, the US Department of Justice, multiple record labels, and the US Copyright Office. The attacks were spawned by a large-scale indictment and the arrest of four people associated with hosting and storage site MegaUpload. If

the SOPA blackouts were the web’s moment of inspiring non-violent protest, Anonymous’ cyber attack feels like a drunken wave of late-night car burning and riots. The results usually bring rubber bullets, tear gas and kneejerk policy-making, and this was no exception. Thanks a lot, Anonymous. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Radical movements against entrenched interests very rarely succeed by persuasion. In the physical world, protest movements do not necessarily succeed because they convince, convert or intimidate their opponent. Protest movements work when their opponent’s major sources of power- bureaucrats, lawmakers, and sources of funding- stop obeying them. In this case, the public advocacy of the internet needs to be focused on educating a rather unenlightened Congress on the benefits of information

sharing, making sure industry lobby money is wellspent, and, perhaps most importantly, getting law enforcement on side by helping them prosecute more successfully those who do violate copyright law as it stands. The effort put forth by millions of activists on Wednesday wasn’t about promoting piracy or celebrating the death of copyright law. It was about asking congress to draft better bills protecting intellectual property and adapting them to the information age.

Anonymous’ latest hacking spree has completely undermined those intentions.

The SOPA debacle has underscored Washington’s significant structural problems. Right now, if you want effective legislation around your industry, then you need to pay the right lobbyists, make the right campaign contributions, and write the right legislation at the right time in order to get it out of Washington. If you had to pick the winning side in any given Washington dispute, pick the team with deep pockets and great

lobbyists, not the team with community organisers and popular support. It’s a condemnation of American democracy, but right now, it’s true. We need to work to disrupt the rules of the game too, but hacking attacks like Anonymous’ won’t have the right effect. Washington doesn’t and shouldn’t change quickly; structural reforms need to be seen as apolitical to be respected, and Washington certainly won’t change as quickly as those of us on the Internet have come to expect. #OpMegaUpload and other retributive hacks by Anonymous are often cast as the enforcers of government transparency, but the Internet and its many hacktivists don’t necessarily make governments more accountable. Internet enthusiasts the world over, including Anonymous, have taken on the challenge of guarding the guardians, digitizing and uploading public and private data in counterattacks against injustices by the state, both perceived and real. Establishing meaingful connections

between information, transparency and accountability needs more than a public deluge of information. It needs healthy democratic institutions that write informed bills, and better systems of checks and balances. The internet can help, but only to a certain extent; it’s political will, not more information, that’s still missing.

The best political communication revolves around understanding how both your arbitors and opponents receive information and tailoring your strategy accordingly. The internet has effectively become the world’s largest public interest group, representing billions of people all over the world; we need to educate its activists on how to more effectively voice their concerns to governments and how governments can more effectively hear those voices.

There’s no doubt that both could benefit from a more symbiotic relationship.

The Internet is a fantastic innovation, but derives most, if not all of its value from user-generated content.

The trial of Christopher Hitchens Conor Kenny “Since Hitchens evidently does not take what he is writing seriously, there is no reason for anyone else to do so.” – Professor Noam Chomsky

“What you have witnessed since Christopher Hitchens’s opposition to the 1991 invasion of Iraq is something unique in natural history: the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly into a slug.” - George Galloway

month has passed since the death of Christopher Hitchens. A learned scholar of substantial literature and political argument, Hitchens once rather immodestly,proclaimed himself the heir to Gore Vidal. Perhaps there was nothing immodest about it, given that the young Oxford graduate was arguably the only essayist who could potentially match Vidal’s intellect and eloquence. Several years later, Hitchens had transmuted into Squealer from Animal Farm. The erudite polemicist and contrarian was now an ex-Trotskyist proselytizing for George W. Bush’s foreign policy.

Understanding how Hitchens got to a political position, characterized rather lazily by most observers as ‘neoconservative’, is difficult. There is essentially nothing wrong with changing your political outlook, or even adapting it to unforeseen

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circumstances and events. Indeed, many young Trotskyists became neoconservatives as they matured, perhaps as a result of the anti-totalitarian sentiment in that particular political faction. There was nothing wrong either, with Hitchens’ criticism of Liberal America, and many of his observations about the Democratic Party’s insipid dogmas were entirely valid and equitable. Nor does it do to be disingenuous about Hitchens’ political loyalties at the time of his passing. As late as November 2010, in an interview with Jeremy Paxman, Hitchens explained how he was no longer a socialist, but still a Marxist and a leftist. Any Marxist scholar will know that these are not necessarily contradictory claims, but it certainly gives an insight into the conflicted nature of Hitchens’ philosophical viewpoint. The professional thinker no longer had a political ideology to call his own.

Perhaps the origins of Hitchens’ abandonment of Trotskyism and socialism stem from his anger over the failure of key figures of the left to speak out against Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni of Iran. In 1989,

Khomeni issued a fatwa against his friend, Salman Rushdie, following the publication of his incendiary novel “The Satanic Verses”. Hitchens, already a militant atheist, was outraged at the failure of socialists and leftists to argue in favour of secularizatio, and defend the right to freedom of speech. It would not be presumtuous to suggest that Hitchens believed there was collusion between Islamic extremism and what he characterized as “thugs of the left”. In an interview with Laurie Taylor, Hitchens, a fierce critic of conspiracy theorists, seemed to have become one himself, stating that “for obvious reasons” which he would not explain, Islam and the extreme left had formed an ideological coalition.

It was understandable, perhaps, if not forgivable, for Hitchens to support the removal of one of the world’s many tin-pot tyrants, even if it did result in the death of a million souls in Iraq. It is a qualifiable opinion whether you agree with him or not, and despite the arrogant and deluded boasts in his memoir that he somehow influenced the decision making process of the Bush

It would be fair to say that the late author has enjoyed “egregious impunity”... since his passing

administration, he does not have blood on his hands. However, his public defence of the administration’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster was the most vile piece of oratory from an Englishman since Enoch Powell. The failure of the US government to pick up the floating dead bodies of their own citizens, most of them black, weeks after the disaster had struck, was defended by Hitchens at Baruch College in 2005, as he claimed that “there were more than enough soldiers”, and that Americans should have been proud of General Honore.

Christopher’s heroes, Che Guevera and Leon Trotsky, would have been turning in their graves.

Mr. Hitchens was, no doubt, a formidable debater. His eloquence alone may have made mincemeat of Tony Blair, Anne Widdecombe, and Al Sharpton to name but a few.

The problem was that in later years, he was nearly always on the wrong side. His advocacy of secularization had mutated into hyperbolic attacks on religion, and his hatred of totalitarian regimes had developed into aggressive interventionist demagoguery. To borrow a phrase from Hitchens’ fantastic book, ‘The Trial of Henry Kissinger’, it would be fair to say that the late author has enjoyed “egregious impunity” from the media since his passing. But if his soul happens to be in purgatory, then I’m praying for Christopher Hitchens, I really am. He’ll need it.

Arguably, the greatest innovation of the web are online communities like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Youtube that exist for the purpose of sharing information between individuals. The legislation offered by SOPA inflicts massive collateral damage on these online communities, but Anonymous’ cyber attacks offer justification for restricting user-generated content at its source. In any governed society, my freedom can be curtailed when it harms a third party; freedom of speech, for instance, doesn’t extend to libel. Guarding the guardians is an admirable principle but shouldn’t extend to nihilism. In the real world, no individual or group is allowed to act as judge, jury, and executioner, and we certainly don’t let the media give out criminal sentences for the injustices they uncover and report.

Anonymous need to play by the same rules.

o what did the start of 2012 mean to you? A fresh start, a new hope, just another day? Many of us view the New Year as an opportunity to improve ourselves...we make optimistic resolutions to lose weight, stop smoking, work harder and so on. By now, many of you may have long forgotten your resolutions, but why not spare a thought for your mental health this new year? Mental health is something we tend to overlook, and even in 2012, it is still stigmatised.

Think about it. Now we’re back from the Christmas break, we get asked the inevitable “How were your holidays?”. We will almost definitely reply “good” or “ok.” We might bemoan the amount we ate, the work we had to do or didn’t do. But it won’t go much deeper than that. I’m sure my family wasn’t the only one to lose someone near Christmas, but sadly this will probably go unmentioned. And it’s not just around the holidays that this happens. When asked how we are, we reply “good” or “grand” almost automatically, even when we’re far from “fine.” We just decide to put up with our problems. It’s how we’ve been conditioned to react.

I suggest this year we bring mental health out into the open. Discuss it, be aware of it. It’s ok to be down, and it’s okay to want to talk about it. Keeping things in only makes it worse. It’s like a balloon; there’s only so much air you can force in before it’s going to burst.

Keeping all your stress and anxiety bottled up is a recipe for disaster. Don’t necessarily blurt out all your problems at the first person who asks how you are, but a sympathetic friend or an understanding relative can make all the difference, and if you’re stuck for someone there are plenty of services here at Trinity. Getting your worries off your chest and

into the open will help. A problem shared is a problem halved after all...and even if that horrible knot of worry is loosened a little, it will have been worth the courage it takes to speak out.

Mental health isn’t all about problems, it can be about happiness too. A big part of that is self-worth. So take the time to value yourself a little more. Try these five simple ideas for creating a more positive mindset for yourself this year: 1) Smile-when you pass by someone walking around campus, smile and say hi.

You’ll brighten up the day for both of you!

2) Take some you time-make time for yourself, time to relax, unwind and enjoy.

3) Write- if you don’t feel ready to talk about your problems, even writing them down will help, it doesn’t have to be poetry just offload all the tension and pain. Consider writing down five things you are thankful for-friends, family, umbrellas, coffee-whatever!

It will make you appreciate life more, and notice all the wonderful things around us.

4) Lend a hand- volunteer, help a friend, do homework with a younger brother or sister. Doing good is good for you too! Check out www. volunteering.ie or look into joining one of Trinity’s charity groups.

5) Appreciate yourself-be glad to be, and to be you.

Look after your mental health, because you matter, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.

Need help? Check out welfare.tcdsu.org where you can find out about all the welfare services here at Trinity, including student counselling at www.tcd.ie/student_counselling and Student 2 Student mentoring services at student2student.tcd.ie

Christopher Hitchens, controversial to the end

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The University Times | Tuesday, January 24 2011

TIMESOPINION

We should demand better from Europe Economise This Rob Farhat Editor of the Student Economic Review 2011

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012 has already gotten off to a rocky start for the Eurozone’s economy. After a brief reprieve over the Christmas holidays, stock markets have returned to their downward trend, the euro’s value has tumbled, and government bond yields continue to rise. This culminated in S&P’s downgrade of nine Eurozone countries’ sovereign debt credit ratings, including stripping France and Austria of their perfect AAA ratings, and a subsequent downgrade of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the European Union’s bail out fund. These moves reflect the decreasing market confidence in Europe’s ability to overcome its sovereign debt crisis, which is in turn linked to its increasing cost of borrowing. So what are the underlying causes of the ongoing crisis? What are the potential consequences? And how can they be averted?

I covered much of the origins of the current crisis in my online UT article “What’s wrong with the European economy?” last August. Up to that point, most of the Eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis was still focused on Ireland, Portugal, and particularly Greece, whose combined economies account for only 6.3% of the eurozone’s

total GDP – a small enough amount to be able to deal with in isolation. Even so, Greece’s debt burden of over 150% was clearly unsustainable. Eurozone leaders’ incapacity to swiftly tackle the problem led to contagion to the much larger Spain and Italy, despite their much surer fiscal positions. Spain and Italy’s combined economies account for almost 30% of the Eurozone’s total GDP – far too large to be able to bail out or to allow a structured default for fear of the dramatic spillover effects it would have on the rest of the Eurozone economy.

The subsequent agreement to enforce a haircut on Greek government bonds was both the right and wrong thing to do. Greece’s debt level is completely unsustainable, and had its debt been written down to a more manageable level early on – before the crisis had spread to Ireland and Portugal, let alone Italy or Spain – it could potentially have been isolated. Delaying this necessary decision to the point when markets were worried about over a third of the Eurozone’s sovereign debt spooked investors into thinking that none of their holdings of the PIIGS’ (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, & Spain) sovereign debt was guaranteed to be

paid back in full. This contagion has spread even further, for example to French banks, which have significant holdings of PIIGS’ sovereign debt and stand to make losses in the event of a default.

If this trend were to continue, every country in the Eurozone would become wrapped in a sovereign debt crisis and the level and cost of servicing sovereign debt would become unsustainable throughout the continent, ultimately leading to (yet another) economic collapse and a break-up of the Eurozone. What would that look like exactly? Well, no one really knows for sure.

We’re dealing with a series of events that have never happened before. A break-up could be forced, where one country, most likely Greece, unilaterally leaves the Euro to avail of a weaker currency and defaults on their debt, increasing market speculation that others will do so, which in turn increases their borrowing costs and makes it more likely that they will.

If you think the austerity that we are currently going through is bad, this would be far, far worse. A wave of sovereign defaults would destroy the banking system, leaving us with nowhere to hold our cash. Borrowing would be impossible, leading

Hungary suffering under an iron fist Derwin Brennan

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t the reburial of former Hungarian communist leader Imre Nagy in 1989, Viktor Orban, leader of the Alliance of Young Democrats or Fidesz, famously used the opportunity to make a speech demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. Twenty two years later in 2011, members of the LMP, a youth parliamentary party, were arrested as they protested Orban’s government enacting a series of laws that are widely seen as thinlyveiled attempts to subvert democracy and entrench the ruling party in power within the state. Right now, thousands of Hungarians are taking to the street in protest and on the 17th of January the EU instigated legal action against Hungary to force it to modify provisions that upset the balance of power within the country.

On the 1st of January 2012, a new constitution, written solely by Fidesz party operatives, came into legal effect.

This constitution codified into law a legal framework that kills the supervisory power of the constitutional court, the independence of the judiciary, restricts religious freedom, severely undermines the independence of the Central Bank and threatens the freedom of the press, a crucial component in any free and open society. Fidesz have redrawn electoral boundaries and has drawn them into the constitution in an attempt to entrench their dominance in Hungarian politics, exacerbating the disproportionate representation already given to larger parties in Hungary’s electoral system. In the 2010 election that brought Fidesz

to power, the incumbent party won 68% of the seats on 52.7% of the vote. This will make it incredibly difficult for any other party to win sufficient seats in order to form a government even if there is a significant swing away from Fidesz to another party or coalition of parties.

A Hungarian think tank ran the numbers of the previous three elections under the conditions of the new electoral boundaries and found that under the new boundaries Fidesz would have won all three previous elections, including the two that they actually lost.

In a true democracy it is possible for an incumbent government to be defeated and replaced and its policies overturned or amended to the new realities. Authoritarian governments use the law to preserve their status, intimidate critics and entrench their rule be it the wish of the people or not.

The government in Hungary is using new powers it granted itself to intimidate the media into compliance and to shut down critical outlets such as KlubRadio, a popular opposition radio station. It has also set the term of office of the head of the media board at nine years and fi lled that office with Fidesz friendly officials who will be able to intimidate and influence the media for years after the passing of this elected parliament. It also lists the crimes of the former communist regime in the constitution for the first time and designates the main opposition Socialist Party as its legal successor with responsibility for them, casting questions on their long term survival under the Fidesz regime.

To change not only the constitution but also fiscal and tax policy now requires a 2/3 supermajority vote in

parliament, a difficult feat for any party except the incumbent. In most democracies a new government, controlling a majority, and being able to form a government has the ability to alter tax rates and spending policies and act on the democratic mandate it wins from the people in popular election. Fidesz have locked in a flat tax rate and its own spending policies and uses the constitution not as a means to protect the fundamental rights of Hungarian citizens but to impose its own ideological agenda permanently.

In 1943, British historian R.W Seton-Watson noted that “The Magyars were unquestionably the torchbearers of constitutional liberties and had behind them in this respect a tradition such as no people of Danubian Europe could boast.” Fidesz have upturned this historic tradition and have abused their parliamentary majority to entrench its own views into the machinery of the Hungarian state. This is an indefensible attempt to rob a future government of the ability to form itself and to govern the country. For the sake of Hungarian democracy, we must hope that the Hungarian protesters taking to streets against this undemocratic power grab and the EU are able to influence Orban and his government to undo some of the damage lest the warning made given

by László Majtényi, a former ombudsman concerned with freedom of the press ring true for Viktor Orban; “It is better to be a departing prime minister than to be a dictator who is removed by the people!”

to far greater cuts in government expenditure and a huge contraction in business activity. We would be faced with a prolonged depression, far worse than anything we have witnessed in the last few years, and many of us would have no choice but to emigrate.

If it was accepted that the Eurozone’s break-up is inevitable, such a dramatic collapse in the economy could be avoided by gradually phasing national currencies back in, almost in the opposite order that the Euro was introduced. Part of the problem with a sudden Eurozone break up is that setting up and printing new currencies takes time and money – doing so immediately would be impossible. Ireland’s exports could benefit from having a weaker currency but, most economists would still be opposed to the idea – the structural costs would still be huge, not to mention the extensive legal changes that would have to be made to existing contracts. Even exporters would initially be hit by the adjustment cost of having to adapt prices to a multitude of currencies.

Even if some kind of controlled Eurozone break-up were possible – and that in itself is debatable – on balance we’re probably better off in than out.

So what was the Eurozone leaders’ latest response? The European Summit of December was supposed to be the moment when the final solution that solved all our problems was brought to the table. Based on past experience, anyone who actually expected anything of the sort was completely misguided.

In essence, their plan and potential new treaty changes nothing. Far from a fiscal union, it’s merely a supposedly more stringent fiscal compact, based on the intergovernmental approach to enforcing rules that failed in the run-up to the crisis, and has resulted in such indecision since.

Moreover, the rules that the agreement intends to enforce will do little to actually solve the problem. They’re essentially stricter versions of the futile rules that were already in place. They mainly involve enforcing strict budget rules that punish countries for excessive deficits. But take the case of Ireland in the 2000s; we were considered fiscal exemplars – consistently running a budget surplus and a low debt to GDP ratio. What went unnoticed was that so much of Ireland’s tax revenue was dependent on a construction boom which would inevitably burst, which our banking system was also exposing itself to and hence would have to be rescued.

Subsequently, the new rules penalise a country for running a budget deficit, which merely increases a government’s fiscal problems in a recession. While the full details haven’t yet been set in stone, the only saving grace might be that the European Commission would have some sort of budgetary oversight. While allowing a higher body to have a say on our own national budget may be hard to stomach, the Commission is consistently the most sensible voice on economic matters out of the bad bunch that we’re dealing with. And it’s not like our own politicians have done

such a great job with the government finances. My fear is that in practice the deal will only further engrain Germany and France’s grip on European economic policy, which is inevitably biased due to domestic political constraints. It’s a terrible deal that won’t solve anything, and personally despite being someone who is very pro-EU in principal (but always feels let down in practice), I would find it very hard to vote for it in a referendum, even though it will probably be billed as a pro- and antiEU vote.

Unsurprisingly enough, market reaction to the announcement of the deal was minimal. It simply is not the bombshell that was needed to assure the markets that the euro is a viable long-term project. But what is? Some have called for the European Central Bank to step in as a lender of last resort, purchasing unlimited amounts of sovereign debt in order to keep yields low and avoid defaults. However, there are a number of issues with this.

Firstly, it’s illegal, the ECB is forbidden from doing so according to its mandate.

But even if that were to be changed (which would require a treaty change), simply changing its rules when the going gets tough would destroy a great deal of the ECB’s credibility which is so vital to a central bank, particularly a young one. It would also create a moral hazard for wayward member states to run up large amounts of debt, knowing that the ECB will bail them out. While it might solve the problem in the short term, it would merely lead to higher

interest rates in the long term as markets expect higher inflation and impose a greater risk premium.

Oddly enough, the solution that most pro-Europe economists would advocate is quite simple in economic terms, but near impossible politically: a full fiscal union with a common Eurobond, some pan-Eurozone tax rates, a European financial regulator, and burden sharing on Eurozone bank debt amongst member states. Yes, this involves a much more significant loss in sovereignty than the current proposal, and would be even less likely to pass in a referendum. So what’s so good about it? For one thing, it would hand over the European economic decision-making power to the more reliable European Commission, and the more representative European Parliament, rather than allowing Germany and France to call the shots. The Eurobond would significantly decrease the interest that the periphery has to pay on its debt, as the overall Eurozone debt to GDP ratio was a relatively healthy 85% in 2011, so markets would be more convinced it would be repaid.

The European financial regulator is necessary in a system where different states’ banks are so intertwined, and certain national regulators have proven themselves to be useless. In terms of tax rates, uniform tax rates across the board as France would love to see would not be ideal, as certain states, such as Ireland, by necessity need lower tax rates to attract investment. But a European rate of, for argument’s sake, 5% of income tax, VAT,

and corporate tax – above which states would be free to choose their own tax rates the revenue from which they could keep – would go into a central Eurozone fund. This would be used to recapitalise European banks should the unfortunate necessity again arise, meaning that countries like Ireland wouldn’t have to shoulder the full cost of rescuing its banking sector.

It’s politically impossible, not just because of the transfer of sovereignty, but also because it would involve significant fiscal transfers from the more responsible members (i.e. Germany), to the rest (i.e.

Greece), much like the more economically stable American States wind up funding their troublesome neighbours. But we live in a currency union, where the likes of Germany’s exports benefit from a weaker currency than they would have under the Deutschmark, precisely because their lot is thrown in with delinquents such as Greece. A currency union simply cannot exist without an economic union, that is the Euro’s original folly.

Europhiles insist that European leaders will do what’s needed to save the European project. As impossible as the ultimate solution sounds, we have to live in hope that it will come to pass, because on the current path, we’re heading for extreme hardship. In the meantime, we’ll have to vote on a shoddy deal, which pro-Europeans shouldn’t feel they have to vote for simply because they are pro-Europe. We should demand better.

Sarkozy victory likely as France suffers

Donal Kennedy

T

he first of two rounds of the French Presidential election 2012 is just over four months away. With the main opposition Socialist Party having chosen its pragmatic centre-left candidate François Hollande after a round of American style primaries à la française, there still appears to be a considerable vacuum in the range of candidates putting themselves forward. This is a result of increased disillusionment, apathy and disengagement from decision making and politics generally, with a majority of those on the electoral register abstaining. France has fought off competition from developing economies to retain its position as the 5th global economic power, but that’s little comfort to a nation with deeply embedded social problems; arguably more than eight million people live in poverty, four million unemployed, with an additional 91,000 in the last 3 months alone. A dismal 0.3% economic growth in the 3rd quarter of 2011 and two national austerity plans introduced by President Nicolas Sarkozy since 2008 have compounded social tensions.

Whether there actually are 8.2 million poor people in France (13% of the population) or whether the true figure lies somewhere in between

that and 4.5 million is a matter of statistical calculation but is of huge significance when it comes to electioneering. This massive disparity comes from two differing means of calculation, either that of the French state statistics agency (L’INSÉE) which fi xes poverty at below 50% of the average monthly income (€795) or the European barometer of below 60% of average monthly income (€954). Such a discrepancy has the practical effect of almost doubling the statistical number of poor people, but also is hugely significant in current debate as opposition parties usurp exaggerated statistics into political rhetoric to attack the government come election time.

Participating French voters, an endangered species, are faced with a plethora of individuals from across the political divide but particularly from niche sectors –ecologist movements, social justice groups, nationalist anti-immigrant parties and numerous anti-capitalist parties whose combined support cannot be ignored. At this moment, individuals from smaller splinter factions are merely potential candidates as they lack the 500 elected sponsors’ signatures needed to appear on the ballot paper. Only Jean Luc Melenchon of Party of the Left, whose national support in the opinion polls hovers at 7%, appears to be the only left candidate likely to win the required support. Reinvigorated Trotskyist, anti-globalisation, and

anti-capitalist parties may consolidate behind him, potentially giving him significant influence in deciding to whom he declares his support in the second round of voting.

The mainstream green party Europe Écologie Les Verts (EÉLV), has already signed an electoral accord between it and the Socialist Party candidate, making it likely that for the first time ever; there will be an Ecologist Party minister in government in France, along with an eclectic mix of hard-line leftists, whose support Hollande needs in order to consolidate a left vote in the second round of voting.

Opinion polls indicate that should the second round be between the centre right and centre-left candidates, Sarkozy would win support of approx. 30% against Hollande’s 26%, indicating the extent of an emerging Western trend of voter dissatisfaction with establishment parties, looking to more extremist and populist groups for answers to social injustice, financial precariousness, and constant relocation of key industrial companies to low cost countries. Many French see the National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, as the panacea whose national support is comparatively stable at 18%, but in many working class areas reaches at least 35%.

Niche leftist parties enjoy similar support. Sarkozy and his MPs are openly criticizing France’s high rate of immigrants from Africa and

blame increased violent crime rates on African-populated banlieues in attempts to appease and win back Le Pen voters. Tactical voting will be central with many begrudgingly voting for Nicolas Sarkozy to avert National Front taking power, which the left describes as disastrous for France’s reputation, rendering it isolated in Europe. The hype and spin began with one Left senator even dismissing Le Pen with “Rather Hitler than the Populist Front”. Whichever one of the major candidates eventually wins will have to include diverse candidates initially when choosing a Prime Minister and then forming cabinet ministries.

With 990,000 more unemployed people since the beginning of Sarkozy’s term in June 2007 and a widening national girth between the economic elite and the working class, the coming election shifts on proposals to retain France’s generous social model, combatting exorbitantly priced housing that prevents the middle class from accessing the property ladder and reducing a public deficit that is projected to reach €1.78 trillion by March 2012. This would be an exact €600 billion increase during Sarkozy’s five years, a milestone coming just a month before the French go to the polls.

Tuesday, January 24 2011 | The University Times

12

TIMESOPINION

Ireland must support independent press regulation to avoid repeating UK scandals Emily Flaherty

“

I see no difference between what the public is interested in and the public interest” said former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan in the ongoing Leveson Inquiry, being held to investigate the tabloid practise of hacking into the voicemail of politicians, celebrities, and most notoriously of murdered school girl Milly Dowler. While it is hard to take McMullan -a man who believes “privacy is for paedoes” and fondly reminisces about car chasing Princess Diana- seriously, he does call attention to a problem in journalism.

In order to sell newspapers, journalists need to feed the public celebrity gossip and according to McMullan, the public has a right to know anything it wants to know.

This question of what the public has a right to know is problematic. A free press is democracy’s best defensewe have the right to know much more than we actually do about our politicians, about our institutions, and especially about how our

money is being spent and by whom. We have the right to know these things, and we need to exercise it or risk losing it like the Germans did under Hitler. However, we are arguably not entitled to know details of Gordon Brown’s son’s medical condition, which were published The Sun. Would censoring this have led to censoring the private lives of all politicians? People need to know who they are electing to office. What would have happened in the 2008 American Presidential Campaign had John Edward’s love child, born of an affair conducted while his wife battled cancer, remained under wraps? The media needs to be free; but just how free?

Today, it seems that the press are free to publish almost anything they like.

Victims of media lies have two choices – to sue the paper or to complain to the Press Ombudsman. In both cases only the victim themselves can either sue or fi le a complaint. This meant that following the death of politician Liam Lawlor in a car accident, The Sunday Independent could publish an article that stating that the other passenger was a

prostitute. His family could not sue for libel because Lawlor was dead, unable to press charges himself. The press also are free to pursue any methods necessary to get a story, even if it means chasing people, usually celebrities, and insulting them or tripping them up to get a reaction. Emma Watson wore cycle shorts under her skirts on her 18th birthday so the paparazzi lying on the pavement couldn’t get a snap of her knickers, but they got plenty of photos of Britney without her knickers instead, and published them.

It is not in the public interest to publish photos of Britney “going commando”, no matter how much the public may be interested in seeing such photos and this is true of most celebrity gossip.

Many celebrities would be in favour of censoring all celebrity gossip. Unfortunately, censoring one celebrity means censoring all celebrities, including the Roman Polanskis and Cathal O’Searcaighs, and while we’re at it, the John Edwards and the Bertie Ahernes.

Besides, not all celebrities want to be censored, but instead enjoy the spotlight, tweeting their every inane

thought and tipping off the press every time they leave the house. Media attention means publicity for celebrities and their latest project or product they’re endorsing. Publicity means money and some will do anything for publicity whether it’s eating donkey testicles in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here or inviting us all to their wedding in Keeping up with the Karadashians.

These shows are on at the same time as Gossip Girl.

Is it any wonder that these reality TV shows become just another TV soap to us?

We want to know who Kim/ Serena will hook up with next week. Who cares if it’s fact or fiction? It may be in the public interest to know the truth, but all the public are interested in is a good story. Celebrity gossip does not satisfy us, but feeds our appetite, and numbs our respect for other people’s privacy, until we don’t care about anything except the scoop.

But what if it is our story that people want to read? If media coverage was solely confined to politicians, celebrities and criminals, perhaps we could justify the invasive treatment they receive at the hands of the press as the

price of a free press. Unfortunately increasingly often the ordinary citizen who neither seeks nor benefits from media attention suffers the same treatment that celebrities and politicians receive. When The Sun heard that low-key TV presenter Anne Diamond’s infant son died a cot death they insisted on publishing photos of her son’s coffin on the front page, despite her plea for privacy. In recent years, Kate and Gerry McCann were forced to endure speculation that they had killed their daughter Madeline, following her disappearance in 2007. Some elements of the media allow themselves to publish whatever they like, about whomsoever they like. It is this unlimited freedom that has bred a disregard for the law that lead to the media interference in the police investigation into the disappearance of Milly Dowler.

Ultimately, what are really in question are our rights as individuals. If we continue to allow the press unlimited freedom and unlimited access to the private lives of politicians and celebrities, are we allowing them free access to our lives? We need a free press but we also need

boundaries that no press pass can cross. We need a regulatory body that is independent from both government and media, unlike our current regulatory bodies the Press Ombudsman and the Press Council; both are entirely funded by the press, and their administrative committees are made up almost entirely of media figures. This independent body should be able adjudicate in any case where individuals feel they have been wronged by a media report. This body should have the power to impose significant fines unlike our present regulatory bodies which cannot fine papers; they can only issue empty threats. Furthermore it should be more accessible than the court system – the reason more people don’t sue newspapers is because of the expense. Eventually one hopes this would encourage real self-censorship on the part of the press.

Such a regulatory body could only be created by government legislation and if we want to protect our privacy, we must pressure our TDs to act and act swiftly.

Who knows what tomorrow’s headlines will be?

“A satirist’s rendition of an amoral tabloid hack”: The NY Times on Paul McMullan

A portrait of a people Caolan Doyle

W

e are, once again, a people exploited and oppressed.

In ‘Portrait of the Artist’, James Joyce expressed his frustration at the Irish people and the ease with which we allow ourselves be exploited; after freeing ourselves from the chains of the British imperial system, we allowed the Roman Catholic Church to fi ll their void.

Joyce’s frustration is still relevant today. As the abuse and exploitation of the church became too much for us, we started to slowly ease them from power.

Unfortunately, we were not long finding an adequate replacement.

We are once again a country outside our own control.

With the help of the elite in our society, the interest of others is at the forefront of our policies. We have welcomed in the ‘Troika’ and allowed them free reign to dismantle our welfare state, in order to protect the interests of those in ascendancy at home and abroad. Once again we find ourselves being exploited by our powerful neighbours - this time with austerity and economic threats instead of guns and bayonets.

What we are seeing is clear and obvious exploitation.

Our government has forced us through four austerity

budgets that target the most vulnerable in our society.

Now we face into more years of brutal austerity. The ordinary people of our country are being squeezed to death in order to protect the domestic and international status quo. The politicians, bankers and big businesses, who benefited so richly from the ‘Celtic Tiger economy’, are shielded from most of the cuts. The obnoxious wealth accumulated by the elite was not used to clean up the mess when the ‘economy’ collapsed. Instead it is the ordinary men, women and child who are being punished for the greed of the elite that caused this mess.

Salaries of the public sector have already been cut by

20%. Hard-working nurses, teachers, and public servants are being held responsible for a crisis not of their making. The most vulnerable in our society are being punished: welfare payments to the unemployed are steadily being reduced, students are seeing increasing fees, and now the pensions of our elderly are in the firing line. Almost 40,000 young people have been forced to emigrate because there are no jobs for us at home.

Our political establishment is happy to abide this - as long as the interests of the elite are safeguarded. Retired politicians enjoy up to €160,000 pensions for their ‘service’ to the country. It is quite clear that the Irish

political system is broken.

Fianna Fáil, using gauze of nationalist sentiment, was easily corrupted and it wasn’t long after independence that it was running economic policy for a new dominant political class.

Today, Fine Gael and a Labour Party that would make James Connolly turn in his grave, are the vanguard of the same neoliberal policy as their disgraced predecessors. Unfortunately, they are all part of the problem in this broken system.

The church justified their oppression with reference to the Bible - our oppressors today justify themselves with the unquestionable gospel of the free-market.

The economy, we’re told, is to be dealt with by the

experts - too complicated for the public at large. But there’s nothing complicated at all with what is happening. We are once again being oppressed and exploited by the powers that be, and it is up to us to resist it. Instead of welcoming emigration, we must oppose it. Instead of dismissing the protestors on Dame Street, we must join them. Instead of accepting our ‘economic’ situation we must challenge it.

Instead of surrendering to the elite, we must confront them. We must act - this is the demand, the task, the duty of the Irish citizen today.

Marginal Opinions

Seán McGrenaghan

2012 and the joy it could bring

S

ky News’ Deputy Political Editor, Joey Jones is not a particularly chirpy fellow, and when he appeared on the television screen in my living room on 2nd January donned in grey over-coat, protruding grey suit, two-tone grey tie and white shirt (albeit greying round the armpits), I briefly contemplated whether it would be possible to drown myself in a cup of tea. As the rain launched itself sideways into the living room window, it seemed that Jordan’s incessant references to ‘gloomy market forecasts’ and ‘a dim start to 2012’ were to set the tone for the year ahead.

If anyone were to spend time watching the news of late, they would be forgiven for thinking we are on the brink of an on-coming apocalypse. It seems the entire western world has finally reached the point of outright depression. The financial downturn, which had before seemed violent and abrupt and from a media perspective, almost exciting, has become slow and eternally boring. While the public mood of 2011 was one of pain, outcry and global revolt, early media posturing seems to point towards a 2012 characterized by a lack of optimism and a flatness approaching apathy.

It seems that we have entered a world of Semolina, magnolia lino and elasticated jeans. It’s 1986 mark two. Rather than crying out against cutbacks and bailouts as we have done in previous years, 2012 appears to mark the beginning of the Austerity Society – the year where the world appears content to revel in the shame of past excesses and accept its presently reduced lot. We are entering a sort of financial purgatory, where we stoically accept the consequences of long-term financial extravagance, as if it will in some way prepare us for a more modest and responsible brand of future prosperity.

When the current crop of fourth years first entered Trinity, we were consistently reminded that this was a great time to be in university, as if the fallout from the financial crash would be swift and that it would all blow over by the time real life began. In some ways, though, those of us about to graduate have received the rawest of deals.

We have spent the years when we are supposed to cement our opinions of the world being bombarded by negativity and leave at a time when the lack of opportunities would suggest that we have not been shrouded in negativity without good reason.

But why should we lack optimism? Yes, we are at the very pit of the economic downturn but we are not the cause of the world’s wrongs. We are the brightest minds of our generation and we have the capacity to not only find a place in this world but to re-imagine the world so that it creates a place for us. As fourth years scour the job-markets and find little in the way of traditional opportunities, it would be a shame to think that the only way to make progress is to settle for something less than we are capable of, or to realize opportunities abroad, when we would rather remain at home.

We find ourselves in the unique situation that only a handful of graduating years this century will find themselves. We begin our careers and at a time when the world is preparing to undergo a seismic shift in values and priorities. The Occupy Movement, while flawed, highlights the fact that the old norms of society are no longer accepted without question. That is not to say that capitalism is crumbling or that that the towers of Wall Street and the City are falling. Money still talks, but it seems that it must now also be prepared to listen.

The world, having seen its progress halted so spectacularly is currently in the process of wholesale social and economic restructuring. The move to ring-fence personal banking in the UK is indicative of the creation of a new brand of capitalism, and with that will come new opportunities. In a world set at nought, it is the current crop of graduates who will shape the future direction that we will take. We should not cry despair when the plethora of job prospects afforded to our predecessors is not presented to us. A fearlessly independent and entrepreneurial spirit will allow us to progress in a manner that can be entirely divorced from the traditional clamber up the job ladder, whether we decided to move in the circles of business, politics, science or arts. Of course, we are presented with a more uncertain path to follow but one that has the potential to be all the more rewarding for its difficulty. All we need is a bit of optimism.

Keep up with the discussion by checking universitytimes.ie for daily posts.

The University Times

13

The University Times | Tuesday, January 24 2011

TIMESOPINION

The University Times USI PAY RISES AND FEBRUARY APPROACHES AND EXTENDED TERM LIMITS THE MANIFESTOS ARE FOLDED

U

SI Special Congress took place last Wednesday in the Gresham hotel.

TCDSU had been under the impression that this Congress was to held in UCD which, no doubt, would’ve saved money. By the end of the day, it was not the cost of the venue that was at issue, but the potential cost of what had been approved by Congress.

Two provisions in particular proved particularly contentious with outside observers. First, a USI officer can now serve a third term in office. USI officers had already been allowed to serve three terms, but in different offices. The new provision allows for an officer to be re-elected to the same office twice.

Second, if that officer is successful in his re-election then he/she will receive an increase in pay in line with civil servant standards. This would not amount to a particularly siginificant increase, but it received a negative reaction nonehtless.

The primary argument for these new provisions is that an experienced officer is simply worth more to the union than a newly elected one. There is no training in period, no new job jitters. The officer is bringing with them the contacts made in the previous year, the knowledge of how

both the organisation and the organisations it deals with work. Thus, the supporters of the pay increase argue that it is only right that an experienced officer be rewarded in line with what they can contribute to the union.

However, there are some important points to be made against this viewpoint. First, an officer of a student union should not be motivated to run for re-election on promise of a slightly more luxurious lifestyle.

Union work is, by nature and tradition, underpaid, unglamorous and carried out as a labour of love. Second, increasing the incentives to run for re-election do not necessarily ensure that the office holder performs better. It could just as easily be argued that all it does is ensure that the office holder will campaign longer and harder and thus perhaps neglect the core duties of the position in favour of gladhanding and canvassing.

Third, and most obviously, allowing increases in pay for anyone involved in the student movement smacks of an organisation that is increasingly out of touch with its constituents. Constituents it claims to empathise with and fight for.

USI may yet rue the day that it incliuded these provisions in its new constitution.

T

he annual orgy of self-promotion that is the Students’ Union sabbatical officer election period is upon us once again. Large numbers of your fellow classmates will be donning brightlycoloured t-shirts and asking you to vote for people that you - or, God forbid, the campaigners themselves - may never have properly met on the back of a manifesto promising everything you’ve (n)ever wanted and boasting of student society and SU experience.

As always, one of the most valuable currencies in which candidates and electorate will deal is first impressions. With so many neatly-folded documents doing the rounds, most students are not going to read them all, underlining the importance of being the candidate whose policies best resonate with the student body or, let’s face it, whose stunts draw the biggest crowd in the arts block.

Of greatest importance, though, is that seemingly intangible transcendence of the merely notable. This is not to undermine any sabbatical officer, but year upon year candidates are elected to officerships by virtue of relativity; because the student body takes a shine to one candidate over his or her competitors without that

winning candidate displaying any outstanding competency in the process.

One year ago, this concern would not have carried the weight that it does today. However, while the spectre of Aaron Heffernan’s Barrack Obama-themed campaign looms large over this year’s election period, the importance of capturing the imagination of the voting body remains underlined. A University Times poll conducted just prior to Heffernan’s withdrawal from the race put him ahead of Students’ Union kingpin Ryan Bartlett, a definite declaration that students valued imagination and style over bureaucratic substance; that carefully considered policies and manifestos are effectively meaningless if not propelled by a way of thinking that stands out among the rest.

Heffernan’s withdrawal from the race freed up Ryan Bartlett to assume the top position unopposed. In the end, he managed to convince students of his competency in the face of a vociferous pro-RON campaign. The University Times understands that, as of Sunday night, two candidates will contest their respective races unopposed, bringing to the fore once again the necessity to define oneself as a highly competent prospective officer.

Realistically, Dan Ferrick and David Whelan have just as much work to do as any other candidate to prove to voters that they are worthy of a salaried and influential position in student life. If they do their job well, then RON will fi ll the ballot paper as an outlet for protest, not a realistic outcome.

Late on Thursday February 16th, returning officer Jen Fox will read five names from the top of the Mont Clare Hotel’s stairwell.

Those five names will have been subjected to the scrutiny of thousands of students and a number of student media outlets over the course of two weeks.

On a side note, it has now been confirmed that we will not be treated to another Heffernan joke campaign this year. It had been rumoured that Heffernan would run a campaign as Tiger Woods, but alas this has not come to pass. Bereft of his fellow Penguins, Matt Smyth and Ross Dungan, Heffernan decided to lay low this year and leave it to someone else to take up where he left off. A Woods for Welfare campaign would, undoubtedly, have been hilarious.

At the time of writing The University Times has heard of no other joke candidacies.

The UK student movement after Lib Dem betrayal Liam Burns, President of NUS UK, discusses the fight against fees in the UK, how the Lib Dems betrayed its student supporters and the challenges that face the student movement in the UK and Ireland.

T

USI has a history of successful campaigning and winning public support

NUSUK President Liam Burns

he past couple of years have been very difficult for anyone involved in the student movement in the UK and Ireland. At the last UK General Election students were courted like never before, Liberal Democrats in particular told us that they were the party of students and would stop any rise in tuition fees if we voted for them. Many students trusted them and were betrayed when Nick Clegg took the party into coalition with the Conservatives and immediately reversed his position, followed swiftly by most of his MPs. The response of the Coalition government in Westminster to a global economic crisis has had far reaching consequences for students not just in England but also Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Shameful decisions to push the burden of deficit reduction onto young people rather than making those that caused the crisis pay for it, have led to a three-fold rise in tuition fees in England that Governments and institutions in the Nations have had to respond to or face being inundated with fees refugees.

Students in the UK have been understandably furious about these changes and NUS UK and our sister organisations in the nations have been campaigning hard to stop as much of the damage as possible. In November 2010 NUS called the largest student demonstration in a generation and 50,000 people took to the streets of London protesting against the betrayal, the planned rise in tuition fees and the scrapping of vital support for FE students in the form of the Education Maintenance Allowance. In the face of popular opinion and ongoing protests, organised not just by NUS but throughout the student movement, the vote to raise tuition fees got through

parliament but will be remembered as the first big test of the Coalition.

Despite this disappointment we did not lose heart and our campaigns continue – focussing now on the finer points of a Higher Education white paper proposed by the Government that was ironically called ‘Putting Students at the Heart of the System’ whilst doing the complete opposite. Instead it puts finance at the heart of the system requiring all but the most elite universities to compete for ‘pile them high sell them cheap’ places. One of the most dangerous changes is that universities are now encouraged to drop bursaries that give students money in their pocket when they actually need it – whilst they’re studying. Instead, in order to artificially lower fees and lower the short-term cost to George Osborne’s Treasury universities are asked to offer fee waivers which are of no benefit to students while they study, saving them money only when they are wealthier graduates nearing the end of their repayments.

Our campaign continues – expanding from our efforts to influence politicians in Westminster and now focussing on building the campaigning capacity of students’ unions and influencing decisions at a local government and institution level.

Students in Ireland will look at the experience of those in the UK and begin to recognise a pattern as the Irish Government prepares to abandon pre-election pledges, raise tuition fees and cut financial support. USI has already started the process of resisting these damaging changes, organising a hugely successful march in November and resisting cuts. USI has a history of successful campaigning and winning public support including in the late 1980s and early 1990s defying a ban on information about sexual health and abortion,

I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!

Join the UT Opinion team.

Email opinion@universitytimes.ie

TIMESOPINION

risking backlash but winning the legal right to distribute this vital information, and that history stands them in good stead for the coming battle.

Young people all over the world are feeling the consequences as Government ministers in thrall to financial institutions fail to defend our futures, asking us to pay the price for a crisis caused by the greed of others. Young people want a fairer future where the rich pay their way and the rest have access to the opportunities they need to succeed. There is a global solution and I look forward to building stronger links with USI that will benefit all our members in the UK and Ireland.

Wednesday, March 23rd 2011 | The University Times

14

TIMESSPORTS SIX NATIONS 2012 PREVIEW WITH BILLY NASH AND EMMA TOBIN

Ireland THERE IS no BOD this year. This is either a blessing or a bad, BAD omen.

The absence of O’Driscoll means that several fundamental changes will have to take place within the Irish ranks.

O’Connell will have to step up to completely fill the role as captain. While the Irish squad has always said that it has several players who are looked to as captains, O’Connell, O’Gara, Boss and Heaslip, O’Driscoll has always been the major influence over the team as a whole. Morale and the performance of the squad often mirrors that of the enigmatic centre. Whether or not the team can function without his presence on the pitch (he will no doubt be present off field, as he has been with Leinster as Waterboy-in-Chief ) will truly be tested this year.

The need for a player to step up and fill his very impressive shoes in the centre can longer be avoided. Fergus McFadden has done exceptionally well so far this season for Leinster and he seems to be Schmidt’s preference in midfield. Declan Kidney however prefers McFadden on the wing and Keith Earls in the center, as seen in New Zealand.

Earls did alright in the centre, and claims he prefers it as a playing position, but majority of his match successes have come off the wing. Similarly there is talk of Tommy Bowe filling the spot. A utility back, Bowe would more than likely fill the role well enough but hasn’t played the position

France STRAIGHT OUT of a World Cup final you would think would be the team to watch this championship would be France. You’d be right, but not necessarily for the reason’s you’d think.

The RWC was a mixed bag for the French. Their camped was tittering on the edge of implosion for much of the competition. They were frequently called the least deserving team to ever reach a final (though their performance in said final kind of killed that complaint). Liévermont more or less lost the plot and control of his team, who began acting independently.

The question for the 6 nations is whether or not this erratic behaviour will continue. Philip Saint-André has taken over the mantle of head coach. Don’t expect press conferences denouncing his team or the sideline temper tantrums of his predecessor. He is a decidedly more level-headed character.

Having successfully made Gloucester one of the most successful teams in England during his tenure there, this success was repeated with the Sale Sharks and hopes that the same will be done for France are high.

Questions over who his choice team will be are increasing rapidly, with his provisional squad including players excluded from the RWC, and two brand new names.

Where Liévermont lost the hearts of the flighty French public was his team selection. He’d leave out necessary first team players and systematically drop the previous weeks’ Man of the Match,

Scotland UNDER ANDY Robinson, Scotland are an organised, compact team with a solid kicking game that is very difficult to penetrate. Stereotypically, the current crop of players are solid and uncompromising upfront, without being sensational. When it comes to creativity in the backline, Jo Ansbro, Max Evans, Simon Danielli and Sean Lamont are all lively and capable of taking advantage of the holes created by the direct running of Graeme Morrison. Realistically, Scotland may cause an upset or two, and will definitely run some of the bigger teams close, but don’t have the squad depth or individual talent to put together a run of victories.

The problem for Scotland is the ying to Italy’s yang; They have a degree of potential in the right areas, but don’t seem to play cohesively as a team.

Chris Paterson’s inclusion in the squad for what seems to be the last ten years has meant that, while they have an excellent goal-kicker, they sideline much of the attacking talent they do have to offer. Thom Evans spent the majority of his early years on the bench, supplementing the efforts of Paterson for the last 20 minutes, often when they have fallen behind.

After the disappointment that was RWC 2011, Robinson and Co. will be very happy with a few big performances and close results, especially considering they are on the road for three of their five matches. The head coach also has the luxury of a choice between three competent outhalves; Ruadhri

Wales

frequently, well, ever.

Whether or not Kidney sticks with preferred selection, as he so often does, takes season performance into account, or even takes a moderate risk will only be seen once the final squads get announce.

While the absence of O’Driscoll will be pivotal, there is no reason Ireland should perform well this tournament.

We had a relatively successful world cup and it looks highly likely that three of the four provinces will go through to the knock out stages of the Heineken Cup. This should prove to be a huge boost to morale over all. A top of the table finish, or near enough the top, is quite possible.

Player to watch:

Last year’s Rugby World Cup did won-

Young prospect: Andrew Conway

Andrew Conway The Leinster utility back has been included in the preliminary Irish squad for the first time off the back of strong season performance. Signed to Leinster straight after winning the Leinster Seniors with Blackrock College, Conway has been making his presence known for the last year or so now, and has finally elbowed his way into a regular spot in Schmidts choice 15. Though he might not make the Irish 15 for the bigger games, it would be surprising not to see him make an impact against Scotland or Italy. - ET

without much explanation. Saint-André will first need to win over the local supporters is his newly-acquired team is to stand any chance of giving the type of performance that he expects.

Despite this, given that he already has a squad that has made it to a World cup final, which lost by a point, would altering the squad beyond a tweak here or there be a smart move? Probably not.

Failure to completely flatten Italy in the first game will not be well received by the French press and dent the fragile ego that so often characterises the French squad. Hopefully this shouldn’t be an issue.It should be admitted at this point that we have very little knowledge of what goes on inside the head of the French National coach, be it Liévermont or Saint-André. There is very little to support the claim that the latter will entirely overhaul the French squad, and the Choice 15 below is based on that assumption. However, Mr. Saint-André may decide to introduce an entirely new array of talent into the side that has not been seen before. At least he’ll be keeping in line with standards set.

Player to watch: Alexis Palisson At 24 and already having 20 caps, the Fullback and Winger has already made himself a regular feature on the French side. Encouraging for the French and worrying for everyone else, Palisson continues to improve. Keep an eye on him throughout the tournament simply Jackson, who started all except one of Scotland’s world cup games, Dan Parks and up-and-coming ‘wonderkid’ Stuart Hogg.

In Richie Gray and Alastair Kellock Scotland have two excellent leaders and top class lineout performers capable of competing with both the Irish and French lineouts. Worryingly, their scrum was targeted in New Zealand, most notably in the crunch match against Argentina and should John Barclay get injured there is no obvious competitor at the breakdown. Expect the Scots to compete ferociously in every game; their best chance of winning lies in reducing matches to wars of attrition.

Ten-man rugby could dominate, especially when faced with the backlines of France, Wales and Ireland, disappointing in that the genuinely exciting outside backs may not see enough ball. A premature prediction indicates that the Scots will narrowly avoid the wooden spoon by beating Italy in Rome on the final day, albeit not without a fight from the Azzuri. - BN

Player to watch: Ruaridh Jackson If Scotland want to play Ten-man rugby effectively, then their out-half is crucial to that plan. Ruaridh Jackson boasts the most comprehensive CV out of all the candidates, albeit that isn’t saying much. Jackson played in most of Scotland’s World Cup matches, and performed admiriably for the most

Choice 15: 1. Cian Healy 2. Rory Best 3. Mike Ross 4. Donnacha O’Callaghan 5. Paul O’Connell 6. Stephen Ferris 7. Sean O’Brien 8. Jamie Heaslip 9. Conor Murray 10. Johnny Sexton 11. Fergus McFadden 12. Gordon Darcy 13. Keith Earls 14. Tommy Bowe 15. Rob Kearney

ders for Welsh confidence; as well as the eventual fourth place finish, there was the added bonus of the emergence of vibrant, new talent in the form of Rhys Priestland, George North et al.

These breakthroughs have come at the perfect time for Warren Gatland and his backroom staff, Shane Williams’ retirement and the indifferent form of Stephen Jones seem less conspicuous these days.

There is undoubtedly an air of optimism surrounding this Welsh team, with many feeling that this is the year in which they can push on and cement their place in the top five of the world.

The back-row of mesmeric captain Sam Warburton, Toby Faletau and Dan Lydiate are among the most mobile and aggressive in world rugby at the moment and will provide a strong base from which to attack opposing teams.

Sam Warburton, despite his young age and relative inexperience, proved his mettle at the World Cup prior to the semi-final. His work-rate and tackling bility, particularly against Ireland in the quarter-final, show the degree to which the youngster has come on, considering only a year ago, he was concerned about starting for the Cardiff Blues.

However, as shown in the World Cup semi final, over-exuberance is a potential weakness in this squad and the opening game against Ireland in Dublin could make or break the Welsh

England

Joker-in-Chief: Alexis Palisson to witness some fantastic plays and feel horribly insignificant in comparison.

-ET

Choice 15: 1. Jean Bapiste Poux 2. William Servat 3. Nicolas Mas 4. Julia Piere 5. Pascal Pape 6. Fulgence Ouedraogo 7. Theirry Dusatoir 8.Imanol Harinordoquy 9. Morgan Parra 10. François Trinh-Duc 11. Alexis Palisson 12. Maxime Mermoz 13. Aurélien Rougerie 14. Julien Malzieu 15. Clément Poitrenaud

LOOKING AT England’s squad, it is very difficult to imagine them fabricating a serious defence of their Six Nations crown.

Factoring in recent upheavals in management, as well as their disastrous world cup display, pessimists think that England will perhaps do well to avoid embarrassing themselves. Many people questioned the appointment of Stuart Lancaster as interim head coach following the timely departure of Martin Johnson, and he is yet to be challenged at a serious test level.

He has however named a solid squad that balances form with experience, one which includes nine uncapped players. The English backline has excellent pedigree, with two good players in almost every position.

Although Chris Ashton has had recent troubles at club level, he is nonetheless an integral part of a razor-sharp back three, alongside Ben Foden and either Charlie Sharples or David Strettle, both of whom are lightning-quick. There are a number of options at half-back, the inventive Toby Flood will surely get the nod at out-half ahead of Charlie Hodgson, an essential choice for the neutrals.

Also don’t be surprised if Saracens’ Owen Farrell makes a notable contribution, realistically as an impact sub rather than a starter. The young fly-half has been more than impressive in his multiple performances in the domestic league this season, and his game-management has propelled Saracens to top of the Premiership.

Italy ITALY WILL get the wooden spoon.

Again. It’s just inevitable. Deal with it.

Playmaker: Ruaridh Jackson part. His kicking from hand was exquisite, particluarly in the match against Argentina, although his forwards let him down on that occasion.

Choice 15: 1. Muray Low 2. Ross Ford 3. Allen Jacobsen 4. Richie Gray 5. Alastair Kellock 6. Richie Vernon 7. John Barclay 8. Kelley Brown 9. Mike Blair 10. Ruaridh Jackson 11. Max Evans 12. Graeme Morrison 13. Joe Ansbro 14. Simon Danielli 15. Sean Lamont

Despite the improvement of players since the inclusion of Italian Regional sides in league games, the standard at a national level remains poor. The Italian scrum is always mammoth and their games are often the most physical of the tournament. Unfortunately they lack the technical skills at present to become a real threat within the tournament. The Italians are finding themselves being left behind. Despite having some highly influential players like Parisse and Bergamasco, the team as a whole doesn’t really function.

The games are nevertheless entertaining to watch, and an upset Italian victory could occur if other teams underestimate them and field a subpar team.

The big question most Italians will want an answer to is how new coach, Frenchman Jacques Brunel, will adapt to the Italian set-up. His predecessor, Nick Mallet, brought Italian rugby out of the depths of uncertainty and gave the entire country some badlyneeded direction. Whether Brunel will completely extinguish the previous administration’s years of endevour and excellent man-managment remains to be seen.

Mallet’s campaign culminated in their defeat of France in Rome last Spring.

Thus, for the first time in a long time, Italy have a platform to build on.

At least metaphorically speaking. On

campaign. With Jamie Roberts in the centre and Leigh Halfpenny’s pace on the wing, there is no shortage of explosiveness or dynamism in the back line. More so than any other team in this competition, they possess what seems to be the killer balance of youth and experience. Their forwards have an tough, well-tested, tight five, and possess plenty of ball-carrying ability in order to generate quick ball to their backs. Incidentally, that is where most of the Welsh threats seem to come from. There is few things in the world that will ease the minds of defending wingers more than the retirement of Shane Williams. However the consensus is that Williams might not have made the cut. With George North creating a storm on one wing, Alex Cuthbert and Scott Williams in an arm-wrestle for the 11 jersey, and Leigh Halfpenny slotting in nicely at full-back, it’s difficult to forecast where Shane Williams would feature.

Dynamic: Mike Phillips Tom Wood is a major loss up front for the first couple of games, both for his playing abilities and his leadership qualities. The back-rower will mostlikely feature in the latter half of the competition and will bring dynamism and much-needed experience to an otherwise youth-favoured team.

Mike Tindall’s absence sticks out like a sore thumb in midfield. Although the ace midfielder ended his career in the most dramatic way possible, his lack of inclusion results in a potentially newlook English backline.

In the front row, Dylan Hartley is the epitome of raw aggression and hard graft, following in the tradition of classic English hookers, while Andrew Sheridan will be sorely missed. At the time of going to print, many bookmakers favour England ahead of Ireland to perform this spring. Surprising considering each country’s form in the Heineken Cup this season.

Tuilagi gives England another option

Player to watch: Mike Phillips Similar to Conor Murray, Phillips’ height and power lend an extra facet to his game, which opposition defences find tought to play against. Couple this with excellent delivery off both hands and an ability to score tries in big games and you have a truly worldclass player. Phillips has arguably been the difference-maker in the last two encounters that the Welsh have had with Ireland, scoring a try last year, and proving a menace during their quarterfinal clash last Autumn. However, what makes Phillips’ inclusion most necessary is his ability to set the tempo. He’s the perfect link between a reliable pack and a threatening backline. - BN

Choice 15: 1. Gethin Jenkins 2. Matthew Rees 3. Hew Bennett 4. Ian Evans 5. Bradley Davies 6. Dan Lydiate 7. Sam Warburton 8. Toby Felatau 9. Mike Phillips 10. Rhys Priestland 11. Scott Williams 12. Jonathon Davies 13. Jamie Roberts 14. George North 15. Leigh Halfpenny

Indisciplined, inherently flawed and inexperienced, yet when he is on form he is virtually unplayable, a combination of brute force and sublime vision combine to wreak havoc among defences. It also doesn’t hurt that he posesses thighs the size of tree-trunks and a consummate desire to break the gainline. Coming off a World Cup as one of the few England players to impress, he will turn many heads and will likely give many defenders nightmares, as well as broken bones. He may cause trouble in a BOD-less Irish midfield, and against Scotland’s questionable outside defence. Plus he’s earned the respect of rugby fans around the world by thumping Chris Ashton across the head in domestic league match last year. - BN

Choice 15: 1. Dan Cole 2. Dylan Hartley 3. Alex Corbisiero 4. Courteney Lawes 5. Louis Deacon 6. Tom Croft 7. Tom Wood 8.Chris Robshaw 9. Ben Youngs 10. Toby Flood 11. David Strettle 12. Mike Brown 13. Manu Tuilagi 14. Chris Ashton 15. Ben Foden

Player to watch: Manu Tuilagi the field, that has been their biggest problem. They continually get themselves into good positions and valiantly give the ball away. And right there we have the nexus of Italy’s difficulty.

They’ve recreated the Irish teams of the 80s, battling valiantly for an hour, and then falling by the wayside as more dynamic, experienced and explosive teams overwhelm them. The Irish teams have subsequently managed to work themselves out of this self-fulfilling prophecy and now are portrayed as giant-killers. Italy, in order to prosper, will need to follow suit.

In terms of the starting team, Italy remains uncomfortably in the position of fielding a very familiar side. They’ve arguably been stuck with the same mediocre starting 15 for the length of Mallet’s tenure. Reputable talents like Sergio Parisse and the Martin Castrogiovanni have been nutured excellently under Mallet’s reign, but growth in the bulk of the squad, particularly the backline, has for years been largely static, and has subsequently underperformed.

Players like Orquera and the Bergamasco brothers have plenty of potential but haven’t been able to produce the goods on the big stage.

The standard of skill in world rugby is rising, and the Welsh are setting the pace. These are two nations which previously Italy would have picked as potential wins, especially if they play the matches in Rome. These days, however, they’ve realised that the current squads best years are behind them, and it’s time to refresh the squad with an infusion of youth. - ET

Luke McLean (right) is always a threat

Player to watch Luke McLean He’s not Italian. Well not really. The Australian born Full Back always delivers for the Italians. He frequently keeps the often lacklustre Italian backs engaged in games and is good for at least a few breaks.

Choice 15: 1. Martin Castrogiovanni 2. Andre Lo Cicero 3. Alberto DiMarchi 4. Marco Bortolami 5. Quitin Geldenhuys 6. Alessandro Zanni 7. Mauro Bergamasco 8. Sergio Parisse 9. Fabio Semenzato 10. Lucanio Orquera 11. Tommaso Benvenuti 12. Alberto Sgarbi 13. Luca Morisi 14. Giulio Toniolatti 15. Luke McLean

15

The University Times | Wednesday, March 23rd 2011

TIMESSPORTS The Trinity Player How could a player on £200k a week possibly spend it all?

You’d be surprised “THEY ARE only offering me 55 grand a week?” a crestfallen Ashley Cole shouted at his agent as he nearly swerved his sports car off the road from the shock of hearing Arsenal’s final contract offer. In fairness to Cole, he probably deserved it but his PR machine didn’t gain him any friends in the aftermath.

Footballer’s wages and how they choose to spend is a topic of discussion where a big disconnect is occurring between your ordinary fan and some footballers living in a parallel universe.

I am of the belief top earners today are earning so much, it would be nearly impossible to lose it. There are a number of variables to blame for the fact that so many of them do. this situation. However, a couple of themes become evident – One, a possible lack of understanding financial management and two, a lack of respect for money.

From the moment I arrived in the UK as a kid, the one thing I noticed rather quickly was this cult like culture in the club to ‘look good’ or in London terms, ‘the dogs bollocks’. I met an old team mate of mine recently and he was embarrassed about the amount of money wasted on clothes over the years. When payday arrived, there was an unmerciful rush to the fashion outlets to spend wages immediately on the latest designer gear, whatever the cost. Being a Professional Footballer came at a price for players who felt this need to display a wealthy existence, even if some of them were only paid peanuts. I had no shortage of players coming up to me on a regular basis offering their services as a shopping partner.

I would politely tell them I was saving for the price of a flight home to see my family and that was that!

Footballers (in the top division anyway) are compensated handsomely for their efforts.

Your weekly pay packet for average Joe goes something like this – the basic salary will keep the show on the road. Then there are the little extras which are incentive based.

You could get a win bonus, a draw bonus or a top 6 in the table bonus. If the club were promoted, there was a bonus based on your contribution over the course of the season.

For FA Cup matches, you would get a bonus even as a non playing substitute. The best one for a cup tie was a bonus for the size of the crowd at the match! Some of the players had individual agreements with the clubs like goal bonuses. I think our chairman didn’t lose sleep about that particular agreement as goals were hardly raining in. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to sign a multi-million pound contract but on one occasion it felt like I did. I was named as a

sub against Arsenal for an FA Cup 3rd round fixture and delighted to say the least. I did not make an appearance that particular day but my pain subsided greatly when I saw my pay packet the following week. I had managed to receive five times my weekly salary for keeping the bench warm.

Getting pay packets like this sent some of the lads into a spending frenzy. There was an air of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ off the pitch as lads would be competitive with their car choice. I recall one individual at our club who signed an improved contract and duly celebrated by purchasing an Aston Martin for himself. It just didn’t make sense to me as I know for a fact his contract was in the 200k per year category. As the investor Warren Buffett recently said, our player had engaged in a spot of ‘irrational exuberance’.

Our player certainly got the attention he so craved as other senior and youth players surrounded his new shiny motor offering him congratulations, pats on the back and even a few attractive offers to borrow it for the weekend. In contrast, our legendary and wealthy goalkeeper was quite happy to zip in and out of the training ground in something that probably had a top speed of 30 miles per hour. No airs or graces with this guy, he just didn’t feel the desire to exhibit, but was pretty good at squirreling away his money. ‘Making money while he is taking a leak’ was the description bestowed on him.

Another black hole in terms of players spending emanated from interest in gambling. I can understand why so many players get into this difficulty. There was a saying in football we used - ‘you would always be home in time for Neighbours’, the Australian soap that aired at 1.30pm daily. What do some of the younger unsettled guys do at this hour of the day? It’s very easy to find a bookie on every street corner of London and unfortunately where many addictions begin.

I also subscribe to a magazine every month exclusively for current and ex professionals.

To use a term from our own David McWilliams, it is littered with ‘financial pornography’. You only have to look at the adverts on offer to see how enticing it is for an impressionable young player to be sucked in by the whole thing.

Even though footballers make more money today than ever before, this makes them more vulnerable to the circling vultures who all want a piece of the pie. In an ideal world, the player will hopefully have a good head on his shoulders throughout his career and learn to manage his finances for the rainy days ahead. Then he can go off to his Villa.

This is probably a failing of the football system in general where kids are allowed completely park school in their teens to become rich and famous and not be encouraged to have alternative plans.

The Trinity Player is an ex-pro.

RONAN RICHARDSON: UT OLYMPIAN v

Ronan practices his Jerzey Dudek impression Ronan Richardson Olympian-elect

Ronan is one of those people who likes to make a distinction between ‘football’ and ‘soccer’. imagine his distate when he showed up to play the latter...

I HATE soccer, I hate soccer, I hate soccer, I hate soccer, I hate soccer, I hate soccer. I’ve went to the gym, I’ve tried cricket, and I’ve sprinted 100 metres, but if there’s one sport that sickens and angers me more than anything else, it’s soccer. Naturally, ergo, the suggestion that my next sport would not be water polo but instead soccer rather outraged me.

Why do I despise this pseudo-sport, I hear you yell form the depths? For all the usual reasons why a critique of soccer is often made, and then some.

Rugby is often described as a scumbag’s sport played by gentlemen and visa-versa in respect to soccer. Whilst I don’t condone that soccer is, as it were, a gentleman’s sport played by scumbags, I do attest to the fact that it is a sport played by primadonnas, spoilt idiots, and the biggest hoodwinkers in society.

This is true at a professional level only (the last thing I want to do is become the victim of grievous bodily harm at the hands of the Trinity Football

team on a dark, foggy evening somewhere near the back of the Pav) The rest stands though. My father is a fan of a team known as Tottenham Hotspur, colloquially known by fans as ‘Spurs.’

From time to time this sport is turned on and I must say, it’s really boring. Let’s leave it at that. I don’t fancy making any more enemies than I need to. All I’ll say is, the players seem to spend more time rolling around the ground on their backs, than a student Bean Garda from Drumshambo after an evening in Coppers. Over paid, over acting, twerps.

Anyway, I digress. I met Cal Gray from West Coast United on Saturday morning last, and along with our intrepid cameraman, David Cullinan, we set off to Herbert Park in Ballsbridge to have a bit of an old kickabout. What fun.

It was a breezy, nippy, drizzly day but being hardened sportsmen; this was absolutely fine, and made no difference whatsoever. Cal started me off with the basics, a few “keep-ups” so to speak. The man has patience of steel, for nay could I master this skill in the prolonged time we spent attempting such. I tired of this very quickly. Instead we moved onto dribbling with the ball. Following my misinterpretation, we both proceeded to run along the side of the pitch gently tapping the ball along ahead of us. Simple. A fool could do it. And literally, they do. Every week on the television.

Sorry, low blow. At this time, I should say, an actually football team along so we took our leave, but only after we received the courteous invitation to play with them. I hastily declined, for obvious reasons of ineptitude.

Photo: David Cullinan

Cal brought me over to a goalpost to try penalty shoot outs that didn’t really go that well either. I missed the ball a few times, missed the goal a lot of the time, and had to embarrassingly excuse myself to run across a children’s football match to recover our football. The parents weren’t impressed. We continued on, and although I failed to score any goals against the indestructible Mr. Gray, I managed to jump up and grab the top of the goal posts, which is quite an achievement, for those who know me. We were going to try and attempt tackles but to be honest, it was felt that I was just way too much of a tank so we left that one out.

The above all sounds really shallow and superficial. Well, that’s because soccer is shallow and superficial. Our Dave, our cameraman described it as human ping-pong and he’s not half wrong. I know that some say there’s a vast amount of skill involved in the “beautiful game,” I understand that those at the top are paid enough wages to fund a small African country’s yearly welfare bill for a reason; but realistically, they’re just wrong.

Sometimes, my attitude towards sports I usually dislike can change after I partake in them, but this is not the case with soccer. The distinction between soccer and Gaelic football is massive.

One employs speed, tactic, power, humility, and love of the game. The other doesn’t. Guess which one? Sadly ladies and gentlemen, I must remain a narrow minded, self-serving bigot and maintain my initial line, that I hate soccer. Soz babes.

Superbowl winners get tougher to predict each year Melanie Giedlin Multimedia Editor

BY THE time you are reading this article, you will know who will be facing off in Superbowl XLVI. Superbowl 2012, the highlight of the season for fans of the NFL, will be held on Sunday, February 5 at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Four teams remain to play in the conference championships: In the American Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game, the Baltimore Ravens will play the New England Patriots, and in the National Football Conference Championship (NFC) Game, the New York Giants will play the San Francisco 49ers.

Though it’s been a while since the 49ers last appeared in the playoffs (the last time being in 2002), the 49ers/Giants matchup seems to be of the most unexpected of this year’s playoffs. Though the Green Bay Packers were touted to win against the Giants on January 15th, a tough defense from the Giants made the Packer’s fumbles and inability to tackle seem like that of a lesser team, not the defending Superbowl champions. In the NFC Game, it will be crucial for the Giants to keep building on their improvements from a lackluster earlier season, and rout the plays of the 49ers QB Alex Smith, who showed he was in his prime during Divisional playoffs versus the Saints on January 14th. Against Drew Brees, the record-breaking quarterback for the Saints, Smith’s clutch

touchdown in the fourth quarter, and pass to Vernon Davis to win the game 36-32 seemed unfathomable. Analysts, however, have picked the Giants to win this year’s NFC Championship Game. Both teams have been steadily working their way up their leagues, though the 49ers have an impressive but possibly overrated scoring margin this year. A 49ers win could solidify their return to the forefront of the NFL, but its doubtful that they will escape being called the underdogs of the 2012 postseason.

To think: Tim Tebow could have been the focus of this article. Though fans of the Denver Broncos were crushed after the fairytale ended and they were beaten 45-10 on January 14th. A divisive figure in the sports world, Tebow could not complete passes on par with New England Patriots’ QB Tom Brady. Now the Patriots will have the possibility to eliminate the Baltimore Ravens, though their victory hinges on whether or not they will be overwhelmed by the Raven’s defense. It is possible to make the case for a Ravens’ win if they can keep the Patriots offense, heralded by Tom Brady, at bay.

This is going to prove difficult, as Brady threw for 5,325 yards this season, with 39 touchdown passes and only 12 interceptions. (Arguably a bad year for the three-time Superbowl winner) My prediction is that Raven’s linebackers Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs will join safety Ed Reed and tear up the field, their menacing defense rattling Brady’s plays.

In the contest for who appears in Su-

perbowl XLVI, there is the sense that anything can happen. Last year, in the back of our minds we all knew the road to the title was through Lambeau by way of the Packers against the Steelers. If the 49ers somehow beat the Giants, an appearance against the Patriots or Ravens would be electric, in the same way that a head to head battle against the Giants’ and Ravens’ defense would be hard-hitting. However, what you’ll probably see by the time you read this is a predictable Patriots-Giants match-up and a battle between Tom Brady and Eli Manning for who can execute better plays and have more All-American hair.

Also-ran Tim Tebow

Patriots QB Tom Brady

NY Giants triggerman Eli Manning

Baltimore’s defensive leader Ray Lewis

49ers’ explosive receiver Vernon Davis

Premier League tightens up at both ends of the Table Jack Hogan Armchair Footballer

ANY CALLS for a winter break in the Premier League should be rubbished after what has been possibly the most entertaining period of festive football in many years. We have witnessed the wobbles of title contenders, the resurenge of relegation-battlers, and most importantly, some top quality goals.

Where else can we begin other than with Manchester City’s worst month thus far in the league? Many said the winter period would make or break the Blues and although they still remain top, questions must be asked after losses to Chelsea, Manchester United in the FA Cup and Liverpool in the Carling Cup. The

challenge for Roberto Mancini is to instill in his squad the same level of consistency as we saw earlier in the season. United too have been out of sorts of late with disastrous losses to Newcastle and Blackburn. With Vidic out for the rest of the season too, there have been calls on Sir Alex to buy big this month.

However, we cannot overlook Tottenham as serious challengers for the title and with decent performances over the festive season, they now have a solid basis on which to push on. With Adebayor, Scott Parker and Luca Modric all at the top of their game, don’t be surprised to see them overtake their Manchester rivals.

With United and City gaining big wins against their respective North London rivals this weekend, the belief of Spurs may be called into question, as they fall to six points behind

the Manchester clubs.

Arsenal too have been showing good form and even Wayne Rooney admits the possibility of the Gunners making a late sweep for the championship. With the legendary (though unforgiven) Thierry Henry on board, this is by no means out of the question, although a loss at home to United this weekend means they fall to six points behind the Champions League spots, which has to be a realistic target for them this season. This, of course, assumes that Chelsea are out of the picture. With some poor results of late, especially a draw with Norwich, André Villas-Boas has a lot on his hands in building his own squad and mounting a challenge for the title. A top four finish would be deemed a success for him. However, as is always the case in January, we have a long way to go.

Liverpool also will struggle to reach

that elusive Champion’s League place. With only one win in their last six Premier League games, the absence of Luis Suarez through suspension has hurt the Reds. Dalglish’s patience with the short-comings of Andy Carroll must surely be running short. Their recent loss to Bolton has been indicative of a dreadful winter period for them but also of the resurgence of Owen Coyle’s men. While they still struggle at the foot of the table, surely they are the most likely to survive with Wigan, Wolves and QPR looking increasingly shaky.

That said perhaps with the arrival of Mark Hughes at Loftus Road, Rangers could emulate the revival as seen under Martin O’Neill at Sunderland. The Black Cats have shown an extraordinary improvement following the departure of Steve Bruce. Perhaps Blackburn can learn from this (*hint hint: sack Steve

Keane). Despite the win at Old Trafford, surely the board at Ewood Park cannot kid themselves any longer. In order to sustain life in the Premier League, they will need to make some serious changes to their management as well as their squad.

However, it has been an extraordinarily quiet transfer window thus far. But if we learnt anything from last season, it is that most deals are completed at 11.57pm on the 31st January. Don’t be surprised to see some fresh faces with the likes of Sneijder, Podolski and Abidal being increasingly linked with moves to England.

Let the bidding begin.

UTsports

January 24th 2011

Inside

RONAN RICHARDSON played football. He didn’t like it

Twitter: @Sports_UT

CYCLISTS STORM INTER-VARSITIES

TIME LORD STANLEY REIGNS SUPREME AT INTERVARSITY CYCLING A UCD rider fails to match Stanley’s pace.

Jack Leahy Sports Writer Treacherous winds failed to spoil the first of five race weekends in the 2012 Cycleways Cycling inter-varsities league as Trinity’s Andrew Stanley took the 16km time trial at Boot Inn in Dublin.

Despite the gale-force wind conditions - hardly conducive to a sport that relies on balance to the extent of cycling - over 20 riders from universities cycling teams across the country took part in the annual event.

The 16km time trial was to be completed is two laps of 8km each, with each rider setting off one after another before racing against the clock.

The early pace was set by DIT cycling club’s David O’Brien when he finished his parcours in

an impressive 28 minutes and 15 seconds.

However, it immediately became clear that O’Brien would be outdone by UCD’s Eoin Morton, who blistered around the track in 13 minutes 20 seconds for the first 8km. Accordingly, he took the lead when, despite a significantly slower second lap, he came over the line in 26 minutes and 46 seconds.

Morton’s impressive denial of the weather conditions served to pile the pressure on the Trinity racers, who were next to take to to the saddle in anger. Stanley, a second year student of Business, Economics, and Social Studies (BESS), was first up for Trinity, managing to complete his first lap with only five seconds in his favor over Morton. However, Stanley improved for his second 8km, beating the first lap by all of ten seconds to give himself a lead of 21 seconds overall. His time of 26:25 was to prove unbeat-

able.

As Stanley stormed to victory, both Ian McGuran and Paul McAufield managed decent first lap times, and it looked for a moment as if they would join Stanley on the podium if they could repeat their form in the second lap. However, unlike Stanley and Morton they found the second lap more difficult to master and narrowly missed out on a podium place by 5 and 5 seconds respectively.

The result was a good one for Trinity; given the competition directors’ decision to place teams according to a total weighted average method of calculation, Trinity’s 1st, 4th, and 5th place finished gives them an overall lead in the team standings of 19 seconds. UCD currently occupy second place.

The teams will be tested once again next weekend as the first road race of the league takes

place before Howth Head hosts an uphill time trial on Sunday, February 5th.

Another road race will then separate the concluding event, which will see the riders return to the Boot Inn for another crack at the 16km time trial event.

Speaking to The University Times, Stanley said that while the club were obviously delighted with the weekend’s results, they knew the next four weekends would prove decisice: ‘Obviously we as a team are delighted with how today went, but the next four weekends represent a fairly comprehensive scrutiny of just how good we are on the bike. It’s definitely not over and what’s important now is staying focused and remembering that we’ve won nothing yet. We’re also very thankful for the generous prizes and sponsorhip of Cycleways’.

Photo: Ian Richardson

Results

1. Andrew Stanley (TCD) 2. Eoin Morton (UCD) 3. David O’Brien (DIT) 4. Ian McGuran (TCD) 5. Paul McAufield (TCD)

Local Celebrity falls valiantly on bigger stage Jack Cantillon Horse Racing Society Auditor WE GOT up at 7.00am, headed to the airport and picked up the only rental mini bus available in Dublin. We drove around Dublin picking up dreary eyed society members that we’d somehow convinced that an 8am start for a three and a half hour trip down to Mallow racecourse for Local Celebrity’s first run was a good idea.

We scanned our Racing Posts expectantly. He was running in the 1st race in his 1st run for the college and he was going to go off favorite. Despite the sleep deprivation, we just couldn’t hold back the excitement. What would we do with the trophy?

Could we convince the jockey to come back and party in Dublin? Did we know a good framer for the silks? These had all been discussed in depth before we passed Port Laoise.

The race arrived, Local Celebrity jumped off 6/4 favorites. We’d told half the college to blow their grants on this fellow. Sure we’d a champion amateur and champion trainer on our side. He moved serenely towards the first hurdle, the weight of the college community on his shoulders and then well, the script was blown to pieces.

Local was taken out by the horse beside us and dragged off the track, knocking jockey Patrick Mullins out of the saddle. We hadn’t even made it over the first hurdle.

Our phones began to have a fit in our

pockets. It turns out losing their semester budgets on a horse in the first race in Mallow wasn’t in many Trinity students’ scripts either.

Patrick consoled us in the parade ring. “He was travelling great, we’ll have him out again in a weeks time”. Scant consolation.

We somberly trudged to our mini bus and left before they’d even left the parade ring for the second race, fallers at the first.

The next week we got word that Local was being entered in a Maiden Hurdle at Navan. A hotter contest then Cork but getting to the second hurdle would be a result at this stage. We approached the day with a little less enthusiasm. Talks of piss ups with jockeys and finding fantastic framers were replaced with a quiet prayer that this time he’d make it round safely. He started the race 7/2-second favorite behind the hotpot Rourke’s Cross. Patrick told us “it’d been a great run if we got second” and we didn’t dare hope for more. Just as the race took off, we had our sentimental few quid on and before we could take our perch in the stands the commentator announced to groans that Rourke’s Cross had crashed out of the race. You never like when another horse falls but when that horse is the red-hot favorite and leaves your horse cruising out in front, you’re never complaining about the hand faith has dealt you.

Local was left in front and stayed in front for a 10-length victory. It felt like a huge

roar from the crowd as he crossed the line but in reality it was 7 lads in a corner of a stand dumfounded we’d actually won.

We sprinted to the ring and lead in our “champion”. We rang everyone in our delirium, the UT to hold the front page, the CSC to demand a trophy cabinet for our exploits and The Phil & The Hist to announce our impending takeover of the GMB. It wasn’t going to get any better then this. The racecourse chairman made the presentation and we were escorted to a private suite to watch the race again and a drink celebratory bottle of Champaign. We could get used to this. We hopped back in the bus and sang our way back to Trinity.

“We all dream of a team of Local Celebrity’s, a team of Local Celebrity’s, a team of Local Celebrity’s”. It seemed very witty at the time.

So where next for Trinity’s racehorse?

Well he hasn’t run since. He’s had entries at Leopardstown during the Christmas period and Naas just last week but none of them have suited. He’s working well it’s just wherever he goes next it will be up a grade and we want to make sure he gives a good account of himself. Whatever happens though it’s mission accomplished.

We’ve got the trophy; we’ve framed the silks. We’d just like one more win so we can bring that jockey on a well deserved piss up. Local Celebrity to National Celebrity and we’re not going to stop dreaming just yet.

Trinity’s Local Celebrity with jockey Patrick Mullins, before their fall at Portlaoise