Volume 5, Issue 1

The University Times VOL. VI - ISSUE I

//

TUESDAY 17TH SEPTEMBER 2013 //

www.universitytimes.ie

TCD FRESHERS’ WEEK

UT Exclusive: News Editor Hannah Ryan Interviews Dean of Undergraduate Studies >>News

Students Need Not Apply Average rental prices in the capital increasing by 7.5% since last year >>InFocus

wat u into?

CAMPAIGN TO IMPEACH SU PRESIDENT UNDERWAY Deputy Editor Vladimir Rakhmanin

A

campaign calling on a referendum for the

impeachment of Tom Lenihan, President of the Trinity College Students’ Union, has begun. The campaign is led by primarily by Eoin Silke, a Junior Sophister medicine student. It was set in motion shortly after the discovery that Tom Lenihan, after a prolonged period of depression, cheated in his third year law exams.

Speaking to The University Times Silke stated that some of the signatures collected are from fourth year students who will not be present at college this year, rendering those signatures invalid. Currently, approximately 100 valid signatures have been collected out of the 500 required by the Students’ Union. Silke said he

believes that he will be able soon as possible. When asked tunity arose. Silke also stated apologise to the students and sabbatical officers of TCDSU to get enough signatures dur- if he would try to maxim- that he believes that “the to the College for my behav- have supported Tom both ing the first couple of weeks ise exposure during the first students of Trinity deserve iour. I have apologised to the professionally and personof term, depending on “how weeks of term, he said that he a chance to decide whether Junior Dean and I will fully ally. TCDSU has undergone receptive people are”. He was wary of the campaign be- they think this is acceptable comply with the sanction im- a number of significant readded that those who sign the coming “a public witch-hunt behaviour for their President”. posed on me”. document don’t necessar- – Trinity students don’t want Lenihan said that it is “Eoin’s

ily believe that Tom Lenihan that”. Silke mentioned that absolute democratic right to activist for the eradication prudence, vision, and team should be impeached, but while he was the main organ- pursue a referendum regard- of stigma for mental health, leadership have sustained that they wish for the motion iser of the campaign, others ing [his] impeachment and which he stated was a ‘poign- one of the most productive to be put to a referendum.

have also expressed support, [he] would not frustrate the ant issue’ during his cam- summers in the recent his-

Silke explained that he but did not wish to expose democratic process”. in a “non-abusive direc-

When asked why he de- ment earlier this year re- view on 2fm, he discussed the relationships with staff, the

tion”, and focus on the main cided not to take the im- garding the incident. He ex- nature of his mental health Graduate Students’ Union issue, which, according to peachment process through plained that he suffered from issues, saying that he suf- and the Union of Students him, is that Tom “shouldn’t Council, Silke replied that he depression, and that during fered from depression and in Ireland have never been represent students”. He also wished to take action as soon the exam period he “had ne- ‘low self-esteem’ from the age better and, accordingly, we mentioned that unfair things as the story broke, a time glected [his] medical treat- of 13, but did not discuss it heartily affirm his capabilwere being said by the gen- when Council was over. Silke ment which exacerbated [his] with anyone until later on in ity of effectively carrying out eral public, with “abuse on also mentioned that while condition”. He noted that this his life. He said he wished to his role as a student leader. both sides”. He admitted that Council is a representative was not an excuse for his be- discuss the matter in order We respect the right of stu-

N

paign through the summer, affect what the students want. full responsibility, but that it stigmatise the issue. due to students being away He did note, however, that provides context. He added

policy, develop inside and outside calls back to the 2003 report 2012.

entitled

As a result, Geoghegan

fessor Sheila Greene, which has stressed that “for any

With this in mind, Ge- aimed to address “the per- new document to be suc-

the “Trinity Education”, has oghegan is looking at intro- ceived imbalance between cessful it must have buyset a target that all courses ducing more radical assess- teaching

and

research” in from the entire College

in Trinity must include a ments across all courses which had been developing community.” mandatory research disser- in order to better hone in Trinity over many years. tation for every student by students’

Discussions have already

communication To combat this, Greene sug- taken place on the sub-

skills and their ability to gested that all undergradu- ject in the Undergraduate

2015/16.

Speaking to The Univer- work well in groups. At the ate courses should include Studies Committee, and it sity Times, Dr. Patrick Ge- moment, “there is little op- a mandatory research dis- was queried whether finaloghegan,

the

academic portunity for group-based sertation element. This was year dissertations should

officer responsible for the assessment and presenta- never implemented how- be optional or compulreport,

stated:

“Students tions – things that count for ever, the reasons for which sory, as all students might

must prepare for the chal- something. We don’t want were discussed at a meeting not be capable of carrying lenges of the 21st century… an overload of exams.”

College is an opportunity to

Recapping the summer in Trinity Sports

>>Sports

constitution, to seek the im-

Trinity College Students’ peachment of their sabbatical

was important to start as through Council if the oppor- gret my action and I sincerely statement on the matter: “the and will continue to do so.”

a report carried out by the level.”

Lecturer

DULBC Strike Gold at National Championships

on holidays, but felt that it he was not opposed to going the following: “I greatly re- Union issued the following officers through referendum

which is informed by the classroom on a personal on College produced by Pro-

Senior

>>Opinion

it was difficult to run a cam- body of students, it shouldn’t haviour, for which he takes to raise awareness and to de- dents, set forth in the Union’s

News Editor Hannah Ryan

college

Samuel Riggs on the worrying trend of sex apps

paign for the position of SU tory of the organisation. Tom

Lenihan released a state- President. In a recent inter- has ensured that TCDSU’s

wishes to take the campaign themselves.

New Policy to Introduce Compulsory Dissertations for All Courses by 2015 ew

forms since the beginning of

Lenihan is a long-time our terms in office and Tom’s

of the Undergraduate Stud- one out.

A crucial part of this study ies Committee in February >>Continued on pg 4

Reynolds: “Solid” Relationship with Vodafone to Continue News Editor Hannah Ryan

T

rinity College Students’ Union Ents Officer, Sean Reynolds, has quashed rumours that Vodafone Ireland have decided to withdraw their funding from Trinity Ents this year, and stressed his confidence and optimism about the year ahead.

Speaking to The University Times, Reynolds stated: “I can categorically deny that Vodafone has withdrawn their sponsorship.

“We have enjoyed a fantastic relationship with Vodafone for three years, it has been very solid and structured.

Every party now needs to assess how this relationship can be maintained and improved. That’s why things have taken slightly longer this year.”

As to whether he will be seeking sponsorship from additional parties, Reynolds said that while they are assessing various options, he is unable to

comment any further, but is confident about the upcoming year. “I can affirm that Trinity Ents will be on as solid a funding base as ever this year.

“We are excited for the week ahead. There are a lot of people involved giving it their all, and we have a great Freshers’ Ball coming up.”

On Friday, Trinity Ents announced that they will be donating a portion of the money raised from Freshers’ Week and the Freshers’ Ball tickets to the Stu-

dent Hardship Fund, “a vital support for Trinity students in financial distress.”

The Trinity Alumni have promised to match the donations 2:1 for every €1 given by students. In this way, for every wristband purchased, €6 will be raised for the Fund.

“We are extremely grateful to Trinity Alumni and The Trinity Foundation for their support,” Trinity Ents stated on their official Facebook page.

2

UT News

Credits

ut

EDITOR Leanna Byrne DEPUTY EDITOR Vladimir Rakhmanin ONLINE EDITOR Conor Murphy EDITOR AT LARGE Colm O’Donnell NEWS EDITOR Hannah Ryan FEATURES EDITOR Ludovic Dawnay OPINION EDITOR Samuel Riggs SPORTS EDITOR Conor Bates MAGAZINE EDITOR James Bennett SUPPLEMENTS EDITOR Shauna Cleary CHIEF COPY EDITOR Michelle O’Connor

Tuesday 17th september 2013

PHOTO EDITOR Andrew Murphy

Deputy Online Editor Sinéad Baker

Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI),

Last year 17% of applicants were still wait-

the body that awards student grants in Ireland,

ing for their grant by the start of the second se-

has affirmed that their processing of grant ap-

mester, with 7% of students yet to receive their

plications is “on schedule” for this year, after

grant by April.

food.” Many students’ unions have also started

lost their grant for 2013-14. 8% of the 80,000 stu-

giving out food to those students in need.

dents that receive the grant are expected to be

Speaking to The University Times, President

affected by further cuts, whether this be a large

of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), Joe

grant being reduced or a small grant cut completely.

last year’s controversy of delays and errors.

SUSI has referred to last year’s delays as

O’Connor, stated that he is very happy with

However this news comes alongside worry-

“teething problems” which emerged due to

SUSI’s progress as it is a “huge step forward”.

ing reports that 800 students have already lost

2012 being the first year that 66 grant awarding

He said that the USI will continue to be happy

their grant due to the government’s lowering

bodies were merged into one. SUSI also cites

if the majority of applications are processed

Caroline Erskine, SUSI Communications, af-

of income thresholds.

the “overwhelming amount of paperwork”

by October. However he also stressed his hope

firmed that: “SUSI is a student grants process-

SUSI claims that this year’s progress has

received last year as a delaying factor; 1.8 mil-

that those whose applications aren’t processed

ing agency, it does not set the eligibility criteria.

been possible due to a new website, www.susi.

lion documents were received from applicants

by then won’t be denied any college services,

That is a matter for the Houses of the Oireach-

ie, which guides students through the process,

around the country.

and that the student hardship fund in any uni-

tas.

and an online progress tracker. New data-shar-

In 2012, students who had been waiting to

versity will be open to them, even though their

SUSI declined to comment on students that have been affected by grant cuts.

“We are urging students to return all their required documentation before 24th September

ing arrangements with various organisations

hear about the grant were forced to consider

such as the CAO and the Department of Social

the possibility of dropping out of college. TD

Despite SUSI’s improved efficiency this year,

to ensure priority processing. Under the Stu-

Welfare, which can now give SUSI information

Richard Boyd Barrett claimed that the delays

concerns for the financial future of students

dent Grants Scheme, the earliest any payment

on the students’ behalf, have also quickened

in the system left students “having to make

have been exacerbated following the news

can be made is in late October when colleges

the process.

a choice between paying rent and paying for

that 800 second year students have already

have confirmed that each student has regis-

situation will only be temporary.

tered and is attending their course.”

New societies App launches in Trinity Current Affairs Editor Finn Keyes

A

new app is coming to Trinity College this coming year which promises to stream-

line the society experience in College for both allow students to simply type their @tcd.ie email address into a laptop at a society stall during freshers week and henceforth receive all notifications, messages and updates from that society via the app. The app will be available on all iOS and Android devices. As the student joins more and more societies, the app will begin to resemble a newsfeed not dissimilar to Facebook with a scroll of events

and statuses. Indeed the app has a function by

to be passed on to the student. Notwithstand-

lems; many freshers will not yet have received

which all Facebook posts made by the society

ing this, the app developers insist that AdMe

their tcd.ie email address in time for Freshers’

will automatically be reproduced on the app.

will be the primary route through which event

Week, a pre-requisite for registation for the app.

tickets are purchased in the coming year.

In response to this problem the developers will

The Chair of the Central SocietiesCommittee (CSC) Dónal McKeating says, “AdMe not

The brains behind this tech start up are two

allow students to register using ordinary email

only gives societies an excellent platform to

Trinity 4th year international students, Sebas-

addresses for a certain period and will then ask

promote their society to their members but

tian Penot and Ormé de Saint Hilaire who are

that these users provide a tcd.ie email address

will help students gain convenient access to

studying Business and Computing and Man-

or lose their account. The service is also una-

all of our 121 societies”. In particular the app

agement Science and Information Systems

vailable through conventional computers and

stands to make the life of the society treasurer

Studies (MSISS) respectively. They cite the

laptops at present, leaving those students who

simpler by allowing students to purchase a

chaotic experience of their first Freshers’ Week

do not use smartphones somewhat out of the

ticket for an event directly through the app and

as their inspiration for the development of this

loop. However, it is understood that a regular

receive an e-ticket in return. One small niggle

app and describe their new product as the new

website model will be available in the coming

which students may have is the 75 cent trans-

“ultimate student companion”.

months.

action fee per purchase which, as it stands, is

Trinity Achieves Highest F World University Ranking in Four Years

The app is not without a few teething prob-

Framework, is allowed to persist.”

or the first time in four years, Trinity has

duct. Trinity now accounts for one-fifth of all

improved its position in the QS World

spin-out companies from Irish higher educa-

The QS rankings are one of a number of in-

University Rankings, published on September

tion institutions, helping to turn Ireland into

ternational league tables comparing the per-

10th, climbing six places to take the 61st spot.

an innovation-intensive, high-productivity

formance of third level colleges globally under

This improved rank comes despite recent aus-

economy.

various headings. In QS, 40 per cent is allocated

terity cuts made in the higher education sector in Ireland.

Staff WriterBernard Ryan

The University Times

Thousands of Students Set to Face Grant Losses Despite Improved SUSI Efficiency

the fresher and the sophister alike. AdMe will

MULTIMEDIA EDITOR Cailan O’Connell

//

As the only Irish representative in the top

100, Trinity’s ranking was boosted by its repu-

“Trinity is at the heart of the national push

to academic reputation, with 20 per cent each

to attract talent to Ireland, nurture existing tal-

for staff-student ratio and the frequency of the

ent, and turn good ideas into sustainable jobs,”

citing of college research in academic research.

he said.

Employers’ reputations account for 10 per cent, while the remaining 10 per cent is for interna-

tation for research and teaching quality and

However, while Trinity has managed to re-

has also improved under criteria such as staff/

verse three years of decline, along with NUIG,

student ratios and graduate employability. The

most other Irish universities have continued

The results involved responses from 62,094

announcement consolidates Trinity’s position

on a downward slide, mainly blamed on third

academics and 27,957 employers internation-

globally as Ireland’s highest-ranked higher

level education cutbacks. The seven Irish uni-

ally, making QS the largest survey of its kind.

education institution.

versities and Dublin IT have all stayed in the

Commenting on the rankings, Provost Pat-

top 4% of the world’s universities, but UCD has

rick Prendergast urged the government to co-

dropped eight places to 131st place, DCU has

invest with the university to secure Ireland’s

fallen by over 20 places to share 324th spot and

future both economically and socially.

NUI Maynooth has dropped from the 501-550

“Trinity, now in our fifth century of intel-

bracket to between 551-600.

lectual endeavour, is a research-led univer-

“Universities work best when Government

sity, generating cutting-edge outputs whose

works together with them in the economic and

extraordinary national and international im-

social advance of a country,” Dr Prendergast

pact is acknowledged by these latest rankings.

stated. “This mutually enabling partnership

This year’s score for our research is our highest

is in danger of failing if fewer public resources

ever. Our campus companies and technology

are invested in the system and the brake on re-

transfers emerge from the research we con-

cruitment, through the Employment Control

tionalisation.

Trinity College Dublin

2013

61st

67th 2012

UT News

3

Tuesday 17th september 2013

//

The University Times

fund – especially for those already elected, as promises were made to them.”

Mentioning the possibility of the Scholars’ annual salary, which at the moment amounts to €253.95, being discontinued, Geoghegan posited that this would “not be the worst thing to lose”, and suggested that “other small things like that” might be scrapped. However, such measures would still face opposition from the Scholars and Secretary Amy Worrall has already argued that the annual stipend is important for purchasing books.

Thus far, the decision has been made to allow only second-year students to sit the examinations from 2014 onwards, and part-time students are no longer allowed to take part. It was also decided at a meeting of the Undergraduate Studies Committee in April that a €30 fine be introduced for students who register for Schols but do not sit the exams and fail to withdraw by the official date, with the possibility of waiving the fee where extenuating circumstances are at play.

Asked about rumours that the Scholars’ free tuition would be targeted in the cutbacks, Geoghegan stated that “nothing had been heard” about this.

Finally, as he enters his final year in office as Senior Lecturer, Dr Geoghegan has turned his attention to the essence and principles at the

New admissions scheme set roll out for 2014 Dr Geoghegan reveals plans to combat the “failings of the points race” and the rumoured cuts to schols

News Editor Hannah Ryan

O

f the key decision-makers presiding over

heart of Trinity’s undergraduate curriculum, in a manifesto-type report entitled the Trinity Education.

“We want ‘Trinity Education’ as a phrase to mean something to students, something that is different to every other institution. We want students to leave as a different person to how they would have left any other college, and we

really like to see is people who wouldn’t oth-

ability.

arship], the intelligence is the same. Once

want this to apply across all subjects.

erwise put Trinity down applying. We need to

“High points have a positive and a negative

they’re all in the exam room, they’re equal.

“We are looking at Trinity Education over

convince people that this can be trusted…[in

side. They give the sense of high demand for

We’ll run a big campaign on the issue in col-

the centuries and re-affirming these princi-

doing so], we will be completely honest with

Trinity courses; however they can also scare

lege this term, telling people to go for it. I think

ples. In the next few months we will be con-

what works and what doesn’t.”

people off. Points don’t mean you’re the best.

the best way of addressing it is to say what a

sulting the college community on key aspects

Trinity College at the moment, few are

Perhaps the area of the study undergoing

High points could simply be a result of rote-

great honour it is.” To this end, Geoghegan has

more relevant to its undergraduate population

of the Trinity Education, but we are still un-

the most scrutiny is the students’ personal

learning, whereas a student with six Bs could

worked closely with Secretary to the Scholars

than Dr. Patrick Geoghegan: Senior Lecturer,

sure about the best way to go about this. We

statements, which many worry could be easily

be a more independent and radical thinker.

Amy Worrall, last year’s Education Officer Dan

Dean of Undergraduate Studies and thus the

will seek advice from staff and students in or-

manipulated by others, and the supposed lack

This is a better and fairer mechanism.”

Ferrick and his successor Jack Leahy.

academic officer shouldering responsibility for

der to come up with a shared view, and make

of objectivity in the scheme.

Information on the admissions scheme will

“Bobby Kennedy had a favourite quote, that

that policy.

admissions and undergraduate examinations,

“There’s always the danger of ambitious par-

be provided on the study at the college Open

‘At the Olympic games it is not the finest and

while also holding a considerable stake in the

“We look at it as a T-shaped [Trinity-shaped]

ents or teachers writing the blurb for them, but

Day on 7th December 2013 aimed at students

the strongest men who are crowned, but they

Scholarship community and the condensing of

education, where the vertical line corresponds

we believe that this is counter-productive…

looking at applying to Trinity in 2014. What re-

who enter the lists’. You have to put yourself

College’s internal finances.

with specialist skills and the horizontal line is

The assessment will not include [the student’s]

sponse is expected in 2014, and how is the col-

forward.”

We begin our discussion with the area of Dr.

more general skills. Students must prepare for

grammar, and it would work against those

lege preparing to implement this study?

Geoghegan’s work that has planted him firmly

who try to ‘fix’ the personal statement if they

on the national third level radar over the past

Geoghegan’s involvement in the Scholar-

the challenges of the 21st century… College is

“There’s been a great reaction among cur-

ship examinations also extends to the funding

an opportunity to develop inside and outside

all come out looking the same…People also

rent students, teachers, principals and deputy

allocated to the Scholar community, a topic of

year: his pioneering new admissions scheme, a

the classroom on a personal level.”

have to know that they can’t simply ring the

principals, perhaps because it means there is

concern for many students last term follow-

feasibility study for which will begin in Septem-

This will involve looking at questions of in-

college and get their child accepted into a cer-

less pressure on them...If our first preferences

ing the decision to relocate the free accom-

ber 2014.

novation and creativity, civic engagement and

tain course.

rose,”

modation for students entering their first year

social entrepreneurship, and graduate em-

The study, which will be conducted by Trinity

Previously, talk of the current system privi-

However, plans are still being ironed out.

of scholarship this month to Trinity Hall in

in conjunction with the CAO, revolves around

ployability. Students’ communication skills

leging those from more prosperous back-

“We have to discuss how to present it to the

Dartry. This move came following recommen-

the belief that the current admissions system in

will be developed and they will be trained to

grounds was incorporated into the argument

public,” Geoghegan states. “We have a lot of

dations by the Working Group on Residential

Ireland, and the “Points Race” that has evolved,

work well in groups. Geoghegan has visited all

for a reformed admissions scheme. It was said

mechanisms in place.” This has included an

Accommodation to deal with the shortage of

24 Schools in Trinity and found that the pro-

is inherently flawed. In an article dated March

“With the government’s incremental raising of the student contribution charge and potential further cuts to the student maintenance grant, it seems less and less likely that economically disadvantaged students will be able to afford to attend university, regardless of the admissions system through which they secure a place”

1, 2013, Dr Geoghegan wrote of the negative effect that the points system has “on both the teaching and the learning experience.”

“It is not an attack on the Leaving Certificate,” Geoghegan assures, “but when you only rely on Leaving Cert results, you are seeing the stu-

fessionally accredited courses develop these skills the best, as they are the most researchoriented.

“We are looking at how we deliver the course as a whole, not just the performance of individual lecturers. There must be consistency; it can’t just depend on a student taking

dent’s academic ability at a fixed point in time,

that points are blindly awarded to students

Admissions forum being set up as a subgroup

rooms available on campus as a whole. The

not their potential.”

across all backgrounds, with little attention

of the Undergraduate Studies Committee to

Scholar community held a meeting last May to

To combat this, Geoghegan has looked to

“There is criticism that third level education

given to their educational surroundings; for

look at this in more detail. Among others, this

discuss this decision and expressed concerns

international practices, and has taken inspira-

these days does not prepare students for jobs,

example whether they attended private/grind

will be attended by Trinity College Students’

that this year the college will insist on pushing

tion from the likes of Harvard in doing so. This

but we are preparing them to adapt to any

schools. However, with the government’s in-

Union Education Officer, Jack Leahy.

through reforms for which it has previously

will be reflected primarily in the fact that when

job,” Geoghegan asserts. “These principles

cremental raising of the student contribution

“Generally we are gaining respect for trying

failed to secure support.

these institutions design their admissions sys-

should be embedded in every curriculum…

charge and potential further cuts to the stu-

this out,” Geoghegan says. “Even if it doesn’t

Furthermore it was revealed at the meet-

tems, “‘Potential’ is mentioned alongside aca-

This year the focus is on bringing the docu-

dent maintenance grant, it seems less and less

work, at least someone tried it. Being honest,

ing that Dr Geoghegan has been charged

demic ability.”

ment through in January so that courses can

likely that economically disadvantaged stu-

it’s a study. Anything that doesn’t go right will

by the College Treasurer’s Office with cut-

The result of Geoghegan’s research is a new

prepare for next September.”

dents will be able to afford to attend university,

be shared.”

ting the College Central Funds (Cista Com-

metric, whereby students will be assessed un-

In January, each course in college will be

regardless of the admissions system through

Another area of college in which Dr Ge-

munis), which subsidise the Scholarship, by

der three equally-weighted headings: Leaving

required to outline how each curriculum will

which they secure a place. The question arises

oghegan, as Dean of Undergraduate Studies,

10%. Unconfirmed reports estimate that this

Certificate results, Relative Performance Rank

ease the transition from second level to third

whether the admissions scheme will be ac-

is a leading administrator, is the Scholarship

will amount to approximately €200,000. Fears

(RPR) and Personal/Contextual data. The sys-

level in “supporting the first-year experience”,

companied by any new student supports.

examinations. Of particular concern this year

abound among the Scholar community for the

use “innovative curriculum design and as-

lecture A or B.”

tem will not, contrary to what some news out-

“It’s less about the economic aspect…The

has been the statistics for the students who sit

security of their entitlements, formerly so well

lets have stated, involve an interview stage – it

sessments”, especially in the Freshman years,

idea is that whatever your background, Trinity

the exams; a perusal of these figures for 2013

enshrined in the college statutes, such as free

will be completely anonymous, with randomly-

and implement a successful “research-in-

welcomes you.

reveals that, of the 580 students who sat Sch-

tuition, free accommodation, and free Com-

spired approach”, particularly at Sophister lev-

“[Provost] Patrick Prendergast reaffirms

ols, 42% were female and 58% were male. This

mons – the latter of which has already been

el. Moreover, each course must begin working

Trinity’s historical mission of being a univer-

is despite female undergraduates outnumber-

reduced slightly, extending to lunchtime on

However, he stresses that “it’s a study rather

to ensure that by 2015/16 every programme

sity ‘for the whole island’. [The college] has al-

ing their male counterparts in the college. Fur-

Fridays rather than evening meals.

than a pilot scheme”, and will involve represent-

includes a compulsory independent research

ways acted as a link between North and South,

thermore, of the 436 female students who ap-

“At the moment it doesn’t look like there’s

atives of DIT on the review board along with ex-

between Ireland and our neighbouring island,

plied, 45% decided not to sit the exams, while

any cut to Scholars being planned; cuts have

ternal observers.

“I’m not saying that Trinity has been rub-

however recently we have lost members from

only 36% of the 528 male applicants changed

to be made [in college], but there’s nothing on

bish until now; continuity is hugely impor-

Northern Ireland.

their minds. What seems to emerge from these

the table right now. Perhaps at some future

tant…Trinity has been doing a great job but it

statistics is a significant confidence gap be-

point there will be, if college funding keeps

hasn’t been as structured as it could be.”

tween male and female students in Trinity.

cutting. If there was, there would be a meeting

generated identification numbers for all applicants.

A key area that will be assessed in the study is the issue of public trust. Does he anticipate that this will be a significant roadblock to the scheme?

“Ultimately we want the best students…We will get the best students this way.”

At this we come to the subject of Leaving

“It’s terrible…We don’t want those patterns

“There is a perception that this study is effec-

Cert points, and whether high points neces-

replicated in the workplace. However, the

tively Trinity ‘closing its doors’ – but what we’d

sarily encompass a student’s entire academic

same proportion [of students] gets [the schol-

with the Schol committee and we would consult widely with former Scholars.

“There’s no fair way of cutting the Schol

project.

UT News

4

Tuesday 17th september 2013

//

The University Times

#TCDFRESHERS Lauren

Aisling Kelleher

Jennie Parchier

@foreign_nun

@ ace_ling

@ parchier

Will also have free tea from Le palais des thés and goodie bags to give out all day! Membership for the year only €3 #frenchsoc #TCDfreshers

Got almost 300 signup for VTP - Voluntary Tuition Programme at Trinity Halls this morning #Delira Everything’s looking up for #TCDfreshers

Had great fun at the @TCDBiosoc stand in Front Square all morning for #TCDFreshers but am now, sadly, en route to hospital for lectures :(

Kevin Baker @s __kbaker__

#TCDfreshers Even though I know that I have forgotten to organise something for tomorrow it’s gonna be GREAT! Super excited.

Chris Cavanagh

James M

@ magentafeelings

@bispys

But now I am most definitely dying. I’ve only been back for a week. Alcohol. Feels like a month. I’d sleep for a month. /rant #TCDFreshers

I am still twitching from the level of terrible spelling at #TCDFreshers in Halls today. Trinity TV and Horse Racing I’m looking at you

Senior Sophister dissertations set to become compulsory by 2015 >>Continued on from front page

Trinity’s newest society goes global

owever, it was subsequently agreed at the same meeting that “if a student was unable to undertake a dissertation or independent project in the final year then this

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Education. Each curriculum must be able to ease the transition from secondary school for first-year students, use “innovative curriculum design and assessments” and place

represented a failure of the Trinity Education being offered.”

It is hoped that such a move, among others, would help to address the importance of innovation and creativity, civic engagement and social entrepreneurship, and graduate employability in higher education. Geoghegan refuted the claim “that third-level education these days does not prepare students for jobs”, and asserted that the above principles “should be embedded in every curriculum” to disprove such criticisms.

In January, each course in college will be required to outline how each curriculum and its assessments will reflect the values of the Trinity

considerable emphasis on research at Sophister level. Moreover, each course must begin working to ensure that by 2015/16 every incoming Trinity undergraduate is part of a programme which includes the mandatory completion of an independent research project or dissertation.

It is also expected that each new course proposal will have to “explicitly address how it embodies the Trinity Education principles and philosophy”, and existing courses will be reviewed under those same headings every three years.

Contributing Writer Sarah Barron

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rinity’s Global Development Soci- phenomenons, that affect all of us.” ety is this week experiencing its first

On one side, there are many indica-

taste of the Freshers’ Week celebrations, tors of development: levels of Gross having launched at the tail end of the Domestic Product (GDP), the Gini coeflast academic year. The society, founded ficient, the Human Development Index by a group of final year political science (HDI) - allowing countries to compare students, seeks to create a forum for dis- themselves, and identify areas of imcussion of the political, economical and provement. Developed countries ususocial problems facing the developing ally feature high levels of GDP, a low Gini world as well as the developed one. The coefficient (low levels of inequality) and society will provide students with speak- a high HDI (good standards of living). ers, workshops and screenings in the

However, there is no universal meas-

hope of raising awareness of the multi- ure of development, or for defining what faceted nature of development.

is a developed, developing and less de-

Speaking to The University Times, so- veloped country. There is lots of room ciety co-founder Frida Ericsson cited for argument on which country should the “unprecedented interest in develop- be considered in the categories, and ment issues and foreign affairs amongst there is always room for a country to beyoung people today” and the need for a come more developed. society in Trinity where students inter-

TGDS will thus aim to question what

ested in such topics can ‘discuss, learn development entails, and already has and take action’.

events planned for this coming year.

The field of development is ever- An interactive workshop at the Irish increasing; indeed the Irish Minister of Aid Centre will allow students to gain a

Campaign Group Celebrates Achievements for Migrant Students Pictured: Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairi Quinn with MEA campaigners following the decision to allow certain migrant students to change their fee status at third-level

State for Trade and Commerce was re- deeper understanding of how aid helps named the Minister for Trade and De- countries become more developed. The velopment in 2011, highlighting the rise society will also invite speakers, one of in the general concern for the develop- whom will be Frank Armstrong a food ing world. Moreover, masters in devel- historian, who will come to talk about opment studies are now offered in most the role of food in development. John universities throughout the world. The Hilary, the leader of the ‘War on Want’, latter trend goes hand in hand with the an anti-poverty charity is also scheduled surge of development NGOs. But what is meant by “development”?

to speak to the society.

TGDS’ events range from conven-

Laura McCarthy, co-founder of the soci- tional topics (foreign aid) to more atypiety explains: “development studies fo- cal ones (politics of food). The society cus on the process in which a developing therefore hopes to provide students country overcomes poverty and reaches with a comprehensive knowledge of the higher levels of quality of life. We want subject, so that they can form a critical the society to be a forum where students view of what development really means can discuss broad social and economic today.

Contributing Writer Sarah Barron

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ceremony to acknowledge and celebrate the work of young people involved in the Migrant Education Access (MEA) campaign will take place this Saturday, September 21st, at Trinity College, Dublin.

The MEA campaign, run by The Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland, promotes equal access to third level education for children of non-EU migrants. While these young people were born outside of Ireland, many of them have lived in the country for several years, attending secondary and even national schools here.

The MEA initiative has highlighted the difficulties facing these young people in attaining Irish citizenship and progressing to third level education in Ireland.

The event this Saturday celebrates the implementation of one of the group’s key recommendations. The recent changes introduced by Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairi Quinn, mean that students legally living in Ireland, who have Irish or EU citizenship, will only pay the standard registration fee, €2,500, similar to their Irish-born counterparts. Migrant students who become Irish citizens during their third level education will now be able to change their fee status. They will no longer have to continue paying the full tuition fees applied to non-EU nationals; instead such students will now be eligible for the free fees initiative, as well as higher education grants.

While these achievements are a step in the right direction for migrant students, those who have not yet achieved Irish citizenship must still pay full tui-

tion fees, despite having lived in Ireland for several years. The issue of long-term residency and access to third level education remains an important factor in the MEA campaign.

Many children of immigrants are eager to progress to third level, but are unable to do so due to high tuition fees and difficulties in obtaining citizenship. The Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland continues to campaign for greater equality in access to third level education, especially for students who have not yet secured Irish or EU citizenship.

The MEA campaigners also recommend that more information be provided to students at secondary school level regarding the issues facing migrant children as they enter higher education or the workforce in Ireland. The group advocates greater clarity regarding the sta-

tus of migrants in third level education and greater transparency in the process of securing Irish citizenship.

Equal access to higher education would provide an opportunity for these young people to integrate and progress in Irish society, while also bringing further skills and greater diversity to Ireland’s workforce.

The event will take place at 2pm on Saturday in Room 3074 of the Arts Block.

It will include a screening of a short film made by the Migrant Education Access group and an awards ceremony to recognise the work and commitment of the campaign’s young leaders. President of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), Joe O’Connor, will also be present at the ceremony to give a short speech and present certificates.

For all your student banking needs Talk to us today

Talk to one of our student advisers www.bankofireland.com Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.

6

InFocus

One student’s struggle to Ć QG DFFRPPRGDWLRQ OHDGV to lies, Sunday best and questions about parents’ jobs.

Contributing Writer Drew Wilkinson

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he realtor seemed unimpressed. I had told him that while I wasn’t working, I was a masters’ student studying Theology in Trinity. But the word student was all he needed to hear. He replied bluntly that the property wasn’t available to ‘your kind’. Before I could tell him I was willing to pay the exorbitant price for his tiny Angela Ashes flat with themed décor and sign up to a weighty twelve month contract, he hung up.

The worrying part was that this was not an isolated incident. Everywhere I went I was met by rude, condescending landlords and realtors. I called roughly thirty numbers and only a couple had answered and even fewer were willing to arrange viewings. I found out later that many phones were switched off due to an inundation of calls. If I was fortunate to get to speak to the landlords, they would tell me to call them back and never answer or chuckle when I told them that we were a group of male students. Sometimes I progressed to the stage of actually getting to view the property and I quickly learned

Tuesday 17th september 2013

//

Students need not apply

that preference is unequivocally given to one eyes each other judgmentally. On the professionals whose credentials I could steps above us the realtor and landlady not compete with. It became increasingly stood like superior beings, questioning stressful. I realised that I would have to re- each individual as they waited their turn vise my budget upwards if I wanted to find to view the property. When the realtor anywhere that met at least one or two of noted that we were three male students they exchanged glances and nodded my requirements.

According to a recent report by Daft.ie, knowingly. It felt like an incredible waste rent prices have risen by 7.5% in Dublin; of everyone’s time.

Once inside, the apartment was tiny, from my own anecdotal evidence I have observed that increases in prices are dirty and incredibly depressing. In one greater in desirable student areas near the of the bedrooms a sheet on the mattress city e.g. Rathmines, Ranelagh and Drum- displayed a grotesque stain shaped like condra.

I took particular offense to A particular experience of mine perfectly describes the difficulties en- questions about my address countered by students. I arrived with in Galway and my parents’ my two prospective roommates at a viewing for an apartment in D1. There occupations. were three tiny bedrooms tucked in the back of a decrepit Georgian building. Italy. Of course we’d take it, we said in a We were made to stand along the rails of delightful chorus. The landlord told us the building before we could enter. The that he’d put our names on a list and deline of people rapidly grew by the second cide tomorrow. He was quick to remind until it almost stretched around the cor- us of the ‘no party’ clause. I felt like telling him there wasn’t a reasonable space ner.

There is a palpable tension in the air be- for a party never mind a one to one soul tween people at these open viewings, the searching discussion.

One particularly humiliating aspect of kind that exists between those jostling for a place on an overflowing subway. You’d this ordeal is the manner in which you do anything to get your spot and every- have to market yourself to prospective

landlords. You are paying them ridiculous sums of money to live in paltry rooms designed for characters from Dostoyevsky novels, yet you have to dress up in your Sunday best and whisper sweet nothings about cleanliness and your background.

Is the market so skewed in favour of the landlord that we have descended into a sort of madness where we are aware that we have to treat each viewing as a job interview? I took particular offense to questions about my address in Galway and my parents’ occupations.

The aforementioned Daft.ie report explains that these “holes in the wall” are currently so desirable because of a 43 per cent reduction in the number of properties available to rent in the capital. I also imagine that the depressed property market is positively affecting the demand for rental accommodation as more young couples look to rent instead of buy homes.

The powers that be could certainly take a more proactive role in alleviating some of the stress. The USI’s call for action on the accommodation crisis by the government is a start but there is a long way to go before rhetoric becomes reality. A lack of basic empathy and communication from the college are cause for resentment when

The University Times

Average rental prices in the capital increasing by 7.5% since last year

students are facing an increasingly epic task with no choice but to undertake it.

Regardless of the negative situation for those currently seeking accommodation there is also a great need for introspection on behalf of the students. When given the opportunity to discuss their reasons, landlords put down their unwillingness to rent to students as a result of previous negative experiences. Every single student knows of some horror story associated with a friends’ house; after parties that ended up escalating beyond control, squalor unimaginable to most and a simple lack of respect. Regardless of increasing demand and falling supply, reasonable students will always struggle to find decent accommodation as a result of their counterparts. A change in perceptions of students is not achievable overnight but is certainly worth the effort. Any student who breaks a lease or damages a rental is not only making it more difficult for themselves in subsequent years but for everyone else also. This short sightedness must be overcome if we ever want to be able to move out of dungeon style basement flats with furniture bought from the last century into decent quarters fit for habitation.

Tips <<Anna forHarrington the Veggie Trinner describes the experience of being a vegetarian student in Dublin>>

Photo: Andrew Murphy

Societies Editor Anna Harrington

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fter having spent a year in a hippy Californian town full of vegan cafés, coming back to Dublin was a rude awakening. Being a vegetarian in Dublin on a cheap budget is in fact extremely easy; you just tend to be completely deficient in protein, iron, and Omega 3.

Going through the common student eateries around Trinity, it’s easy to see why always looking to these places for lunch will end badly for you: Yum Thai’s vegetarian option rarely amounts to more than a few vegetables mixed together with

noodles, most burrito bars substitute meat with guacamole, The Buttery’s options are plain chips or plain pasta, and a cheese roll in Maguires fails to prove substantial enough to keep you going throughout the day (vegetarian options in Maguires are also dubiously much more expensive than its infamous chicken fillet roll, which is shady). Dublin city centre’s vegetarian café Cornucopia, albeit delicious, is seriously overpriced and quite unsustainable to visit often on a student budget. To add insult to injury, vegetarian restaurant Juice recently shut down to make way for San Lorenzo’s, which offers no vegetarian options on its menu.

In my quest for solutions to the plight

of the malnourished vegetarian, I turned first to home cooking. My personal favourite student classic is the clichéd beans on toast, which costs around 75c per portion and constitutes a complete protein.

There is also probably a case to be made somewhere for the nutritional value of its tomato sauce. Another option is always Quorn, a mycoprotein meat-substitute. It is a surprisingly accurate representation of many meats, particularly its chickenstyle product which has the taste and texture of the real deal almost perfect, if a little on the dog food side. At around €3 a bag from Tesco, and a bit more for their ready-meals, Quorn is reasonably priced but not particularly creative.

One meal which I found to be delicious and relatively easy to prepare was dahl, an Indian lentil soup, for which many recipes can be found online. Because it primarily uses dried ingredients (lentils, spices, and vegetable stock) it’s a great one to have on your repertoire. I put mine in a Tupperware box and heat it when I get into col-

lege: a microwave is available for use by all students in The Chaplaincy in House 27.

Although in an ideal world we all plan to be organised and bring packed lunches, the reality is that we are all lazy and want to buy comfort foods with our mates on cold winter afternoons between classes.

There are a few good options in some of the more popular restaurants around campus that can see you through. One of my favourites is Gourmet Burger Kitchen, where you can get chips and the “GBK Veggie” for €6.50. The one drawback, however, is that the pattie is made with leeks, potatoes, red cabbage, and onions, with no mention of a substantial protein element in sight. They do have a falafel burger, but this will set you back €9 (not including chips).

A great option for breakfast is Café Moda in Rathmines, which is a ten minute walk from Trinity Hall. It does an all-day vegetarian take on the full Irish, with veggie sausages, mushroom, tomato, eggs,

beans, toast, and coffee for €7. On the other side of town, also a bit off the Trinity student café circuit is Delhi O’Deli, a vegetarian Indian restaurant on Moore Street. Delhi O’Deli does a “Daily Fiver” plate (which actually doesn’t cost €5 at all, but €5.99) where you can fill up a big plate with whatever’s on offer that day, usually various curries. It’s delicious and authentic Indian food (or so I’m told).

Dublin is surprisingly good for greasy post-night-out vegetarian options, most of which are of the Persian/Lebanese/ Falafel persuasion. Iskander’s Kebabs on Dame Street combine my two greatest loves: tacky late-night vegetarian mezze and garlic cheese chips. Dublin students who frequent the Harcourt Street area will also undoubtedly be familiar with Zaytoon, which has a vegetarian kebab and even a fish kebab made with salmon for pescetarians. The worst thing your friends can possibly suggest is McDonald’s, which strangely has no vegetarian option in their student meal deal. Rank salad it is.

The University Time

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InFocus

Tuesday 17th september 2013

Contributing Writer Maurice Casey

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e had failed first year of Engineering and decided college wasn’t the right place to be at that point in his life. Bluntly put: Lewis was on a grinding path towards self-destruction. It wasn’t even the dramatic rock and roll lifestyle path to self destruction, it was the boring, “I spent €15 this week on almost out of date sausage rolls and that’s all I ate” path to self destruction.

I had first met Lewis when we moved in together in Halls, and we had been great friends ever since. It was difficult to watch Lewis’ decline, largely because I knew he was wasting his talent, intelligence and charisma through a series of inebriated and reckless adventures through Dublin.

Adventures that found him in all corners of the city and all kinds of terrible but frequently hilarious situations. I had sat with him in a bus shelter as his blinks became laboured with drunkenness, the kind of intoxication where even his eyelids were plastered, as he shouted the word “poo” at passersby. I had watched him climb onstage in a pirate outfit into the middle of a Players’ play, which had such a precocious mess of a plotline that the sudden inclusion of a drunk buccaneer in a ketchup stained cardigan made narrative sense to the struggling audience.

I had garnered hundreds of YouTube views on a video of Lewis passed out on a floor and I had once watched him try to

Dropped out to join the French Foreign Legion The unlikely tale of Lewis Shanahan, told by his friend and old housemate. placate a crying German exchange student wasn’t aware of how much an ounce was, dressed only in his underwear. He had end- I just had the money” Lewis told me when ed up trapped in someone’s back garden at he first produced the cannabis from his undergarments.

6am, dressed in a tuxedo. He had vomited Lewis’ plan was to get a job and live the more places than I can name, passed out student life without the mundane trapon more couches than I could count and miraculously came through it all with most pings of being a student, such as exams and lectures. The plan didn’t work out; Lewis of his personal relationships intact. Lewis’ couldn’t find a job, despite handing out special brand of urban adventure for the almost ten CVs. It was irritating to me how manically depressed had given him a certain renown amongst our group of friends, it seemed as though he wasn’t proactive in but those who saw beyond the ‘#Typical“Maurice, I’m not going home.”

LadBanter’ aspect of his drinking were Lewis, always self-aware, paused for worried about him. I saw Lewis go to the dramatic effect. very darkest part of himself and enter into the bleakest dead-end situation I’ve ever personally witnessed, and fortunate“I’m joining the French ly I saw him crawl spectacularly back out Foreign Legion.” of it, in true Lewis Shanahan style.

After a summer working in a call center, three months of tedium broken by the slightest. Lewis seemed content to sit brief interludes of getting so high that he in front of the TV and occasionally roll into once forgot how to urinate for more than Superquinn to purchase Chilli Heatwave an hour, Lewis returned to Dublin to live Doritos and a litre of milk. It came to the with myself and four other friends he had met in Halls. He had failed out of Engineer- point where I was discussing with those I ing and was about to start burning through lived with whether we would sit him down his summer earnings and a comically large and urge him to go home to Cork and figure things out or not. Lewis pre-empted that bag of weed he had smuggled to Ranelagh talk before it happened; one night when I in a number of socks. The bag had been came back from college, before I had the purchased from a Cork dealer, who had chance to take off my coat, Lewis sat me an ‘An Garda Siochána’ sticker placed on down and said “Maurice I’m leaving.” I was his window, just to throw off the scent. “I

UT Blogs: Graham’s Gym Journey

Blogger Graham Murtagh

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ome things in life happen with a certain degree of predictability. Take traffic lights, for example. It’s a well established fact that when I’m driving anywhere in a hurry, all of them immediately turn red.

And then shortly afterwards, I too turn an extraordinary shade of puce, as frustration at the great god of traffic signals reaches its peak.

So it was with a certain degree of predictability a couple of weeks ago that, with a familiar ping, my email chimed like a kind of polite 21st century town crier, and proudly announced the news that fees for the new academic year are due. Student contribution? Slightly more than last year. Check.

Students’ Union membership? Check. TCD Sports Centre levy? Something else I’m never going to use. Check.

Like so many, to me, the Sports Centre is little more than a line on my annual college bill. For a sizable percentage of us on campus though, going to the gym is a daily occurrence as natural as waking up. Having lived through the delirious heights of the Celtic Tiger, playing rugby at schools level while being twice the size of the generation before us was considered something of a right of passage. Joe Duffy was regularly inundated with concerned parents, wondering what little Fionnán-Oscar was doing, hoarding contraband protein in his bedroom and wondering when he was going to

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being in my early twenties. Unsurprisingly, I’m also a bit overweight. This can be viewed as an even more impressive achievement, given that I don’t have arms so much as bits of body that connect my hands to the rest of me. So all that weight hangs around my midriff, making me look less like an hourglass and more like I’m ‘expecting’ in a biologically-impossible sense.

I’m not alone. I don’t use the TCD Sports Centre to cure the problem because it’s filled with people from the rugby team with arms the size of my head. The rowing team are there too, talking about ‘benching’ as a verb and not as a piece of garden furniture. I don’t go to the gym.

Until now.

Over the next few weeks, I’m planning to shake off my hang-ups about the gym and find out what life is really like inside the Sports Centre. Working with the fitness staff at TCD Sports, The University Times wants to see why it is that the gym is perceived as being just an exclusive playpen for the athletically gifted, and find out if that’s really the case. Using me as the least-fit, least-experienced guinea-pig imaginable, we’ll bring you top tips from the Sports Centre’s best advisors on a wide range of issues, from diet to exercise to using the gym for the first time yourself. We’ll be talking to the sport scholars to get the other end of the spectrum men and women on campus at the peak of physical performance - and bring you news, views and analysis on how and why they got there.

Will it work? Who knows. But one thing is for certain - it won’t be predictable.

inflate excessively to the point of spontaneous explosion.

Off the pitch, we shopped on the Abercrombie & Fitch website (long before it took up residence just outside the front gate).

We gazed at the semi-naked models (which has always struck me as a strange marketing policy for a company peddling clothes) and we knew we wanted to look like that.

Fitness, bulk and a Southern Californian tan in South County Dublin reigned supreme.

Personally, I never got caught up in it. This may be because I have no sporting ambition and even less sporting ability. I wouldn’t recognise a football were I to trip over it.

Moreover, I actively avoid episodes of activity day-to-day. I refuse point-blank to hurry for buses and will happily wait twenty minutes for the next one if it means avoiding suffering the indignity of having to run somewhere - because running highlights my complete and utter lack of coordination and makes me look like an octopus falling out of a tree.

I don’t like lifting heavy things either. Indeed it’s something I would go as far as to say I detest. Annually, we take Christmas decorations out of the attic (another preeditor@universitytimes.ie dictable life event), and annually I have to hoof this outsized carton of fairy lights and baubles dating from 1980 down two flights of stairs, completely blind, while fighting the urge to drop it. Mostly because it’s heavy.

All of these aversions to exercise has led to me to develop a generously proportioned middle-age spread. People used to say I was mature for my age, and I am, having acquired a belly of which any middle-aged middle-manager would be proud while still

relieved and at that point surprised by his rationality. “I’m so glad Lewis, I really think that going back to Cork is the best thing to do, you just need to sort everything out.”

Most college dropouts take some time out and work for a year or so, taking stock of apple tarts in a rural Spar, eventually moving on with their lives once the scent of the village elderly has become too sickening.

Lewis, who couldn’t face this lifestyle, took the most romantic and dramatic of “noother-options” decisions. And it worked out. After a couple of months of basic training, Lewis became the youngest member of his group to make it all the way through and be inducted into the Legion.

On a bus trip to the alps, where Lewis was being sent to lift rocks, homosexuality was brought up as a topic of discussion and Lewis was sentenced to hours of homophobic ranting amongst the Legionnaires as the bus ascended above sea level and progressive society. “If the French military is France’s baseball bat” Lewis told me before going over to France, “then the legion is at the top of that bat.”

Always the first into a terrible situation and often the last to be evacuated out of it, the Legion has a reputation for being a group of expendable soldiers. It’s frightening, but from Lewis’ frequent Snapchats it seems a lot of his life in the army consists of mopping floors and ironing his uniform.

Big Brother’s Little Brother Features Editor Ludo Dawnay

Ludo Dawnay joined the audience at the filming of a Big Brother Live Eviction

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or three weeks, the purpose of travel was travel. But the flight back from Munich to London Gatwick (LGW) was a means to an end. The commercial break of my summer was the pause dividing the inter-railing from the dreaded search for work. And I knew it was ‘coming up next’.

As I returned to the sofa, my little brother was watching a new show, Big Brother.

My initial snotty reaction was long forgotten by the time I had joined the chanting crowd at the filming of a Live Eviction, six weeks later.

The Channel 5 reality TV show is gripping. It offers an intriguing social and psychological experiment. The producers choose such an interesting mélange of personalities and cleverly provoke conflict by manipulating the information one or all of them hold. There is no access to ‘the outside’, creating a bubble in which all they can think about are events on ‘the inside’. It is intriguing to observe the methods the participants use to win the £100,000 prize and gain fame. They lie, exaggerate, flirt, scheme and bitch.

The highlight show aired daily creates a storyline by its iconic Northern narrator.

It’s raw reality TV, from an era before the ‘scripted reality’ of Made in Chelsea and Tallafornia.

The location is Elstree Studios, where @grahamsgymjourney Star Wars, The Shining and the recent Simon Pegg movie, The World’s End were filmed. The three of us were being treated as one of the ‘F&Fs’ (friend and family) for the night. Outside ex-X Factor coneditor@universitytimes.ie testant Rylan Clark was puffing on a fag, and blaming the coverage of The Daily Star for the early expulsion of one housemate, Daley. The undefeated boxer had used the Saatchi handshake on a female

Get Involved!

Other drastically less domestic Snapchats do arrive, such as the occasional picture of a gun rack lined with assault rifles. Lewis told me, “I do a lot of cleaning and ironing, but I will be doing a week of shooting and explosives training this week, in a month it’ll be three weeks mountain training.

That’s the best thing.” Even with the idea of a contract that ends in 2018, anathema for students like me who can’t fathom a concept of life direction after graduation, Lewis is now living his life on his own terms and has countless more prospects than he ever did; currently he’s on the path to become a mountain combatant.

I like to imagine how baffling it would have been if at some point last year Lewis had a That’s So Raven moment. Lewis, sat beside a broken bowl of spaghetti, in his underwear, watching series seven of Peep Show, suddenly looks into the middistance and sees himself one year in the future, hiking across the French alps in military gear. Nobody saw it coming, not even Lewis.

If you had told me that this guy that I photographed a day before an exam, smoking a joint and eating pizza half naked in the middle of the afternoon, would a year later be inducted into French Foreign Legion I would have said in Lewis’ recognisable voice “go suck a fucking bag of dicks.”

housemate. The tabloid, owned by Richard Desmond, had printed Big Brother stories on its front page for the past three weeks. Desmond also owns Channel 5.

The housemates’ F&Fs were nervous, ‘hating’ their experience of the process, but lovingly wanting it to continue for their participant.

A self-proclaimed ladies’ man who admitted to sleeping with hundreds of women, Callum Knell, exited the Big Brother compound to a rented booing crowd. The producers directed us to a different area, where an interview would be conducted. ‘We’ll wait ‘till they stop crying, then we’ll send them in’, said a producer, referring to the sniffling relations. During an interview, Knell was noticeably shaken, breathing heavily and restlessly fidgeting. He told the presenter Emma Willis during the break, ‘People don’t see everything that goes on in there’. The interview ended. His fifteen minutes was over, and the 28-yearold from Maidstone returned to the status of a member of the public.

The programme is, of course, inspired by the state penned by George Orwell in the novel 1984. The book showed a 337% increase in sales on Amazon.com early in the summer as a reaction to the revelations of Edward Snowden. The Hawaii-based National Security Agency ‘systems administrator’ leaked evidence proving the extensive information the US government collects on its own citizens. The whistleblower observes people opting to be ‘living unfreely but comfortably’ and calls for a ‘better world’. Orwell phrased it better himself, ‘The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better’. Snowden, along with Bradley Manning (the US soldier convicted of passing documents to WikiLeaks), beg the point that at least the poor buggers on the box know that ‘Big Brother is watching’, and more importantly, have chosen it.

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InFocus

Tuesday 17th september 2013

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The University Times

Barista Battles Daire Collins attempts to discover Dublin’s hidden (in plain sight) coffee specialists.

those three hour breaks. This was an easy choice for me to start with, as I’ve been a huge fan of the place since day one.

Fully embracing their student friendly image, Walter Mitty’s has been on the hit list of every society seeking a discount Deputy Feature Editor card. While they haven’t been able to Daire Collins strike a deal yet, the sheer numbers of requests speaks volumes. This place, offee Culture is in its infancy here in for me and hundreds of other students, Dublin, a niche market mostly occu- has opened up a new world of coffee, so pied by bearded baristas rocking ‘sleeve far removed from the Costa experience, tats’. Until five years ago, coffee remained which happens to be just across the road. nothing but a basic necessity of the lagSo what’s different about it? ging office worker or hungover student.

The gritty design of Walter Mitty’s is Times change, and in case you didn’t what takes everyone’s notice, its bohemihear, coffee is the new wine. Hipsters the an chic attempting to capture the 1990s world over have embraced coffee culture industrial New York. It works; Walter in droves, and independent coffee shops Mitty’s is cool. That’s cool in italics, too. are popping up left, right and centre. In The Wall is the eye grabbing centrehip capitals, such as New York, London piece of the layout and really speaks to more exotic blends out there in Dublin, unusual layout which doesn’t maximise and Melbourne, coffee shops stay open how much Walter Mitty’s has embraced this coffee has a great taste; much of on space. Given how much emphasis is late and offer wide varieties of blends and its student clientele. The little sayings, which is owed to the baristas behind the placed on the experience within Walter flavours. This world is not for the Skinny scrawled names and stupid drawings counter, who put care and attention into Mitty’s, it is not unusual for students to Caramel Frappuccino toters, but rather form the idea that in someway this coffee making each coffee. Trained by Martin, walk in only to have to immediately turn for someone looking to enjoy their whole shop is ours, our New York hangout in the head Barista (who himself has more around due to lack of seats. Unfortunatecoffee experience. My aim is to delve into <<Walter Mitty’s biggest fault is its scale and seating arrangement>> this world of Robusta blends and half roasted beans, searching for the subtle the heart of Dublin. The Wall has recently than eight years experience), the empha- ly, it is not high on the list for the smokers flavours and embrace the culture of cofbeen repainted, covering those memories sis is on making good coffee not quick either, a large subset of coffee enthusifee. of last year, fresh for freshers week to fill it coffee. His mission is to educate, having asts, as again there is a lack of seating.

Walter Mitty’s is my first stop on this with new names and old. seen too many people unwittingly accept This time it’s due to the building’s restricjourney and is well known amongst the The coffee used is La Scala Prima, a Be- poorly made coffees, by untrained or tions and hard to blame on Walter Mitty’s Arts Block coffee crowd, offering a little wley’s blend, something which they were uncaring staff elsewhere. itself. slice of bohemian New York on lower keen to note. They try and source many of Walter Mitty’s biggest fault is its scale Slowly but surely, the Irish coffee scene Dawson Street. Set up only eight months their products, including their soft drinks, and seating arrangement. While it may has been developing and Walter Mitty’s is ago, replacing a busy but ungrateful Café in Ireland. According to the internet, La sound odd, it makes a huge difference. a sign of how far we’ve come. The appeal Sol enterprise, Walter Mitty’s got off to a Scala Prima is ‘bold bodied espresso with Depending on the time of day finding of this coffee house lies in the aim of the flying start jammed with students filling a nutty and sweet flavour’. While there are a seat may be impossible, due to the

C

business, the promotion of coffee culture, the whole experience of something new; rather than just a caffeine hit. While the big coffee house chains still dominate the landscape, this idea of good coffee is taking root, especially amongst young professionals and some students. For me, Walter Mitty’s is the ideal entry point into good coffee. The surroundings show the possibilities for the backdrop to your life, rather than the generic Starbucks feel, as comfy as that may be. Coffee Culture is out there to be embraced, and is moving up in popularity. In no time, perhaps, the late night coffee house may be replacing after work pints. It wouldn’t do us any harm.

Surfing on the crest of a couch Features Writer Emily Flaherty

I

The alternative to Erasmus $ \HDU RII ERRNV PLJKW EH PRUH EHQHĆFLDO WKDQ EHLQJ WKH H[FKDQJH VWXGHQW LQ WKH FRUQHU Features Writer Emily Flaherty

E

rasmus a.k.a. the best year of college; a year long party with crazy people from all over the world. A year you will remember as your own personal Auberge Espagnol, full of cultural shocks and communication errors and crazy adventures and booze.

Why would you even bother looking for an alternative way to spend a year abroad in college?

A sabbatical a.k.a. off-books; a year out is the alternative. An option infrequently taken by students, largely because it is the forgotten option. But, there are many advantages to opting off-books, not least because it is easier to organise. There is no finite number of places; you do not need to find out which overseas colleges have links to your department; no need to worry about studying modules abroad that will be compatible and acceptable to Trinity. You make an appointment with your tutor and explain the situation; he/she will then set things in motion. You fill in one form, and then you pass your exams.

Overseas colleges generally do not prioritize exchange students. Erasmus students often complain about the disorganisation of overseas colleges. Modules and timetables become more difficult to navigate en

français. Booking flights home from Nantes at Christmas posed a dilemma, as the postChristmas Exam timetable would not be available online; only on a noticeboard. By mid-December, it still hadn’t been posted up. What happens when you fail your “doss year” exams? Taking a year off-books removes all college related stress; you cannot fail off-books.

Off-books can also be more economical.

You do not have to pay for registration or books; you have the free time to work full time. You still have to pay rent, but you are no longer limited to the cities Trinity chooses i.e. if you study English Lit. and you want to go to France - the only options are Paris and Nice; two of the most expensive cities in the world. Off-books, you can live in cities where the rent and cost of living are more affordable. As you are now available to work full time, you no longer are dependent on your parents for hand outs.

Travelling and living abroad off-books is closer to emigration than to any college experience. Unless you go with someone, you go alone. There is no system for you to slot into, no department to complain to, and no phone number to call if something goes wrong. There is no pool of fellow Erasmus students waiting to befriend you; you must make an effort to befriend the natives,

which is less easy and takes longer than you would expect. Integration does not happen overnight. But instead of speaking English with friends from every country but the one you live in, á la the Erasmus experience, your native amigos can lend you books in the language you’re supposed to be learning (if you are learning a language). They can teach you how to make the regional specialities and laugh at (before correcting) your many mispronunciations. You get to know a country by getting to know its people.

A year off-books does not automatically mean a year abroad. It is just a year in which you do not attend college. But you can make it your alternative Erasmus. You can make it anything you want. A year abroad off-books is more difficult because it’s set outside of cosy college in the real world. At the same time it’s arguably more worthwhile. You are forced out of your comfort zone; you have to work to build a life for yourself from scratch, and in the process you learn about the kind of life you want. Whoever learned anything from having it easy?

Erasmus, when all is said and done, boils down to the same old college experience in an exciting setting. Going off-books gives you the freedom to experience anything you want, anywhere you want.

n 1999, Casey Fenton spontaneously decided to go to Iceland. Rather than book a hostel, he emailed 1,500 students at the University of Iceland asking for a place to stay. He received more than fifty offers of accommodation. And so couchsurfing was born.

Launched in 2004, it has spread all over the world and currently has 6 million members. However, many are still reluctant to use it out of fear of staying with or hosting strangers met online.

In nine years, out of the millions of couches surfed, there has only been one recorded crime connected with couchsurfing. In Leeds, in 2009, a woman from Hong Kong was raped by her host. This is one violent incident amongst millions of safe interactions, and which seems to indicate that the vast majority of strangers/couch surfer hosts are not threats.

Nevertheless, the site recognises the importance of safety. When you stay with a host you leave a reference on his/her profile, and (s)he leaves one on yours. When browsing potential hosts you can view all their references. Furthermore, the site contains an identity and location verification function, which is not mandatory, but it means that you can choose to stay with someone who has been verified.

Members can also vouch for each other; to vouch for someone you need to be vouched for yourself and you need to be vouched for by three other members. The search engine can be filtered; you can find your perfect host via his/her gender, age, number of references, and vouched or verified status. The host profiles leave plenty of room for detail, so you can get a flavour of their personality from their profile. Finally, nothing is set in stone; if you get a bad vibe from your wouldbe host when you first meet them, you can cancel.

So, how do you surf? First you set up your free profile; you would be advised to make this as detailed as possible, as potential hosts like to see who their wannabe surfers are. Select a few hosts that you like the look of from your chosen destination and

message them, or post a general request on the couchsurfing homepage for the city (most cities have a dedicated couchsurfing homepage). You let them know the date you will arrive and decide a meeting place and time; the site recommends you choose a public place for your first meeting. It is customary to bring a gift.

There is no typical couchsurfing experience. Some hosts prefer to leave you to your own devices; others like to show you the sites. Perhaps you will arrive and there will be a party going on. You might walk in on your host having sex.

Maybe you will be dragged along to an Ornithological Film Festival. It’s best to not to over-plan and be ready to go with the flow. However, remember that you are being provided with free accommodation (and in a lot of cases free food).

Contribute - help your host make dinner or offer to cook. Pay your way; sing for your supper. Couchsurfing can be a draining enough experience, as surfers must be nice and polite, entertaining and obliging at all times. While couchsurfing is free in a monetary sense, you are not completely free as a surfer; you dance to your host’s tune.

While most people regard couchsurfing primarily as an accommodation site, it is also being used by members to meet people in their own city. The couchsurfing city homepages are full of open invitations to trips to the beach, the cinema etc. Most cities have couchsurfing groups – usually a big general one, and several smaller ones that cater for niche interests - who organise meetings. One of the Dublin couchsurfing groups meets every Friday night in different bars around town; all are welcome.

There is a definite couchsurfing community; hosts know other hosts, surfers know other surfers, and this community vibe makes couchsurfing safer.

Couchsurfing not nearly as big a risk as most people fear and the rewards of discovering a city through its people, meeting new friends and having different experiences vastly outweigh these risks. Couchsurfing believes in the kindness of strangers; something worth believing in.

The University Time

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InFocus 9

Tuesday 17th september 2013

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inside the computer! spending a lot of my time watching films â&#x20AC;&#x201C; while all meta and the poster would probably have those cool little leaves denoting arthouse awards on them â&#x20AC;&#x201C; wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exactly be riveting stuff.

To be honest, the fact that a movie was

Yes, you get given the propeller hat.

Features Writer Ben Butler

$Q H[ *RRJOH LQWHUQ KLPVHOI %HQ %XWOHU EXVWV WKH P\WKV of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Internshipâ&#x20AC;?

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he Internship is less cinematic masterpiece and more â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 11pm on a Tuesday, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve missed the first twenty minutes, and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve a 9am lecture tomorrow.

But sure, more fun than sleeping.â&#x20AC;? For that sort of situation, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perfect. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re half asleep so youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re barely functioning brain will enjoy the dumbed-down Wed-

ding Crashers appeal. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pretty PG too, so your little brother can stay up too (if Mum says itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ok).

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never had many movies to compare my life to. Sure, Michael Cera-esque awkwardness abounds, but thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about it. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never had a movie made about me â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think I ever will. A film of me

being made about the experience was kind of exciting in itself. I was always going to enjoy the finished product, but I thought it would be interesting to compare the experience as it actually played out to how it was portrayed on the silver screen.

A quick note if you havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seen it: Billy (Vince Vaughan) and Nick (Owen Wilson), two former watch salesmen, stumble into an internship at the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s California headquarters. There, armed with little more than a fraternal bond, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;80s movie references, and a can-do attitude, take on life at the tech giant. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s described by The Onion as â&#x20AC;&#x153;the best movie of 2005â&#x20AC;?.

Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s take a look at some of the main things that crop up: the perks, the internship process, and the people. First off : the food. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a scene on the guysâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; first day where Billy discovers that the food is free. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the damage here?â&#x20AC;?

The almost impossibly cheery person behind the counter replies with a smile â&#x20AC;&#x201C; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Free.â&#x20AC;?

Billy proceeds to take six bagels, and some bananas. For the potassium.

This is true and, honestly, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great. You eat well and it was particularly welcome after a year of living off chicken fillet rolls â&#x20AC;&#x153;Having a beer with your bossâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201C; [Screengrab] In the orientation scene, the interns are

presented with a number of scenarios.

Then, using green and red paddles, they are asked to indicate whether these situations are permissible or not. In the movie, perhaps because of its U.S. setting, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Having a beer with your bossâ&#x20AC;? gets a thumbs down from Chetty (the Intern Coordinator) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; much to the chagrin of Billy and Nick.

This is actually pretty commonplace.

We wound down each week with beer and pizza at TGIF (Thank Google Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Friday). TGIF is a great opportunity to talk through ideas with your team. In fact, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where I came up with the concept for my intern project. Ah yes, the internship itself.

Yes, you get given the propeller hat. But, the internship is less of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;mental Hunger Gamesâ&#x20AC;? and more of a â&#x20AC;&#x201C; well, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to describe. Unlike the movie, interns arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t all competing for the same jobs. Yes, like any company, there are limited positions.

But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nothing like the competition depicted on screen.

Also, interns are put into different departments â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and not all techy ones either.

I was in marketing; I had friends in finance, another in the Creative Lab, sales, etc. Google, although a tech company, has so many areas, and is so much more than just coders. And, when they do want people to write code, they hire people who have the specific skills to do that.

In the film, one of the internsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; challenges is to develop an app overnight â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which they accomplish by getting drunk, heading to a strip club, and coming up with the idea of having to solve maths problems before you can send a message from your phone.

Before that though, during the brainstorming session, Billy and Nick, lacking in technical ability, pitch loads of app

THE Â IRISH Â TIMES Â

THE WORLD AT YOUR FINGERTIPS SIMON CARSWELL SUZANNE LYNCH MARK HENNESSY DEREK SCALLY LARA MARLOWE MARY FITZGERALD CLIFFORD COONAN PADDY AGNEW MICHAEL JANSEN TOM HENNIGAN BILL CORCORAN GUY HEDGECOE PETER CLUSKEY RAHUL BEDI DAVID MACNEIL PADRAIG COLLINS

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THE Â IRISH Â TIMES THE STORY OF WHY

ideas. For example, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Exchangeagramâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lets you share photos with your friends. And itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s definitely different to Instagram. Sort ofâ&#x20AC;Ś Sadly, if we had been put into teams like that, I would be the Exchangeagram guy. At least thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how I felt at times when around these incredibly talented engineer interns.Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s another thing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the people.

Thanks to TV shows like The Big Bang Theory, nerds are sort of cool nowadays.

And yeah, Googlers (employees) can be a little geeky. Real employees were used as extras, but they were explicitly instructed to wear â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;geek chicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; while on set. The people that I worked with are some of the smartest people that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve ever met. Not only that, but theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re just brilliantly competent. Less social awkwardness, more just general aptitude.

The

The lingo is pretty spot on too, if a little over exaggerated.

things about the movie I enjoyed the most were those that would easily be missed, but do in some ways capture the sense of working at Google. Little things like being able to look up peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s calendars, or our internal profiles (mine now has a special little icon of Vaughan and Wilson as I was an intern when the movie came out). The lingo is pretty spot on too, if a little over exaggerated. Lyle for example refers to his idea as still in beta.

I would love to work at Google in the future. Whatever happens though, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s kind of cool to be able to look back on this summer through not just a series of selfies â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but as a silver screen depiction.

10

UT Opinion

Tuesday 17th september 2013

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The University Times

Tempting Death

With a Swan Dive Through the Sky

Deputy Opinions Editor Fionn Rogan

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he act of self-slaughter is, essentially speaking, the greatest expression of free will. To kill oneself demonstrates complete agency over oneself and oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s physical being, exhibiting absolute personal autonomy. However, such a demonstration may be regarded as somewhat extreme and also self-limiting as once your absolute free will has been expressed it is simultaneously extinguished. So, what is the die-hard evangelist of self-determination to do? A possible, marginally safer course of action might involve reckless endangerment where at least there is a margin for survival. Not one for half measures, I have decided to fling myself from the open hatch of an airplane flying at thirteen and a half thousand feet, strapped to another man so as to best put to the test the weight limit of a flimsy fabric umbrella on steroids with which I have trusted both our lives to. This demonstration of my personal autonomy has cost me â&#x201A;Ź280 with the Irish Parachute Club in Edenderry, Co. Offaly. This stunt, whilst also providing great fuel for an article, will most certainly crown me king of self and absolute agent of my own free will.

However, a small voice residing in the back of my head protests and simply asks, â&#x20AC;&#x153;WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?!?â&#x20AC;?. I suppose the simple answer

might be that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not and that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m merely on the foolâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s errand of young manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reckless hormones seeking danger and excitement with little or no regard for my own personal safety. It can be argued that labeling this jump, as an ultimate expression of my free will is a pseudo-intellectualization of my idiocy so as to make it seem less wasteful if I should die.

The internal debate over whether I shall jump or not jump is ultimately moot as the fact of the matter is that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve already paid my â&#x201A;Ź280 and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not prepared to lose that based on anxiety and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m also jumping with my friend Dave so there is an informal yet binding social contract present too. Although I must admit that the simple issue and existence of the internal dispute has intrigued me and coaxed me into researching my anxiety over the jump. My research, namely just talking to my Dad who has some knowledge on the subject and who is, for the record dead set against me jumping drew my attention to two very interesting theories.

The first is well-documented human response to stress known as Approach Avoidance Anxiety (AAA). Essentially speaking AAA works by allowing our anxiety only to build up to the point where escape or avoidance is a possibility. As soon as avoiding the subject of stress becomes impossible our anxiety levels will

begin to wane as we begin to realize that it will have to be faced and dealt with. To put this in the context of my jump I will be shitting ever increasingly larger bricks until the point where my feet leave the floor of the plane and I am falling through the atmosphere at which point I will (hopefully) experience a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Nirvana-esqueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; level of calm as I plummet towards the earth.

The second theory is Personal Construct Theory proposed by the American psychologist George Kelly. He argues that the

, KDYH GHFLGHG WR Ä&#x2021;LQJ P\VHOI IURP WKH RSHQ KDWFK RI DQ DLUSODQH Ä&#x2021;\LQJ DW WKLUWHHQ DQG D KDOI WKRXVDQG IHHW VWUDSSHG WR DQRWKHU PDQ means by which we view the world can be broken down to the tripartite relationship between anticipation, experience and construct, the means by which we construe our experiences in the real world.

Our anticipation of an event will more often than not be inaccurate. We will either build the event up to an unreachable level and we shall be disappointed by the outcome or the opposite of this where we are pleasantly surprised. The experience is the actual event that has been anticipated and it will either surmount our anticipa-

tions or disappoint us. A prime example of this relationship is Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Quite a few people will admit to enjoying Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day, as the actual day will rarely quite live up to the idealized Christmas experience that we have anticipated all Christmas Eve. Thus Christmas Eve becomes a more enjoyable day as we are allowed to believe in a hyped up, impossibly perfect Christmas Day unspoiled by the reality of an imperfect Christmas Day either spoilt by drunk relatives or the turkey being too dry (Mam, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t worry the turkey is always perfect!).

Now the impact of this relationship comes to fruition in how we construe our experiences in the real world. If Christmas doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t live up to the anticipation of Christmas Eve then this will have a run on effect whereby the person will often admit to preferring Christmas Eve to Christmas as the experience of the actual day was a disappointment. The means by which we construe our experience will then have an effect on how we anticipate things in the future so to some degree it is self-regulating. Once more to put this theory in the context of my jump, as the days pass and I draw nearer to my jump I become increasingly anxious and this affects how I anticipate the jump will go.

Broadly speaking: I believe I might die.

The experience is the jump. If I survive,

Trinity liberals falling victim to clan mentality Staff Writer Paul McNamee

A

s someone who was born and bred in Belfast I know all about â&#x20AC;&#x153;clan mentali- the legislation because it was made up of men who were exclusively celibate. Sentiesâ&#x20AC;?. When I was growing up, everyone I knew was Catholic. It was not until ator Bacik is considered a leading liberal in this country, yet here she was adamant I was 15 years of age that I first encountered a Protestant. Cocooned as I was in a that the very basic human right to freedom of expression should be denied to a bubble of ignorance, I thought they were all loyalist paramilitaries intent on an- group of people on the basis that they are primarily male and celibate. This is the tagonising and even destroying the Catholic population in the North. In my eyes, very same sort of sexist attitude that was used to deny women the right to vote for centuries. Yet today it passes as liberalism.

Catholics/Nationalists could do no wrong. It goes From Vincent Browne to Aaron In our fast-paced society we rarely want to think our without saying that this sort of prejudice was greatly challenged when I joined cross-community projects Sorkin, we are bombarded with the opinions through. From Vincent Browne to Aaron Sorkin, we are bombarded with the idea that being liberal and actually interacted with those from outside of my idea that being liberal is modern, is modern, while being conservative involves being outâ&#x20AC;&#x153;clanâ&#x20AC;?. Being released from the slavery of my clan mentality allowed me to see the ignorance of my views and while being conservative involves dated and backward. So if we see ourselves as modern, extension we have to be liberal. We go along with gave me freedom to think for myself. being outdated and backward by the crowd, identify ourselves as liberal and then adopt When I chose to study at Trinity I did so in the hope whatever position the liberal person that is interviewed that it would expose me to many more such liberating on the news takes. We refuse to ever allow the conservaexperiences. Trinity, after all, had produced graduates with such diametrically opposing ideologies. Can you imagine for example, tive view to challenge us, instead dismissing it as the ideology of a bygone genhow enthralling a debate between Wolfe Tone, Edward Carson, Oscar Wilde, Mary eration that was brainwashed by a corrupt and hypocritical Catholic Church. We McAleese, Mary Robinson and Edmund Burke would be? Unfortunately, I then donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need debate to liberate our minds and challenge our convictions, we have realised the vast majority of Trinity students are guilty of submitting to the clan the â&#x20AC;&#x153;clan mentalityâ&#x20AC;? which takes no effort or thought and that suits us just fine. mentality I had managed to escape from as a teenager. The only difference is that However, this laziness comes at a cost. It allows those with a reputation for being instead of viewing all things Protestant as bad and all things Catholic as good, the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;liberalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to get away with passing off outrageously bigoted remarks as the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;liberal positionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Worse still, it prevents us from acknowledging the numerous benefits majority of us see all things liberal as good and all things conservative as bad.

As a result of this refusal to think critically, liberalism is being mutilated to the conservatism can bring to our society. As students, we must break free of the clan extent that it is barely recognisable. A prime example of this is Ivana Bacikâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s out- and think for ourselves. If we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t, we risk allowing the once noble ideologies of burst against the Catholic Church during the abortion debate. She argued during liberalism and conservatism to be reduced to a set of prejudices and clan rules. a Seanad debate in July this year that the Church had no right to speak out against

the experience has surmounted my anticipation and thus I will construe that I am immortal, or at the very least, Jesus; therefore, I will more than likely sign up for a second jump where I will anticipate that I shall live. However, if I die on my second jump which I thought I would survive I would, frankly speaking, no longer have the capability to construe my experience in any way possible but if I did it would affect how I anticipate my third jump.

Although whatever for the pessimistic and fatalistic tone of this article I must admit I am bounding with excitement for the 21st of September, the day on which I jump. As someone who openly admits to preferring Funderland to Alton Towers because you actually see the bloke with three fingers, one eye and a suspicious quivering tick belting you in on a cold January morning in the RDS as opposed to the brilliantly safely engineered â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;thrillâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rides in an English forest, I hanker for real danger and get my kicks from it and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m jumping. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even opt to raise money for charity; this jump is a selfish pursuit of dangerous excitement and if you should see me writing in the second issue of The University Times youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll know that it was a wonderful success.

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The University Time

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UT Opinion

Tuesday 17th september 2013

The Worrying Trend of Sex Apps

You know what really grinds my gears?

The Dark Side of the Meme

Opinions Editor Samuel Riggs “wat u into?”; the little orange message pings up onto the screen. A hefty sigh, a roll of the eyes, and I click out of the app with a groan, and the sinking feeling that this is all a pointless exercise in loneliness. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the idea of sex apps, a disturbing trend which has risen in popularity along with the soaring ascendance of the smartphone, it breaks down quite simply – you log on to the app, upload a photo, and you can chat to singles (or, all too often, notsingles) in the nearby vicinity. There are plenty of options and variations – Grindr is the original, targeted towards gay and bisexual men. It comes with certain features, such as a location-sender, so you can let the creep who uploaded a picture of a porn star’s torso instead of his face know exactly where you are.

There are a million and one variations on Grindr, with names like ‘Scruff’ and ‘Hornet’. There’s Blendr which, as I understand it, is more of a free for all in terms of sexuality. Tinder is the variant for straight people – the main appeal of Tinder for many is that, instead of your profile and pictures being instantly accessible to all those nearby, you get the option to choose whose profile you see, and who sees your profile, through a process of elimination.

More recently, a new sex app has been announced – it’s called ‘Pure’; the tagline for the app is ‘Sex Is Pure’, and it eliminates the need for all the humdrum talk and awkward conversation that comes with other apps, like Grindr and Blendr, allowing you to hook up with impunity and with absolutely no strings attached.

Apps like these are beginning to find their way into the mainstream culture – Grindr and others market themselves as ‘social networking’ apps, in the same vein as Facebook and Twitter. They are becoming more and more a part of everyday life. Indeed, there’s a show in this week’s Fringe Festival entitled Grindr; A Love Story, discussing the legitimacy of finding love and intimate relationships in a world where the dating game is ever-changing.

The idea of having an app aimed towards finding sex has become completely acceptable in modern, liberal culture. But my question is this – when did it become okay to, on a day to day basis, receive naked pictures of people on your phone, looking for sex?

Maybe I’m prudish, maybe I’m a little stunted in terms of sex and sexuality, but I don’t think that this is an acceptable or

Columnist Tom Myatt

T

he standard joke: ‘working hard or hardly working?’ has been applied to me on numerous occasions. I usually come under the latter. Day after day of summer unemployment has been spent on Facebook, mail-ordering Russian brides, and best of all, looking at hilarious photos of cats. This felinebased hilarity forms part of a recent genre of comedy that has been closely associated with the rise of the internet: the ‘meme’. These are a series of online images, each intended to give us a free and easy laugh. They may display witty puns, or animals that look like people,

healthy approach towards sex. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was never to just ‘fuck’ or ‘have sex’, but to always try to ‘make love’. These apps bypass this ideal completely – they promote a world where sex is a commodity, becoming less about a genuine and enjoyable connection with a person, on a physical and emotional level, and more about a quick fix – one could make a genuine con-

êZDW X LQWR" nection between frequent sex app users and junkies looking for their next fix, willing to do anything to get it.

By using these apps, one is exposing oneself to not only an unhealthy atmosphere of hook-ups and no-stringsattached sex, but you’re also potentially subjecting yourself to harm – any photos you send can be screenshotted and used again. It’s a common trait of these apps, especially Grindr of which I have experience, that people can recycle photos of other people, and masquerade themselves as something they’re not. You have no idea where these photos could turn up – imagine if a future potential employer saw them? Where would your chances of a new job go then?

That’s not to say that these apps are all bad – I have had some wonderful experiences during my forays into Grindr. I know of people who have been on amazing dates, with guys (and girls) they wouldn’t

have met otherwise, and there are people who are, genuinely, on these apps to chat and talk with people, without whipping out a photo of their genitals at the first opportunity. And there are times when you can, legitimately, use Grindr as a messaging app, if you don’t have any mobile phone credit to get hold of your friends, for example. But behind it all, if you do end up going out with someone from one of these apps, there’s always that niggling little voice, whispering ‘But you met them on a sex app. You’re better than this.’

It’s a horrible dichotomy – apps like these present you with a genuine opportunity to meet people you wouldn’t normally talk to, in an environment you have complete control over – block them, delete them, you don’t have to expose yourself to them at all, which in some ways is FAR preferable to the creeper-in-the-club style of the alcohol-based dating scene in Ireland. However, they have been tainted, turned in to cruising apps, where people prey on those they think they can get sex out of – if you do use them, I urge you to be careful and safe. I want to delete Grindr, I really do. But, much like Facebook, it has ingrained itself deeply into the social fabric of my world – it has become something that, without it, I would feel as though I were missing out on an essential and vital part of the dating game; a missed opportunity. And that, in itself, is the true triumph of this app. We hate it, but without it, we are lonely; afraid of our own solitude.

Startups are the new way forward Online Editor Conor Murphy

students involved.

Even beyond that students are beginning to startup companies even before they reach college. Marco Booth will be a new student in Trinity this SepA startup is a small company set up recently that’s tember and has already started up a company not trying to enter a marketplace, often technologically yet launched trying to get free Leaving cert lessons focused. One man who has plenty of experience available to all students. He’s very optimistic about here is Sean Blanchfield, as he was co-founder of how easy it is to try to get an idea off the ground: DemonWare (sold to Activision in 2007) and is now among many other things running ScaleFront, “I’ve gotten a lot of support from things like Enterprise Ireland and the NDRC so there’s a lot of a startup lab with many successful companies to optimism around to get these things started”. its name. When asked about the opportunities at this time for startups he said, “It’s unprecedented in A good example of this student friendly structure is Dubstarts, a free jobs fair and startup event. It was history for any kind of maker, professional, craftspreviously held in the Button Factory and is in Café man or artist to be able to put their work into the en Seine at the end of October. It’s both an event hands of so many people as easily as we can today. for students/graduates to get into new businesses Whether you’re a writer, musician, artist, videograpopping up around Dublin and also for students pher or programmer, your only production cost is your time, marketing is nearly free, and distribution to build friendships with these companies while they’re still small enough to spend that time with is completely free.” you and help you grow. They’re not only interested As the startup scene has begun to flourish, it’s done in programmers but people in law, marketing and so without the stereotypical thick-framed-glasses design. exclusivity that might feed it in other countries.

Some people say that Dublin is just trailing a trend The Irish have always had an allergic reaction to that lost its rockstar quality a few years ago. Yet anything that could be termed “scenes”. So it seems obvious now that when something like these compa- these people are missing the point; as the rose-tintnies sprout up, a support structure will appear to get ed glasses get removed, the real businesses will just

benefit from that and rise to the top. The Dublin Startup scene is heating up just when the opportunities for startups are moving from a trendy scene to one where two or three people can actually build up a viable business and impact millions of lives in a small or large way without external funding When talking about students’ opportunities in the startup area Sean Blanchfield was definitely encouraging. “No other generation has had so much opportunity to create meaning and impact with their lives as we do today”.

Basically, if you want to be excited about your work from the very start and not after ten years of promotion, join a startup.

The single most exciting thing is that each story these companies have to tell starts with a little moment. A small idea coupled with access to the type of people you need to get that idea off the ground.

If you’re a programmer you need either designers or marketing people (or both). If you’re a business guy you might need people with a more capable set of technological skills. I have personally found the Dublin technology crowd the most generous people with their time that I have ever been around in my life. To begin mixing with these circles has never been so easy and so fruitful.

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Women, of course, aren’t allowed to be so funny

and are spread over a number of websites. This image-based online humour has been hailed as the democratisation of comedy – anyone can make and upload one. However, what this article investigates is the rise of a darker side to this apparently light-hearted fun.

With the allowance of a wide range of contributors, many have fallen to homophobia, misogyny and all-round discrimination. Thus in many ways the internet is coming to resemble the outdated preconceptions of a time that long predated it.

While the internet is not necessarily dominated by men, males have always claimed a monopoly on comedy. This subconscious sexism is piercing into the twenty-first century and nowhere is this more obvious and pronounced than in many modern memes. Women are frequently portrayed as unwise sluts whose only reason for existence is to be made subject to male desires. Many highlight social faux pas that a girl might have committed, such as being photographed with an unflattering facial expression. The photo will most likely be making a bold statement, suggesting this is due to a wider, almost inevitable, feminine trait: vanity or sexuality, for instance. I seem to find these types of images on my newsfeed every day.

Feminists sought to fight fire with fire, and graced my computer screen with the back length of a woman’s leg, on which was written a straight barometer, with numerous drawn lines, each suggesting the meaning of a skirt at particular lengths. The line behind the back of the knee was ‘proper’, another further up was entitled ‘she’s asking for it’. The highest, just below the bum, implicitly claimed a girl who wore a skirt this high is a ‘whore’.

A very relevant point was made here.

Who exactly determined these ‘moral’ codes? And why should clothing be assigned to women based on these ideals?

There are many more of these demeaning and single-minded memes, often cartoon-strips portraying the frustration of men who are in a relationship with an idiot. Such a patriarchal tendency of the internet means that this wondrous tool, which has come to change humanity for the rest of its existence, is coming to symbolise much of what was wrong with the century that preceded it. To date, I have not come across one which subjects men to demeaning traditional gender roles – women, of course, aren’t allowed to be so funny. If you’re on the internet seeking gender equality, online humour pages that my Facebook seems to send me to, such as ‘roflista.com’, ‘lmaofun.com’, and, worst of all, the ‘LADbible’, are best to be avoided. The word misogyny is replaced in the latter for “LADness”.

What is just as shocking to me is the streak of homophobia which is also widely exhibited on meme pages. Many, largely indirectly, argue that homosexuality is not only unnatural, but morally wrong. What prompted this article was an ever-expanding mixture of shock and boredom with the increasingly re-

petitive ‘gay test’ memes. The sheer lack of original thought alone could be the sole talking point here. Normally, there will be a small object (such as a dinosaur or an odd facial expression) in the background; however, these are supposedly not to be immediately noticed.

The dominant feature of these images is usually a pair of large barely-covered breasts in the foreground. The caption will then read ‘if you noticed the dinosaur first… I have bad news for you’. The fact that the breasts are so all-encapsulating that they will be the first thing anyone notices, regardless of sexuality, makes this completely irrelevant. More importantly, however, is the claim that homosexuality is “bad news” – something to be ashamed of, and you don’t even deserve to be on this website.

You’re not welcome here. It becomes somewhat difficult to see where the humour derives from.

Less often than sexism and homophobia will one find racism within these pages. While they seem prepared to advocate a male, heterosexual dominance, colour doesn’t seem to matter.

The reason for this is that modern societal sanctions imposed for racism are a lot stronger than they are regarding gender discrimination. Of all the illiberal -isms and -phobias, sexism is generally regarded as the least worst. Racists can have their account deactivated and face criminal charges. Male-supremacists, meanwhile, receive their own online community.

But what are the causes of these trends we have come to see? Certainly, an important factor is the anonymity that the internet provides. The tormentors amongst us can now hide behind computer screens. Not being able to identify others on the internet has given ‘memers’ the psychological effect of being untraceable – therefore you can say what you want. The comments are always even worse, but I doubt the makers of these memes would actually openly criticise a woman in the street for wearing a high skirt.

Yet it must be remembered that in many ways too, the internet has also facilitated the means to attack this culture.

Popular rap group D12 in 2001 released

I doubt the makers of these memes would actually openly criticise a woman in the street for wearing a high skirt.

a song entitled ‘Nasty Mind’, which featured such messages as “I could persuade any b**ch to have eight of my kids”, and “I f**k ‘em then pass ‘em to my homies”. Such well-versed academia made Robin Thicke’s suit-strutting hit ‘Blurred Lines’ almost seem a bastion of liberal and rational thought, yet the response by feminists on the latter has been far stronger and eye-catching than anything that was possible twelve years ago. Even a parody was released by New Zealander students called ‘Defined Lines’, a counter attack against the song, which attracted a great deal of attention, was very successful. Perhaps this means that, as mentioned, fire can indeed be fought with fire. Feminists thus need to take to the comedy, attack back with memes, and perhaps the nature of the misogyny can be less harmful.

Just for the record, there are a great deal of memes and other online humour that are pretty funny. I’ve spent many an hour in lectures just browsing through and occasionally having people give me funny looks whilst I try to conceal my laughter. The problem is that so many have become increasingly aggressive in their outlook, and so much more demeaning in their argument. The creators might claim that it’s all in good fun and not to be taken seriously – but their jokes go deeper than that. They are reinforcing the ancient remains of former discriminatory social structures.

Perhaps all this suggests is that society hasn’t changed – it has simply found a means of airing its views anonymously.

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UT Opinion

Tuesday 17th september 2013

Blurred Lines

Contributing Writer Stephen Cox

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very year songs are released that capture the public imagination and reflect the mood of their moment. This effect seems doubled in summer, as every year there are a couple of songs that are natural companions to 99s, a few sunny days and a few months complaining about the lack of such good weather. It can be very pleasant to hear one of the event songs of a bygone summer and reminisce about dancing gauchely at Gaeltacht dioscós. However, for me at least, this summer’s big song—Robin Thicke’s international smash ‘Blurred Lines’, with inputs by urban stars Pharrell Williams and T.I.—contains no such simple pleasure because of the level of crude sexual objectification that it contains.

In case you are unfamiliar with the song and have missed the not inconsiderable controversy it has caused, the song consists of a series of coarse

come-ons from a caveman character to a woman whom he is convinced is sending mixed signals; the ‘blurred lines’ of the title. Though she may be a ‘good girl’, he knows that ‘you’re an animal, baby it’s in your nature’. Her last lover was a wuss; he didn’t ‘smash that ass and pull your hair’, while Thicke claims he will give her ‘something big enough to tear that ass in two’. He knows, as the chorus insistently blares out, that ‘she wants it’, as if suggesting that no woman could resist his leery passes.

Though ‘Blurred Lines’ can be accused of many things, subtlety is not one of them. In the uncensored version of the music video, Thicke and co. dribble fully clothed over a trio of topless women. The fact that the song has been so massive a hit—at the time of writing, 152 million YouTube hits and counting—is at best an indication of how much three men can get away with in the name of a catchy tune, and at worst a mark of just how much misogyny still lurks in the minds of some men.

Thicke’s attempts to defend himself

from critics have been risible. He claimed on The Today Show that the song is ‘a feminist movement in itself’ because of the line ‘that man is not your maker’. It seems to have escaped his attention that this line is a reference to the woman’s ex and is part of the singer’s strategy to belittle and dislodge him. Even without this slimy ulterior motive, a defence based on one inoffensive lyric in a song full of offensive ones is utterly unconvincing.

Thicke’s second line of defence has been to plead his past good behaviour in the matter of misogyny. In an interview with GQ, he said of the video: ‘what a pleasure it is to degrade a woman. I’ve never gotten to do that before. I’ve always respected women.’ Citing his status and that of his collaborators as married men with children, Thicke insists that he and his mates are ‘just three really nice guys having a good time together’. This is linked to his final attempt at rationalisation, which has been to suggest the song is a joke and that it should be taken as such. In support of this, he has named Benny Hill as the influence behind the song’s video,

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The University Times

Misogyny in popular music is nothing new; it is all too present in heavy metal and hip-hop in particular

to which I can only say that if you’re reduced to name-checking Benny Hill to defend yourself from charges of sexism, it must be time to put up your hands and plead guilty.

That said, misogyny in popular music is nothing new; it is all too present in heavy metal and hip-hop in particular. Flicking through the book Fear of Music: The 261 Greatest Albums Since Punk & Disco, I was struck by comments author Garry Mulholland made about The Beastie Boys’ 1986 debut Licensed to Ill and how they ring true in relation to the popularity of ‘Blurred Lines’. The album’s lyrical content caused widespread controversy against the backdrop of a new musical landscape ruled by ‘the youth dollar and an increasing reliance on glibness disguised as irony.’ Referring to the brattish lyrics, Mulholland asks ‘surely if you make blatant the fact that you are skinny young wimps who could never cause the girls ‘n’ guns mayhem within the lyrics, everyone will get it, right?’ He goes on to refer the incident at the 1998 Reading Festival where The Beastie Boys criticised The Prodigy for performing ‘Smack My Bitch Up’, how they ‘didn’t appear to see any irony whatsoever’ in this and helped make the subsequent popularity of that song ‘inevitable by convincing us that misogyny in pop music was big and clever.’

If this is indeed the case, it goes some way to explaining the enormous popularity of ‘Blurred Lines’. As a fan of both heavy metal and hip-hop, I’m familiar with many lyrics equally objectionable, if not more, than those of Robin Thicke.

However, I think I took exception to the way the song takes serious issues and, after wrapping them up in irony and laddish ‘humour’, supposedly turns them into a bit of harmless fun that it’s perfectly acceptable to like. Clearly enough people have been willing to look past that to make the song’s composers a great deal

of money. In late July, the song broke an eight-year-old record for radio audience, with 242.65 million listeners beating the figure for Mariah Carey’s ‘We Belong Together’.

In his Today Show interview Thicke says that ‘great art’ should ‘make us talk about what’s important and what the relationship between men and women is’. Great art should indeed do this, but Thicke’s is nothing of the kind. It offers instead a dangerous and debased depiction of love and sex. While the hype around the song may have died down somewhat since its release in late March, its ubiquitousness has been made all the more discomfiting by recent high-profile sexist incidents.

Since ‘Blurred Lines‘ charted in Ireland, it has been the soundtrack to, among other episodes both domestic and international, Fine Gael TD Tom Barry’s ‘horseplay’ in the Oireachtas, the spew of rape and death threats sent to feminist activist Caroline Criado-Perez via Twitter, and the highly publicised ‘Slanegirl’ photos and subsequent internet furore.

Songs like ‘Blurred Lines’ underline the belittling attitude and double standards held against women in many sectors of the media that has become worryingly normalised in contemporary society; it comes as no surprise that, after their controversial duet at the recent VMA Awards, Miley Cyrus, not Robin Thicke, has been the target of internet ire.

A contemporary musician would never allow himself, or be allowed, to pen racist lyrics and then to shoot a blackface pastiche for a music video. This analogy throws the outrage generated by ‘Blurred Lines’ into sharper relief, and shows how far we have to go before relations between men and women are consistently treated in a mature way in popular music.

Letter to Freshers Deputy Opinions Editor Fionn Rogan

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’m sure by this stage you have been handed several hundred thousand newspapers by 7 parents, 14 aunts, 72 uncles and that local guy named ‘Worrisome Joe’ who hangs out at the bus stop and somehow always manages to smell like boiling leeks. They will then have instructed you to read this ‘brilliant and insightful article’ telling you how great college is going to be and what you can to do to make the most of it. And that’s why I’m not going to make you read another sickeningly positive but cautious article where the writer tries too hard to be pally and nudges you whilst winking and hinting that they too have tasted cider before they were 18 and once got a blowjob in Spain from a girl who now lives in Coventry. Instead I’m going to write about Trinity and what it means to me and I hope to organize in the next few issues of The University Times a mini-series where writers from the likes of UCD, NUIG, UCC and other third level institutions will be invited to offer their opinion on Trinity College, which will

You will, without doubt and without fail, be subjected nine times out of ten to the wonderful phenomenon that is the ‘Trinners for Winners’ chant certainly be interesting if not divisive.

If I am to make one prediction for your first few months as a student of Trinity College it is that you will, without doubt and without fail, be subjected nine times out of ten to the wonderful phenomenon that is the ‘Trinners for Winners’ chant. This poetic and peerless piece of rhyming brilliance will assault you in every nightclub in town every time there is a lull in the conversation and some jackass will inevitably ask ‘so, what do you do?’. Now unfortunately I must admit and with some shame that what I used to do was be very straight to the point and literally just say ‘English and History’ and rarely volunteer any information as to where I studied English and History. If asked, Trinity would be mumbled inaudibly beneath my breath so that people might think I said Trinidad. If they did hear I would instantly remark, ‘please don’t hold it against me’. Thinking about it now I’m ashamed because the truth of the matter is that I love Trinity and have done so since I was about three years old. To make the analogy between Jesus and Peter with Trinity might be a tad extreme and ever so slightly blasphemous but the fact remains that I would never have gone to any other college.

As I mentioned above my love affair with the college began when I was about three when my Dad was a part-time student here. Every Friday my Mam, my little brother and sometimes my big brother and I would visit him and we would have a picnic on the front steps of the chapel in the Front Square. Now at three I can’t say that my memory was eidetic but I do remember fondly, if fuzzily, sitting in the April sun on the warm stone steps with a sand sandwich in hand (just butter) and a Capri-sun (if it was on special offer) and Trinity College must have a left its mark on me because from then on no other college could really compete. I was going to go to Trinity.

My relationship with the college blossomed as I grew older and the prospect of becoming a Trinity student became brighter. Every trip into town would invariably involve me going for a stroll around the college grounds, dramatically sighing with content. Students must have thought I was just a very happy asthmatic who’d found a cure. My first open day sealed the deal when I randomly joined a group of likeminded individuals coming from Waterford, Cork and Dublin and we spent several hours in the Starbucks on College Green discussing politics, poetry and comedy like pretentious Trinity students and I could have died of happiness that day. I nearly did, it was quite frightening but everything is fine now.

The road to Trinity isn’t always easy (College Green can be a real pain) and it wasn’t very straightforward for me. My journey involved spending a year in a windowless box above a carpet shop and beside a Chinese restaurant repeating the Leaving Cert. There were four months where I did not see daylight Monday to Friday and the weekend was spent in work selling Calvin Klein jeans to Russians.

Of course the ‘Trinity Premium’ that’s placed on points will catch out a lot of people who aspire to study in Trinity College but there’s a reason this premium exists. Our college was recently ranked 61st in the QS World University Rankings with our closest Irish competitor being the much larger UCD which dropped this year to 139th place. I don’t wish to stoke a ridiculous and inane rivalry by bringing this up but I think this statistic shows how Trinity can qualify the need for a premium on the points needed for entrance.

Similarly, most colleges will offer an insanely generous prize to students who achieve high points in the Leaving Cert. For example NUIG offers €2000 to students who get over 560 points. Trinity however would be bankrupted by such generosity and thus the Entrance Exhibitioners, students who have achieved over 560 points are gifted with a €300 book voucher for Hodges & Figgis that is then split between first and second year. Whilst some may feel at first miffed by this supposed miserliness I think it’s a better approach to recognize that you are now a member of a rarified atmosphere of academia and intellectualism. If you were renowned for being the smart person in your school you may find the first fewmonths a little jarring but ultimately rewarding and refreshing.

So, welcome to Trinity College. You are now a student of Ireland’s answer to Oxbridge and the Ivy League. You will soon become aware that Trinity is a world within itself complete with its own poli-

If you were renowned for being the smart person in your school you may find the first fewmonths a little jarring but ultimately rewarding and refreshing

tics, political scandals, diverse society, celebrity culture with actual Trinity ‘celebrities’ highlighted in the ‘Trinity 20’ and even its own personal zeitgeist separate from that of the rest of the country. It can be an insular society at times and is often ripe for ridicule but for the most part it is a wonderful place to be and to study. Now I will invite you to take off your scarf (which I must stress is essential) and satchel (fairly essential) and to get involved (for example UT is always looking for staff writers) and enjoy your time as Trinity College student. It’s going to be fantastic!

The University Time

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UT Opinion

Tuesday 17th september 2013

13

PRE-BUDGET LAUNCH PARTY

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Editorial Editor Leanna Byrne

ust last week Dublin Labour MEP Emer Costello was pictured smiling out in Dún Laoghaire nestled in the middle of a group of students holding placards saying “your future”. Speaking at the Youth Guarantee Conference, her message was clear: youth unemployment is the greatest crisis we face.

There is little objectionable to statements like these. As many as one in four under-25s are out of work, 62,000 young people are unable to find jobs and every student can name a handful of their friends that have been forced to emigrate. The combination of stark figures, anecdotal evidence and invites to “going away” parties paints the picture of a lost generation.

Even students that find themselves in the position to get into university are now being hit by rising rent prices in

Dublin and no real changes to the ef- ticularly acute this week as they see its ficiency of Student Universal Support support dropping by two more points.

According to opinion polls they are the Ireland (SUSI).

However, there is little to say that any ‘fourth party’, 7 per cent behind Sinn of the harsh realities facing students Féin and gain 13 per cent less than are going to change anytime soon. support than Independents. You can Apart from various photo opportuni- be sure that we’ll be seeing more Laties for politicians sticking their heads bour backbenchers offering their supthrough photo frames What students are port to students in their of need. and calling on the govfighting for are the time But this all seems very ernment for the sake of table scraps familiar. It seems that all calling on the governof the bodies concerned ment, there has been nothing substantial done to relieve are just going through the traditional the pressure on students. Reports have pre-budget motions. The fact of the been published and articles have been matter is that it might just be beyond written about them, only to fall on their control. deaf governmental ears who receive After all, there will be no changes to the so many ‘calls’ they now leave their system of third-level fees. Ruairí Quinn will continue to increase the student phone on silent.

Worries in the Labour Party are par- registration charge to €3,000 by 2016

and student grants are still on the table to take a hit in the upcoming budget.

This year we have already seen 800 students that have lost their grants due to the lowering of the income threshold, with even more expected to be affected by further cuts.

Even if students are not hit as badly as we have been in previous budgets, we cannot say in all seriousness that we have succeeded in any way. The foundations for a lost generation have already been set in stone, with measures that are not going to be changed, despite any amount of calls to our minister.

We will chant passionately and we will mean it. But, what students are fighting for now are the table scraps.

LITTLE CHANGE IN ATTITUDE TOWARDS STUDENTS

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or the past two months Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) has been inundated with students seeking help from the Accommodation Advisory Service. While they were located on the first floor queues would be out the door with worried students trying to find somewhere to live for the academic year.

These are typical signs of a rent crisis in Dublin. Although students are not the only ones who are affected by the rising prices in rent and the lowering of places that are available, the attitude towards students looking to find accommodation has been disgraceful.

The best example of how students are being treated by landlords can be found in the features section of The University Times, as Drew Wilkinson

luas to turn things around.

In terms of students, the public are very fickle. This is all well and good if it is simply a sensationalist story, but when this attitude leaks over into the treatment of the many because of a few it creates a dangerous precedent.

With support and services for students being cut across the country, the situation is continually getting worse. So, if you’re a landlord and hoops to be considered for a dive in D1 you have made the conscious deciknow, TV3 might make a game show image of the drunk layabout that sion to rent to students, try to be a litgets handed a degree at the end of tle bit more open minded about the out of it soon enough. crisis many of them are facing.

The Accommodation Advisory three or four years ‘on the sesh’.

Service have regularly been in con- Currently the media have latched tact with The University Times about onto the stories about student hardlandlords looking to charge €300 ship and the surmounting pressure euro a week to live in a box room, or many of us are facing; however, that specifically asking for ‘postgradu- is not to say that there will not be a ates only’. Other calls have been even segment on Joe Duffy about some more disappointing as some land- kind of Freshers’ Week fiasco on the describes a situation where he has lords that are renting out rooms in had to lie through his teeth about their home would request that stustudying for a Masters while sport- dents would not use the kitchen or ing a suit. The process of renting has dining area. They wish them to neibecome so ridiculous that landlords ther be seen nor heard. are making people jump through This leads to the age old question hoops to be considered for a dive in about the student stereotype. The D 1 .

Y o u The process of renting has become so ridiculous never that landlords are making people jump through

The University Times Look out for our UT Workshops taking place next week

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UT Sport

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Tuesday 17th september 2013

The University Times

Running into trouble Sports Editor Conor Bates

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Transfer Window Devaluing Football Senior Staff Writer Carl Kinsella

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It all seemed so sound until the smoke of the battlefield cleared and the transfer window slammed shut (it never closes, only slams). Now Spurs are left with Danny Rose as the only left-back in their squad, and Michael Dawson as a firstchoice centre-half as he takes over from Ledley King’s vital role as the personification of a punctured wheel.

The ‘because-we-can’ attitude is an affliction that has finally begun to trickle down to the smaller clubs. Instead of contenting themselves with the excellent signings of Gareth Barry and Romelu Lukaku for a combined fee of very little (as both are loan deals), Everton chose to supplement these players by paying upwards of £20m to Wigan for Arouna Kone (who at 30, possesses a fraction of Lukaku’s quality) and James McCarthy, a player whose potential does not nearly match that of Everton’s own Ross Barkley. West Brom somehow saw fit to shell out £6m for Victory Anichebe, an injury addled carthorse who averages roughly two league goals per season. Even ManSpurs opted to sign four attack-minded chester United PLGĆ HOGHUV ZKR DUHQèW TXLWH DV JRRG DV panicked, throwing an outrageous Bale and just the one striker to convert £27m at a problem the answer to all their creativity into goals. which has been sitcreativity. Spurs smashed their transfer ting on their bench in the form of Shinji record time and again with signing af- Kagawa. Dumped on Old Trafford’s ter signing, spending enough money to doorstep was Marouane Fellaini, a busturn their squad (whom Arsenal nar- tling Belgian who plays his best football rowly pipped to 4th last season) into with his elbows.

However, and as ever, Jose Mourinho genuine title contenders.

And yet title contenders they are took home the whole cake when it came not. But why? Spurs opted to sign four to the transfer most tainted by off-theattack-minded midfielders who aren’t pitch tactics. In August, Chelsea lay in quite as good as Bale and just the one wait for Brazilian midfielder Willian to striker to convert all their creativity into complete his medical at Spurs before goals. AVB and Baldini are well aware owner Roman Abramovic took it upon that chance-creation is not what made himself to yank a few strings with his Gareth Bale, nor is it what Spurs will friend Suleyman Kerimov, the man selllack this year. Gareth Bale made his ing the player in question. At a lower name on the kind of goals that give a price than the one Spurs had agreed player the game-changer status that with Anzhi Makhachkala, Mourinho got makes men like Florentino Perez sit up his man - a man likely to find himself and take notice. Spurs were faced with marinating in the margins at Stamford the age-old conundrum of quantity ver- Bridge where he faces stiff competition sus quality, or to give potentially bril- from Mata, Hazard, Oscar and Schurrle. liant players like Erik Lamela their due, The prodigal Portuguese has exhibited a quantity versus the right kind of quality. clear lack of faith in every striker at his The opportunity to sign two guaranteed club so far this season, yet thought it best goal-scorers and Mesut Ozil, a player to fork over £30m for the sake of playing whose current levels of creativity rival if Godfather to Villas-Boas’ upstart. The not surpass Bale’s, was there for the tak- move leaves Chelsea short-changed up front, relying on an aging Eto’o, a waning and Spurs spurned it.

Real Madrid’s generous-to-say-the- taway Ba and Fernando Torres, whose least offer for Bale gave Spurs some- profligacy with the ball perfectly mirrors thing they’d never had before: a chance that of Premier League clubs with their to smash-and-grab their way to a new wallets.

Less and less is the transfer window squad, like Chelsea and City can whensoever the moods takes them. Daniel a welcome opportunity for Premier Levy’s life flashed before his eyes and he League clubs to identify their weaknesssaw his name in lights, plastered across es and strengthen their squads. Instead Twitter timelines; ‘A Socratic Wonder of it has taken up a new function, serving Transfer Negotiation’. (It should be not- as the frenetic and protracted prologue ed that in his twelve years as the owner to the Gillette Soccer Saturday-Ford Suof Spurs, he has negotiated his way to a per Sunday soap opera, with every club return of exactly one trophy.) Spurs sent clambering for its cut-to-commercial a clear message to the big-spenders, the moment, each hoping they don’t get squad-augmenters, the quality-hogs. their fingers caught in the only window “We can sit just as many millions of in the world that never closes gently. pounds on our bench as you this year”. uspend disbelief or don’t; football doesn’t care. If nothing else Gareth Bale’s €100 million (£85m) move to Real Madrid, the obligatory ‘saga’ of this summer, proves that once the men at the very top end of the sport take leave of their senses, there are few straws of sanity in the transfer market left to which we can clutch. Florentino Perez, president of Real Madrid, is one such man.

Willing to wildly overpay Tottenham Hotspur for Wales’ finest wizard since David Lloyd George, Perez kicked into motion a megabucks merry-go-round from which many of Europe’s elite clubs emerged dizzied and dazed.

Spurs hungrily snapped up their shot to spend as though they were a club reinforced with the financial titanium of oil tycoon-ery. Their Technical Director, Franco Baldini, waded into the sea, home to the ‘plenty more fish’ you’ve heard so much about, and came back to White Hart Lane lugging a net bulging with six new players that Andre VillasBoas hopes will replace Bale’s goals and

hen Roger Bannister broke ‘the four minute mile’ in 1954, the world took notice. At the time, this was an athlete pushing the limits at this distance of running; something never seen before, that no one thought was possible. It was a pure and purist accomplishment, but one that has faded into the realm of yore and pub quiz knowledge. Conversely, when you examine the similarly implausible achievements of Usain Bolt more recently, it’s hard to imagine that they would ever disappear into perceived mediocrity. When he took to the track in the 2013 World Championships, he did it as the world record holder in 100m sprinting, with an incomprehensible record of 9.58 seconds. The record for the mile now stands at 3:43, and the current belief is that barring any unprecedented developments, this truly is the best we can ever hope for. This is the wall. Without drugs, of course.

The difference between Bannister’s and Bolt’s achievements spans decades of improved athletic technology, globalisation, media coverage and, most pertinently, performance enhancing substances. Over the last number of years, athletic competition has come under increasing scrutiny in relation to the use of performance enhancing drug and doping practices, with more athletes now than ever being caught cheating, most recently well known names like Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay. As of yet, Usain Bolt has never tested positively for any banned substances, and we have lived quite happily numb in this regard. But Bolt’s achievements are superhuman, and at some point, we may have to face the possibility that the Jamaican star cheated his way to two Olympic golds. The question then becomes, if his record falls, how far back do we have to go before we reach the true world record in the 100 metres, the pinnacle of human sprinting achievement? Who is really the fastest man in history?

The highest profile emergence of the doping problems in the 100 metres came in Seoul, in 1988, when Ben Johnson was stripped of his gold medal, and world record of 9.79 seconds, after a positive steroid test. The race was dubbed “the dirtiest race in history”, as five of the eight finalists were found to have been involved with drugs at the time, or at another closely timed point of their career. The gold was instead awarded to American ‘hero’ Carl Lewis, who himself was found to have taken drugs in training and qualifying, but was cleared by the US Olympic Committee to compete anyway. Incidentally,

Lewis also stepped out of his lane a number of times during the race which should have resulted in a disqualification; politics in the sport at the time kept Lewis on the podium.

Many runners at the time, Lewis among them, were also believed to have used human growth hormone during the offseason. In a recent ESPN documentary, 9.79*, directed by Daniel Gordon, specific coaches of the various athletes in the race all but admit to providing their athletes with performance enhancers. They claim they had to, as everyone else was, and Performance Enhancing Drugs gave their athlete a fair chance.

Nowadays, we take for granted the celebrity status and marketing campaigns that come with professional athletes, but at the time these phenomena were only beginning. The possibility for success grew massively if you could attract a big name sponsor to line your pockets. The choice now became take drugs, win, and share in the boundless glory of globalisation, or take the moral high ground and fade into obscurity. Usain Bolt has certainly reaped the rewards of success.

A simple examination of Bolt is enough to cast doubt on his abilities. Consider, first, his running style. A description of the Jamaican’s running technique would include the words ‘light’, ‘unorthodox’, ‘distinctive’ and at times ‘lethargic’. Of course, it is better for athletes to be toned and loose in a race, rather than tense, but Bolt stands alone in the ‘laid-back’ department of modern running. Similarly, if you look at recent Jamaican trends in sprinting, their meteoric rise, and numerous incidents of athletes being caught doping, five in 2009, two in 2011 and now Powell, it is safe to say that their whole programme is troublesome. The records of Justin Gatlin and Tim Montgomery were

also rescinded for failed drug tests, and given the fact of Ben Johnson’s misgivings bringing him to 9.79 seconds, it’s also safe to assume the true record lies behind him.

Dr. Don Catlin, a pioneer and purveyor of the anti-doping cause in major sport, has claimed that he recently began testing old samples of the major athletes of the time, using new technology, and decided to discontinue his efforts after seeing the sheer volume of doping that was happening; he simply didn’t want to know about it anymore.

To run the 100m in ten seconds means averaging a speed of 10m/s, from a standing start. This is quite difficult, to say the least, and in reality, the wall, and the true record, can’t lie much beyond this. Ironically enough, the record probably lies with an athlete from the 1988 final. Calvin Smith, an American sprinter, was reaching the end of his career by the time he got to Seoul. But before Johnson and Lewis in 1988, Smith ran 9.93 in 1983. Smith finished fourth in 1988, and was ultimately elevated to third place, but most importantly, he never failed a drug test in his career; when all around him were doping, he still kept pace.

In the world we live in now, the world of mass media celebrity endorsement and soundbite culture, people want the best and the fastest athletes to represent their products and lifestyles. This is obviously true to the point of a doping confirmation. The problem with drugs is that they diminish the value of real sporting achievement. While we can only speculate as to the possibility of Usain Bolt et al. being on drugs, it is definitely worthy of speculation. The wall, the limit of human achievement in 100m sprinting has been artificially overcome, this is a fact. The unknown aspect is merely the extent.

DUHAC on the &UHVW RI WKH +LOO

Sports Editor Conor Bates “In truth I owe my love of sport to DUHAC.” With an introduction like this it’s hard to see anything other than passion emanating from this year’s Harriers captain, Maria O’Sullivan. The club is coming off the back of a very impressive year in terms of individual and group achievements, and the woman now charged with carrying the Harriers mantle is certainly more than capable of carrying on the great recent successes of DUHAC. To say that O’Sullivan has had a bountiful year is an immeasurable understatement.

“It has been amazing for me. In February I won the Athletics Ireland National Intermediate Championship in 5000m and later that

month my club team, Raheny Shamrocks, won the National Inter Club Title. Best of all, this means we’ve qualified for the European Club Championships this coming year. This year I also represented Ireland, for my second time, in the Great Trail Challenge in Karrimor, England. I wrapped my club year off with a win in the U23 National Championship in the 5000m.” Amidst a plethora of personal and club achievements, Maria lauds her DUHAC wins as her favourite. A win in the 3000m Outdoors led to a place on the Irish University team to race against Scotland, and against Ivy League schools Dartmouth and Brown. “The most important race for me this year was the Intervarsity Cross Country Championship. I’d been on the team when we won silver in 2011 and bronze in 2012. To place second personally and get the overall team win was the best

feeling. Needless to say everyone was delighted with the win.”

The club is growing in stature all the time, in terms of both on-course successes and casual running numbers, and Maria sees maintaining membership levels as imperative to her role as a steward of the club. “The main goal is to keep numbers up, but we cater to all levels. For a new member, that first run can be a big shock to the system, but it’s definitely worth keeping going. Running is a unique sport; there are no half-times and you do it regardless of the weather. There’s always someone out there running, and we’ve gotten full, strong teams out to events last year. We want to keep that up. Obviously then as well, we want to improve on our growing medal hauls and try to keep people beating personal bests and Trinity records.”

The success of DUHAC over recent years is galvanising the club as a whole. It now has a very solid foundation and mission which allows individuals like Maria to flourish. On her personal ambitions for the year O’Sullivan wants: “to give back to the club.

Prefontaine once said, ‘To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift’ and this idea has really hit home for me. Being a runner is a lifestyle choice, hopefully I can encourage others to see the benefits of running. Most people are tired after a long day of college and pick the couch over exercise. I believe that it’s better to rejuvenate your energy by going for a run.” Maria’s biggest ambition, however, would see her follow in the footsteps of last year’s Harriers captain, Sam Mealy; to qualify and compete at the European Championships in December. With a focus and desire as resolute as Maria’s, it’s safe to say that DUHAC should be in for another productive season.

The University Time

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UT Sport 15

Tuesday 17th september 2013

Off-Season Adjustments Key to Hockey Success Deputy Sports Editor Stephen Ludgate

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fter a promising start, and a disappointing end to last season, Dublin University Hockey Club has undergone several changes in personnel over the summer. Former coach Billy Evans has departed, and Simon Filgas has taken on the role in his place. Filgas brings a wealth of experience with him, having won over one hundred international caps as a player. As a coach he has won a number of Leinster Division One titles along with several Irish Senior Cups. He has also worked as Leinster and Munster head coach as well

holding a spell as the Irish national be made to the squad before the seaassistant coach. son begins on the 21st of September, There has also been some turnover as Freshers’ Week has traditionally in the playing squad, with last year’s brought some talent to the club. captain, Niall Noonan, moving on, Leinster Division Two has also unalong with Steven Roberts and Stu dergone much change over the sumMalcolm. One of last year’s stars, Steven Nolan, spends the year on Filgas brings a wealth of experiErasmus in Madrid. Thilo Becker ence with him, having won over has joined the club from rivals one hundred international caps Three Rock Rovers along with as a player.

Geoff Garrett from Pembroke, both of whom look to be great addi- mer with the number of teams being tions to the squad. Geoff brings ex- increased from six to ten. Second perience to the club having been a XI’s have been allowed promotion member of Pembroke’s First XI for into the division for the first time the last number of years. It’s also and this year Pembroke, Monkshoped that a few more additions will town, Three Rock Rovers and YMCA

seconds teams have all been promoted, which should make the division vastly more competitive.

Pre-season for the club began on the 24th August, however it has been a difficult start to the year with many members of the squad away, until recently. The first team have played two pre-season friendlies so far, against Railway Union and Rathgar, both of which ended in defeat. The team has been showing improvements over the last few weeks and there is real belief that this is the year that Trinity can gain promotion back into Division One. As the club fields four teams, catering for all levels, there is much inter-

est across the board, and a lot of talented players filtering down through the various squads. As the First XI strive for victories and promotion, the aim and formula is the same for the other panels within the club.

The work in the off-season, in terms of recruiting new squad members and attracting a new coach, should go a long way to building the success of the club, once initial teething issues are overcome. With a strong foundation to work from, there are few things that will hold Trinity back from their overall goal of promotion, as the season unfolds.

The Bluffers’ Guide to American Sports

Editor at Large Colm O’Donnell

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t’s about that time of year when you’ve noticed that those truly dedicated sports fans friends of yours are posting obscure late night statuses about something called ‘american football’ and ‘touchdowns.’ You’ve ob-

served this phenomenon before from a distance, but this time you want in.

UT is here to help. Before you jump into debates about American Football on this side of the Atlantic, know this, fans from here fall mainly into those who know very little and just enjoy the games as a spectacle, and those addicts who’ve fallen under the spell of the

games and spend large percentages of Popularity of the game is growing division, so best of luck figuring out their waking hours following them. in Ireland exponentially, facilitated in who to root for. For me, I just enjoy the At this point in the calendar we’re part by the eagerness of some college spectacle, the pageantry of the marchthree weeks into the college football teams to schedule a game here,with ing bands, the excitement that comes season stateside and just finished week the Notre Dame - Navy encounter in with the more high scoring nature of two of the NFL season. The best advice the Aviva last year and the Penn State the college game, the ability to have I can give you is to pick a NFL team out - UCF game scheduled to take place in over 115,000 fans in a stadium (Michof a hat and blindly follow them. Ex- Croke Park in September 2014 hope- igan-Notre Dame last week), but to ceptions to this each their own. If you are if you’ve spent The best advice I can give you is to pick a NFL team out of are a sports enthusia large amount of ast, don’t be afraid to a hat and blindly follow them. time in a city with give gridiron a try, you a team and feel some sort of loyalty to- fully the first of many. In the hopeful won’t regret it. wards that place, or if you’ve got fam- event that London gets a NFL team I On a side note, the month of Ocily somewhere, (pro tip: an easy way to can easily see one of their home games tober contains the baseball playoffs, get cheap team gear). In order to un- every year being played in Dublin. In a truly splendid time to stay up until derstand the game, it’s going to take addition to this the domestic league 4am watching the sport that used to at least three or four weeks watching is growing every season, with Trinity’s be known as ‘America’s Pastime.’ They on your own and listening to the com- own American Football club doing play a 162 game regular season in Mamentary while learning the rules as better each year. jor League Baseball (MLB) so by the best you can. I’m six years into it at this Once you’ve conquered the ini- time they get to this end of the season point and still get confused sometimes. tial barrier, the NFL, feel free to move it’s all finely tuned machines, making Playing Madden is also very beneficial down to the NCAA (collegiate) level, for great sporting drama. in the long run. this contains 125 teams in the first

Passion for sport?

Why not write for the sports section?

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UT Sport

Tuesday 17th september 2013

Summer Sport Roundup Fencing

Sports Editor Conor Bates

Rowing Athletics In domestic athletics, Trinity student Eamonn Fahey claimed a national championship in the long jump, at Morton Stadium, Santry. The DUHAC and Donore Harriers athlete recorded a jump of 7.20 metres, improving on his previous best of 7.09 metres to become Ireland’s long jump champion

Another valiant summer for Trinity’s two rowing clubs saw the DULBC take home a number of awards at the National Championships. Three wins, in the Inter 8+, the Inter 2- and the Inter 1X, gave Trinity’s women much to cheer about in July. The men had a similar fortune in Cork with the Novice 8+ taking the prize of national champions. At the Henley regatta, Trinity made it through their first round with a ¾ length win over the University of Virginia ‘A’s. They were bested at the quarter final stage by Isis, Oxford, by just over a length.

A total of nine Trinity fencers were selected to compete in this year’s Student Five Nations competition in Birmingham. With eight DUFC fencers called up to the Irish squad, and one representing Northern Ireland, there was a heavily vested interest in the tournament proceedings. Ultimately it was Ciara O’Connor’s Northern Ireland team who fared better, placing third overall, while her Irish DUFC counterparts finished in fourth place. With this volume of representation, we can expect another big year from one of Trinity’s premier sporting clubs.

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The University Times

Rugby

American Football

A notable absence to the Trinity sporting calendar this year will be the College Park rugby pitch. The pitch, home to Trinity’s men’s and ladies rugby games, had come under increasing pressure over the last few years with many training sessions and matches taking place. It had succumbed to poor weather and flooding on many occasions, and the decision was taken to improve the standard of the College Park facility. A recent DUCAC press release declares that work is finished on the pitch and it will be allowed to grow until August 2014. For the coming season, home games will be played in Santry or in other local rugby clubs.

Trinity’s American football team had another resounding summer, reaching a new height once again. After piledriving through their conference, the team reached the semi-finals of the Shamrock Bowl competition, where they were bested by local rivals, the Dublin Rebels. In addition to their great domestic run, the team was also selected to play in the Atlantic Cup; western Europe’s premier amateur football tournament. Trinity beat the Brussels Tigers in a tense semi-final before succumbing to eventual Shamrock Bowl champions, the Belfast Trojans, in the Atlantic Cup final.

DULBC Strike Gold at National Championships

Contributing Writer Sally O’Brien

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y mid-June, we all had our daily routine. Eat, sleep, work and row. The number of training sessions became fewer and fewer and this only meant one thing: the National Championships were fast approaching. Within the rowing calendar, regattas are scheduled all around Ireland from the start of April to the end of June, all of which provide essential race practice for the central event in the rowing calendar, Champs.

Each race allows you to try out different race plans, to see how fast you can go, and to put the fear in the other competitors at the start line. Champs, however, is one of those events that no matter how fast you have been all year, and no matter how many times you’ve beaten your competitors, it all could go incredibly wrong.

From the moment exams ended, each DULBC member had one goal in sight; competing at National Championships.

All of the early morning erg sessions in the gym, all the cold and rainy rowing sessions in Blessington, and all the painfully sore blisters on the hands were in preparation for this one weekend in mid-July. Within the pre-championship regattas, almost all of the crews racing Champs had an opportunity to see how good they really were. And, with consistent wins in events like Inter 2x, Inter 1x, Novice 8+, Novice 4+, Senior 8+ and many more boats, DULBC knew as a club there was a good chance in con-

tending for a National Championship come July.

The commitment required was gruelling for most, but sometimes that wasn’t even the hard part about the Champs build up. Each two hour training session in Blessington, beginning either in the early morning or sometimes late evening so that a full day could still be had by all crew members, most likely involved race prep pieces, meaning that you would have to push yourself to your absolute limit over and over again until you had nothing left to give. It would be worth it though to cross that finish line first.

After the last training session, the boats were de-rigged, trailers loaded and the boathouse bay in Blessington closed. There was nothing more to do from there on in. On Wednesday 17th July, DULBC travelled down to Cork, rigged the boats and rowed the course in practice. Racing began on Friday, with DULBC having crews competing in the Novice 4+, Inter 2-, Senior 4- and Inter 8+. Each crew approached the start line knowing that there was nothing else they could do except battle their way down the 2000m stretch on Iniscarra Lake. For the two Novice 4+s and the Senior 4-, the outcome wasn’t what they hoped for but gave it their all against the other crews. The Inter 2-, of Sally O’Brien (stroke) and Gillian Crowe (bow), having never raced in that combination before, surprised themselves as they won their heat and were in a commanding start position for the final.

Racing against five other competitive crews, the girls knew they had to blast out of the blocks in the final and to try

and snatch an early lead. They did just this, blitzing the course and winning the race by twenty seconds, the largest winning margin of the championships.

As an added bonus to the National Title, as this boat class event was the first of its kind, DULBC go down in history as inaugural winners.

The celebrations of this win were put on ice, as later that afternoon, DULBC were racing in a straight final of the Inter 8+. The crew of Niamh Williams (cox), Katie Phelan (stroke), Georgia Richard (7), Sally O’Brien (6), Deirbhile Tuite (5), Amy Nash (4), Heather Crowley (3), Sinead Greenan (2) and Gillian Crowe (bow) had only been formed weeks before but showed potential to be a fast crew. The race was neck and neck from start to finish, with Galway RC taking and holding an early lead over all the other crews. Both DULBC and UCDLBC held onto Galway RC as they lead the race until the final quarter. With 500m to go, the race came down to either DULBC or Galway RC. Approaching the last 100m nobody could call the victor, but DULBC pulled through strongly winning by half a length. National Championship number two was greatly welcomed by the club.

Trying to bring Friday’s success through to the rest of the weekend posed a challenge as many more DULBC crews took to the water. On Saturday morning, the Inter 2x of Sinead Dolan (stroke) and Sally O’Brien (bow) were drawn into the straight final of an event that they dominated in all season.

Unfortunately on the day, the win was not theirs, being beaten by a strong and determined NUIG crew and placing 2nd

Photography: Hazel O’Neill & Eimear Duff in the championship event.

Later that afternoon, two DULBC pairs launched for the Senior 2-’s heats, however both pairs faced very experienced crews and couldn’t make the final of this event. Sunday approached and the final day of racing began. DULBC’s Inter 4+ took to the water in the morning session, but failed to reach the final of this event. Later that afternoon saw the Novice 8+, Senior 8+ and Inter 1x events.

The Novice 8+ which qualified through to the final in their heat were unlucky to only place 6th in their final, but acquitted themselves well, with the majority of the crew only having started rowing at the start of term. The Senior 8+ was up against the big guns of Irish rowing, and gave a strong and hearty performance, placing 4th in the final. The weekend

ended on a high, with both DULBC’s Inter 1xs, Sinead Dolan and Sally O’Brien, making their final and the club was awarded its third National Championship of the year with Sinead Dolan’s commanding win.

After a long year of intense training, hard work and commitment from each and every member and coach in DULBC, this successful championship made everything worthwhile. Once the National Championship pot and national pennant were awarded, the crews looked fondly on how much pain and effort went into achieving this title. At the end of the day, the club got out of the championships what training it put in and can be very proud for such a triumphant end to the season. The aim, as always, is to go one better next year.