The University Observer 20th Anniversary Edition

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the university observer 20th Anniversary edition Welcome to the University Observer’s 20th anniversary commemorative supplement. On this day 20 years ago, Dara O’Briain and Pat Leahy published the first issue of this paper. Born out of the ashes of the Students’ Union News, the Observer quickly became the go-to source for the best writing and reporting in UCD.

Over the years it has experienced many changes, broken some of the biggest stories and launched the careers of many of Ireland’s finest journalists. This supplement aims to celebrate that history, with contributions from two decades of editors, each looking back on their times at the helm of this newspaper.

P2 20th Anniversary

“God, when I think back on it, we more or less lied to them the whole way through the year.”

Pat Leahy, Editor volume I, ‘94/‘95

The University Observer’s first year of life was not an easy one. Pat Leahy looks back the stories, scandals and secrets of the paper’s founding I had finished a law degree; a postgrad hovered; the Bar or Blackhall beckoned. But I had a different idea, and Dara was game. My mother was beside herself. So was Dara’s. Thank goodness the mothers never met to discuss the inadvisability of spending a year farting around college on a newspaper, or we would have been goosed before we started.

I sketched out a vague idea of what we might do. Discussions over pints sharpened it. Dara persuaded the Students’ Union to fund the whole thing. And with that, we were away.

We had decided we wanted to call it the University Observer a long time before we actually got the union to agree to the title. They wanted the word “union” in the masthead; at the very least “college”. Some of them thought “university” was too hoightytoighty (!). Dara managed to avoid throwing his eyes up to heaven; I was not always so successful.

Eventually we got our way. We convinced them that we shared their objectives (promotion of the union, etc) but we were just going about it in a more, ah, subtle way. God, when I think back on it, we more or less lied to them the whole way through the year.

From the outset we were lucky with stories, with a procession of page one leads that were picked up by national newspapers and, more importantly, established the paper as the must-read for students and staff who wanted to know what was going on in their college community. Sometimes the stories literally walked through the door -- as did a philosophy student performed his own sting on a lecturer who was distributing stickers which suggested that condoms were no protection against Aids. Condoms were always big news.

We got into awful scrapes. The union president ordered the print run stopped and the replacement of a story based on a leak of the college budget she had provided herself. We threatened to walk, then stayed. I wrote the story for the Irish Independent, which drove her bonkers, loudly. I affected contrition, eventually; Dara deployed his concerned face a lot. We were predictably appalling in private.

Halfway through the year, the L&H’s men in grey suits arrived to offer Dara the auditorship of the society; the elected auditor had biffed off to the Department of Foreign Affairs (he is currently our man in Warsaw). Having been defeated in an auditorial election a few years earlier (all the best candidates are) and still nurturing a commendable bitterness about it, he initially played hard to

get. He would have to discuss the matter with his co-editor, he told them gravely. He wasn’t sure if his onerous editorial duties could afford him the time to run the society. Oh no, no, the men in grey assured him. They would do all the work. He would just have to turn up on Fridays to chair the meetings. I remarked that this would mirror his arrangements in the Observer. Dara managed to juggle the difficult balancing act of doing as little as possible in two important roles; I managed to embarrass him a few times on Friday nights.

How it began Dara O’Briain, Editor volume I, ‘94/‘95

Listen, it was all a long time ago.

Promises were made, difficult things were said and maybe a few hearts got broken along the way. But the point is, it happened, it’s done and now we have to live with it.

Somebody asked me if I had any photographs of that time. Yeah, there was one, I said, maybe I could dig it out. We’ll send it back they said.

Whatever, keep it, I’m not that person anymore I said. It hurts to see it.

God, we were so young.

Pat is the one on the left.

Dara O’Briain is a stand-up comedian and the host of BBC’s ‘Mock the Week’ and ‘Stargazing Live’.

We both acquired fame (of the college variety, anyway) and girlfriends out of the Observer. I suppose if I am honest this was always part of the reason for doing it in the first place.

I caught the journalism virus and haven’t yet managed to shake it off; Dara went a different route -- upon which he has enjoyed, I gather, some success. Looking back on it, we complemented each other well -- we saw the world in much the same way. It was all the most tremendous fun.

We see each other regularly, and when we do, invariably end up

gassing about the Observer days. We skate over the exhausting hours, the frustration of dealing with the union and the college, the unspoken fear that really, we had no idea what we were doing at all. We remember instead the fun, the excitement of the stories, the unprintable wheezes and -- round about the time of the last drink -- the satisfaction that comes with knowing you are doing something important, and doing it well.

Pat Leahy is Deputy Editor and Political Editor at the Sunday Business Post.

20th Anniversary P3 “We viewed newspapering as a sort of holy grail, a noble calling to speak truth to power.”

Roddy O’Sullivan & Declan Walsh, Editors volume II, ‘95/‘96

Binchy and her friend, Rebecca Daly, that our fate was sealed. During production sessions on Sunday evenings in the offices of The Sunday Tribune in Baggot Street, then edited by College Tribune founder Vincent Browne, our infatuation with The team that edited Volume journalism intensified.

II of the University Observer first met It’s important to recognise the in enemy territory - the offices of the contribution of the Tribune in the late College Tribune. Back in 1991, the 80s and early 90s, because it created Tribune operated from a glorified an environment that showed other broom cupboard under a stairs in the aspiring student journalists what was Arts block. Despite the state of the place, it was the centre of our universe. possible — and, ultimately, paved the way for the Observer.

The editor, Michelle Thomas, was You could describe many of us terrifying and inspirational in equal involved in student publications as measure. Her able collaborator, misfits united by a sense of mission.

Diarmaid Ferriter, was never short of We viewed newspapering as a sort of campaigning zeal. Together, they led fearsome onslaughts against the liberal holy grail, a noble calling to speak truth to power. UCD gave us an instant enemies of the day: the Kevin Barry ecosystem that was perfectly suited Cumann and Opus Dei. for it: gossip and intrigue; oversized It was under the next editor, Sarah

Roddy O’Sullivan and Declan Walsh look back at fond memories of strangely dressed designers, meeting on enemy turf, and the joy of seeing your work in print

egos at the debating societies; hugely ambitious student politicians; and a college administration that we never hesitated to malign.

We took over the editorship of the Observer in 1995 with lofty aims: to produce a newspaper that was exciting and important, and that looked beautiful too. Much of the time, we didn’t reach those heights.

We could be horribly self-important.

We argued over stupid things. We were wrong-headed or, sometimes, just plain wrong. But at other times it worked. You wrote 600 words or took a photograph, it was reproduced thousands of times on paper, people read it and then – just maybe – they took it seriously. When you saw fellow students poring over the paper on the concourse over lunch, it was a complete headrush.

We were lucky to work with a

talented team, many of whom have gone on to strong careers in journalism, including Sinead Ingoldsby, Alan Torney and Siobhan Silke. The rock of the operation was Declan Hackett, a technology wizard (i.e. he could work a Mac) and a man of indefatigable good humour. Together with Shane O’Neill, he toiled with us through production nights in the S.U. offices. Declan had a unique sartorial style. On winter evenings, he would arrive in a kneelength, stonewash denim, sheepskinlined jacket. Hackett’s jacket became part of office legend.

Despite the worst fears of our country mammies, who sent their sons to college in Dublin to get a real job, we managed to salvage careers from our adventures in student journalism.

The Irish Times, The New York Times, RTE and France 24 are among the media groups currently benefitting from

hard lessons learned in Student Union corridor during the mid 1990s. Many of us have remained good friends and, two decades on, still get together for pints.

Would we do it again? You bet.

Since we left, one of the most satisfying things has been to see how the Observer renews itself every year. Shane Hegarty, who followed our stint, re-imagined the paper with a fresh design and new sections. Other made equally bold moves, such as changing the format to Berliner, or creating a website.

If you’re thinking of getting involved with the Observer this year, don’t hesitate. Newspapers, even small ones, can change things. It changed us.

Make the most of it.

Declan Walsh is Pakistan bureau chief for the New York Times.

Roddy O’Sullivan is News Editor at the Irish Times.

“The news content was so thin for the last issue that we just made up the news.”

Shane Hegarty, Editor volume IiI, ‘96/‘97 Shane Hegarty recalls his time at the helm of the good ship Observer, a year of controversial issues and careerchanging opportunities There is nothing so dull as a middle-aged man reminiscing about his student days to a readership that was in nappies at the time. So here goes.

I didn’t keep a diary during my time as editor of the University Observer.

There was no social media timeline of events, because there was no social media. (I genuinely remember the day the internet arrived in UCD, and I’m pretty sure it arrived on the back of a truck.) I don’t have so much as a single picture of us in the Arts Block office.

If we wanted to remember something we had to literally remember it. This

means I have a few probably misremembered sketches of my term.

1. Our first issue featured a student giving the finger, and posters saying: “Why this man hates UCD”. The college authorities tore them down and I remember sitting with someone in charge and arguing that it was a violation of the freedom of expression and independence of the press. Throughout the meeting, he had a look on his face that suggested I was a just the latest line of deluded, know-it-all idiots he’d had to face down in a career he wished was over.

2. My predecessors Roddy O’Sullivan and Declan Walsh were superb newshounds, with an eye for a story that would see them carve great careers. I was not. Instead, we concentrated on features, ripping off the Guardian’s G2

as a quick path to it. The news content was so thin for the last issue that we just made up the news.

3. We had a drugs issue, because these were the ‘E’ years and even Ireland’s Eye did a drugs issue. Our advanced blurb said we would test every drug we could get our hands on and it made a national paper. It was a joke, of course. More or less.

4. Every deadline day a nice man would drive from Meath with a large box and we would have tea and biscuits and chat while the newspaper was sucked slowly from the Mac into his magic device. Eventually, following much creaking and whirring, the large box would collapse with exhaustion and we would have start again.

5. There was a great thrill of getting

the paper and handing it out across the campus. I learned quickly to just press it into people’s hands because asking “do you want the University Observer?” invited a response you wouldn’t want to hear after a 36-hour, sleep free shift trying to get the thing to press.

6. Getting the chance to edit the University Observer was a key moment for me - possibly the turning point, as it was the foundation brick for an entire career that followed. If I hadn’t done it, I’m not sure what I would have ended up doing with my life. Something useful, probably.

7. Outside of the University Observer, there were other fine journalists, with the College Tribune producing John Collins and Conor Lally at the time.

The Examiner’s Cormac O’Keeffe

looked after the Students Union News, the predecessor to the Observer. It should not be overlooked in this anniversary, because it had the same structure and office but just a different face. It was the Pierce Brosnan to the Observer’s Daniel Craig.

It scares me that many of the people reading this weren’t even born when the University Observer was founded. I hate them for that. All that soothes me is knowing that one day they too will be middle-aged, nostalgic and horribly jealous of Dara O Briain’s success.

Shane Hegarty is a former arts editor and current columnist for the Irish Times. He is the author of the forthcoming ‘Darkmouth’ series of fantasy novels for young adults.

P4 20th Anniversary

“I’d phone people’s parents asking them to send their hungover sons and daughters in to college to type up their articles.”

Sinéad Ingoldsby, Editor volume IV, ‘97/‘98 Lawsuits threats, smoky offices, and scooping the nationals. All in a day’s work for a student newspaper, writes Sinéad Ingoldsby ‘UCD to be sued for sexual harassment’, so screamed my first front-page article in the University Observer. My name was spelt wrong in the by-line but I was thrilled. That was until the Women’s Studies society also threatened to sue me, and the newspaper. I wasn’t even in college a wet week and already I was going to get the student newspaper shut down. I was terrified about breaking the news to the editor. I needn’t have worried.

Pat Leahy’s response was to whoop and punch the air. And so it began.

It was 1994. Mary Robinson was President, divorce was illegal, Brit Pop was the rage and Ireland was still winning the Eurovision. When I stepped off the No. 52 dart feeder bus for the first time I was certain of two things. I wanted to be a journalist and I wanted to be at Trinity. The University Observer was a light at the end of the library tunnel. For the next four years, my life revolved around the SU corridor and the tiny smoke filled office with the manky couch and the hole punched in the wall. It was brilliant.

Back then cut and paste was done using a blade, a ruler and Prit stick.

We looked up the phone book, not the internet. I’d never even heard of the internet. Articles were written by hand and contributors were paid in Fosters dollars. If you could type you were handed a floppy disk and sent down to the computer room in the LGs with a fistful of foolscap. We jammed open the fire-escape so that we could sneak into the building during production weekends. There were late night tantrums, the two computers kept crashing and knowing how to use Quark Xpress made you some kind of demigod.

When we should have been studying for our finals Alan Torney and I spent weeks working on our application for the job as co-editors. I cared more about getting that job than getting my degree.

Not quite the Mulder and Scully of student journalism, Alan was neat. I was messy. I wrote things on the backs of envelopes and raged at

him for throwing them away. Before the first issue we came to blows one night on Stephen’s Green. But we did agree on some things. We doubled our advertising rate and introduced full colour pages. Remarkably ahead of our time we banned smoking in the office and stuck up posters during the summer repeats because we wanted contributors who had their priorities right. We accidentally changed the name of the newspaper, adding the The. Our first production weekend was a disaster. By then services had copped on to the fire escape so when they kicked us out of the office we had to move computers and printer to news editor Katherine O’Callaghan’s sitting room. Her parents made us cups of tea.

Alan wrote the editorial on the stairs. I got a nosebleed.

I’ll never forget the buzz of seeing the first issue snapped up in the Arts block.

Our second front page had a photo of a grinning Bertie Ahern with a copy of the University Observer under his oxter

beside the headline ‘Fresher crushed by bus to sue’. It was all about the suing. An attempt to blow up the water tower, allegations of corruption in USI, threats to introduce semesterisation, controversial plans for a student centre and the price of a pint in the bar were the burning issues of Volume IV. Never missing an opportunity for a bit of cheap publicity we ran a double page spread on the findings of our drugs survey which got us loads of attention in the national media.

Some students sometimes take drugs shocker.

Michael Mac Nicholas and Lorraine Brehany were in charge of the satirical centre pages. ‘We expose the swots’ was one memorable feature which involved Michael getting up out of the scratcher at 8am for the first time in years and meeting a photographer in the library to take pictures of the poor unsuspecting eejits who were actually studying.

Gradually we got into a groove with our production system. Every

and I would have earnest debates about what to put in the editorial and fight over whose turn it was to write it.

Late one Sunday night news broke that comedian Dermot Morgan, Father Ted and UCD alumnus, had died suddenly. Shane Hegarty crafted a beautiful tribute piece which we put on the front page. Our ever-patient printer Paul O’Loughlin- Kennedy waited outside in the car park with his engine revving for hours while we changed everything around at the last minute.

When the paper came out the next day we’d beaten the nationals to the story.

Later that week a student came into the office looking for the editor.

A question like that only ever meant trouble so both myself and Alan immediately pointed to the other. The complainant turned out to be Dermot Morgan’s son, Dom, who was in 1st Arts.

He’d dropped in to thank us and say how moved his family had been by what Shane had written. Definitely one of the sweetest memories I have from a year that I still count as the best of my life.

Two decades on and the world is much changed. Times are tougher for newspapers but the University Observer is still going strong. The last time I was in UCD I got lost trying to find the bar. The field beside the old science block where we used to go Friday afternoon Alan would send me knacker drinking is now a car park. down in a short skirt to get special permission from the head of services to The Montrose hotel is long gone. stay in the building over the weekend. And the tiny newspaper office at the end of the library tunnel has become The smoking ban was temporarily an somewhat less tiny office in the lifted and we’d stock up on boxes of Student’s Centre.

Marlborough Lights for design editor Twenty years of life off campus Ed Melvin, whose wages were part may have made me more cynical paid in cigarettes. Alan would drive and less ambitious. But I am very around in his mother’s Ford Fiesta lucky to say that Alan is still one of dropping off film to be developed in my closest friends. Now we put the the Merrion Centre and picking up world to rights in Nearys rather than burgers, chips and Redbull. And the welfare office. I still tell Ed he’s I’d phone people’s parents asking a ride even though he’s married with them to send their hungover sons and daughters in to college to type up their kids. I may not write as much as I’d like to anymore, and at the age articles. of nearly thirty-nine I’m nowhere During the second night without near as sure of myself as I was at sleep things would start to get tetchy. nineteen. But there are still a couple At around four in the morning we’d put on Blur Song 2 and the three of us of things of which I am certain. I want to be a journalist and I am very, would jump around the office. Having very glad that I didn’t get the points learned nothing from my brush with the Women’s Studies Society, I’d try to for Trinity. persuade Ed to lift his Dublin jersey and show me his six pack. He’d banish Sinéad Ingoldsby is a freelance producer and director me to the welfare office where Alan

20th Anniversary P5

“It was July 1998. Waves of pre-millennial angst pounded us. The Rapture was almost here.”

Katherine O’Callaghan & Edward Melvin, Editors volume v, ‘98/‘99 Katherine O’Callaghan and Edward Melvin look back at one of the final volumes of the old millenium, back when you could still smoke in your office and our arts and culture magazine Otwo was born We inherited the title from the defamatory Ingoldsby/Torney era with a new cloud above our heads.

Volume V would be the last volume of this millennium. We felt the weight of a half-decade of history on our backs. The names of the great past editors. Leahy. O’Briain. O’Sullivan Walsh. Hegarty. Torney. Ingoldsby.

All monstrous spectres leaning over our trembling first drafts of editorials, whispering to us that our files were corrupt, our editorials naive, our photo captions low-grade.

The emergence of The Paper from its pre-cambrian era, as the Students Union News (or “The Sun” as it was catchily called), a horrifying newsletter drafted by people who had been elected to posts by their peers, still lived in the memory. It was July 1998.

Waves of pre-millennial angst pounded us. The Rapture was almost here.

On the upside, we had total editorial independence and you could still chain-smoke in the office.

Katherine had been the news editor the previous year and, as editor, was the brains of our operation. Ed was given responsibility for smoking, writing filler pieces at 4am, and hanging around the office giving out beers or Red Bull to contributors.

He bought himself a pager. James Kelleher as design editor was a unique talent, with a mission to entirely rework the paper.

Which we did - ours was the year the paper moved to broadsheet format; the main section we set to cover the deadly serious business of news, investigative reports, opinion, editorial, the various columnists, hot/not lists, and sport. Features, music, entertainment, reviews and listings were moved to a new tabloid supplement, which we christened O2. A mobile phone operator paid us handsomely for the rights some years later, except they didn’t do that. We were also, we believe, the first year to set up a website for the University Observer (though that quickly became a crucifying blend of hand-bashed code and late-night regret).

The year itself was the usual blend of mysterious on-campus goings-on, students’ union wrangling, reviews of obscura and some decidedly odd centre-page spreads. “SWP in corrupt abuse of student services” was one of the frothier news reports. We also revealed that the “Year 2000” bug was set to cost UCD millions in preventative measures. One editorial was memorably entitled “Editorial Headline”.

Our most remarkable news event, however, was one of the more unfathomable episodes in the history of deranged student politics. It revolved around a Poe-esque letter, both scandalous and of dubious origins. It was purportedly sent to the Minister for Education, Micheál Martin, from the SU Education Officer Charlie McConalogue (today a Fianna

Fáil TD). The letter, which was leaked to the Observer, contained a list of student “trouble makers”, all of them well-known characters about college, whom the government should “watch out for” in an upcoming student march.

The letter would have constituted an act of high treason if McConalogue had indeed penned and sent it.

However from the outset, it was clear that there were several peculiarities about the letter.

Then-Minister Martin’s name was spelled as “Michael”, something “an Irish person would never do” as one student representative informed us.

And while our news team’s week-long investigation included numerous unsolicited interviews from people with passionate and stringent opinions on the letter, it also became weirdly apparent that there was no proof that

any such letter had actually reached Government Buildings at all. So where had it actually “leaked” from?

Our chief informant’s tale changed at such an alarming rate that it earned him the moniker “Keyser Soze.” His own alleged source in the Department of Education was a man with no name or telephone number. Our man appeared to be cracking after several interviews, spewing out the names of the dark forces in the periphery of student politics who had asked him to “leak” the letter, but even his “cracks” would lose credibility in subsequent interviews. One union officer burst into tears “from the pressure of it all” during a gentle interview over Hilper’s coffee. We knew there was certainly something afoot when several of the SU’s former political heavyweights marched into our office to inform us

that they would sue us if their good names were besmirched in any way.

Tensions were clearly running high and the subsequent fracas led to no less than an impeachment attempt on the SU President.

Unravelling the nefarious depths of the story was a mammoth feat and James was reduced to accepting the monstrosity of bullet-points on the front page so as to present a reasonably clear picture of the chain of events. Alienating one’s readership with relentless student political shenanigans was always a danger in a student paper. But in this case the whole debacle was so GUBU that it drew a fascination from the student body. We had the delight of spotting students poring over the paper in the restaurant, enthralled by this mad implosion of the union elite.

In retrospect, and having now watched House of Cards, it is clear that some masterstroke of political engineering must have been occurring during this period, and that while we were merrily distracted by Woodwardand-Bernstein visions of successfully deciphering the letter scandal, it will no doubt emerge in years to come that no less than the seeds of the very downfall of the Republic were simultaneously being sown in those murky days of the student union corridors.

No doubt many editors claim this, but we had gifted writers that year, many of whom wrote pieces which we recall still. Seamus Sweeney, Michael MacNicholas, Sarah Egan, Joe O’Donnell, Denise Power, Deborah Staunton, to name a few; all very talented, if generally incapable of coming in under a word count, accepting edits with any grace, or (of course) making a deadline.

From this remove we are somewhat in awe of the chutzpah of our younger selves, who never set any limits as to what might be attempted over the course of a production weekend. It was exhilarating and a privilege and it’s particularly rewarding to see the legacy continued in the University Observer of today.

Edward Melvin is a Director with Publicis Dublin. Katherine O’Callaghan is a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto.

P6 20th Anniversary “What should have been big news in the march of 5000 students on the Dail reflected badly on UCD’s apathy at the time – just 150 turned out from Belfield to Kildare Street.”

Lucy Michael, Editor volume vI, ‘99/‘00 With a whole millennium’s worth of news to review and constantly breaking stories, Vol VI was a chaotic year for news, as Lucy Michael remembers There was a definite pressure on us starting as the Observer’s youngest Editors to date, especially as previous editors had begin to make their mark in mainstream Irish journalism. We were inspired by, and slightly in awe of, our predecessors. We got a slightly bigger office in the SU corridor off the Library Tunnel, big enough for 2 sofas, and society auditors dropped in regularly for chats on their way to the Forum, at least partly as a result of Alan and Katherine’s bravery in replacing the societies page with the Social Diary the previous year. The office was always lively – from 9am to 10pm daily – because we had an amazing team of sub-editors who directed their focus to the things they were most passionate about – music, politics, fashion, culture – and left us to deal with the editorial work and admin that went with the ridiculous deadlines we had set ourselves in our ambition to go almost-weekly. We also had an incredibly talented and diverse team from across almost every faculty in UCD. Without them, we would never have been shortlisted for the Guardian Student Newspaper of the Year UK and Ireland – the first time for the Observer.

Headline news included issues around appointments to jobs in the University and Union, pint prices rising, and students being ripped off by accommodation agencies. What should have been big news in the march of 5000 students on the Dail reflected badly on UCD’s apathy at the time – just 150 turned out from Belfield to Kildare Street. Cruelty to animals appeared several times - firstly in the form of goldfish-swallowing at a C&E Freshers Week Iron Stomach event, and later in the year, animal testing on campus. Smoking-to-be-cool took a dive that year too, with the Arts Block declared a No Smoking Zone, perhaps rightly since our end of year survey showed 69 percent of students to be non-smokers. That trend might have gone upward in the intervening year, while the opposite is probably true of the other 2 key findings: 37 percent of Catholics still attended Mass weekly, and 36 percent of students surveyed claimed never to have taken drugs.

Other stories seem very dated now: in this year the purchase of Carysfort was marked for investigation by the

Moriarty Tribunal, and a Commerce graduate was lauded as one of the first dot.com multi-millionaires.

Over the previous years, LGBT rights had found a home in the Observer, and we tried to make sure that our working ethos reflected our support for equality across the campus, not just in the news pages – nonetheless, it was stories about gender and LGBT issues that produced some of the best and worst responses from our readership. A particular example was in the height

of Valentines fever in February 2000, we featured front page stories both about Blood Bank policies on not taking blood donations from students (or anyone) identifying as LGB, and Science Day being “forced to pull gay kiss” of two female students which was designed to raise money for Crumlin Children’s Hospital through sponsorship. Sarah and I had both been shocked by the setting fire of anti-homophobia posters on campus the previous year. We didn’t handle these issues with the sophistication we

might apply today, but we were proud of the efforts our little team made to address intolerance.

The Millennium might have started worries about Y2K, but the Observer’s production was a low-tech affair. Our photos were still developed at the Fujifilm shop in the Merrion Centre, and we tried to remember to collect the last prints by Saturday morning to reach the edition. War was declared when there was an undeveloped film found on Saturday afternoon.

A computer engineer who saved our

necks on more than one occasion taught us how to fix our own Apple Macs. Our Motorola mobile phones were still bricklike, and text speak was still new. Pocket and disposable cameras went everywhere with us.

Contributors delivered their articles handwritten to the office, and editors and sub-editors typed as much as edited. In any case the Millennium gave us an excuse for a pre-Xmas edition when the news was slow reviewing the best of, oh, the last 1000 years. Not the dizzy heights of student journalism, but good fun nonetheless.

One advantage of the links with societies was an abundance of free tickets for social events, though an ambitious move to almost-weekly production along with the big broadsheet paper tabloid supplement format meant a pretty sleepless year.

Being a female editor of the Observer unfortunately brought little of the desired attention earlier male editors had won from the opposite sex, but the odd stalker or two!

The latter part of the year was marked by an increasing tension with the union as members of Ógra Fianna Fáil swept the boards in the elections and started marking out their plans for the coming year. The appointment of the next editorial team took a nasty political turn, and the emerging conflict drew together the historical body of the Observer contributors in defence of the newspaper. As the row rolled on at home, Sarah and I were starting our J1 summer in San Francisco, and falling out over how we should and could go about preserving editorial independence. We argued loudly all over the city for a while, then settled into J1 life, getting productively employed, drunk and sunburnt, and agreeing to disagree.

I went back to the Observer to help edit the first edition of 2001-2, in a vain attempt to shore up what was still ‘free’ about it, while Sarah staunchly maintained the boycott. We remained friends. It wasn’t an easy time, but the sense of a friendship forged in fire kept us together. Neither Sarah or I are journalists today – I blame the stress of those final months! – though we have gone similar directions, lecturing sociology at Bard College, New York and the University of Ulster respectively.

Lucy Michael is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Ulster and the UK Regional Editor of the Irish Journal of Sociology.

20th Anniversary P7

“From the outset, we wanted a paper that was hard hitting yet entertaining, bold yet informative.”

Daniel McConnell Editor volume VII & VIII, ‘00–‘02

our fun.We also did our best to put out some strong papers during that time.

But it was amazing to work alongside some people who I still consider some of my best friends today.

During our time some major “University Observer Editor developments happened both in terms arrested at Freshers’ Ball” roared the of the paper but also in the wider College Tribune headline.

Oh shit! It was September 2001, and world. On our watch, we abandoned the old office with our one working I had disgraced myself and brought computer for the new windowless, shame upon my family by trying to convince a fine upstanding member of airless office in the Student Centre.

I was also the first solo editor in the Gardai that as pissed as I was, I the paper’s history, as before my was ok to remain behind to socialise time, there had always been a dual when the ‘normal people’ were being editorship. But also we lived through cleared out. Now it is important to and reported on one of the biggest state for the record that I was not stories ever - the attacks on the actually arrested. No dear reader, the truth of the matter is that I was merely World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001. temporarily detained and released “Stop everything and let’s go to the without even being given a caution Forum bar,” said Ros Mac Thoim, our within minutes once the kind officer brilliant designer after he got a text at was certain of my bone fides.

After that, everyone from college bar lunchtime on that sunny day. “Why?” staff to my old lecturers would delight we all asked. “A plane has hit the Twin in slagging me about my exploits. Now Towers in New York,” the text read.

Our tiny office in the Student it would be a lie to say that my year Centre was bustling with senior and a half as editor was always that paper editorial staff and writers who dramatic, but we most certainly had Daniel McConnell looks back on his tenure in the editor’s seat, including the University Observer’s coverage of the 9/11 attacks

reacted with shock at the news. We all dropped what we were doing, quickly rounded the corner of the building and filed into the crowded bar to watch the horrific events unfold on the big screen before us. Some of us worried as we had friends and family members working in New York at the time. It was a world event but it resonated with us all in a very personal way.That deep personal connection was what we sought to bring to our University Observer.

But how would we report on an event that every news organisation was covering? We agonised over how to make our paper different, to make it special. From gathering as much UCD related copy we could, our main news hound, Enda Curran came up with a cracker of a story that the Islamic society in UCD had been placed under surveillance.

The commitment from our team of volunteer writers in those early weeks was incredible. People like Enda, Ros, Steve Cummins, Samantha Libreri, Matt McConnell, Colm Maguire, Juno McEnroe, Eve Rowan, Alec Elliott,

Gearoid O’Connor, Eamonn O’Lionnan and many, many others made the paper a lively entertaining package.

Even my Sunday Independent colleague Niamh Horan played her part, though it is still a matter of great jocularity between us that I sat on an interview panel that rejected her for the position of editor.

Unlike previous volumes of the paper, I as editor was not adverse to being slightly more tabloid in our news stories, and revelled in getting as many sex related stories on page 1 as we could. Escorts being removed from campus went one splash (front page lead), Blow job incident on Student Bar stage was “faked” went another.

But with the talents of Enda, Samantha, Eve and others we also broke some very important yarns that got a lot of national attention.

We revealed the story of the secret £43,000 pay-off to a ‘harassed’ staff member and we also reported on the lecturer who forged his credentials in order to obtain his job and we also broke the story that a proposed Luas Link to UCD was being abandoned.

From the outset, we wanted a paper that was hard hitting yet entertaining, bold yet informative. Inevitably, it put us at odds with our Students’ Union counterparts who more than once threatened to withhold the paper from distribution. That never happened, thankfully, but we certainly pushed their buttons enough times.

Ultimately, it was a real thrill to see our top guys get recognised at the Smedia Awards and to also pick up the Guardian Award for best paper. Like all previous editors, there is a part of me that would love one more go at putting the Observer out, given the sheer craic we had. It was a massive privilege to have steered the ship some through choppy waters and hand it over in some reasonable shape to the next guy. It is a privilege I will forever be grateful for.

Daniel McConnell is currently Group Political Correspondent with Independent News and Media. He is also a published author.

P8 20th Anniversary

“Little known students such as Chris O’Dowd would swing by, angling for publicity for their latest drama production.”

Enda Curran, Editor volume iX, ‘02/‘03 Enda Curran looks back on a year in which the University Observer had bureaus in Paris, London and the Middle East, and managed a graceful recovery from a misspelled poster In keeping with time honoured University Observer tradition this piece is being filed after deadline.

Instead of my usual excuses, this time I will blame the tens of thousands of prodemocracy protestors in Hong Kong who are pushing their way into the history books as I write this. But even amid the clamour, noise and sweltering heat of those protests I can well remember my time at the Observer.

It was a period of great fun, camaraderie and the occasional bit of work. It was also the best backstage pass to College life that anyone could have.

Who could forget the miserable production weekends when we were locked away in a stony cold office, buried deep in the campus with nothing for entertainment only Microsoft Word spell check. Email was still a novelty. And forget Twitter.

On those moments when we would step out for fresh air, the deafening silence on a deserted campus always gave off the feeling that we really should be somewhere else.

But the hours were made easy by the great company. To this day when I hear that Pixies classic ‘Where is My Mind’ it reminds me of music maestro, a certain Mr. Stephen Cummins, who had a superb play list for every production weekend.

On any given day the office could host a range of luminaries and wannabes. Little known students such as Chris O’Dowd would swing by, angling for publicity for their latest drama production, or a future politician could stick their head around the door only to be pushed back out.

Along the way I bumped into one young news hound by the name of Daniel McConnell, who later became editor and made me his news editor.

Few people brought the zeal and energy to driving that paper as Danny

did. While his approach to news gathering was sometimes ‘risqué’-when Danny was in charge we always knew to fasten the seatbelt—it was his drive that rejuvenated the paper. It was working with Danny that we ran the famous ‘Sex Scandal Rocks UCD’ headline. Whether the story had any substance or if indeed the College quivered, who knew, but it was a great headline.Deeply entertaining and with a modicum of talent, I can think of fewer people I would rather have worked under.

And that is probably my biggest takeaway from the Observer. The great friends I got to meet and work with.

My first byline in the Observer was under Edward Melvin and Katherine O’Callaghan who brought a very fresh look and appeal to the paper. If I’m not mistaken I submitted a sports article.

I then signed up with the formidable duo of Lucy Michael and Sarah Egan who worked tirelessly for the paper but made the mistake of appointing myself as sports editor when no one else applied. Readership of the back page plummeted.

My period as editor got off to an auspicious start. In an effort to ramp up recruitment for the paper we printed hundreds of very large posters carrying the iconic image of a civilian sheltering behind a U.N. vehicle during the siege of Sarajevo. The black and white image was emblazoned ‘So you want to be a journalist,’ with some underlying text about how to get in touch, the exact wording I don’t recall.

Of course what we didn’t realize until the hundreds of posters came back from the printers was that there was a typo in the text. Undaunted, a very quick witted Gearoid O’Connor—who also pioneered our website-- suggested we add a sticker to each poster simply stating ‘sub editors also needed.’

And so we did. Painstakingly placing the sticker on every poster.

When we blitzed the campus, it looked like genius. Little did anybody know.

In my time I was fortunate to have the aforementioned Stephen Cummins alongside me in the cockpit. Mr. Cummins, a Meath tragic, guarded his territory like any good section editor.

We first met when he was in the office reviewing the latest album for the band Ash. An encyclopedic knowledge of all music with a particular knack for spotting bands before the masses did, his greatest attribute was his endless supply of free tickets for gigs. He was a pleasure to work with and became a great friend.

In our time no expense was spared.

I believe we opened the paper’s first London bureau staffed by Paul Brady and a Paris bureau helmed by Brian

Flanagan, two stalwarts of college life, and a Middle East bureau too led by Ruth ni Fhionnain. Their only reward being a can of cheap lager at the year’s end.

It is always difficult to mention names without forgetting some valuable ones.

Michael Clark’s ‘Clark on Sport’ became required reading. The news team of Samantha Libreri, Sorcha nic Mathuna, Steven Carroll, Niamh Lyons, Sean Stephens and others showed early signs of their pedigree and why they went on to great things.

Eoghan Casey opened up our science coverage, Cormac McKenna led our photography efforts. Few could have matched the attention to detail and enthusiasm as Emmet Ryan, who once filed a match report over the telephone while on the train back from Cork.

Others, like commentary supreme Eoin Purcell and Johnny Ryan, Jarlath Regan, Colm Coyne, Gearoid O’Connor, John Morrison, Feargal O’Connell all backboned the paper.

Richard Butler was always a friend of the paper among officialdom. Special mention must also go to those alumni who looked out for the Observer, even after leaving campus, chief among them in my time was Rossa Fanning, now a giant at the bar. To those I have omitted, I sincerely apologise.

Every paper needs its war stories.

We had mishaps too, plenty of them, but we always sought to maintain and defend the paper’s integrity and to deal with them in a good natured manner.

After one mishap I was hauled into the Student Union President’s office and told for no good reason to fire the inimitable Mr. Cummins. I said in no circumstances would I do that. After a brief pause, the then Union President looked at his financial controller, and then back at me, and said simply: ‘Ok, you’re fired then.’

And that was it. It was time to pack my bags and move along after a fabulous spin.

Thank you.

Enda Curran is the Wall Street Journal’s Asia Finance Reporter

20th Anniversary P9

“our rivals in the College Tribune thought my name was a pen name, as it couldn’t possibly be real.”

Samantha Libreri, Editor volume X, ‘03/‘04 A bull’s “rampage” in the vet building, a Coca-Cola boycott and endless Apache Pizza; Samantha Libreri tells the strange stories of the University Observer’ tenth year The year was 2000. The Celtic Tiger was in full flight and employment prospects plentiful. Business, banking, technology, teaching…the world was my oyster. So I chose Arts. Actually it chose me through the powers of the CAO. Journalism in DCU had just eluded me. But I wasn’t going to let my dream of being a journalist do the same. I knew that even a qualification in English, Sociology and Greek and Roman Civilizations from Ireland’s largest university wouldn’t be enough.

It took a whole year to pluck up the courage to walk through the door of the University Observer and ask to write.

And it took several such visits before they gave in. But eventually Editor Daniel McConnell would dispatch me on my first assignment and the rest as they say….

I can’t remember what that first story was. But I do remember my first front page ‘Ag Dean Slams First Years’. The Dean of Agriculture didn’t cause any physical harm to his new students. He just gave out about them for some reason. It was a slow news week but I had got my hands on the leaked letter and it was my first taste of shaking up the authorities in any way, shape or form. I was hooked. The thrill of seeing my name on that front page never faded (even though our rivals in the College Tribune thought my name was a pen name as it couldn’t possibly be real). The story I remember in much more detail from that time was when a bull that was visiting the vet school went on a “rampage” around campus causing no actual damage or harm but spawning lots of excitement, questionable eyewitness accounts and urban myths.

None of my first stories rocked the establishment but they helped me understand how large institutions operate, how stories can emerge from them and most importantly how to interview, write and meet a deadline.

After a year as News Editor, a degree in my back pocket and two offers of places on journalism masters I decided I couldn’t leave UCD without at least trying to get the job of Editor of the Observer. It worked and what would

become one of the best and busiest years of my life got underway.

Volume X got off to a slow start. We burst onto the scene with the shocking revelation that library opening hours were being reduced but murmurings soon began that the new left leaning Students’ Union was about to do something big. The following week we broke the news that students would be asked to vote on a boycott of Coca-Cola products on campus. The campaign, which accused the global soft drinks giant of colluding with FARC guerrillas in the deaths of several union leaders in their Colombian bottling plants made national and international headlines. A Colombian Coca-Cola worker came to UCD to back up the SU’s case. Coca Cola took it so seriously they flew in one of the big guys from Latin America to refute

the claims. The referendum passed marginally and the ban came into effect. The story didn’t end with that as an attempt to repeal the ban led to another referendum within the same term. The ban held, narrowly again, after another dramatic campaign.

What we thought was the story of the year was soon eclipsed by two bigger scandals that also made national headlines. The first was when radiography students alleged that their lecturer had told them they must attend an event organised by the controversial Catholic group Opus Dei or their grades could be affected. The other was when some lecturers were accused of homophobia after they sent emails to the LGBT group about their promotion of Rainbow Week. The trial of UCD students for the death of Brian Murphy outside Anabel’s Nightclub in

Dublin also dominated the news that year.

The headlines you’ll never forget but it’s the little things you also remember.

The never-ending production weekends fuelled by Apache pizza and lack of natural light (the office in the old Student Centre had no windows). The ‘Observer stone’ we all gained as a result. My Deputy Editor being rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack (it wasn’t my fault and it was a false alarm…it was actually because of a chair). Waiting for the paper to burn on to several CDs in the early hours of Monday morning. Taking the CDs to Busáras to put them in the 10am bus to Monaghan (yes, even in the noughties). It was a world without Facebook or even Bebo, so all social networking was done in person. The Arts Ball, the Beach Ball, the B&L

Ball, the C&E Ball. This was by far the best part of the job and for that reason, a lot of it can’t be recalled.

The Observer gave me my start in journalism. A month before my tenure as Editor came to an end I got a letter to say I had got a place on the RTE Newsrooms panel. By the end of that year I had secured my dream job with the national broadcaster. Ten years on I’ve been covered all kinds of national and international stories, got to stand on the sidelines and watch historically significant events unfold before my eyes and experienced the thrill of live television and radio reporting. But to date nothing has been as fun as chasing that rampaging bull around campus.

Samantha Libreri is a journalist with RTÉ News.

P10 20th Anniversary

“Sure, we didn’t even get our first solicitor’s letter until Issue 11.”

Eoghan Casey, Editor volume XI, ‘04/‘05 Eoghan Casey reflects on the stories and people who made Volume XI, from the bendy bus to editors shouting about commas My volume of the University Observer was a sedate and largely uneventful period in the paper’s history. The Deputy Editor quit after a fortnight (was it something I said?), the printers went out of business shortly before the first issue and the Students’ Union threatened (variously) closure, defunding, sackings, competing publications and banishment to UCD’s equivalent of the gulags (that weird carbuncle on the underside of the Library Tunnel). But apart from those scarcely noticeable blips it was all plain (nay, stately) sailing. Sure, we didn’t even get our first solicitor’s letter until Issue 11.

In those days, the Student Centre (original part only) was still relatively new, Law was still in Roebuck and Medicine was still (just about) out in Earlsfort Terrace. Just as the new President, Hugh Brady, was driving through a business world-aping makeover of the college that had a very management consultant feel, the SU was tacking hard to the left, various stripes of socialist getting elected on the strength of something of a backlash against a two-term Fianna Fáil SU President (at the time the most noteworthy President with links to Moneygall, County Offaly), whose tenure had descended into a cult of personality. Fees, sit-in-lie-downdragged-out protests at ministers’ visits, semesterisation, modularisation and the dismantling of departments and faculties were consistent features in the headlines.

In the interstices of those dominant story arcs, smaller dramas played out. Like Dublin Bus canning the articulated bus on the venerable No. 10 Route, “Bye Bye to Belfield Bendy Bus” being surely the most shocking headline ever to assault the campus’s collective eyes over its morning coffee.

The shameful state of the on-campus Residences continued to be gradually revealed by revelations about firetrap apartments, missing extinguishers, directions to non-existent escape

stairwells and assembly points half a mile away. In the second semester, a major change was announced to the rules governing the allocation of places in Res. The authorities’ new criteria that a student’s home address be more than 20-odd miles away from Belfield was an implicit admission that allocation was based on something other than need. The official “other” was an alleged lottery. Strangely most people seemed to operate as if one’s prospects of success were animated by something other than randomness.

Something that responded favourably to petitioning county councillors and investing in well-placed gifts of wellaged whiskey. I will leave you, gentle reader, to draw your own conclusion.

Meanwhile, O2, the entertainment supplement featured the only “What’s Hot – What’s Not” worth reading and can take more or less all the credit for any success Willie Mason, KT Tunstall and one Niall Breslin have enjoyed, they having been “discovered” by our entertainment and culture supplement.

The paper did well enough at the Smedias (the annual student media awards), scooping about half-a-dozen gongs (I think). However, yielding the Newspaper of the Year title to Trinity News was a disappointment and means I have to sit at the fish fingers and potato waffles table at every UO reunion. If I had it over, I’d go full tabloid, offend a lot more people and get a lot more legal (and general) threats.

Elsewhere, things moved forward technologically, with a shift to Adobe from Quark design software, the creation of an online presence – such innocent days (!), and uploading the page files to the new printers rather than burning it onto CDs and putting it on a Bus Éireann up to Louth. I’m assured this is what happened. In retrospect, it might have been an elaborate wind-up on the part of the previous editors. I never thought to ask was the CD eligible for a student ticket.

But, like any Volume, the year was defined by the people who made it.

There was a cast of over a hundred contributors and they all ought to be proud of being part of something so

special. Of course, it is invidious to single out certain people for special praise and risk alienating others by omission. But that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

My two heroes of the Volume are Eoghan de Bhulbh and Nathalie Márquez Courtney. It is very tough to convey (and I’m not very good at this conveying-ideas-in-writing business) the sheer hopelessness and loneliness that threatened me early in the summer of 2004 after the premature departure of the appointed Deputy Editor and the failure to get any response to the re-advertised position. Eoghan (no relation) was not a “paper man” but he saw a friend in trouble and identified roles to which he could contribute. More than that, his presence steeled my resolve to arrest and reverse the inauspicious beginnings and fuelled my belief that it was possible. Advertising, logistics and a sufficiently productive summer and Freshers’ Week happened. After that, as he had always warned, Eoghan had to focus on his Master’s Degree and slipped into the background.

Step to the fore, Nathalie Márquez Courtney! Ostensibly the News Editor, Nathalie became the de facto Deputy Editor. Excelling at marshalling the troops, she made the horror of production weekends her problem when she was under no compulsion to do so. In Volume XI, NMC was the most loyal and unstinting servant the University Observer could ever have asked for, to the extent that she even sacrificed studying for her finals on the altar of her love for the paper.

Honourable mentions have to go to Conor and Eleanor, the O2 Editors, who dealt admirably with an enforced shift from tabloid to broadsheet due to the new printers; Natalie Price, who produced some wonderfully artistic arts spreads on that larger canvass; Philip Gilsenan, who lost years off his life that first production weekend; Ciarán and John, who had some official functions but more importantly kept me level by slagging me and shouting about commas; and future editor, Catreeeeeeeona Laverty, who kept Nathalie level by co-authoring

cathartic comment pieces whose inclusion was editorially questionable but mandatory for morale management.

Other section heads and contributors, I love you dearly and value you what you did. It’s just that that windowless, L-shaped, hellhole is a small place and it’s always a tight band of souls who find, to their surprise, that their lives are being lived in it. And, despite the lack of light, oxygen and sleep, I remember

we laughed so much and were still so delighted every time the bales of an issue came tumbling off the delivery truck. When it was all over, we weren’t quite ready to accept that it was the end. It has been almost a decade now but even counting nothing I did since then, I know I lived ten years in that one. Or just aged ten years.

Eoghan Casey is a practising barrister.

20th Anniversary P11

“Do one thing everyday that scares you (but don’t jump into the lake).”

Nathalie Márquez Courtney & Sorcha Nic Mhathúna, Editors volume XII, ‘05/‘06 Sing. Don’t be reckless with other people’s study notes, secrets or hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Read the University Observer. And the College Tribune too. Get involved with college life. Our closest friends Ladies and Gentlemen of the from UCD are those we met not in class of ‘14/15 and beyond, the lecture hall but in the old Student As the song goes, if we could offer Centre. Don’t waste your time on you only one tip for the future, wear seeing life through the feed of your sunscreen. The long-term benefits phone rather than though your own of sunscreen have been proved by experience. scientists whereas the rest of our Look around you, because someday advice has no basis more reliable than you may see a familiar face on TV and our own meandering experience. We squint to recall the person next to you, will dispense this more UCD-specific or who passes you on the concourse advice now. every day. Trawling though our old Enjoy the power and beauty of your editions, we found a rugby interview time in college; oh never mind; you with a second year economics student will not understand the power and beauty of your time in UCD until it has named Rob Kearney and that year we named an athlete called Derval faded.

O’Rourke our sportswoman of the year.

But trust us, in 20 or even 10 years Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin graced the you’ll look back at tagged photos of front cover of our first issue and each yourself in UCD downloaded from edition of the O2 supplement carried a a now long defunct social media band diary penned by Bressie, then of account (Bebo was ours) and recall in The Blizzards. a way you can’t grasp now how much We’ve seen UCD faces from ’05-’06 possibility lay before you and how become local councilors, TDs and fabulous you really looked… even an MEP. And they weren’t all Don’t worry about the future; or SU hacks back in the day. Some worry, but know that worrying is as people from college are now hot shots effective as trying to quickly navigate in industries that didn’t exist when the labyrinth corridors of the Arts we were students, others work crazy block (especially if you’re not an Arts hours as corporate lawyers, while student). The real troubles in your many want to change the world for the life are apt to be things that never better, through jobs like teaching or by crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle volunteering.

Get to know your rivals, you might Tuesday. even marry one of them (Sorcha Make the most of your time on earth, married a former College Tribune and Belfield. Don’t just clock in and clock out for lectures, you’ll be doing that editor earlier this year).

Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes routine in the world of work is ahead. you’re behind… the race is long, and Do one thing everyday that scares in the end, it’s only with yourself. you (but don’t jump into the lake).

Inspired by Baz Luhrmann’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen), Nathalie Márquez Courtney & Sorcha Nic Mhathúna write to their student selves of nine years ago

Remember the exam passes you receive, forget the fails; if you succeed in doing this, tell us how.

Keep your old love letters (or emails, texts and WhatsApps) and copies of the University Observer. Stretch. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people we knew in college didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, and some of the most interesting eternal students still don’t.

Get plenty of sleep. Be kind to your ability to not get hangovers, you’ll miss that when it’s gone. Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll never see your college friends

again, maybe you’ll end up drunkenly dancing with them at their wedding years later; choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can… don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.

Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the

older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

Travel.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

But trust us on the sunscreen…

Nathalie Márquez Courtney is now Editor of Image Interiors and Sorcha Nic Mhathúna is Oxfam Ireland’s Communications and Content Manager. They edited the University Observer in 2005-06.

A look back through the archives of 2005-06: We revealed semesterisation would be in place for all students by September 2006 (back in the day most students enjoyed a long academic year with summer exams only), plans for a campus swimming pool and new student centre (that later became reality), a proposal to locate the National College of Art and Design in UCD (NCAD students staged a series of arty protests against this), anger over the closure of the Sports Bar and the

launch by college authorities of a new UCD logo to become ‘a brand leader’.

A ‘hack attack’ forced the UCDSU website offline, UCD’s Campus Television Network was launched, the Freshers’ Ball was held on campus for the first time and there was also the first UCD Ball headlined by BellX1, while the Quinn Business School’s QSoc emerged as UCD’s biggest society at the same time as most political parties on campus recoded a decline in

membership. During Freshers’ Week, 40 afro wigs mysteriously disappeared from the RetroSoc stand.

The Celtic Tiger was at its highest point and fees including postgraduate were increasing, while a ‘work to play’ survey we conducted found that over half of UCD students were working part-time jobs mainly to fund their social life. Meanwhile, a group calling themselves the ‘Student Action Co-op’ set up a fair trade tea

and coffee stall outside the Arts Café to protest about the high price of food and drink on campus, but faced insurance problems.

Features warned of iPods putting you at danger of being mugged, the growth in illegal downloading (top TV shows downloaded that year included 24, Stargate: Atlantis, The Simpsons, The O.C. and Smallville). A survey of students found that the best thing about UCD was the arrival of wi-fi on

campus.

Embarrassing moments? A few issues into the academic year, a random student called into the office to point out that we were living in the past, in that we had 2004 and not 2005 on the front page. We also had two times issue number 2, and no issue 3.

Legacy: We added some new bits and columns to the paper, including the cantankerous Mystic Mittens horoscope section.

P12 20th Anniversary “People were angry and frustrated, and angry people write letters to the student newspaper.”

Stephen Carroll, Editor volume XIII, ‘06/‘07 Stephen Carroll looks back at Vol XIII, the year that would become know for modularisation and other mistakes Gmail can bring back the strangest memories. I went back seven years into the archives to find some of the messages I sent while Editor, between 2006 and 2007. The vast majority were to and from my Deputy Editor Michelle McCormick, who is also responsible for reminding me of most of the terrible things we let go to print seven years ago.

When someone hands you 40 pages of a newspaper to fill, there are some lessons your learn quite quickly. The first one was to write about stories that affect students. 2006 was the year that UCD’s registration system collapsed under the changeover to modularisation. Students spent days

queuing in buildings around campus trying to get into classes, being turned away or sent elsewhere as the online system buckled under pressure. People were angry and frustrated, and angry people write letters to the student newspaper. That was the second lesson.

We quite often received correspondence from people to point out spelling mistakes, or to respond to an issue that had been raised in previous editions. Then every so often, there were those who were unhappy with something that had been published.

Some were legitimate complaints, others less so. One student wrote to us to point out that despite the fact she’d been pictured leading UCD’s first Pride parade, she was not in fact, gay. She wanted that on record. Fair enough.

Really angry people could go even further, we learned. I think I

might have the honour of being the only editor of this newspaper to have a parody version of the University Observer printed and distributed on campus by an external group that wasn’t happy with our (factually correct) coverage. Most people thankfully spotted it as a fake when they saw it was printed on much higher quality paper than we could afford.

More astonishing were those who didn’t write to us. Imagine our horror when about 24 hours after one edition of the paper had been distributed, one of our writers pointed out that the colourful picture of students making a human pyramid on the front page included an equally colourful wardrobe malfunction by one of the female participants. Nothing like seeing that printed 10,000 times around campus.

Such oversights were thankfully rare. Putting together an issue of the University Observer is a long and sometimes painful process, once described by another former Editor as ‘like giving birth’. She has a baby now, so I must ask her about that again sometime. Long nights with no sleep did produce some interesting editorial decisions, including the time the front page nearly went to print with a title in the masthead that read, “Don’t do that, you’ll go blind,” referring to an article about masturbation. At about 5am on Monday morning, when I’d been in the office for around 20 hours, I moved it to the bottom of the page. That was a poor call on my part.

I felt more confident about some of my other decisions. Making pirate puns in headlines? Great.

Subtlely positioning a scissors over

the photo of a national radio DJ who sent me an obnoxious response to an interview request? No regrets. Excessive use of rhetorical questions? Why not!

The other thing that struck me when reading through past emails is that I had a team of resourceful, creative and motivated people who put in a lot of work for no pay and little thanks.

There are messages at 4am with articles attached, responses to my (less polite) reminders to send images or missing copy, and even a few kind words when the issue was published.

Wonderful as they were, I also learned that nobody turns up to help carry 10,000 copies of the newspaper around campus.

Stephen Carroll is business editor at France24

“Enda Kenny, then leader of the Opposition, returned a call to the office on a Sunday afternoon.”

Rob Lowney & David Neary, Editor & Deputy Editor volume XIV, ‘07/‘08 Rob Lowney and David Neary look back at the year that saw the demise of the Celtic Tiger and changing fortunes for UCD’s students Volume XIV was perhaps quite lucky to be the last volume of the the University Observer to run its course before the death of the Celtic Tiger and the resultant hardships faced by students – and by UCD – in succeeding years.

The economic crash of late 2008 and its long-lasting effects, coupled later with the threat of the re-introduction of tuition fees, came to be big topics for UCD students and the paper – but the 2007/2008 academic year saw students more concerned with how they were going to afford tickets to all the big campus balls, and not so much how they were going to afford rent.

Our news team did uncover the first inklings of financial troubles, however. Volume XIV’s biggest scoop revealed how UCD’s debt had spiraled out of control, with the university €15 million in the red. This giant debt led to a series of budget cuts across the university, the effects of which are still felt in 2014. Similarly, we covered

the story on the first rumblings of the introduction of fees for the Student Health Service, which came into force two years later.

In what was a prelude to the policies of UCD Residences later to come, we revealed how accommodation staff had been searching the web to find evidence of student delinquency on res. In a time when Bebo ruled and

Facebook was unknown to the average student, the advice of being mindful of what you post online generally went unheeded.

Volume XIV put a lens on education and mental health issues. Well-known clinical psychologist Marie Murray penned some wonderful articles offering students advice for dealing with life’s difficulties. We also published

an insightful piece on the rebuilding of the Iraqi education system following the toppling of Saddam Hussein four years previously, thanks to interviews with some of Iraq’s leading academics.

The Registrar, Philip Nolan, sat down with us to talk through the implementation of UCD’s controversial Horizons curriculum – 2008 saw the first graduating class from the modularised system.

A controversy erupted on campus when French right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen was invited to speak at an event, with many students protesting his attendance. In a surprise twist to the story, Enda Kenny, then leader of the Opposition, returned a call to the office on a Sunday afternoon supporting Le Pen’s right to speak – doubtful he’d be so kind these days to phone a student newspaper back!

As for events within the Observer itself, then an underlit cavern in the old Student Centre, it was a trying year at first. The editor, supported by a tireless staff, went four whole issues without a deputy, producing a fine paper at the cost of ceasing production of vitamin D through lack of exposure to sunlight.

There were adventures to be had. A furious drive across town at 4am to collect an article for a 9am print deadline after a contributor’s internet went suspiciously dead.

An early morning covert operation to photograph an elephant at the Veterinary Building that resulted in an unexpected brush with the majesty of nature when the editor stepped on a rat carcass. And then that time we pitched a tent in the middle of campus for a photoshoot to accompany our coverage of the first UCD Festival.

And of course the obligatory namedrop-worthy celebrity interviews; we sat down with the likes of Will Ferrell and Queens of the Stone Age; sadly not simultaneously.

But the crest of our year came early in the spring. We received a suite of state-of-the-art iMacs and a new Mac Pro. Like children at Christmas, we had as much fun playing with the boxes as we did the computers.

Rob Lowney is postgraduate student and works in legal Irish language training; David Neary is a postgraduate student of Film Archives & Preservation at New York University.

20th Anniversary P13

“We were (in our own minds, at least) hugely meticulous.”

Gavan Reilly, Deputy Editor volume II, ‘95/‘96

Gavan Reilly looks back at some of Vol XVI’s finest achievements. First and foremost? An exclusive interview with Jedward Like any good journalist, I should start with apologies to this year’s editors for missing my deadlines (You’re forgiven – Ed). When you’re the one setting deadlines, they’re immovable objects – the breach of which is a mortal sin and one

which throws a regimented, military timetable into anarchic chaos. But when you’re on the receiving end – and you know how breakable they are – they become little more than a general guideline. ‘We’d like you to send your stuff in by noon, but if it’s four days late, sure, whatever.’

What I forgot was that this week’s Observer is a bigger task than most – with not only the regular paper and the Otwo supplement, but also a third

section to commemorate this paper’s 20th birthday.

And it’s for that reason that I should feel particularly guilty about being so late with my piece. Catriona Laverty and I took on a similar burden in January 2010 when we set out an ambitious plan for an epic ‘Review of the Decade’ in our first issue back after the Christmas break – a definitive chronicle of a decade which had seen the internet become a global mass medium and stateless terrorism become the world’s greatest threat.

Planning this was no throwaway exercise – we were (in our own minds, at least) hugely meticulous. Every single interview we got for Otwo was rounded off with a single question – What was your favourite album of the last ten years? – for inclusion in an epic two-page spread, and we even agreed to pare down the size of the newspaper and Otwo so that our designer would have ample time to put the finishing touches to What Would Definitely Be The Greatest Student Newspaper Supplement Ever.

Fast-forward to the Friday evening of production weekend, and things hadn’t quite worked out that way. We were,

naturally, running behind in producing the formal newspaper itself (we were, naively, shocked that UCD would produce so little news over Christmas?)

On top of that, one of the section editors –the most talented writer of our bunch, who was to write seven pieces for the newspaper and supplement – had a personal crisis and disappeared for a week, leaving us thousands of words short and with a desperate scramble for last-minute submissions to plug the gap. The late finish, naturally, left the designer with barely enough time to put the words on the page, let alone give them the finesse we had dearly hoped for.

Parallel to this was a crisis with O2 – where we had no centrefold interview

by Friday evening, yet somehow that night bagged an interview with Jedward, their first interview with any Irish media since elimination from The X Factor. The exclusive was great; knocking out another 1,500 words in a busy weekend was not.

There were other highs and lows throughout the year, of course.

One front-page exclusive had to be deleted from the web within hours amid threats of legal action; another

revealed massive data protection vulnerabilities within UCD, allowing outsiders to access a graduate’s academic records with mere shreds of their personal data. (The latter story ended up helping me to my first ‘proper’ job in journalism at the end of the year.)

Five years later, it’s not the crises I remember – it’s the friendships I forged with my closest colleagues, fattening myself at 2am on an Indian takeaway for the fifth night running, and the level-headedness I learnt when dealing with the myriad challenges of the year – an invaluable professional tool in the real world.

I can’t believe it’s been five years – in fact, I can’t believe the University Observer is now in its third decade, but it’s no surprise that a paper which forges such friendships and delivers such a valuable service would still be going strong in its third decade.

Happy birthday, Observer – long may you reign.

Declan Walsh is Pakistan bureau chief for the New York Times. Roddy O’Sullivan is News Editor at the Irish Times.

“Typing furiously on my computer while shouting into the phone and drinking coffee too quickly is the abiding memory.”

Paul Fennessy, Sports Editor volume XIV, ‘07/‘08 Editor volume XVii, ‘10 Paul Fennessy reflects on his time spent cutting his journalistic teeth reporting on hockey matches while drinking too much Red Bull IT DOESN’T seem like so long ago that I nervously entered the Freshers’ Tent during my first day as a UCD student and spotted a stand with the words ‘The University Observer’ on it.

On the application form, aspiring journalists were required to mark the areas in which they were interested.

Like a typical overly keen first year, I circled music, art, sport, current affairs, photography and just about every choice that was available.

A mere three months later, the sports editor got back to me and was wondering if I had any ideas for an article. The result was ‘Staunton must go’ – a punchy opinion piece calling for the then-Ireland manager to step down after a plethora of disastrous results.

Shortly thereafter, Staunton went and my article was published (not in that order thankfully). “This journalism thing is a lark,” I thought, having no idea of the endless sleepless nights, tears of frustration and vows to stop drinking Red Bull “after this last one” that would soon ensue.

What was particularly cool about that first article was seeing your name in print – it was a thrill that would continue, albeit with somewhat diminishing returns, as I continued to write pieces for the paper over the next five years.

Though it sounds slightly pretentious in hindsight, at the time there was a genuine sense of prestige about simply producing something that people might actually read. The words ‘student journalism’ often tend to evoke thoughts of sloppy, unprofessional articles by people with ideas above their station, but reading through the University Observer for the first

time quickly eradicated any negative preconceptions I might have had. For a free paper with limited resources, the quality of journalism contained within its pages was of a far higher standard than it had any right to be.

Remembering the sports section , the long-running Clark on Sport and Super League columns stand out. I was as inspired and influenced by them as by anything written in a national paper. Moreover, the calibre of interviewees would make any alternative publication envious – one-on-one features with Brian O’Driscoll, Sonia O’Sullivan and Jack Charlton among many others have all featured within these pages.

There was also, of course, the occasional inevitable disaster. For instance, that time I rang the then-captain of the UCD soccer team about the article he was supposed to send in, three hours before the print deadline, only for it to quickly become obvious that he was

out on the lash and had no interest in writing anything. That time I was given the wrong info prior to a basketball match and so showed up midway through, meaning I had to interview a spectator about what had happened in the first half. And of course, that time a design issue led to the score-lines in a match report being reversed – the headline made reference to UCD ‘triumphing’ accompanied with a result suggesting that the opposite was the case.

But despite the occasional awkward moment, typing furiously on my computer while shouting into the phone and drinking coffee too quickly is the abiding memory I’ve taken from my college experience. More than anything else, writing for the paper was what helped define me and so many others as UCD students.

For aspiring journalists how to break into the industry, writing for a student paper is essential. Getting as much

practical experience as possible is more important than any journalism lecture or tutorial can ever be.

Yet despite the last-minute 800word scoreless hockey match reports and interviews with monosyllabic prima donnas I’ve had to churn out in an increasingly panic-stricken state over the years, the most difficult issue for many people can be simply making those first steps into the Freshers’ Tent and signing up. You don’t have to be Shakespeare or have friends in high places as so many people assume, but what will be quickly obvious is that editors love the word ‘yes’ as opposed to ‘I’m working Saturday,’ ‘I have an essay due,’ or ‘the dog ate my column’.

Keep note of that and you may well find yourself grilling Martin O’Neill at an Ireland post-match press conference before you know it.

Paul Fennessy is a staff writer at TheScore.ie

P14 20th Anniversary “Student media, in all of its ever-expanding future forms, needs to be supported.”

Kate Rothwell, Deputy Editor volume XViII, ‘11/‘12

The last year in our notorious Windowless Office of Doom, Kate Rothwell recalls Volume XVIII’s celebrity interviews, swag acquisitions, and sex advice columns Volume XVIII was a product of economically turbulent times. What volume wasn’t, I hear every ex-editor ask. I make this statement because our news stories were often reflective of a year when funding shortages had a particularly dramatic effect. We broke

about how in previous years they would have replaced books that got lost, but now they just remained lost.

When I stepped into the stunning new Student Centre on a visit back to UCD the following year, it seemed to be haunted by the ghost of a Celtic Tiger past. It is a beautiful building, but it was envisioned in more affluent times, and seemed out of place alongside the cutbacks that were being felt in academic areas.

However, it wouldn’t be in any way accurate to paint a picture of a volume that was marked only by news of economic gloom. We fanboyed and fangirled over interviews with Marc Maron, Henry Rollins, Steven Moffat and Maria Bamford in an Otwo that made myself and our editor Jon HozierByrne immensely proud. In fact, every individual section of the paper made us proud on regular occasions. Pieces the Copy Bureau, as it meant not only the news of the Students’ Union being by talented writers were matched with a reduction in services for students, up to one million euro in debt and but also the loss of jobs for members of excellent images often provided by our potentially seeking external financial own photographers, then made into a support, a story that I could never have UCD staff.

We were the last Observer generation thing of visual beauty by our designer. envisioned when I started writing for None of this could have happened to enjoy and endure working from the paper back in the comparatively without our brilliant and inexplicably our Windowless Office of Doom, and flush days of 2007. The Student Bar’s dedicated section editors; they are the as we watched the final construction struggle with losses, which eventually glue that holds any volume together. stages of the new Student Centre, its lead it to shut its doors the following And while we could pay our team in year, was another economically themed swimming pool and cinema contrasted nothing but print copies of a student story that just a few years earlier would sharply with previous battles over reduced library opening hours, and the newspaper, any swag that could be have seemed unthinkable. An angry acquired was duly blagged, and the comment a librarian once made to me student protest followed the closure of

fun and excitement somehow managed to outweigh the exhaustion and the stress. Our time as editors provided us with incredible opportunities breakfast at the French Ambassador’s house, being flown to Brussels to represent Irish student media at the European Commission, and writing a sex advice column under the name Fadora McSexypants.

The legacy of the University Observer deserves to be celebrated, and student media, in all of its ever-expanding future forms, needs to be supported.

Like media on a wider scale, it helps us not only to question and criticise the world, or campus, around us, but also to inform ourselves about its goings-ons and celebrate its successes. Those who get involved train their communication and language skills, gaining experience that will genuinely stand to any career path they may choose.

There is a thrill, pride and immense amount of fun in student journalism that nothing else I have ever done can compete with, and I am sure that the many friends I made during my five years at the University Observer agree with me.

Kate Rothwell now uses her wellhoned interview and editing skills when teaching English and correcting homework in Zurich, Switzerland.

“We organised what was probably the least successful Occupy movement, excluding all the real ones.”

Cormac Duffy, Music Editor volume XVIiI, ‘11/‘12 Editor volume XXI, ‘14/‘15 freedoms fall into the wrong hands.

Otwo Attempts started off as a noble attempt in immersive journalism. Our writers wrote of their first-hand experiences in online dating, donating blood When you get involved in student and getting their personality tested by journalism, you are told that one Dublin’s Scientologists. of the perks of the job is the editoThen somewhere along the way, it rial freedom. Sure, you may get little recognition for the countless hours put became an outlet for our most absurd ideas. Our conceptual approach to the in, and you regularly have to face the sight of students using your hard work format oversold its content somewhat.

We attempted to create a campus to mop up spillages, but you can run superhero, but it was really just our whatever you wish, as long as its legal (and sometimes if its not). The environ- magazine editor George Morahan runment these freedoms create in student ning around in tights. We tried to start a perfume empire by handing out some media is one of creativity, exploration bottles of our own strange concoction and risk-taking; all in all, the perfect around campus. We formed a boyband, welcome to the world of journalism.

Boyz’R’Us, who had exactly one dance All that said, sometimes those

Cormac Duffy details the history of one of the Observer’s stranger features, Otwo Attempts

rehearsal and one very elaborate photoshoot before splitting up. Their fictional album Boyz’R’Us, Girlz’R’U received a rave review in our music section.

We organised what was probably the least successful Occupy movement, excluding all the real ones. “Occupy the SU” lasted about an hour and mainly consisted of five us in a children’s popup tent waving around a red t-shirt on a curtain pole. I made my own currency and left it around campus to try and help solve the financial crisis.

It may sound ridiculous that these stunts were how we spent part of our time (many of us were in final year at the time), but the articles were popular, and some still remember their strange presence in our magazine.

20th Anniversary P15 “If you want to tell stories, the most important thing is to go out and find one.”

Sally Hayden, Contributor volume XVI–XVII, ‘09–‘12 A start in student journalism can bring you to incredible places. Sally Hayden looks at a journey from band interviews to global news reporting There are people who trade in money, and there are people who trade in experiences. If you want to be a journalist you had better be the latter.

The first time I went to a University Observer meeting I was in second year. It was held by the Otwo arts and culture section. A band called Hockey were playing the Academy that night.

“Is anyone willing to interview them?” the then section editor said. “You’d have to leave for town right now.”

Of course I said yes.

One of the most essential lessons for beginner journalists is learning to say yes to things. You’d be surprised how many people hesitate, or come up with excuses, or make their answers overly complicated. With time you’ll feel your experience; you’ll become more selective. That time isn’t now.

I’ve been asked to write about what I’ve done since I left university.

In September 2013 I went to Malawi with a Simon Cumbers student award. Every year Irish Aid funds three students to travel to developing countries and research a topic in memory of Simon Cumbers, an

Irishman and BBC journalist killed while working in Saudi Arabia.

If you want to tell stories, the most important thing is to go out and find one, but working somewhere like Malawi, where “information poverty” is a real phenomenon, you become aware of your responsibilities too. In a situation where fact verification is difficult, your editorial judgement develops very quickly.

After that I went to London to do three months with CNN International.

Working on two of their top shows involved suggesting, contacting and pre-interviewing guests, sourcing graphics, writing scripts and producing vox pops. It was a lot more technical than I had anticipated, but it’s good to add anything you can to your skill set. Breaking news is thrilling, and witnessing first-hand snap rulings on everything from how to present images of Syrian war crimes to who the best interviewee from the Russian ruling party is was invaluable.

Two days after I finished at CNN I flew to Rwanda to cover the commemorations for the twentieth anniversary of the genocide. While there I wrote for the Irish Times, Vice, CNN and World and Media. I also wrote about the experience on blogging platform Medium, and acted as a live

TV correspondent for a digital news channel.

From there I travelled to Burkina Faso to visit a Malian refugee camp and do some work on the Sahel food crisis.

After that I returned to London for a three month placement in the Financial Times. I also covered the Scottish referendum for Vice News, and did a photo shoot for the Sunday Times.

Every story I’ve done I’ve had an interest in, and I think that’s incredibly important. You don’t have to study journalism to be a journalist.

Study something you care about. It’s the things you learn now that will inform the stories you tell later. And there are a few lessons that can’t be taught in lectures.

One of the most important things I’ve learned is not to ask for anything without giving something back. Always research, always pitch ideas, don’t assume that you’re above offering to make tea. Don’t ask to meet someone without reading/hearing/watching their work. Meet deadlines too.

While I was in the Observer I

interviewed Bill Bailey, Colm Toibin, and Kasabian. I met Rizzle Kicks backstage at Marlay Park, and gave a piece on North Korea the questionable title ‘Ding Dong, Kim Jong is Dead’.

Student media gives you this amazing freedom to gain experiences to trade on; to meet people, see things and explore thoughts you wouldn’t otherwise be able to. All you have to do is say yes.

Sally Hayden is a freelance journalist who has worked for CNN and the Financial Times.

“We learned many things over the year, but chief among them was probably to not mock everyone at once.”

Emer Sugrue & Aoife Valentine, Editor & Deputy Editor volume XIX, ‘12/‘13 that those who came before us were ten times the news hounds we were.

It started out as a joke, but it quickly became a genuine fear that “‘UCD grand,’ says man” would be our lead Volume XIX saw the Observer move story for the first issue.

It’s a steep learning curve anyway, from its Windowless Office of Doom but all the fresh air went to our heads in the old student centre into the new student centre, where we were granted and we decided it wasn’t quite steep enough. We added an extra, satirical the veritable luxury of windows. magazine to our workload, mocked Windows that opened, no less. It was far from natural light and fresh air the every single person and organisation of note on campus in it, and cried a Observer was raised, we were told. bit under our desks when the paper This meant our year began rooting through the archives and over a decade looked like it would never actually go to print. It was probably more about of general debris that was probably sentimental for someone. It was some- the prospect of never seeing our beds thing of an intimidating start, because again than never seeing the paper at that point. it pretty much instantly sunk in that We learned many things over we were now the only ones in charge of the year, but chief among them was making sure the news happened, and Emer Sugrue and Aoife Valentine look back at a year of great changes, from the relocation of the Observer’s office to the abolition of Pass-by-Compensation

probably to not mock everyone at once, unless you feel like listening to everyone then tell you in great detail how important they actually are, in response to lighthearted allegations of self-importance. That, and not to use all your good jokes in the first issue.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Our biggest stories were naturally those that affected students most – the closure of the student bar, the UCD Ball being moved far, far away into town, and passing by compensation being abolished. Almost no one wanted to fight rising fees, but everyone was up in arms when they couldn’t fail exams but then pass anyway by magic, or drown their sorrows without moving too far from Newman.

For a campus so filled with students routinely labeled as apathetic, we riled

a good few people up along the way.

Ex-Students’ Union officers crawled out of the woodwork to shout at us on the concourse, despite not even being students of the college.

At one point, we got a call to say someone was throwing away bales of the papers we had only just distributed, because it didn’t quite fit with one of the many referendum campaigns that were run throughout the year. As small women very accepting of our own upper body strength limitations, this was more of a physical nuisance than anything else.

It’s strange to look back on something that happened so recently, but while going through the motions in the paper, you don’t really stop to appreciate just how much the paper is teaching you. Every issue is just

another set of deadlines, and the panic about where the news is going to come from never really fades. It could have just been an extra year spent arsing around campus, avoiding the real world, but what we’ve taken away from our time in the Observer is far more than just an unholy amount of campus newspapers to fill our parents’ attics.

It’s an education in journalism that would have been difficult to rival in any course, some of the best friends we made in all of UCD, and an intense appreciation of sleep we never otherwise would have had. It’s the little things.

Emer Sugrue is a staff writer at Sheology Digital. Aoife Valentine is a freelance journalist with the Irish Times, the Sunday Independent and the Sunday Business Post.

P16 20th Anniversary

Endnote: When Interviews Go Wrong Killian Woods, Sports Editor volume Xvii, ‘09/‘10 Deputy editor volume Xx, ‘13/‘14 Referencing a particular interview with a high-profile pundit, Killian Woods talks about what can go wrong when you push record The chance to interview people always struck me as one of the greatest perks of working for the college newspaper. As a first year, I thought it was very cool to get the chance to simply have a chat with some famous person and ask whatever questions I wanted.

It wasn’t necessarily a bullet-point on the Volume XX bucket list to interview as many interesting people as possible. Nevertheless, editor Kevin Beirne and myself went with the flow when our excellent group of contributors hounded famous actors and directors, world-renowned musicians, high profile sports personalities, and Robert Sheehan to feature in our twelve issues.

Our writers interviewed Martin Freeman, Conor McGregor, Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent), Patrick J. Adams, Lenny, Abrahamson, Sophie Turner, John DiMaggio, Little Green Cars, Bombay Bicycle Club, Sam Lloyd, Robert Sheehan, and Paul Krugman. And to top it all off, the singer/songwriter of the moment that isn’t Hozier (who also featured in our culture magazine when he was on the cusp of fame), Orla Gartland, contributed a column each issue.

Although I enjoyed interviewing famous people, that doesn’t mean I was very good at it at the start. Especially with bands since my rookie questions never quite got the conversation flowing.

“Where did you get your inspiration from?” was a popular one. As was “What music do you listen to?” But my most overused early doors go-to question had to be, “Are you looking forward to coming to Dublin?” Looking back, I cringe at how bad I was at interviewing people, and cringe even more because I thought I knew exactly what I was doing.

When I was 19-years-old, I thought I knew everything about football. I had led Cardiff City to the Champions League Final on Football Manager and lost on penalties, so surely interviewing ex-Ireland international and Arsenal legend Liam Brady wouldn’t be too much of a challenge.

Well, to keep it brief, I was wrong.

At the time, Liam Brady was part of Giovanni Trapattoni’s Ireland coaching staff and acted as a bridge between the Italian’s fragmented English and hand gestures in order to get across

to the squad that they should, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Never hold onto the ball and play as deep as possible.”

In September 2009, I got media accreditation for Ireland’s World Cup Qualifiers against Italy and Montenegro, which meant I got to attend the games for free in Croke Park, go to the press conferences, and speak to players and coaches at the special training sessions open to journalists.

For the first training session I attended, I got to the training ground way too early and had to wait outside until security gave me permission to go in. At that stage I was forced to make awkward conversation with an English Sky Sports News reporter who clearly had drawn the short straw when it came to deciding who had to cover Ireland’s games.

That passed and once we got into the training complex I struck out

again. This time it was when I tried to start a conversation with some pundit who works for TV3. I thought we could bond over how we were both watching Liam Miller training on his own, as if he had to be cordoned off from the talent lest they catch whatever football curse he had, but he just looked through me.

I was still adamant I could make the best of my morning in Malahide and when the training session was over, I decided to try and grab a question with Liam Brady as he fulfilled his media obligations pitch side for eight-odd reporters trying to ask their questions.

“Will Keane start up front against Italy on his own?” was one of the questions. “Damien Duff sat out the training session today, has he picked up a knock?” was another. At this stage I thought I could do better. I had much better questions floating around my head. So I decided if I got

the chance, if there was dead air, I was going to go for it and butt in to ask my question. Unfortunately, I got my chance.

As Brady looked from left to right gesturing to see if we were finished, I perked up and asked my long-winded question. “In the last fixture against Italy, you utilised Caleb Folan as an impact sub and that seemed to rattle the Italian defence. They couldn’t cope with his aerial ability and he was crucial in attack. Is this an option you’d consider starting with rather than falling back on as a Plan B? I noticed he was wearing a yellow bib.” (Note: Wearing a yellow bib at Ireland training during the Trapattoni era meant you were 99% nailed on to start).

I thought it was a great question.

It coupled on the ground observation with a bit of research. After that I remember noticing it took him a few

seconds to respond; he was thinking a lot about the question; or at least it felt that way as.

His reply was on the nose and pretty frank as he said, “Caleb Folan isn’t in the squad.” I replied, “But he is, I saw him wearing a yellow bib during training.” To which Brady responded, “That’s Leon Best,” lifted his right arm, patted me on the head twice and said, “Better look next time, son.”

It all became very apparent very quickly what had happened. Not only had I mixed up two players in the squad, I had mixed up the only two players of African descent who had played for Ireland during that World Cup Qualifying campaign.

So, similarly to Father Ted, I think this is a perfect moment in this piece to point out that “I’m not a racist”.

Killian Woods is a freelance writer for the Sunday Business Post.