Miscellany, Volume 115, Issue 1

volume 115 issue 1 michaelmas term 2007

miscellany

contents

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contents 4 Editorial Miscellany and Tradition

Editorial Team

A Few Words… 5

Interviews with familiar faces around campus

6 Starters Just to whet your appetite Interview 10

Michael Wynne talks to David Norris about his Same-Sex Civil Partnership Bill and life in politics

12 Society Jean Morley on the life and

philosophy of Fr. Anthony de Mello

Ducktastic Competition 13

You won’t believe your tailfeathers

14 Culture Laura Barnicoat investigates peculiar northside statues

College 16

Editor - Sinéad Fortune Layout and Design Amy Fleming and Barry Murphy Advertising Natasha Finnerty Contributors - Jean Acheson, Laura Barnicoat, James Dempsey, Natasha Finnerty, Ben Michael Matthews, Alyson McEvoy, Gerald Morgan FTCD, Jean Morley, Fearghus Roulston, Orla Shortall, and Michael Wynne Illustrations - Ben Michael Matthews and Orla Shortall

James Dempsey & Orla Shortall on the life of an Trinity student abroad

19 Culture Ben Michael Mathews on positive outlooks and why you want one

This publication is partially funded by a grant from the Trinity Publications Committee. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the editor.

All serious complaints, questions, or Natasha Finnerty on Emer comments should be addressed to

Review 21

Martin’s new book, Baby Zero

22 Review Michael Wynne discusses the pathos behind Annie miscellanymagazine@gmail.com

Lennox’s new album, Songs of Mass Destruction

Through the Vaults 23

A 1935 editorial from T.C.D.: A College Miscellany illustrates the gender inequality of the time

Miscellany 2nd Floor, House 6 Trinity College, Dublin 2 (01) 896 2335

editorial

college

Michaelmas Term, 2007 “We have long felt the want of some modest publication that would surmise the events of College life…For those who have improvements to suggest or grievances to ventilate, our columns are open, so long as such persons are studiously temperate in their language and do not endeavour to abuse the publicity it offers them by attacking specific individuals…”

So began the very first issue of T.C.D. A College Miscellany on the 9th of February, 1895.

Quite a few years have passed since this inaugural publication, but the underlying sentiment behind its inception still remains: Miscellany stands as a medium through which Trinity students can express their opinions and discuss issues of relevance to them.

Although this tradition of Miscellany is unchanged, some aspects of the magazine inevitably have evolved. While it once concerned itself almost entirely with issues of the College itself, it has now broadened its scope. The world we live in today is a great deal more connected than it was over a hundred years ago, and one of the favourable consequences of this is that we as students can now enjoy a wider array of experiences. We are more involved in the world, as well as more affected by it. The issues that students face today incorporate not only the College, but the society and world in which we live. Because of this, Miscellany also needed to extend its boundaries, and thus it stands before you as a forum of social commentary, cultural discussion, and means of communication to hear and have heard our views on the events of our college, our society, and our world.

In this case, tradition has proved itself to be something worthy of upholding, something that stands for freedom of expression and a desire to learn from the expression of others.

However, tradition is often something we blindly cling to, either because we do not know any better or because we are afraid of what a change might bring. We stick to the comfort of the status quo because it separates the normal from the other, the known from the unknown, the us from the them. Tradition has been the mask behind which elitism, prejudice, and ignorance have hidden for far too long. It has a way of excluding and ostracising, and any tradition whose merit has not been carefully scrutinised and deemed worthy should be reconsidered.

Tradition comes in many forms: cultural traditions expressed through language, national traditions of life under the shadow of an oppressive political regime, societal traditions of male superiority, traditions in religious expression…our lives are full of traditions if we only look for them. Some traditions contribute to a fuller sense of individual, familial, or cultural identity. Others, however, serve only to subjugate, and can only be overcome by being opened to educated inquiry. The following collection of articles, in their own ways, raise questions that need to be asked in order to test the traditions by which we all live our lives.

Sinéad Fortune Editor Miscellany Magazine

Photo By Patrick Jefferson

starters

starters

Laying the Best of Plans

The Arts Building: Unfit for Purpose

By Fearghus Roulston

By Gerald Morgan, FTCD (1993)

I

“All your dreams are made / when you’re chained to the mirror and the razorblade / today’s the day that all the world will see…”

’m loath to give them any credit, but Oasis probably said it best. Dubious drug allusions aside, that lyric conjures up perfectly the remarkable self-delusion I’m able to perform in the moments after waking up. Every day is going to be a new beginning, a change of personality, lifestyle, and lifeplan. Remember being on study leave from school? Unless you were one of those frankly insane students who kept large, colour-coded charts planning your revision above your bed, you might be familiar

Countless times I’ve woken up with a throbbing head, very occasionally in someone else’s clothes, and made the spurious claim- met with ridiculethat I’m never drinking again.

with this feeling. Waking up gently, a few hours after everyone else has left the house. Lying for a moment in warm sheets, eyes closed, enjoying the silence, the luxury of an unhurried morning.

Seeing the day ahead of you: seeing yourself leaning over King Lear, underlining in red ink, with an occasional studious smile flitting across your face as an especially sharp analysis came to mind. Writing out the periodic table, colour coded! Highlighters! Diagrams! Yawning in cosy satisfaction at the thought of such an intellectually stimulating schedule. Three hours later, drinking tea and watching Trisha, with a niggling thought in the back of your mind about exams, or something. I could never live up to my early morning plans, and the pattern has continued as

the exams have been left thankfully behind.

Countless times I’ve woken up with a throbbing head, very occasionally in someone else’s clothes, and made the spurious claim- met with ridicule- that I’m never drinking again. Such reckless over-consideration of my own willpower seems to be common at around ten in the morning. Maybe I’ll go for a jog… and then have a cold shower, and come home and finally write the Great American Novel. Simple. By twelve, I’ve decided that I can’t possibly go for a jog as I have no white socks, and in that case a cold shower would be foolish, and I’ll probably just buy a paper instead, putting it off until tomorrow morning. Shaving, too, seems to have this delusional effect. No more strange tufts of hair- no more do I look like a shoplifter. I look like someone who could be given a job! I look like someone who has a plan, someone who makes lists and spreadsheets and plays badminton every Monday. I’m going to go to all my lectures this term! In fact, I’m going to the library, right now! Again, after leaving the bathroom this euphoria fades, generally replaced by a dull urge for tea and a quick lie down.

This morning I woke up and thought I’d try and write a quick piece for that magazine to kick-start my journalistic career and then go for a jog, come home, ring the bank in order to get over my paralyzing fear of all financial institutions by making some kind of appointment, book a driving lesson, get a haircut, and prepare some kind of square meal for lunch, perhaps using something other than cheese and bread. Well, I’ve made a start.

Might as well put the kettle on now.

T

he health of any society or institution can easily and quickly be determined by its public buildings. I have no doubt that one of the great attractions for present-day students (greater even than the distinction of our scholars) is the grandness of our buildings in Front Square. Perhaps we should insist on calling it still Parliament Square, for the name reminds us of our debt to the vision of a native Irish Parliament in Dublin before the Act of Union of 1800. No building in College since has matched the elegance and nobility of Front Square and in many ways it is a pity that we have not tried harder to emulate its eminent example. I still recall, on entering Front Gate for the first time in the early morning of December 1967, a sense of the greatness of Trinity College Dublin and that sense has never left me.

In the 1950s and 1960s Parliament Square was a vibrant centre of student and academic activity. That effect was created above all by the Dublin University Players who flourished in House 4 under the inspiring example of the great R.B.D. French (College still owes a statue to his memory). I recall walking with some trepidation across the cobbles to give my first lecture on Beowulf in the lecture theatre in West Chapel. Now the dead hand of administration and the unfettered access of cars, vans and lorries have all but stifled the academic life of Parliament Square. The College seems to have little respect for itself nowadays as a great university.

The 1970s will not be remembered in Dublin as a great age of architecture of our famous city. Indeed, much of Georgian Dub-

lin (buildings well capable of being preserved and refurbished for future use) was destroyed by the relentless and unappeasable greed of property developers. I wish I could say that the building of the Arts Building in 1976 was the grand exception. Users of the building today would know that I was evading the truth were I to say so. We can admire the ingenuity of the architect (Koralek) in getting a building of any description into so confined a space between the Old Library and Nassau Street. But nothing can be said in favour of the addition of a sixth level or penthouse suite in recent years. Apart from anything else, it is destructive of the view form the Dining Hall steps (much like that of the Central Bank in Dame Street).

The rooms for heads of department are supplied with spacious windows, but at the expense of the secretaries who work for them without access to natural light or fresh air. The clustering of the seminar rooms next to the departmental offices was a sensible idea, but as with 4012 and 4018 in the School of English all sense of that original coherence of design has now been lost. But above all we must continue to say , loudly and clearly enough even for the administration in Front Square to hear, that is not acceptable to teach in rooms without windows and without access to fresh air. Rooms such as 4011 and 4046 are health hazards and ought to be closed for teaching purposes immediately. If college administrators will not face up to their public duty in this respect then perhaps the Health Authority ought to be invited to intervene.

starters

starters

La Musica de Lucha

by Alison Mc Evoy

O

ne of the best things about travelling is that we can never anticipate the experience we are going to have. Even the most painstakingly laid plans can be toppled by what is encountered once we leave. I have learnt to make only the loosest sketch of what any journey I undertake might just entail.

than those of the day. Each night offers a breath-taking array of performances and venues– Rumba in Vedado, a leafy green neighbourhood close to the city centre and pervaded with an air of crumbling colonial splendour; or perhaps salsa in ‘la casa de la musica’, right in the heart of the city centre.

This summer I decided to make my way to Cuba. Before leaving I jotted down some of the expectations that I had developed as I awaited my departure date. As I read back on them now I notice an odd awareness of the artificiality of expectations about a place to which I have never been or heard very much about.

Nonetheless I managed to conjure up expectations of “music, dancing…poverty but happiness…crumbling but alive…intense joy from simple things”. Cuba’s past, its strain of communism, its infamous dictator and complex US relations were, initially, merely an afterthought to me. I primarily intended to experience the joy of the place– the musical, rhythmic, bodily energy that Cubans appear to have in abundance and are famed for– and that I did find.

And so I encountered more than I had bargained for on the music and dancing scene in Havana. I never imagined that such musical vitality, talent and even genius could exist all in one place and endow itself so liberally and exclusively on one race. I met people in the venues of Havana who had been coming to the country for years– from a Belfast man who now lives in New York with a quiet passion for salsa, to a UN translator from Belgium– all of whom, like I, had found themselves impassioned by the musicality and spirit of Cuba and Cubans.

“I never imagined that such music vitality, and even genius could exist all in one place.”

However, in Havana at any rate, there is no ‘finding’ music or dance. It fills every breath of air you take and penetrates every sound you hear. Each day I found myself waking to a manylayered sound of son, salsa, reggaeton , rumba…as cars, houses, and voices filled the air with their music from early in the morning. Nights in Havana are filled with even richer sounds

However, in a place where the sun shines so brightly and music is so all pervading, one must also realize that there, shadows are all the darker and silence all the more disturbing. I made it my business not to pre-inform myself on Cuba’s past and the intricacies of Castro’s career and regime. I listened to Cubans speaking about their life and its joys and difficulties on this fascinating island where education and medical services are free and food is rationed, where poverty is comparitively minimal, but where life is highly restricted by the policies of an authoritarian government, and where highly educated professionals open doors in hotels or clean bathrooms because the wage for all but those who work with tourists is about €20 a month. The Cubans are people whose “intense joy from simple things”, like music, sunshine and dancing, is contagious and intoxicating. They are also, however, a people for whom life is a continuous struggle: la lucha is a word never far from their lips.

An Attack on Lazy Anti-Irish Sentiment I

by Jean Acheson

n conversation with two friends over the summer, I suggested that Trinity should have its own Irish language magazine.

The idea was immediately greeted with a cry of “Elitism!”

What on earth is so elitist about it? Why is it presumed that if a person supports the Irish language and would like to see it more readily available in this college, that he or she springs from the Eamonn DeValera School of Cultural Orthodoxy? Or that he or she is a blinkered republican or has delusions of superiority?

The Irish language is part of our heritage and, according to some, a part of our political history. It was spoken and developed by people who lived here long before we did. It absorbed certain newcomers– like the Anglo-Normans– and threatened others– the English political classes. It almost died out, but some people would not let it. It became a minority language and that remains its present-day status. However, for over a hundred years, concerted efforts have been made to revive it.

Do continuing such efforts offend? Are people right to call the proponents of such efforts elitist? People need to understand that the Irish language, like any language, is apolitical. In the past, it has been hijacked by some in a clumsy effort to make a political point. However, it’s wrong to perceive it as a threat to our ideas of equality and inclusiveness. Irish does carry some unfortunate political baggage but most of this is a question of perception rather than an actual fact. Perhaps in the past it made the natives stand out from the newcomers, was seen as subversive to an English-speaking authority, and was a source of inspiration for some nationalists; but the crucial point is that this was in the past. Times have changed, symbols change, and speaking Irish today should not categorise you one way or another.

Maybe the accusations of elitism didn’t stem from its perceived political baggage, but rather from the notion that it’s “ours”, because that begs the question of who to include when we speak of “ourselves”. National identity is a sensitive subject for many people. However, let’s start off by accepting that its main components are history, politics, and culture. Let’s also agree that national identity is not a zero-sum concept – lacking something like fluency in Irish or an education taught by the nuns does

not make you “less” Irish; being a Catholic, Guinness-drinking GAA-head does not make you “more” Irish. You don’t need the language to view yourself as Irish, but it should be obvious that it can play a part in defining who we are if we want it to. It may not even figure in the equation of identity for many Irish people, but if it does for some, then so be it.

Of course, people are free to dislike Irish (perhaps they had awful teachers or hated their bean-an-tí’s cooking), but they should be able to accept it as part of our national identity and our culture. Instead, some claim it’s something elitist and not at all related to who we are. However, you need not love the bloodthirsty rhetoric of Padraig Pearse et al. to accept the part that it plays in our conception of who we are, just as you need not love the Catholic Church to accept that we act and think the way we do in some part because of its dominance in modern Irish history. National identity is a multi-faceted and mutable concept.

Irish people are not all alike, but we should have the maturity to let people nurture particular aspects of their national identity if they want to.

National identity is a process, not a conclusion with demarcations for those who are in and those who are not. Resorting to knee-jerk hysteria about elitism seems to miss this point. It may seem like the worship of an extinct fire to some, but there are people who love speaking Irish and are proud of its distinctiveness; it is for these reasons that they speak it, not to feel superior to others. So, please let the lovers of the language get on with maintaining and moulding it, and let the begrudgers learn to interpret history accurately and engage with national identity constructively.

interview

interview

The Gregarious David Norris Michael Wynne talks to Senator David Norris about some of the high points in his twenty-year-and-counting stint with Seanad Eireann, and his hopes to see his same-sex Civil Partnership Bill become a reality in the lifetime of Bertie’s Government.

G

regarious is a word David Norris chose to describe himself during a thirty-five minute one-to-one we had in the grounds of Leinster House five days before the successful retention of his Trinity seat in the Seanad elections in July.

By the end of our talk – throughout which he breezily carried on answering questions in a manner as fluent as it was expressive without once losing his thread of thought, despite continually interrupting himself to shoot the breeze with every passer-by within lassoing distance, while getting through an unbroken sequence of Majors – the epithet gregarious would tend to seem a bit on the understated side.

It’s clear Norris revels in his role as jovial hail-fellow statesman; what is just as clear is that the attributes he shows unequivocally as a man and as a politician – large-hearted vitality, impassioned bona fide expertise in many fields, committed humaneness – while never so much needed in those chosen to be, as it were, in charge of things, are unfortunately less evident than ever in most who are. Famously instrumental in the overturning of Ireland’s savagely homophobic laws in the early 1990s, Norris has since then been the ever-engaging and impeccably right-minded spokesman on all the inescapably big issues facing this country and the world at large: environmental destruction, the rise of religious fundamentalism, the Iraqi occupation, terrorism, AIDS, the general and hugely problematic question of ethics in global affairs. Indeed, when asked, it is within these last two areas he feels he can locate some of the most significant personal achievements of his twenty year senatorial career. “I got the first debate on AIDS in either house, for example,” he elaborates. “I did it by hiring a room at my own expense over in Buswell’s Hotel, and I got Fr. Paul Lavelle, who’s a Roman Catholic priest, a very decent man, who dealt with the impact [of AIDS] on drug-taking

people. I got Fiona Mulcahy, who was the first AIDS consultant.

And I organised and chaired the thing…We had a really good, well-balanced, informed debate. The whole Senate was there – the Minister for Health, and everyone else. The Dail was terrified of it. They subsequently had [their own] debate. There were a few snotty things said during that by the usual suspects. But at least we cleared the way. And that was useful…Then myself and Michael D. [Higgins, Labour politician, broadcaster and poet] were responsible for starting the Foreign Affairs Committee. I mean, we’d never had a Foreign Affairs Committee, and I initiated that. And then I got Michael D. involved in it.” The coming into being of such a group was inevitable sooner or later, he suggests. “But I forced it onto the agenda, and got it, and I’ve been on the Foreign Affairs Committee ever since. And that’s one of my principal interests – to try to ensure that we have some degree of ethical standards in the conduct of our foreign affairs even though we’re a small nation.”

On the matter of whether this is working he is distinctly unambiguous. “No, it isn’t. It patently isn’t. But at least there are people who are highlighting it. For example, Mary Robinson. I was on her team when she was elected first [to the Senate]: we were elected by Trinity College the same day, and she was my barrister in several cases, including the one about homosexuality. And she now has this thing about ethical globalisation and I think she’s absolutely right. Unless we develop some standards in the conduct of our international relations the whole planet is banjoed! So I think that’s terribly important.”

Other career high points he cites are his successfully pushing for the Dublin Transport Bill to be amended so it incorporated provisions for a Metro, and a whole section he got into the Childcare Bill, “which undoubtedly,” he insists, “has saved children’s

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lives. That was with the cooperation of a very decent minister, Noel Tracey from Fianna Fail. And it was very difficult because the whole bill had to be re-commissioned and sent back to the Dail, and all the rest of it. So it wasn’t a popular thing for him to do. It was in the aftermath of the famous and tragic case of a young infant called Maria Caldwell, who was in the care of the local authorities, but they foolishly handed her back to her parents who promptly murdered her, or at least she died in very tragic circumstances in their care. And after that it was decided there should be somebody in the court to represent, not the family, not the State, not the authorities, but the interests of the child alone.”

The list of positive political contributions goes on: his campaign on behalf of the building up of East Timor’s infrastructure, his ongoing opposition to the war in Iraq and the presence of U.S. troops at Shannon – “And then the latest thing – and last, because, even though you did invite me, I want not to blow my own trumpet until people are deaf: When Michael McDowell introduced the Defamation Bill in the Senate in the last few months before we dissolved, I argued against it on a principled basis, because it was introduced at the behest of the press barons, and the whole effect of it was to prejudice the rights of ordinary citizens as against the press. And I think that was wrong. I mean, the Press Council is a farce in my opinion. Every editor of every newspaper has called for independent regulations of every other profession, but against themselves – guess what? – it’s not independent, it’s funded by the newspaper industry, fifty per cent of its members are from the newspaper industry, and it has no sanctions at all, except disapproval. So I scarified them, and the bill was allowed quietly to drop.”

And what if it should raise its head again?

“I would hope to be there to raise the same principled arguments about it. In the beginning it was myself alone. But then the fella speaking for Fianna Fail got a bit of courage and joined in as a kind of filibuster. But I have to tell you there were cabinet ministers coming up to me in the bar saying, Thanks be to Jaysus somebody around this place has balls. But they didn’t do it because politicians are terrified of the press, because of the job they know will be done on them.”

Another matter toward which, unsurprisingly, Norris directs his blazing energies is that of securing the legal recognition of samesex and other untraditional partnerships, something he is sure will be effected in the lifetime of the present Dail; however, he is quick to stress that this confidence is in no way based on any of Bertie Ahern’s assurances that the Government is committed to establishing rights for non-heterosexual couples, which he gave in a speech at the refurbished gay community centre on Capel Street, officially opened by him in the summertime.

House I came out feeling I’d got the sun, moon and stars, and as I came down the corridor the sun went into an eclipse, the moon went in behind a cloud, and there wasn’t a star to be seen. Bertie gives you a nice warm feeling, but it’s getting him to deliver.

Now, he kicked it into every available committee, he established think tank reports on it, and they’ve all reported the same way – and still he has done bugger all.”

What Norris wants to see is his own specially devised Civil Partnership Bill introduced through the Senate, a bill whose effectiveness he says lies in its political practicality - and its inclusiveness with regard to cohabiting heterosexuals – by which he means the thorny word “marriage” is carefully circumvented.

While “all in favour of those [gay] people clamouring for marriage,” he is wholly sensitive to its divisiveness in this context.

“I mean, I remember when I was involved in the gay movement in the early days, people wanted a social scene, they didn’t really want political agitation, and that divided the gay community. I remember people saying all these political actions and legal cases were a waste of time. But they came to see in the end that it was necessary. And I feel the same about this. I’ve never believed in fighting unnecessary battles, ones you might actually lose.

Now, marriage is just a name. In England they don’t have gay marriage, but when Elton John tied the knot the headlines even in rubbishy newspapers like The Sun was ‘Marriage of Sir Elton John’. The papers called it marriage. And every single advantage of marriage is there in my bill.”

But whatever one’s agenda might be, he would presumably have no trouble agreeing - being an out-and-out high-octane extrovert himself – that politics is around about ninety per cent showmanship?

“Yes, but there is also a fair amount of hard work in it. People don’t realise that in order to be effective there’s no point in just a bit of bluster. Bluster’s great fun. But at the same time, if you want to get things done you’ve got to read the legislation, and that is as boring as hell. Legislation is horrible, it’s written in this secret language that takes a long time to accommodate one’s self to.”

So to be an effective politico you’ve not only to be something of a grandstander but also have a pronounced sado-masochistic streak to boot, is that right?

The mischievous glint in Norris’s eye suggests I’ve perhaps hit on a bit of jargon he doesn’t find quite so mind-numbing.

“I met Bertie two years ago about this issue. I said later in the

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“It probably helps,

yeah.”

society

society

Change from Within: The De Mello Paradox Jean Morley examines the philosophy of Fr. Anthony De Mello and its unsettled relationship with established religion.

“M

ost people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up.” Galling stuff. But that’s classic De Mello.

Who? Good Question. Perhaps we could introduce him as Tony de Mello, the spiritual counsellor and psychologist who died twenty years ago. Or Fr. Tony, the priest who remained a firm Jesuit up until his death, despite the Vatican’s beliefs to the contrary. Or the Indian missionary who sought to build a Christian model upon the existing Buddhist and Hindu practises in his homeland. Even, perhaps, as a successful author- a man who penned five books, among them the bestselling Awareness.

However, these descriptions can’t recreate Anthony de Mello.

Perhaps, fittingly, the man who constantly stressed the disjunction between words and reality is himself impossible to define.

A quick look at his teachings may paint a more accurate picture of De Mello. He aimed to awaken people to the truth of their being. This was only possible through the destruction of our most accepted fantasy: that happiness is dependent on the external.

“Problems exist only in the human mind,” he asserted.

Yet this quick soundbite from De Mello is limiting. It can make his message seem unoriginal and inoffensive. Don’t worry, be happy; a message we’d sooner associate with a national lottery ad than spirituality. Even a description of his technique fails.

He fuses nuggets of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism and Sadhana meditation through constant anecdotes and jokes. Yet all this sounds about as innovative as the layout of a religion book for the second class of St. Josephs.

But De Mello cuts. He hacks up basic values, of the individual and of wider culture. Charity is pretence: “self-interest mas-

querading as altruism.” Forget clapping oneself on the back for volunteer work, but forget also the idealisation of others as saintly. Martyrs, he points out, are deluded. Francis Xavier was “so brainwashed [he was] ready to die.” We must likewise forget being ‘in love’ with a person: we’re only ever in love with an altered and conditioned view of another. By a natural progression, give up an exclusive attachment to religion or nationality. They’re ideologies and “no reality fits an ideology, life is beyond that.” De Mello even undermines his writings, through a derision of the idea of words. “Words correspond to nothing.”

His style matches his sharp content: verbal shock tactics include exclamation marks and repetition, presented with ironic wit.

disregard for life after death or -possibly what Ratsinger saw as the gravest offence- relativism. Since evil, according to De Mello, was caused by ignorance, his ‘objective rules of morality’ did not sit well with the Vatican.

De Mello might have laughed at the devout in disbelief, like parents who are appalled at what they perceive as the indoctrination of their children with certain morals in religious schools but who accept the similar teachings under a different name in non-denominational schools. To a man for whom titles were non-sequitur, no system of beliefs was considered unworthy of his appraisal, for it was only then could they be fairly accepted or rejected.

This is the point that is made by attempts to categorise De Mello.

Anand Nayak, his most recent biographer, called him a ‘post-denominational Christian.’ Although paradoxical, this points to the contradictory things De Mello felt he himself could be. Fired by an existing knowledge of Christianity, he embarked on a journey of religious thought. He was an advocate of change from within, but not just self-regulation by the individual. De Mello changed from within: the innovative model of human happiness he formed was possible only through an inside knowledge of existing religions.

It reminds me of a conversation I had a few years ago with an American friend. It was the beginning of the war in Iraq and I was aghast at her plans to join the Marines and be prepared to spend time in combat abroad. How could she support the Bush regime in such a dramatic way? What if it was for oil or money?

She calmly assured me that her allegiance wasn’t unquestioning- of course she had doubts. However, she saw herself as more likely to affect real change through a position in the American military. Sure, she could don dreadlocks and get arrested for egging the Pentagon, but she saw the only possible way of enabling change as the infiltration of the system from the inside.

We’ve heard the arguments against religion: it’s illogical; it depends on faith and idols. It’s also difficult to imagine astrologers sitting on the roof of media buildings, interpreting our fates in the stars before condensing them into the page of a magazine.

Yet, in order to critically assess religions and spiritualities, surely we need a sound knowledge of their tenets. Yes, we must debate, contradict, and undermine, but we must ground it in fact. For as the religious can worship their idols in blind belief, so too can we cling to our idols of disbelief. We can mouth the word ‘science’ or mention Dawkins, but we can only form a valid counterargument through knowledge of the system.

Big Duck on Campus

Certainly, he can chafe the reader. He can seem like the eternal cynic, the ‘realist’ we’d sooner avoid. Moreover, his allusions to himself as the sole gatekeeper of reality more than hint at condescension.

Yet, these factors haven’t hindered De Mello’s popularity since his death. His writings have been translated into languages from English to Arabic. Sadhana meditation courses and retreats in his honour continue to fill spiritual centres worldwide. This month Ireland was chosen as a venue for a conference marking the twentieth anniversary of his death.

Yet, in spite of his ability to link Christianity with other cultures and his obvious global appeal, De Mello hasn’t been embraced as a PR man for the Catholic Church. Instead, 1998 brought the Vatican’s controversial ‘Notification concerning the writings of Fr Anthony de Mello, S.J.’ Spearheaded by the then (relatively) fresh-faced Cardinal Ratsinger (a.k.a Pope Benedict XIV), the document sought the official separation of De Mello from the church. It pointed out that he blatantly contradicted Catholic doctrine, be it through his denial of the validity of the Bible, the diminished importance he affixed to Jesus as the son of God, his

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COMPETITION!

The Miscellany Duck has taken to wandering about the campus on fine autumn afternoons. Name all three of his haunts pictured above in as much detail as possible and send the answers to miscellanyduck@ gmail.com. The winner receives 2 bottles of wine, courtesy of our fine friends on Aungier Street, Costcutter!

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culture

culture

The Hill Has Eyes Laura Barnicoat investigates a cultural symbol of Dublin’s north side and gets caught in its appeal.

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first saw them a few months ago. I was cycling up the Summerhill Road on the northside, when I suddenly noticed these white sculptures flitting past, out of the corner of my eye.

Then I began seeing them everywhere, glinting in the windows of the flats and houses around the area. They didn’t start to really scare me until walking from the Royal Canal to Parnell Street became a game of spotting them, one by one. Sometimes there would be four sculptures in one house alone, placed proudly in every window of every room. What did they mean?

The sculptures are about a foot high and made of gleaming white plaster. They are models of naked women sitting on a rock, with a towel draped around them, and 80s bouffant style hair. It’s the sort of thing a Barbie doll might have in her plastic mansion.

Barbie would love them. Perfectly formed and perfectly smooth; the epitome of female beauty. I wondered if they were a fertility symbol for some kind of Wicker Man cult that was operating in the area.

They have become a fashion phenomenon on the northside. If you walk along Gardiner Street up towards Phibsborough, you will see them positioned in every other window, like shrines or guards watching from a fortress. No one seems to care that everyone else has them too. It’s communist decorating. People buy them in bulk. The demand for them at the Dublin Mouldings Company on Parnell Street, where they were first created, is still going strong. The sculpture, known as ‘The Lady on the Rock’ has proved to be their most lucrative business venture, since the craze began two years ago. At one stage they were making fifteen sculptures a day to accommodate the number of orders coming in from all over Dublin. Recently they have cut down their production to around ten a day, attributing the slight decline to the fact that most people already own one.

I was amazed to discover that the sculptures were bought by

people living all over the city. I thought that it was a territorial thing, representing a certain northside group of people who identified with each other, all living close to the Dublin Mouldings Company. There’s an odd atmosphere surrounding these northside estates, which are going through a period of rapid regeneration. It feels a bit like a city in rehab. Alongside graffiti, rubbish, odd discarded furniture, and the rubble from buildings being torn down, there are Arts Council murals depicting green country idyls, all cast under the eerie purple lighting used to deter heroin addicts. Add to this the game of spotting The Lady on The Rock and pretty soon you feel as though you have become part of some horror film, like The Hills Have Eyes.

The fact that I managed to locate where the sculptures are made reveals the height of my obsession, which led me to ring on the door bell of one of these glinting ‘eyes’ of the Summerhill Estate. Outside the flat was one of the most terrifying flowerbeds I have ever seen, with large iron gnomes, mushrooms and words written in fake flowers, spelling out “WELCOME”. Situated in one of the most violent and deprived areas of the city, here is a piece of architecture that appears to have been constructed for misery; the brightly coloured flowers and laughing iron gnomes on swing chairs can only be interpreted as omens. Like Hansel and Gretel to the the gingerbread cottage, I was lured closer.

There was a child’s toy truck on the doormat which made it seem slightly more safe, although I was still fully prepared for kidnap and possible attack at the hands of potentially murderous psychopaths involved in a fertility cult. I rang the bell and stepped back well away from the door. The house had two sculptures, one in the front room and one in an upstairs bedroom. A young girl opened the door, who I then began an incredibly confusing conversation with, as she shouted my questions to her mother, who was in another room. I didn’t get much information out of either of them. The main point was that the sculptures don’t

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mean anything at all, something which was confirmed by the family who run the Dublin Mouldings Company.

It was all hugely disappointing. I almost wish I hadn’t asked.

The sculptures have lost all their threatening mystery since discovering that they are popular all over the city, for the simple reason that people like them. I have recently noticed them in flats around The Liberties, and even as far out as Bray. Gradually, they have become a familiar part of the city. After meeting the family at the Dublin Mouldings Company, all possibilities of fertility cults and gang warfare were wiped out. I suppose it is a relief. The Moulding family can only be described as jolly. They raved about the success of their creation, which is the equivalent of a one-hit-wonder pop star, with a terrible and contagious song.

They couldn’t understand what I found so mysterious about the popularity of this object. I tried not to sound rude, as I asked several members of the Moulding family what they thought it was about this sculpture that appeals to so many people.

“They’re just really popular. People see their friends have got one, so they want one too. That’s it. We do it in different colours – gold, silver, black. But we do all sorts of plaster works – see the angel and cherubs over there, very popular as well. Now, there’s The Beatles – that’s a great one and we can do it in colour as well. And James Joyce over there. All sorts.”

It is as simple as that: people like them. There’s a real sense of community spirit about it. I thought things couldn’t get any safer, until I was shown into the workshop at the back of the Dublin Mouldings premises. It was a bit like going into a Dickensian lunatic’s apartment. In the centre of the room was a big wooden table with a large orangey rubbery mould in the middle of it, the shape of which was all too recognisable as The Lady on the Rock herself. It was strangely womb-like in the dark room, with this rubbery gunk and oil and mess dripping all over it. All around there were shelves of Ladies on the Rocks, along with a few Paul McCartney heads and James Joyces.

Dublin is full of this kind of thing. There is a fine line that runs across certain backstreets, dividing reality from a whole new realm of disfunctional retail. Suddenly, you find yourself stumbling across one weird shop after another, wandering past a place selling body building protein foods in tins and vintage clothes shops that deal in a kind of deeply soiled thrift, most likely salvaged by grave diggers.

Only Dublin could have a phenomenon like The Lady on the Rock. I’m sure that it is specific to this city, or maybe we have just learnt to see the place through James Joyce’s wonky spectacles. Continually being confronted with the words of Ulysses, reading those little gold plaques on the pavements when drunkenly walking home, must have infused into our brains. It is inevitable that we would begin to see the city in surreal terms. And so I find myself sucked in by the cult, preparing to place my order for The Lady on the Rock. It doesn’t symbolise anything at all; I just like it.

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James Dempsey discusses his thoughts and apprehensions about spending a year abroad in France as a teaching assistant.

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Altkirch, Population 5001

h how it was all supposed to be perfect. I’ve always known that I’d study French and German in Trinity. Always. Since the very first day of je m’appelle and ich heiße. I forced my school to change its entire timetable, as I was the only one who wanted to study both for Leaving Cert. Even when I mused and hummed and hawed over the CAO form, I knew deep down that it was inevitable. Better luck next time BESS, smell you later Science, you’re dead to me Drama. And in 2004 I made my way through Front Arch. Three years later, and in a few days I’m leaving on a jet plane, or two planes, to be precise.

The problem with studying two TSM languages in Trinity is one of temporal economics. First of all, you have to spend two months in a country where the people speak those languages. Fair enough, I thought, from Paris to Berlin and every disco I go to my heart is pumping for grammatical correctness and idiomatic flare. But you’re on your own. You find a job yourself, you don’t

From Paris to Berlin and every disco I go to my heart is pumping for grammatical correctness and idiotmatic flare...

get help. Many students resort to expensive language courses as a means of doing your time. The others work in places that don’t understand the term minimum wage. I myself survived Berlin on €2.35 an hour. Then you’ve got to time everything perfectly, making sure you’re in the right country to cope with your minor exams at the end of third year. What about Erasmus, I hear you ask. Fine if you’re in European Studies or Law/Computer Science/Business with a language, you automatically get to go.

If you do TSM, you might get to go, pretty much only in second year and then there’s about 4 places for 50 students to fight over.

But this didn’t really bother me, because just as I knew I would do French and German, I also knew I’d be going off books to be a language assistant. My sister Deirdre did it and I used to love listening to her tales of classroom fun and culture differences.

She instilled a desire to assist, to mould young European

minds with the fortifying pedagogical perfection of Pictionary.

Some day, I thought, that will be me with the hourglass timer.

As early as Michelmas Term in second year, I pestered my Tutor to let me know what I needed to do to become an assistant. I bided my time and at the beginning of third year, picked up my application form.15 pages later, with passport photo, two Lecturer evaluations, my university transcript and a medical cert for good measure, it was ready to be dropped in.

I’d picked Alsace as my region, hoping to pop across the Rhine into Germany and visit my friends who were going to assist in the German programme.

My German studying friends got cities, Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Munich, so surely they’ll send me to Strasbourg, the very heart of the European Union, I thought. On the cusp of starting my final year here, I’m off to pastures new and mountainous, heading to Altkirch, a village of 5000 (a blip on the map in a country of 62 million), 120 km south of Strasbourg.

And j’ai peur. I’m terrified. In a week’s time I’ll be standing in front of students two years younger than me, suggesting party games with all those Gallic eyes watching me, their lips curled into that oh so sardonic pout.

And I’m off to a bad start. I received an “information pack”, a brochure, telling me to bring money and contact my school as soon as possible. I got it in July, and by that stage the French

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Away

Orla Shortall shares her experiences gained from a year away in France, and ponders readjusting to college life again.

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Au’revoir la France, Bonjour le Trinity College

kay, so here I am, walking under front arch, back into Front Square, back into college. I haven’t been here for a year and a half. And it seems all the same!

Just like before there’s the bikes and the pretty buildings, the campanile, the tourists, the arts students, the business students, the science students. God this is weird! It’s like stepping back into the Matrix. I saw the Real World, I saw that there’s life outside college!

I swear to God, I was in a place where nobody had even heard of Trinity College! There were no college societies and I never once got to talk about Kant’s transcendental theory of existence with anyone. This doesn’t seem real; it’s a microcosm you get when you mix alcohol and toast and mouldy library books. Should I really be here?

and if you don’t you’re considered to be a tourist or an unwanted non-French speaking foreigner so you pay twice as much and they spit on you as you leave.)

You see I wasn’t a student last year. Instead I was working as a language assistant in France. I did the schols exams in second year, got the exemptions and so hadn’t actually been to college since last April. It seemed like a brush with the Real World, the Outside. For the first time I was entirely self-supporting, there were lots of tasks I hadn’t done before alone, like dealing with the unholy might of the French administrative system. Being in a country where you need your birth certificate to buy a baguette at the local boulangerie is a rude awakening for anyone. (It’s a lot of hassle but it’s actually worth going through the whole birth cert/boulangerie process. If you do you’re considered to be a resident and get to pay local prices for your morning bread,

So it was undoubtedly easy work, but it was still work; I was no longer a student, no doubt about it. I was a functioning member of society. I made my measly salary and paid my measly tax on it. I complained about my apathetic and clueless students with the other assistants. I met the French government head on in each mini-administrative battle: sending back each incorrect social security card, clearing every hurdle put in the way of my government funded rent supplement, patiently keeping my place in that interminable queue.

Albeit even with those challenges it was a soft brush with the Real World, like an olden-time hairbrush. It’s nothing compared to the hard scrubbing you’d get if you were say a Polish person coming here with no English, no qualifications and no money.

Being a language assistant is very badly paid but one of the cushiest jobs you could ever imagine. There was a maximum of 12 hours a week and neither the students nor the teachers cared too much what you did during those 12 hours (which were usually on average about 8). I mostly filled it playing educational yet interesting games like Pictionary. I found games were among the only thing that would get them talking in their heavily accented pigeon English. I now feel sorry for any tutors that meet with stony silent apathy during their tutorials. I urge you to say

You’re considered to be a tourist or an unwanted non-French speaking foreigner so you pay twice as much and they spit on you as you leave...

something, anything during the next prolonged silence in your tutorial. It might be something stupid, but I always preferred hearing something to silence.

I liked being a pseudo adult. You have all your own money, all your own time- no essays, no prescribed reading. And France is

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schools had shut their doors for the summer. I had no way of contacting them till early September, and it’s been a slow emailing process since then. And with the emails came the crushing reality that going “off books” means I’m not a student here. Trinity owes me nothing anymore, at least till I pay my registration fees next year. I’ve no TCD username, no library access, and most importantly, no discount availing student card. All I have now is a bottle green hoodie and a Facebook network to cling to.

Worst of all, I completely forgot about the bit where I have to speak French to French people. And not like here, where in oral classes we’re thrust into the awkward spotlight and asked our opinions on weighty issues and political current events, ultimately uttering some waffle while everyone else looks at the floor, fascinated by the carpet’s weave. No no, I’ll have to do small talk. Starting when the school’s English teacher picks me up at the airport. Then there’s the random but necessary trivialities: finding a place to live, opening a bank account, getting a phone, getting a social security number.

It feels so strange. At 20 years of age I’m heading off into the world, entirely on my own.

No parents, no siblings, no Tutor, no friends.

I’m independent financially, having worked all summer and I get paid for assisting in the classroom too. And as I write this, along with the fear, there’s a growing sense of excitement inside me as well. I’m going to live in France for a year, and experience the true essence of Europe. I’m going to smell the entrancing scent of baguettes and croissants in the Boulangerie. I’m going to eat cheeses that stink of festering mould. I’m going to walk the cobbled streets of my village and feel the cool alpine chill as I haggle in the festive Christmas markets. I’m going to take a TGV to Paris and drink coffee, faffing about the 1st, walking along the banks of the Seine.

But first, I’m going to buy Pictionary.

Away

cont.

a great country; maybe not for the upbeat charm of its people, but for such things as the food and the wine and the weather.

(I don’t want to give a misleading impression of the French, they’re not all always grumpy and unfriendly, just many of them, often in the Alpine region of Haute Savoie where I was staying anyway. There were many lovely and immensely friendly people, but they do, as a nation, have a greater tendency to moan, complain, and pout, even the nice ones.) It was great to live in a different culture and see how they do things over there. Just little things make you think, like how there are three fresh fruit and vegetable markets a week in the town Annecy where I was staying. How nothing is open on a Sunday in the whole of France.

How people scoff at the idea of low-fat cheese.

It makes you realise that the way you’ve done things all your life isn’t the way to do things but simply a way among many.

So why, I wonder to myself as I watch shiny new Freshers doing their thing in Front Square, am I back here? I’m impatient to do more travelling, learn about other ways of living. Aren’t things different here to the real world of work and won’t I be faffing about for another two years waiting to leave? Will Kant’s transcendental theory of existence ever be of use to me?

Maybe not, or maybe it has already been of use to me. I liked learning it. Like seeing low-fat cheese rejected as a ridiculous idea, it made me think. And after I worked as a language assistant I worked in an ice cream shop for about four months. The ice cream was undoubtedly very good but I didn’t much like the job.

Confined for too long in a tiny, hot, sweaty place with people I didn’t much like, it made me think of the line in Sartre’s play Huis Clos; “Hell is other people.” If I have a degree I probably won’t have to work in a poky French ice cream shop for the rest of my life. So I’m happy to be here at college. Sure I can explore the world, or bits of it, later. For now I get on with the more pressing business, with Kant and his pals, of finding out if it actually exists or not.

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Great Expectations

by Ben Michael Mathews

Have positive expectations for the year ahead: it could effect your health, mental capabilities, and even your libido

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xpectation is a powerful thing. In fact, positive expectations can help your college life by improving your grades, happiness, fitness, and sex life. Expectations also help decide our confidence as well as limit what we will or will not attempt and how we will attempt them. Believing something about yourself or your experience can then be expected to influence a substantial portion of your life. Some scientific studies are even beginning to suggest that belief in the treatment one is undergoing is partly, or even wholly, responsible for the effects of many medications. Furthermore, some scientists consider belief as the cause of the strange patterns in achievement that are seen in the sporting world, among other places. The important factor for us is that the conclusions that these scientists come to can often be applied to our own lives.

To begin with I’ll introduce some of the relevant research discoveries and explain the jargon. The placebo effect is a term used in science to describe the beneficial effects of an “inert” or inactive treatment; the inert treatments themselves are subsequently called placebos. In medical studies these placebos are often just sugar pills, and yet the patient will often still report some positive effect from the treatment. However, to determine that some active ingredient is responsible for the cure in the nonplacebo pill and not some other factor, the treatment must be exactly the same in all ways including appearance and side effects etc. Certain scientific studies have shown however that the difference between many treatments with “active ingredients” and placebo treatments disappears when the placebos are given the same appearance and side effects. Scientists have come to argue then that what matters actually is the side effects. These side effects, along with the illusion of the professionalism of the treatment, increase the client’s belief that the treatment will work. In

other words, as long as the side effects are the same in the two treatments, many people will feel the pill is working whether it includes the active ingredient or not. Certain thoughts may then influence our beliefs: “It has side effects and therefore it is working”.

“It looks like a very complicated pill and it tastes horrible; it should work”.

Similarly the more a doctor talks up a treatment or in some way acts in a way to make the patient have greater belief in the treatment, the better the treatment will fare with the patient.

Importantly, our potential in other areas is also a factor of our mindset. This potential is often set by the fact that we as humans are unaware of our true limits. As a result of our inability to know our true potential, we take our current high score or record as the highest we can reach. A string of failed maths tests could encourage less effort for the next test- saving energy expenditure in what seems a futile exercise. This self-limiting belief can be seen in the sporting world as well. The mile run, for example, was once thought to be physiologically impossible to do in less than 4 minutes. In 1954 Rodger Barrister finally dispelled this myth by being the first in recorded history to run a mile in under 4 minutes. Shortly after this, many others managed to push themselves and equal or surpass Barrister’s feat, despite the fact that it had previously been beyond the reach the human body for over a century of recorded races.

It seems unlikely that so many people who were naturally more gifted than their predecessors would all be born and reach their

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peak at the same time. Furthermore, the type of clustering of new records in question here is actually commonplace in the sporting world and predates performance enhancing drugs. The nature of the clustering patterns also is said to suggest against the theory of better sporting facilities. Therefore, what this scientific research has shown is that this clustering occurs far too often to be due to chance. We must conclude there must be something else going on and the evidence and anecdotes are pointing to a change in attitude as being the causal factor. If this effect happens in sports, why wouldn’t it happen in other areas too? The fact is it almost certainly does exist in many other fields, from computer game high scores to tutorial essay results.

In studies for new prescription drugs and treatments for libido, such as Viagra, the drugs are usually tested in a “double blind” study up against a placebo. These studies have shown that it is difficult for the actual treatments to do better than the placebo groups, and often there is not a significant difference between the groups. The cause of this? An educated conclusion is that the patients now believe that their previous limitations have been removed and respond to this by achieving overall improvement in sexual satisfaction. This makes sense if we consider that much of what we experience is dependent on chemicals manufactured in the brain, and that the abundance of these chemicals responds to how we behave, or what we perceive in the environment. Most importantly however might be the fact that how we perceive and interpret our environment is, in part, up to us.

So what does this mean for us as students? It suggests that we too may be limited by our beliefs and what we perceive to be our ‘upper limit’. If placebos work on the basis of our own innate ability to heal triggered by our belief in the treatment, we may similarly trigger this ability by belief in ourselves. Simply by understanding this principle, expecting more from ourselves and perhaps setting our own goals rather than paying attention to current high scores, we will increase the probability of getting that high score in a sporting match, computer game or tutorial essay.

Furthermore, this principle may be applicable to all areas where placebo would usually work or attitude is important, including but not limited to: mood, health, libido, pain treatments, and the effects of psychoactive drugs. Understanding this principle may act almost as powerfully as the “active ingredient” that you will get in any IQ training book, drug, or treatment.

Baby Zero F

By Natasha Finnerty

emale repression, prostitution, trafficking, drug abuse, racism: these are all real issues, and yet very few people want to address them. I recently spoke with Irish writer Emer Martin whose latest book, Baby Zero, tackles all these issues and more.

Although there is a very dark side to her book, Emer still manages to bring humour and hope to her characters. She explains that without hope you have nothing. It is an unforgettable read, one which will force you to delve deep into your own emotions.

Although Baby Zero starts in Iraq and shows the devastation of war and oppression there, Emer makes it clear her book is not an attack on Iraq. On the contrary, she aims to show the similarities between East and West. She discusses how here in Ireland we condemn the East because they cover up their women with veils“Is it as appropriate to cover up a woman with a veil, [as it is] to slice some woman’s breast open with a knife and put implants in?” If we take a close look at the treatment of women in the West we may see it is equally as bad as in the East.

“Feminism is very recent here,” Emer says, pointing out that most people do not realise that such a concept was late to arrive in Ireland. A simple illustration of this fact can be seen by looking at who is running the country: there has never been a woman Taoiseach. “Will a woman ever be Taoiseach here? I think not.”

Since time began men have had all the control. Men own everything, and still rule everything. “I think this is pointing out something: the West is not as liberal as we would like to think.”

A character from Emer’s book is young Iranian girl named Leila.

Her brother explains to her, “Men are like diamonds, women are like cotton”: a man can easily be cleansed, but a woman will remain dirty. A woman should not have an active sex life- that is dirty, shameful. However, this isn’t purely an Eastern phenomenon. “We all know the men are studs, the women are sluts, and that’s not the Muslim culture making us feel that way.” We feel this way in Ireland today. We condemn those who are different, and women are different to men.

Emer speaks about the Catholic Church, how her own mother after having a baby was not allowed walk through the front doors of the chapel. “This was not a thousand years ago, this is not the Taliban.” She speaks of why we have the Virgin Mary. This is because men cannot accept that a woman is both holy and has sex. So they say Jesus was born through the Immaculate Conception, “the virgin birth.” This is a clear example of male fear of female sexuality. The Catholic Church says Mary cannot be God’s mother if she is dirty, and women are dirty if they have sex. This is ridiculous.

Women don’t need to be rescued, and men don’t have all the

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answers. Emer speaks of her friend, Irish poet Kevin Williamson, who said, “Women underestimate how much men really hate them,” which comes from the fact that men are afraid of women. Men need women more than women need men. However, in this society everyone needs an underdog; a man can feel better, no matter how bad things get for him, because he will still have superiority over a woman. Baby Zero is a clear representative of this. The female as zero: it doesn’t matter how many times it is multiplied, it still amounts to nothing. Emer uses marriage as an example: “It is such a reproductive contract, telling us how to raise our children. Even now women go from their father’s surname to their husband’s. That really annoys me.” Women don’t even keep their name, and so they are Zero, every generation is Zero.

Emer also addresses the issue of human trafficking. Emer’s character Lan is a Cambodian child prostitute. Her circumstances are horrific, but she just accepts them, she gives up. This is happening here in Dublin: Irish brothels are full of Eastern European women. However, instead of sympathy and compassion for these victims, we ignore them. In our ignorance we disassociate ourselves from them. Another example is drug addicts.

Recently Joe Duffy spoke about drug addicts on his radio show, calling them ‘junkies’ and ‘worthless’. People were phoning the station agreeing with his labels and argued about whether they should get state help. We see them as filthy, shameful, and not fully human. It is easier to isolate a person if we look down on them.

It is very easy to turn your back on society. We are so obsessed with achieving the ‘ideal’ lifestyle that we don’t give a second thought to those worse off. This is what Emer wants to expose in her novels. It is very difficult to preach to people, but putting it in a story makes it easier to digest. As she says, “Everybody loves a good story.” Baby Zero examines how history keeps repeating itself. The book speaks about the Indians, the role of the indigenous people, and genocide. Entire cultures are wiped out, but the overlying attitude is that it doesn’t matter if the Indians or the Iranians are dead; we can’t see them, and they are not human to us. Emer ends by saying, “the face of Iraq could be anyone...”

To check out other projects Emer has lined up go to her website: www.emermartin.com.

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Songs of Mass Destruction

By Michael Wynne The forthcoming release of feminist AIDS anthem ‘Sing’ is seen against the backdrop of the approach of World AIDS Day. “What won’t kill you will make you strong,” the listener is assured on ‘Sing,’ what might be thought of as the climax of Songs of Mass Destruction (Sony/BMG), a fluid and diverse collection of new compositions by stalwart of so-called white soul Annie Lennox. Due to be released as a single the week World AIDS Day falls (December 1), this track - an already fairly well-publicised plea for African maternity hospitals to implement mother-to-child transmission prevention programmes - is a high-flying gospel anthem parenthesised by a voice-over and sampled chants from The Generics, a musical group consisting of HIV/AIDS activists and members of grass roots organisation Treatment Action Campaign, with guest vocals from seventeen other world-status female vocalists, including Madonna, k.d. lang, and Melissa Etheridge. One can appreciate Lennox’s desire to increasingly use her music, starting with this release, to “participate” with those who ordinarily lack any kind of voice or platform, something she’s willing to do with an earnestness that would do credit to the rebellious tendencies of gung-ho rockers a third her age. Or so it would seem, going not only by what that her apocalyptic and distinctly dated title suggests, but also by the artist commentary (which you get with the special 2disc set), especially for tracks like ‘Sing.’

With such a noble and all-important objective at stake, it hardly matters if the actual tune ultimately turns out to be a melodically limp twenty-first century update of ‘Sisters are Doing it for Themselves,’ with Madonna’s going-throughthe-motions vocals on the second verse especially enervated and unenthused. After all, where would we be without such heartfelt consciousness-raising efforts on the part of the world’s conscience-stricken privileged and enlightened – blundering and simplistic as those efforts often seem?

“Complacency,” as we were recently advised by one of our slicker televangelising economists, “is the enemy of success;” and if there’s anything in that other platitude, the one that promises health is wealth, it would appear there was more to what he said than may have immediately hit home.

A health survey conducted here at Trinity College last year showed that as many as 14% of the students who described themselves as sexually active admitted they never use condoms, and 18% of these said it was only because sex was unplanned (59% of those dispensing with a rubber were in

monogamous relationships, while 23% were “occasional” users). While it might be argued these stats hardly suggest the kind of blasé attitude that warns a cataclysmic on-campus outbreak of STIs is on the cards, our economy guru friend’s words about complacency apply, especially considering the same survey’s revelation that 54% of those actually using condoms when practising sex do so out of concerns over pregnancy, not infection.

This seems to imply a blinkered approach to the reality and the seriousness of the pathological risks. It’s as much cause to celebrate that so many of us are exploring the joys of physical intimacy as it is that HIV is rare among students here at Trinity, but smugness, as much as silence, can often spell big trouble, and so it seems a shame that, according to both the Student Union welfare officer and the College Health Service, no events for the run-up to World AIDS Day (which this year is a Saturday) have been scheduled to take place on our renowned university.

So perhaps it’s up to the concerned amongst us to grab the thistle and go out there ourselves to do some heavy-duty peddling of prophylactics – a supply of which the College Health Service will no doubt be too happy to lay on. In the meantime, we have the big-hearted clarion hymn ‘Sing’, with its gaggle of prestigious divas, aiming to activate awareness of the issue’s global and feminist significance.

Songs of Mass Destruction can be downloaded on amazon. com.

World AIDS Day is Saturday, December 1.

Some useful links and addresses: Cairde – http://www.cairde.ie/ Gay Health Network–www.gayhealthnetwork.ie Dublin AIDS Alliance, The Eriu Centre, 53 Parnell Square West, Dublin 1 Tel: 01 873 3799, e-mail: aids_alliance_dublin@hotmail.com AIDS Helpline Dublin–Freephone:1800 459 459

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or over thirty years women have been permitted to study in this College and obtain degrees and throughout that time their fees have been of considerablke assistance in maintaining the resources of the College. But have they produced any change in the tempo or outlook of the University or have they even obtained value for their money? We think not, and for this they have only themselves to blame.

They are in College but not of it.

We see them crossing the Front Square or chatting in the Library, we take them to dances if we are wise and to the cinema as well if we are foolish. A certain percentage of them marry us. But apart from these localised functions the life of the College (if, indeed, there be any such thing) flows on completely oblivious to them. Their champions will immediately say that this is because of the regulations, especially the six o’clock rule, which circumscribe their activities and prevent them from the full enjoyment of their rights. An Act of Parliament, however, merely exists as a thoroughfare for coach and four and if closer contact between men and women was of value surely some extra-mural associations would have appeared. As it is they vanish at six o’clock to the Hall, a registered lodging-house or the home of a parent or near relative and till the following morning we only meet individual specimens and are not conscious of the leaven of the kind.

Again the champions say: “What are thirty years among three hundred? Give us time.” But these thirty years were not as any other thirty: they have seen the origin and practical completion of the so-called Emancipation of Woman. In the larger world there are now few callings in which they cannot attain the highest positions: why have they had such little effect in the University? Their brains are not inferior, quite frequently they head the examination lists; we receive each week reports from their clubs and

societies; there have been female members of the T.C.D. staff but it is of individuals we are aware. Exclude women from the College to-morrow and would they be missed by any save the Bursar and the male Players?

They pay the same fees and obtain the same degrees as the males of the College but do they acquire any of that tolerance which rarely fails to be impressed on the undergraduates living within the walls. Discovery of the different types of human animal resident in the College makes inevitable the fuller realization of the fact that it takes all kinds to make a world. This ability to act as a Universal Flux is one of the greatest assets possessed by the older Universities in contrast to their newer rivals, but has it any effect on our undergraduettes? We feel convinced that the inhabitants of Six are less tolerant of their neighbours’ vagaries than the inhabitants of Sixteen.

“But,” the ladies shriek, “we cannot live in.” Quite so, but still the Hall will always be what its inhabitants make it.

They cannot complain that the official atmosphere of the Hall is not liberal: its present Warden is probably the closest approach to the ideal that that institution will ever see.

Infortunately breadth of outlook and domestic economy do not always go hand in hand and there is no doubt that it is not cheap to live in Hall. Few men living in spend twentythree pounds a term on the bare necessities of life even if their termly stay is prolonged to ten weeks. Also as a unit it is rather small, but if it was fulfilling its real function and conferring on its inmates those advantages, not to be measured by material standards, that are to be gained by living in it could not fail to grow in size. Until it does so we may safely claim that women will never be a factor in the life of the College, but will continue to use it as a jumping-off ground for matrimony or the staffing of girls’ schools.

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It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them.

-Nietzsche

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