Amelia Rosevear is Misc.’s International Editor. She is also the co-host of numerous radio shows on Trinity FM.
Cliodhna Conway is the winner of the NOLA for Creative Writing 2024. She is also PRO of the Public Health Society and a member of Streetdoctors society.
Conor Healy is Misc’s Co-Deputy Editor. He is also Co-News Analysis Editor for Trinity News, and acted as last year’s Publications Officer for Trinity Hall JCR.
Eliora Abramson is the Assistant Editor of Misc. and The University Times, as well as Article Editor for The Trinity Journal of Histories.
Ellen McKimm is a final-year PPES student and contributing writer for Misc since 2023. She has
Monday, February 3rd, 2025
CONTRIBUTORS
also written for publications such as Trinity News and is the former President of both the Phil and the Elizabethan Society.
Faye Madden has held several roles within The University Times and Trinity News since 2021 and currently serves as the Investigations Editor for Trinity News.
Hosanna Boulter is Misc’s Co-Deputy Editor and the Ireland and Northern Ireland Regional Officer for the Student Publication Association. She is also the founder and presenter of the What It Took podcast
Jenny Maguire is President of TCDSU/ALMCT. She is also a columnist for the Irish Independent.
Kelly Lackey is a second year European Studies student contributing to Misc for the first time. She is also
ILLUSTRATIONS
Jessica Sharkey
Mathilda Gross
Eve Smith
Pages 4, 6, 9, 13, 14, 15, 35
Pages 24-27
Page 30
on the Elizabethan Society Registrar Team.
Lucia Orsi is Misc.’s Community Editor. She has also contributed to TN2 and The University Times.
Margot Guilhot Desoldato is Misc.’s Culture Editor. She has also contributed to Tn2, Trinity Film Review, and Trinity News.
Phoebe Pascoe is Misc’s Editor-in-Chief. She was previously the Assistant Editor of Misc. and of The University Times. She has written for Trinity News, TN2, Oxygen. ie and Mission Magazine.
Stephen Conneely is Misc.’s Political Editor, after having spent last year as the magazine’s Erasmus Co-Editor. He is also the Deputy Editor of Trinity News and has reported for TheJournal.ie
PHOTOGRAPHY
Amelia Rosevear
Leah Bernasconi
Pages 19-21
Page 32
COVER Jessica Sharkey
BACK COVER
Isabel Maharg Bravo
Phoebe Pascoe
Editor's Letter
The Misc Matrix
Jenny Maguire
You Do Not Matter to Trinity
The TCDSU / ALMCT President on the future, and failings, of our college
An interview with Ken Early, journalist and Editor of Misc. 1999
Pheminism Part II Is feminism in limbo?
Break a Leg
Award-winning fiction about a day as a medical student
Caps, Gowns and Curfews
The female fight for Trinity
The Things We Carry Portraits of paraphernalia
The Fight For The Right To Choose Student activism’s role in abortion rights
Ones to Watch Trinity Hall of (Future) Fame
Misc. during WWII
A timeline of Misc’s wartime coverage
I Haven’t Taught a Man in 7 Years
A conversation with Professor Lindsey Earner-Byrne
Friends in High Places
Discovering places through people
Tough Pill to Swallow
The disinformation undermining women’s access to contraception
Ivana Bacik Looks Back
The Labour Party leader on life at Trinity
EDITOR'S LETTER
For this anniversary issue of Misc., we decided that originality is overrated, and took to this publication’s archives. We also wanted to see how much the magazine had changed in its 130 years of production. Though Trinity has copies of Misc. going all the way back to 1895, they can be tricky to find, because Misc. was not always Misc. Throughout the years, it has been known as T.C.D., T.C.D: A Miscellany, New Miscellany, TCD Miscellany and finally Misc. Magazine. It’s something of a Theseus’ Ship situation: how can we claim to be the same magazine after so many different versions? Like any good Trinity institution, though, we are keen to evidence our old age (hi, Hist). And, if nothing else, there does seem to be a kind of consistency in Misc.’s capacity for change - one which echoes the ‘student experience’ more generally. Reinvention is far from atypical at this college (at any college). Misc. has always sought to reflect the experiences of Trinity students in individual issues, but, when you zoom out, its back catalogue does this, too. With each renaming, redesigning and new ethos there has remained a goal not just to inform students but to be informed by students. That said, each editor and editorial team has taken Misc in different directions in pursuit of this elusive goal.
For Paul McGuinness – manager of U2 and Editor of Misc. in 1970 – this involved publishing the stories that the national newspapers were forbidden to print (provided by his friends who worked for said papers). Though the Junior Dean fined Misc. for the ‘consistently libellous nature’ of its output, a penchant for risk-taking has characterised many of Misc.’s eras. And just as Misc. has changed, it has also catalogued Trinity’s own changes – 130 years of them, in case we haven’t laboured that enough. In this issue Stephen Conneely, our Political Editor, reflects on how Misc. covered the 1916 Easter Rising, in shocking evidence of just how much student politics has shifted. He also looks at Misc’s archives from the Second World War. Throughout Misc.’s archives, one can find controversial, provocative and sometimes abhorrent pieces. These are no different. Looking back through another lens, Kelly Lackey chronicles when women were first allowed on campus, and Ellen McKimm considers the fight for abortion rights as undertaken by students at Trinity. But, as much as we are reflecting on the past in this issue, it is also intended to be a time capsule of Trinity now, as all those
other issues of Misc. have been for their own times. Stories of past student activism sit alongside a disillusioned yet hopeful essay by Jenny Maguire, our TCDSU/AMLCT President. Ellen and Kelly’s articles on women’s history at Trinity are followed a few pages later by Faye Madden’s piece on how disinformation about medical contraception has spread online. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is clear from the issues which, time and time again, students want to write about, but also from our conversations with past students for this issue. I spoke with Ken Early, the Second Captains podcast host and Irish Times journalist who edited Misc. in 1999, about his experiences in student (and real) journalism. Ivana Bacik, leader of the Labour Party, also shared some memories of her time on campus. Misc. has been home to some big names throughout the years – in our conversation, Early reflects on Leo Varadkar’s writing for Misc. during his time as editor – and we have a special feature this issue highlighting the students we are excited to share a campus with. But it is the connection between students, rather than any one individual, that really makes up a university. There are reflections on friendship studded throughout this issue, and collaboration weaves its way through the foundations of any student publication. The individual issues of Misc. are fun (and sometimes insane) to look back on, but it’s the whole bundle that tells a story, so many stories, of students over the years. When we look back on our time at Trinity, after all, it’s the faces of others that make up our memories; lunches with friends on the cricket pitch, the people you always see in the library but never know the names of, the guy on the steps of the Pav who you accidentally spilled your pint on. This campus is an eclectic mix, as this mish-mash of a publication has reflected over the last 130 years. We hope the miscellany of students and sentences before you speaks to this as well. - Phoebe
THE MISC. MATRIX
Want to contribute to Misc?
We are always on the lookout for new writers and artists.
To get involved, email us directly at editor@miscmagazine.ie ; join our writers' group chats through Instagram, @tcdmiscmagazine, or head to miscmagazine.ie and fill out our 'contact' form.
YOU DO NOT MATTER
Jenny Maguire, TCDSU/AMLCT
President, on the future - and the failings - that lie through Front Gate
Don’t allow your eyes to glaze over. Give a shit. These are the words I wish to scream in almost every meeting with senior management I have had in my six months as our SU President. “Trinity time”, as it’s often referred to, is the term used to describe just how slow things happen within the university. The length of time it takes for decisions to be made or incremental change to be enacted within College is not only frustrating, but widely accepted by management. The institution will, “of course”, always protect the institution. It is however, in the creation of Trinity timea bureaucratic, inhumane and conservative concept - that allows it to do so. Trinity upholds this conservatism as an inevitable part of college life. It underlines the ideology behind all that occurs on our campuses, an ideology built to forfeit responsibility to support you. Whether it’s Gaeilge, your disability, or just needing to heat up a meal, it is the institution that will always come first - but we can and must change it. With a university built as an outpost to civilise, colonise and demonise Irishness and the Irish people, promoting the language and integrating it into the heart of how this college runs this year has been…interesting! Trinity College once owned *2% of Ireland*, and
Whether it’s Gaeilge, your disability, or just needing to heat up a meal, it is the institution that will always come first
collected rent right at least until the end of the twentieth century. It still sings the praises of the colonisers of Ireland at ceremonies, and a large reason it was able to be so lavish and grand was because it was paid for with money from its tenants across Ireland. Why do I bring this up? Because its role in the destruction of the Irish language and culture is not something in the past - it is our shared present. As TCDSU/AMLCT has worked to highlight this academic year, Trinity is in “direct breach” of Irish language legislation. When we beg, vandalise and organise for our language, we are met with the same hesitation and fear that it might rock the boat too much (despite that boat being built on colonial oppression). And yet, the boat is protected.
The Rubrics, standing at over 300 years old, most recently underwent renovations from 20212024 . It is, after all, Ireland’s oldest purpose-built residential building. It is, also, still inaccessible. Costing over €12 million, and housing a whopping 9 students and made unavailable to PhD’s, it served as a fantastic opportunity to spend millions of euros on a capital project that will serve very few staff and students and ultimately just boost tourism and Trinity’s global reputation. This privilege is not unique
to The Rubrics. The Trinity East project (a redevelopment of the campus at Grand Canal Dock) was originally planned to cost close to a billion euro, yet does not have a single space planned for students and researchers to heat up a meal. I was reassured by one senior member of college that there is “a courtyard”, however. These builds exist not for you, but for the institution to show off to investors and international corporations. We are reassured that this money comes back
MATTER TO TRINITY
to staff and students… looking forward to that. Heralded in any article about these builds is their sustainability practices. Did you know the Rubrics is 100% heated by ground-sourced heat pumps? Or that Trinity East will “do great things in a way that responds to climate change and biodiversity loss” according to the Provost? Perhaps more relevant environmental information is that TCD has an agreement to only serve Coca-Cola on campus, the largest polluter in the world. Or that TCD has a greenwashing partnership with Ryanair. Every year Trinity runs Green
Week, highlights of which usually include some green ribbons on the exam hall and a self-masturbatory award ceremony. Much like DEI initiatives on campus, sustainable activities only exist to try and distract the harmful and environmentally horrific decisions made by the university. My transness and the destruction of this planet only matter when they may be used as a publicity stunt. When it comes to the hard decisions, like defying the conversion policies of the National Gender Service, or rightly telling Ryanair to fuck off, Trinity hides behind time and bureaucracy, arís agus arís. So what do we do? The nature of an institution as large as Trinity means that some delays are to be expected. Trinity does not operate in isolation from the rest of the country, as much as it often thinks that it does. It, too, must deal with the slog of government and the council and dealing with its thousands of stakeholders. However, this good faith allowance of time is taken advantage of. Why wouldn’t it be? There is no true means to hold university management to account. There can be slaps on wrists, but nothing to stop the wrongful wielding of power. Trinity belongs to us all. No one alive today was a part of its creation, we have all inherited it by living in and around this city. We should (and can) have a say in how it is run, making sure it is run for us and not for corporate interest.
Trinity College once owned 2% of Ireland
“But Jenny”, I hear you call out. “You guys have been sooo class and sexy this year and achieved
so much. A student centre? Free period products? Master fee freezes...” you then continue listing our accomplishments for 45 more minutes. I blush. It is these achievements that make my point even more pertinent. It is only because of the display of reckoning upon the university following its decision to fine the Union €215,000 and single out individuals (hey x) that the university has been, admittedly, lovely to work with for the most part. The Provost and I dabble in queening out, in fact. We, the people of Dublin and beyond, managed to achieve something Trinity is built to withstand: accountability from its so-called college community. Students’ Unions do not have the power of strike action, and so it is in our community building and grassroots organising that accountability and wins can be attained. We have achieved this in actions with health science students, and will continue to agitate for greater goals or, in other words, for accountability. Unions within this university will suffer from their inherently shortsighted nature if they do not come together to demand a greater democratisation of the university, for the people who live, work and visit it. Every decision made is a political one that impacts the lives within this community, and yet you have little/ no say in it. To benefit the institution must be to benefit the people within it, first and foremost. The people who know best about what benefits the people are the people themselves – they must be given greater opportunities to do so.
REREADING HISTORY
What does Misc’s archive have to say about the 1916 Easter Rising? Stephen Conneely finds out.
Since its establishment in 1592, Trinity College Dublin has stood in the centre of Ireland’s capital as an emblem of foreign rule. Originally founded under the name of England’s Queen Elizabeth I, the first professors and administrators of the university made no secret of its allegiance to the British crown, and its ambition to further the colonial cause in Ireland. It served for centuries as the school of choice for the island’s ruling Protestant Ascendency, and up until the 1970s had comparatively very few Irish Catholic students due to broad socio-economic barriers to education and the Catholic’s Church insistence that permission must be granted in order for a Catholic to attend Trinity. Of course, the campus that
we go to everyday has changed much since those times, and now stands at the forefront of academic modernity with robust schools and a diverse student body. The progression to this current state was non-linear, however, and underwent various periods of opposition and acceptance throughout the slow march towards Ireland’s self-actualisation. Trinity’s history of propagating colonial interests in Ireland has naturally resulted in the college’s less than favourable social and cultural reputation for being ‘elitist’, ‘out of touch’ or ‘not-Irish’ - to sum this up in one term: West
Trinity has always been at arm’s length from broader Irish society
Brit. Loosely defined as someone or something that maintains either an interest in or support of the British presence in Ireland - be this cultural, political, economic, militarily or otherwise - the term West Brit brings with it explicitly negative connotations in the Irish psyche. From reading choice articles in Misc.’s archives from around the time that the Irish nationalist cause was at its most active (say 1915 - 1925), the label is well earned - one wouldn’t have thought that a revolutionary fervor was stirring in the country, for Misc’s writers largely ignored this. While it wouldn’t be accurate to state that the 1916 Rising was a grassroots effort from the people in Dublin, it is surprising that the supposed intellectuals in Trinity at that time didn’t sense an air of change, or at least talk amongst themselves about theories of a burgeoning national identity. Misc. took a break from publishing their weekly pamphlet style newspaper in the immediate aftermath of the 1916 Rising, and only returned to readers in the June of that year. What they wrote about such a significant event - which, arguably, occupies centre stage in the historical retelling of the birth of the nation - is telling of the
privileged position that the student body occupied at that time.
In the opening editorial, Misc.’s top writers opined that “Trinity College, true to her traditions, has played a worthy if an unacceptable part” in what it first described as a rebellion. This part that the College played was “to defend our University against the attack of Irishmen, to be forced in self-defence to shoot down our countrymen” - certainly an interesting way to describe the series of events. Perhaps the most delusional statement of all was their speculation as to why Trinity wasn’t targeted more severely by the rebels, writing that “we cannot help cherishing the hope that our College was defended by something even more powerful [than] the rifles and bayonets, and that the honoured fame of our university made the rebels loath to attack it”, adding that “the love of Trinity and the pride in it is the heritage of all Irishmen”. This shows us not just a wilful ignorance to the reality of a life of struggle lived by people in Dublin (something which Trinity students are charged with to this day), but also a blindness of the political situation that provoked such a violent outburst in the Easter Rising. The latter is even more surprising from a group that would consider themselves at the forefront of political public opinion, backed by hours of lectures on relevant topics. They wrote not about rebels who had been executed by the British army, nor of the infrastructure damage to the city centre, but instead focused their writings on
Perhaps the most delusional statement of all was their speculation as to why Trinity wasn’t targeted more severely
“the efforts of the College servants” by crediting the two porters who closed Front Gates with “promptness and initiative”. They praised the kitchen workers for providing “tasty breakfasts” for British Army Generals stationed on campus, while also thanking them for maintaining the quality of dinners for staff and students.
Reserved for the very last paragraph was brief political analysis, in which they simply put that “if only the various rival politicians could be induced to spend a few weeks in the College we feel sure all difficulties would vanish”. They then quickly shifted to discussing a poem about a yellow primrose by a river basin in a confusing attempt to express their wish that this
would all go away.
Reading through this edition of Misc., I didn’t expect to be greeted with revolutionary attitudes, or even light agreement with the Irish nationalist cause - which, for those interested in further readings, can be found in abundance in
Misc. during the 1960s and 1970s, when the publication shifted to a magazine style and the student movement was at its peak. I was, however, surprised to read such a tunnel vision account of events. Trinity has always been at arm’s length from broader Irish society. For good reason, too, with its unapologetic association with the British crown for centuries and proximity to privilege provoked by rampant social and economic inequality. A narrative has been born within this campus’ walls that this position is unjustified, and although in a contemporary context it is fair to question this - the historical roots of this are more than reasonable. Misc., in its various guises, acted as Trinity’s principal publication for more than 50 years, only beginning to be rivalled by Trinity News in the 1950s, meaning that the brightest (or, at least, the loudest) minds flocked to our pages to voice their views on events. The first edition after the 1916 Rising largely ignores the reality and context of the events that took place that Easter - sadly only solidifying Trinity’s tarnished reputation as an institution alien to Ireland.
EDITORS ON EDITORS
Ken Early - co-host of the Second Captains podcast, columnist for The Irish Times and Editor of Misc. in 1999 - speaks with Phoebe Pascoe, Misc’s current Editor.
PP: Could you tell me about your experience editing Misc?
KE: I suppose I look back on it with a bit of shame that I didn’t really do a very good job. But it was interesting to do something where I had no idea what I was doing. It was only really afterwards that I was like ‘Oh, I should have done this, I should have done that’. As I got more experienced I realised that I actually did everything wrong. There is some interesting stuff in it. It was certainly a worthwhile thing to do, which probably had quite a lot of influence on the rest of my life, actually, in terms of what I ended up doing – not that that was obvious at the time.
PP: In an interview I saw, you talked about a piece you wrote for Misc. calling Amazon a bad investment. You said it was one of the worst pieces you’ve written. Do you think there’s something to be said for getting some potentially bad writing out the way as a student and making mistakes? Also, do you have a favourite piece that you wrote?
KE: I really can’t remember the pieces I wrote, aside from the Amazon one – that obviously sticks in the mind. I think I actually was right in the short term. I think in the larger sense I was wrong. I remember writing something about the Belgrade bombing, saying I thought it was very bad. Actually, I think that was right, I think it was bad. I see it now being used by Russia to justify what they’re doing; “You did this and it was bad so we should get to do it as well.” But mainly I was editing [Misc.] in the sense of getting other people to write things. Also, I did all the design and layout – the production part of it – which was a bit of a nightmare. Because of my disorganised work approach I would end up having to do it all in 48 hours. After you do that a couple of times you sort of develop a phobia of having to do it again. Which might explain the low numbers of issues we produced! The first one that we did, I remember I had taken so long over laying everything out, it was like my little baby. Then I sent it off to the printer and they just sent back this total jumble. All of the fonts were wrong, everything had gone wrong. There were pieces missing, articles cut. It was just the grossest… I hesitate to use the word abortion, but it was an abortion. That was the first one we did, so that was disappointing. I was really happy with that, I
“This is great, everyone’s worked so hard, I think we’ve got some good articles”, then it came back and I was just looking at this deformed thing and I was like
“Oh my God”. And then there was an argument with the printer… So that wasn’t a great start! But at least the layout worked on the other ones we did. You often incorporate references to TV shows, pop culture etc into your writing, is
there journalism (aside from news) that you enjoy reading that is outside of the remit of what you write? Is there a particular writer or kind of writing you find yourself drawn to?
KE: Well, now, not particularly. It’s changed so much since I was in college. We did have the internet, but it wasn’t like the internet is now. I think Google maybe existed, but nobody used it at that stage. It was AltaVista or Yahoo - those search engines that wouldn’t really give you much. Some of the papers had started putting up their stuff online for free – everybody was doing it for free then, because it wasn’t taken seriously, it was just like, “Oh, yeah, we have a website, we’ll throw stuff up there, nobody looks at that.” So nobody really understood what was going to happen. But I feel as though it’s completely changed everything to do with journalism. Back when I was in Trinity, the interesting journalists then would have been doing what was called New Journalism. In the sixties, Tom Wolfe was leading this movement of a new kind of journalist that doesn’t want to write the dry, boring prose of the style that newspapers think journalism should be written in. Instead, we’re going to use novelistic techniques and bring ourselves into the story and do all this stuff which would have been regarded sort of sniffily by the New York Times or any of the establishment papers.That was the cool type of journalism then. I kind of don’t see that now. Maybe you would know better than I would. Who’s doing that now? It’s not as though journalism was really respectable as long ago as the 1990s, but it wasn’t hated, like the slogan they have: you don’t hate the media enough. You’ll see Elon Musk or whoever [say]: “You don’t hate them enough.” It’s become identified, I think, in a lot of people’s minds - the word journalist - with what they now call “legacy media”, and a lot of people conflate that with essentially a kind of a propaganda outrider for the government or for the elites or for the establishment or whatever the evil force is. As opposed to the idea that I would have grown up with that the independent media is separate from power and actually can critique it, and in fact does do that, or at least tries honestly to do that. At least in a lot of cases, because we also had the tabloid or what they might call popular media – popular meaning more people actually read it – which would just be about which footballer is having an affair, that kind of thing, which obviously people have always been interested in. But there was that sense of the media as a serious project with at least some people with integrity in it who were trying to find out things or better understand or explain the world. I honestly think that idea is completely gone now. And the way that people consume information has completely changed. I used to think, wow, great, and sit down and read a 6, 000 word article. Do people do that now? I mean, I know that obviously some people do, but generally, it’s kind of 15 second videos. It’s obvious that that’s a far more dominant way of communication now and the people who are successful in media are the people who understand or are good exponents of this style. PP: The way that you were describing those changes in the
media in the past 25 years, do you have any changes that you predict going forward - do you think maybe the pendulum will swing the other way as a response by “legacy media” to try and regain the faith of readers and that kind of thing, or do you think that it’s all just kind of going in the same direction
KE: No, I don’t see any way that it can be. I suppose there’s always gonna be a market for, say, what the Financial Times does. The Financial Times is an extremely successful so-called “legacy media” organisation with a vast subscriber base because they actually are telling people something about reality; if you’ve got money, if you’re rich, you will want to know what other rich people are doing, what’s happening. And the Financial Times is doing this in a way which people still find credible enough to pay them in, in large numbers. And the New York Times, I guess, is sort of the same; it’s a kind of a broader entity than the FT. But we’re talking about some of the biggest newspaper brands in the world. For everybody else I really don’t know.
I think it’s going to be interesting over the next couple of years, the way you saw during the US Presidential campaign Trump just started doing podcast interviews with all these guys like Theo Von and whoever. And this, I think, was a pretty successful strategy by him. He’s always been more interesting media-wise than whoever he’s been running against. But it was a good idea because they recognised that these things have much bigger audiences and bigger reaches than what we have previously been conditioned to think of as the biggest media.
What I think is going to be interesting to see over the next couple of years is to see [...] how long before people start to realise that this is the propaganda now, this is the form that it’s taken? How long can his sort of appeal survive?
People are going on about the legacy media, CNN: “they lie, they lie so much”. But Rogan is just sitting there listening to these billionaires talk about how great they are and just going “wow”. It’s far worse. Previous generations of propagandists wouldn’t have dared to try this; it just would have seemed too ridiculous. But somehow he’s still managing, so far, to be like: “Oh, you know, he’s not like the legacy media, he’s got integrity.” I’m like: “I don’t think so!” And it will be interesting over the next couple of years, all of this right wing podcast sphere,which has grown up as a reaction to the previously established media and has kind of been like, “We’re not like them.” If they’re all now just cheering on the United States government and the richest billionaires in America and talking about how great this all is, how long can that last before people start to go “Hang on a second, are you not actually even worse than what went before you?” At least they made the pretense of having editorial standards. Maybe it was hypocritical, but at least if they got caught out doing something, somebody might get fired. Instead, I hear people say stuff about Rogan like, “Well, he’s not a journalist, he’s a podcaster.” It’s as though that exonerates him from having to have any sort of standards of integrity. I don’t know, this may in time seem like a very old fight – this may be as good as my Amazon prediction - you know, are people not gonna notice at some point that this is like an even more insidious propaganda form? I’m not sure. Maybe people just find it entertaining and it’s what they want to hear.
guess, the mainstream view.
KE: And what does the reaction to that look like? I kind of shudder to think in a way.
PP: I guess given all of that and how extreme that sphere can be, do you have advice for people entering journalism now? I mean, a lot of people’s response to that is just don’t.
It’s the nature of being at Trinity: a lot of the people who are there will, in 20 years time, be running the country
KE: I mean, it’s obvious there’s a good living to be made, you know, lots of people are doing it. I don’t know if it’s what we used to call journalism: a primarily written form. Because writing used to be the way that information was transmitted at large scale, and if you wanted to read something you had to buy that thing first, whether it was a newspaper or book or whatever, it was a physical object that you had to buy so there was a revenue stream purely associated with the writing. Now I guess there’s Substack. It can still be done, but it’s a bit harder. I suppose people can build Substack profiles out of anywhere just by being consistently good. If you consistently write really interesting things then people will eventually notice. That’s true. But it is harder to get noticed than if you were, for instance, hired by a newspaper and your stuff appeared there alongside everyone else’s and people would see it and go: “this is good”. It’s just hard. How do you get over that initial hurdle of people knowing who you are unless you have some other pre-existing fame or some other way of getting noticed? The idea that someone like me could understand what someone now should do honestly is ridiculous. I have absolutely no idea. The one thing that I wish I had done is pay more attention to the people around me, when I was [at Trinity]. Some of the people who were doing articles for me I thought were actually really good. And I never even thought to bring them out for drinks or something. You know what I mean? These kind of stupid, simple things. Like, why did I do that? It just didn’t occur to me. That’s the only thing that I would say – some of these people actually might grow up to be important, you know. I’m not just talking about human respect and empathy; it could serve you later in later life. Like Leo Varadker wrote a couple of things for Miscellany. He interviewed Bernard Ingham, who was Mrs. Thatcher’s press secretary. Rory Hearne, who’s a TD now. I mean, it’s the nature of being at Trinity: a lot of the people who are there will, in 20 years time, be kind of running the country. Maybe you should pay attention to them while they’re there, instead of just thinking about yourself all the time like I did.
PP: Do you think that experience in student journalism is in any way a preparation for then working as a journalist? Or do you think it’s a different entity entirely, just getting to make things with people that are around you and your friends etc?
PP: I agree. I think it’ll be interesting as the “alternative” becomes kind of assimilated into the government and becomes, I
KE: I think it is definitely a preparation. I mean, just the whole thing of working in a group with other people, working in a kind of a collective project. Also the fact that you’ll meet a lot of those people again – if you continue to work in media, you’ll probably run into these people because they obviously have a similar interest to you at that point, so you’re kind of starting out going in the same direction. So yeah, for all of these reasons, I definitely look back at it as something I’m glad I did. I just wish that I’d done a better job. This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
PHEMINISM: PART II
With trad-wives trending and another female presidential bid biting the dust, Indira Kelly asks: where is feminism today?
It’s 2009: I’ve just graced the floors of my rural Galway junior infants classroom. Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” is on the radio, and Rory Treanor is blessing the pages of the Misc with his acerbic article “Pheminism.”
A personal rant against women—based heavily on Treanor’s grievances with the price of car insurance— this piece provides a baffling reflection on how some people viewed the feminist movement at the time.
Fifteen years later we get to reflect on all that society has achieved for gender equality. The Istanbul convention has come into effect, increasing legal protection against gender-based violence. The MeToo movement acted as a catalyst for survivors of sexual abuse to speak out, and here in Ireland abortion rights were granted as the 8th amendment was repealed. There is, despite uneven progress and systemic challenges, undoubtedly no better time to be a woman than today, in a world where blatant sexism ‘seems’ a thing of the past. Yet, while Treanor’s article feels like a relic, some of its observations remain uncomfortably relevant. Women still occupy fewer seats than men in the Dáil.
In 2025, feminism can easily feel disingenuous
In the latest election, while 53% more women ran for government, only seven more were elected compared to 2020 numbers. Across the pond, Kamala Harris’s presidential bid faced a bitter defeat, prompting collective disappointment from women everywhere. The issue isn’t that women aren’t advocating or running for office; it’s that people still don’t vote for womenwomen included! Women are often perceived as less capable or authoritative than men with equivalent qualifications. Apparently, the ability to grow a baby inside one’s body just screams “incompetent and weak”. Considering how little progress has been made globally for gender equality, it is unsurprising to witness the persistent social regression that shapes attitudes toward women. In Afghanistan, women face severe restrictions, from being barred from education to lacking access to healthcare and protection from violence. Most Western countries aren’t faring well either, with the legal protections in place being disregarded time and time again. The Gisèle Pelicot case in France revealed how violence against women remains a crisis even in countries that ostensibly champion equality. Despite each of the 51 men being convicted of aggravated rape, none of them were
sentenced to above 20 years, perpetuating a culture that blames victims instead of holding perpetrators accountable, reminding us that even when it appears accountability is being reached, it’s still not sufficient. Western feminist movements have a critical role to play in addressing these issues. By amplifying the voices of women in crisis regions, and by listening to the women around us, we can foster meaningful change. However, this requires moving beyond symbolic gestures and embracing sustained, intersectional advocacy. The global fight for gender equality must reflect the interconnected struggles of women everywhere. Even as the feminist space becomes more intersectional and begins to include queer women and women of colour, the role of gender in student life offers a revealing microcosm of these broader shifts. At Trinity, for instance, the very existence of the Eavan Boland Library—named after a trailblazing Irish poet—stands as a powerful acknowledgement of women’s contributions. It’s a far cry from 1904, when women were first admitted to Trinity after decades of exclusion. Today, outside the Arts Block, gender feels like a more fluid concept than it was in 2009. Students dress in ways that challenge traditional norms, openly exploring and expressing their identities. Yet, these signs of progress exist alongside lingering traces of inequality. I’ve been interrupted by male peers in tutorials more times than I can count, and I’ve heard whispers about certain professors being “sexist graders” who routinely grade female students lower than male counterparts. These experiences are small but telling, showing how systemic biases still shape women’s experiences, even in spaces designed to foster critical thought and equality. Such contradictions mirror feminism’s broader journey, highlighting its successes while underscoring the work still to be done. But this is not work for women alone. While women and femininity are often celebrated, it is rarely done by men, in fact men still remain isolated from the feminist conversation. A summating remark from Treanor’s article: “Ladies.. Get off your arses. The trickle isn’t going to work. Your rugby-watching male friends may not seem all that comfortable with such a departure but if you want a movement towards greater equality, it’s certainly not going to emanate from that set”. Fifteen years on, it
is still widely held that most women are not doing enough to achieve any feminist goal, and aren’t really sure what goals we are trying to reach or where to start, while at the same time men are not consulted or critiqued on their role in the pursuit of equality. Some may think my point is naive - why would men fight for or desire equal rights, when their position is and always has been the one which women seek to be equal to. In short, people think “what’s in Feminism for men?” But, this question should really be rephrased: “What will men miss out on?”. Women are now surpassing men in several key adult achievements, including college degree attainment, starting salaries and early financial independence. For instance, In the USA in the 2018-2019 academic year, over 1.1 million women earned bachelor’s degrees, compared to fewer than 860,000 men—roughly 74 men for every 100 women graduating. In the UK, women between the ages of 22 and 29 also earn slightly more than their male counterparts. However, this gap quickly reverses as many women in their 30s take on part-time
linity in the 21st century- and it’s not a feminist one. Society finds itself in a contradictory state: on one hand, it celebrates powerful women and women-led achievements in culture and rhetoric; on the other, it consistently undermines women’s opportunities through societal norms that favour men. While society often describes aspects of masculinity as “toxic,” the very systems that uphold male dominance continue to thrive, perpetuating inequality under the guise of progress. In 2025, feminism can easily feel disingenuous - printed “girl power” T-shirts made in sweatshops or 15% discounts on scented candles for International Women’s Day. But feminism isn’t futile just because it’s hard to define. In the Western world we have the luxury to think about what type of feminist we want to be while thousands of women and girls everyday face human rights abuses purely because of their gender. Treanor critiques feminism because it is not substantial enough to be considered a philosophy or political movement, yet he admits the term means exists. But
that misdirects their confusion and anger. Social me dia has enabled men like Andrew Tate to have a platform, their misogynistic views amassing attention and slowly becoming normalised among susceptible young men. Though women have not caused the so-called “crisis of masculinity”, the evolving role of women as leaders who can ‘have it all’ (which itself is a reflection of systemic pressures rather than an innate trait) - balance work, childcare, and societal expectations— stands in stark contrast to the stagnation of traditional male roles. This disparity underscores the urgent need to address not only systemic inequalities but also the shifting dynamics of gender expectations. It is alarming to think of the example set by men in power, men like Elon Musk or Donald Trump. These power-hungry men peddling a kind of authoritative patriarchy are the ones setting the cultural reference for mascu-
nism is enough - feminism has always existed as a lens to make uitable for all,
seems we’ve gotten caught up in the need to fight for tangible goals, like the right for franchise in the proaching modern feminism needs a different tack. We must find practical ways to involve men in femi nism or look at how society can redefine masculinity to align with modern values. Men play a crucial role in shaping conversations about gender equality. If discussions on feminism came from men themselves, it could make the subject more accessible and less polarizing. Reflecting on Treanor’s piece, I find myself admiring one aspect of his approach to feminism- at least he is talking about it. Feminism should be a topic discussed by men, in casual settings like the Pav, not just something for women to carry alone. His remark, “Enlightenment has a face, and it’s the misogynist residing in Irish males” still rings true today. It’s these enlightened men who, by actively participating in the fight for equality, can help strengthen feminism—not just as a movement for women, but as one that advances fairness and opportunity for everyone.
BREAK A LEG
Cliodhna Conway writes a fictional account of a medical student’s day on shift.
I’m used to the role of annoying medical student at this point. In fact, I’m an expert in the field: I’ve become skilled at finding the most inconvenient place to stand in, at dropping everything I’m told to hold, and at not knowing the answers to the simplest questions. As my last rotation of the year looms, I feel I have become a seasoned professional. Through much research, I have compiled the following list of tips for the pestering medical student in the MDT.
1. “Med student” is your new name. Accept it.
2. Never bend over Your scrub pockets will empty like Mary Poppins’ bag — a singular piece of chewing gum, a Boojum receipt from two years ago, a leaking pen, a protein bar, and a singular surgical glove scattering to every corner of the ward and drawing second-hand embarrassment from everyone.
3. Tell every doctor their speciality is your dream one — this makes life a lot easier.
4. If you don’t have a caffeine addiction already, you will by the end of the year. On the
bright side, the doctors will probably pay. 5. There are a thousand acronyms — learn them. You don’t want to ask why a stroke patient needs SALT (Speech And Language Therapist, not, as I first thought, the sister of pepper). It’s the start of the end. The first day of my final rotation of the year — thank God. No matter how many times I’ve done this, it never gets easier. From the moment I wake up, all the worst scenarios start running through my head like a horror movie — a consultant interrogating me about the Krebs cycle, (accidentally) making a patient cry, or worse, killing a patient. Of course, this has never happened before, but Greys Anatomy has made me paranoid that it’s only a matter of time. So I’m also anticipating bombs in patients’ robes, mass shootings, and a freak workplace accident all happening this morning. The whole of Dublin is piled onto one Luas.The only part of my body I’m able to move is my thumb, which scrolls on my phone as I desperately try to squeeze as much or-
thopaedic knowledge into my brain as possible. The heat and smell from the passengers mixed with the halting and stopping of the Luas makes it an environment unconducive for learning. I’m starting to spiral. I just learnt that broken bone = fractured bone, which means I either need a miracle or a consultant with a very low bar for this to be a positive placement experience. I arrive just about on time, but I’m tempted to stay on the Luas to avoid the inevitable. There’s usually another student to trauma bond with — free therapy for all involved! — but I cannot spot them as I do laps around the hospital. I finally force myself to approach the orthopaedic office. There’s a long drawn out awkwardness as I try to decide whether to knock or just wait. The hallway to the door is a dark void, deafeningly silent, with no sign of life on the other side. It isn’t exactly a welcome sign. No choice now but to enter the void. Breath shaking, I knock.
ly waits for me to recall something I studied just last night, and have since forgotten, I glance down and notice his mismatched socks, which is oddly reassuring. The other intern, meanwhile, is less inspiring. At one point, he requests a CTPA for a patient—whose name he couldn’t recall. Perhaps the HPAT should be a bit tougher.
The only people we annoy more than interns are patients
Entering the room, I stifle a laugh — it’s just as the stereotype predicted. All the men are over 6 feet tall, obnoxiously discussing a weekend football game, decked in Connell Waldron chains and Dublin mullets, leaning against the furniture without a care, gym bags strewn beneath the tables, creating a hygiene hazard, if anything. I half-expect a tub of protein powder in the corner. They glance up, sizing me up like potential prey; med students are at the bottom of the food chain. My sympathetic nervous system kicks in — fingers fidgeting, skin sweating, heart hammering.
When the patient tells him he’s a widow, he simply responds “Cool.”
Recalling nature documentaries, I smile cautiously without showing my teeth, avoid eye contact and don’t turn my back to them. They can smell that I’m not interested in surgery. I start scanning for an intern; they offer a safe shelter for us med students. Interns are invaluable. Medical students follow them like ducklings, lost without their guidance. Interns know just how little we know.
On this orthopaedic team, there are two interns. One instantly eases my nerves, taking me under his wing. He’s laid-back yet exceptionally competent, exuding confidence without a hint of arrogance. His skill with both patients and staff becomes clear in the way he seamlessly manages tasks: answering senior doctors’ questions on bloodwork, updating a patient’s chart, bleeping a PT, and explaining the WELLS score to me — All. At. Once. If this is what’s expected of me in two years, I may be out of my depth. As he patient-
“There’s a couple of patients we have that would be up for a history?” they not so discreetly suggest. “Yes! Thank you, I would love that!” I exclaim, picking up on the hint that they just want rid of me.I can’t blame them. I can’t imagine being responsible for patients’ lives while having a medical student asking what a blood thinner does. As I’m leaving, I notice two protein powder tubs on a shelf. Bingo! The only people we annoy more than interns are patients. In a hospital full of beds, their 2.5 corners become their world. They receive good news here, they receive bad news here, they even endure the presence of med students here. They also share intimate conversations while another patient, in their 2.5-cornered world, yells answers to The Chase. Remarkably, no patient has ever refused to share their history with me, reflecting their generosity by giving me their personal stories as well as their time. My pale face peeking around the patient’s curtain, there is evident confusion. It’s as if saying “I’m a medical student” translates to “What is the speed of light?” He, as is usual, responds with, “Oh, so you’re [insert any healthcare job except doctor]?” I clarify, “Nope, I’m in medicine,” hoping he just can’t hear me. “What do you hope to be?”he asks again. I reply, “I’m going to be a doctor one day,” speaking slowly, perhaps patronizingly. It surprises me that he’s more shocked by the prospect of a female doctor than by the fact we’re replacing his hip and sending him home in two days. Another student arrives, bewildered, stumbling over simple questions even after eight months in this profession of ‘med student’. When the patient tells him he’s a widow, he simply responds, “cool.” As we leave, the patient calls out to him, “Doctor, when will I be discharged?”—a betrayal to me, how can this incompetent eejit earn his respect automatically while I have to fight for it? There is a moment after the painful history taking where you have to do the (more painful) presenting back. I thought I was getting good at them until the last doctor who observed compared mine to a Jack-
son Pollock. All this for the holy grail of a doctor’s signature on my precious logbook. The other student accompanies me for what I initially presume is emotional support. Instead, he informs the intern I took 30 minutes with the history. Wow, I hope he didn’t strain his arm when he threw me under the bus. I defend myself, saying patients are generous with their time and personal stories, so if they want to brag about their precious granddaughter, I’ll gladly listen. I present the history at the nurses’ station, the sun that everything in a ward gravitates around. We might as well blare my mumblings over the intercom for all to hear, and judge. I butcher every medical term with more
than two syllables. The intern then takes on the role of Chris Tarrant and starts asking me questions, except this time I have no choices and, apparently, no phone a friend. I answer all his questions before he asks the big one — what are the genes for Lynch Syndrome? Shocked, I manage to rattle off the three genes (MSH2, MSH6, MLH1– for all those nerds wanting to know) trying not to look too thrilled. To my disappointment, he gets bleeped for an emergency and the round of applause is postponed. Later, I’m cornered by a non-intern doctor interpreting an x-ray. When you’ve disappointed the doctors enough, they start lobbing “easy” questions your way, as if throwing you a bone. Once, a regis-
trar asked where I’m from; when I said Belfast, he replied, “No, you’re not,”—a nice confidence boost. The consultant asks me if I’m dating anyone, maybe she (yes she!) has been recruited by my mother? Next, she’s going to ask if I’m eating enough meat. She then starts asking if I’m part of any societies and the usual casual chit-chat ensues. She shares funny stories from her college days that I don’t even have to force myself to laugh at. I have yet to work out what part of the body I’m staring at, never mind where the fracture is, but I suddenly feel comfortable enough to admit my incompetence. She starts to teach me how to interpret any x-ray. I now have an advantage over the other medical student — not that I’m competitive or anything… A morning of careful catheter insertions and painful PR exams has left me ravenous. I manage to avoid the team buying me anything —- once, an intern bought me a sandwich and the guilt still keeps me up at night. I join the other students’ for a trauma dumping session. Sitting down with the other students to debrief, I admit my morning has been mellow. One shares how her consultant called the “feminization of medicine” the death of healthcare—lovely. Then, another mentions that a healthcare worker took their life this week. The air chills, it’s a stark reminder of the weight and inescapability of this career and its responsibilities, which can sometimes feel too much, even at this early stage. In the hallway, I notice a patient wandering alone and start chatting while the interns hide from me, they must have ditched the trackers I put on them. The patient recognises me from the ward round earlier in the morning;we startled her awake at 7am and demanded to know if she had used the toilet recently. I’m usually hidden
at the back,contorting my body to see if I can somehow get a glance between everyone else. She said she had noticed my “pretty” hair. I’ll make sure the doctors prescribe her the good drugs (don’t worry, I’m only joking). It’s refreshing to talk to a patient normally and not to get into a series of questions about whether she ever used drugs or what her c-section was like. She shares her fear of losing mobility and missing out on running after her grandkids, even showing me their photos. Each patient has a story beyond their history. She may forget me, except for my amazing hair, of course, but I’ll remember her now. Later, I learn that a patient I took a history from earlier in the day has deteriorated. The impact is profound, the idea they might not make it to tomorrow feels unreal. I hope I never get used to this feeling. The team springs into action, they don’t have time to dwell, they are the ones who have to determine the next steps. It’s a potent reminder that I’m not just playing dress-up. As I’m processing this reality, my pen explodes, ink covering my hands. I stumble into a bin that crashes loudly, spilling everywhere, and commanding everyone’s attention. Typical. The good intern might be ready to file a restraining order on me — no good deed goes unpunished. He encourages all my questions, however basic (I asked him what to give someone with low potassium and the answer was, unsurprisingly, potassium). He lets me take on real responsibility, making me feel part of the team. He
I learn that a patient I took a history from earlier in the day has deteriorated. I hope I never get used to this feeling
has me read ABGs so often that they start to feel more like ABCs. The other intern isn’t as keen on teaching; when I was relegated to him at one point, he casually dismissed me when I pointed out that a patient on DAPT should probably also be on a PPI (I do know some things).. I checked with the other intern, who confirmed I was right and called him over. It felt like telling Mum on him. Oops!He just shrugged; he doesn’t carry the weight of representing his entire gender every time he makes a mistake — oh, to be a man. The end of the day arrives. It actually comes very fast. I float the idea of leaving and they inform me I could have left whenever. Thanks for letting me know, I whisper. Truthfully, I would have stayed anyway, soaking up the experiences. There was the SHO who listened to my history while eating his lunch, the stoma nurse who detailed the psychological effects of stomas, the registrar who wouldn’t let me leave till I could distinguish chest sounds, the nursing student who taught me how to apply ECG leads, and the CNM who high fived me after every cannula as he knew I was nervous. If I become a good doctor one day, it’s because of them. In the chaotic calm of the nurse’s station, you can see the real healthcare system. Everyone working together, united by the common bond of wanting one simple thing — to help people. Although there’s faults, I know this is where I want to be. There’s a lot more good than bad, and hopefully the bad moves to Australia.
CAPS, GOWNS AND CURFEWS
Kelly Lackey on the female fight for Trinity.
Founded by Queen Elizabeth I in 1592, Trinity College Dublin, ironically, did not permit female enrolment until 1904. Indeed, from its genesis, Trinity established itself as an all-male academic bastion. However, by the late 19th century a wind of change was blowing throughout campus, and in the wake of the first wave feminist movement, progress became inevitable.
The struggle for female admission began in 1892 when a petition–bolstered by over 10,500 signatures was sent to the College Board. This petition was refused on the grounds that “if a female had once passed the gate, it would be practically impossible to watch what buildings or what chambers she might enter”. In the twelve years that women campaigned for access, further objections posed to their admission ranged from issues of jeopardising femininity, surveilling the activities of female students, and that “susceptible” males could fall into an “imprudent marriage”. These objections were founded on social prejudices rather than academic merit, reflecting the moral codes and social norms that restricted the women of this era.
Provost George Salmon, in his waning health, wrote to the King of England retracting his earlier objections to the admission of women. Provost Salmon died in January 1904 and it was under the tenure of his successor, Dr. Anthony Traill, that the first women ventured through the Front Gate. The first woman to register as a student of Trinity College was Isabel Marion Weir Johnston. During the 1904 Michaelmas Term, forty-seven females matriculated, each in their own way catalysing the Quiet Revolution that was to take place in the decades to come. However, in this case admission did not correlate with integration, and so the battle for social inclusion began. The ‘Rules for Women Students’, imposed in 1905, constrained female activity on campus. Women were required to wear a cap and gown so as not to be ‘academically naked’, they had a curfew of 6pm, and they could not visit the on-campus dormitories unchaperoned. The female sphere in college was distinctly separate from the male one, with separate Commons and cloakrooms designated for women, first in House 5 and later in House 6. House 6 was central to wom-
en’s campus life for decades. It was here that the Elizabethan Society was born. This pillar of female campus life was established in October 1905 in response to the Hist’s and the Phil’s rigid opposition to female membership. The meeting at which the Eliz was formed was attended by rather exceptional ladies, including Dr. Isabella Mulvany, who was awarded an honorary LL.D by the college in 1904, as well Provost Anthony Traill’s wife, Mrs. Traill, the society’s first President. The Eliz continued to be a central aspect of college life into the 1920s, hosting afternoon dances, picnics, ‘Cinderella’ dances in the Provost’s house, and debates—though political topics were only first debated in the late 1920s. Indeed, the Eliz provided a forum for women to engage in debate and discourse, which had long been reserved for men.
In December 1906, the first group of women graduated. Their triumph would inspire future generations of women following in their footsteps. Among the graduates were Muriel Bennett and Brighid Stafford, both of whom went on to be involved in the suffrage movement, entwining their names with the broader struggle for equality.
In A Danger to the Men?, Susan M. Parkes describes the college’s initial response to the female presence as being “amused and light-hearted”. She recalls a 1930s incident where a lecturer referred to some of his female students as “hope less, hapless, headless, and not even beau tiful”. A similar sentiment was expressed in a 1936 Misc. article where women were referred to as “irritating impediments to work”. These comments underscore the prejudices and stereotypes women con tinued to face on campus 30 years later. Social segregation was again evident in a satirical poem featured in a 1931 Misc. article recounting the events of the Storming of the Dining Hall in cident. The poem starkly ends with the line “Those who rush in too boldly will find they are not wanted”. In the WiSER ‘All Changed’ video, former student and Senior Lecturer Vivienne Darling recalled that “we weren’t really recognised as part of the universi ty, we were sort of like external students or something”. It was not until the 1960s that women were graced with the oppor-
tunity to enjoy full equality on campus – the lunch buffet in the Dining Hall finally opened up to women in 1962. So, how has life changed for women in the 120 years since Trinity first allowed them to seek an education? Outside of campus life, the female position was also limited at this time. Women had not yet won the right to franchise, though some of Trinity’s first female graduates played instrumental roles in the suffrage movement. For example, Helen Chevenix, a 1909 graduate, co-founded the Irish Women Suffrage Federation in 1911 with Louie Bennett. The marriage bar remained in place until 1973. Social norms dictated that women could not do simple things like entering a pub unaccompanied. In addition, marital rape was not criminalised until 1990. One cannot doubt that the opening up of third-level education to women equipped them with the necessary knowledge and platforms to fight for gender parity. In a system that was not originally designed to see us succeed, we have done exceedingly well. In a matter of years, the first female students proved themselves both capable and worthy of a third-level education, excelling in many different academic fields. These women forged a path for the generations to come, culminating in advancements such as the appointment of Linda Doyle as the first
ment of four female busts in the Long Room, and the former Berkeley library ing named after poet Eavan markable women who fought for access, our generation enjoys a tegrated experience der-biased straints.
THE THINGS WE CARRY
As an international student, what paraphernalia do you keep filling your suitcase with? Amelia Rosevear explores what our ‘stuff’ says about us.
“You could host a flea market in here,” harks my flatmate, hovering in the door frame of my Dublin bedroom. She is right - my walls are hodge-podged with postcard prints and musical memorabilia; my shelves are lined with living and dormant cameras; my windowsills house feral plants and toy race cars. It is a traveling circus of items, painting a life of one person with many interests. I have accepted myself as a ‘collector,’ though my grandmother would prefer ‘hoarder.’
Now entering my final semester of my bachelors, deadlines are imminent. Those most daunting include capstones and future plans, though I similarly await the expiration of my yogurt in the top back shelf of my fridge (which is far too small). My deadlines, both major and humble, imply movement. Even the kefir cultures in my greek yogurt are bound to change their form. Particularly, in my mind I fast forward to the long-awaited and long-denied movement that will rear her ugly head towards the end of May - leaving Dublin. In anticipation of this change, I am reminiscing on all of my locational transitions. From home to school and back and forth, as well as Erasmus resettle-
ment and countless Ryanair escapades, I consider my feet to have graced many a ground, both in temporary and permanent ways. As a tokened ‘hoarder,’ I can’t help but imagine the scenery of every space I have made my own and the things that set the scene. More than the windowsill statues and crooked canvases play crucial roles in my relocation. Stories are constantly told by the things that move with us, whether they be intended memorabilia or haphazard collections. After a journey I find my pockets stuffed with crumpled receipts, pastry remnants, irrelevant currency and rocks that I was totally going to convert into some cool jewellery (no, that time I really was going to!).
So, I’ve been racking my brain about the things that always seem to be with me. In all of my resettling into daunting rooms with blank walls and stuffy air, my decorations hold the recipe for making a space energetically liveable. The stars are my Tibetan prayer flags, linen multicolour squares exhibiting Tibetic inscriptions and Buddhist imagery. These exact flags have hung in every room I’ve ever lived in, from my Nevadan infant nursery onwards. Their
presence offers the warm familiarity of my mother and her spirituality as well as being the protector of my space. Traditionally, prayer flags denote the movement of mantras of peace, wisdom, and compassion by way of wind. For these flags to serve as my rock in times of readjustment as well as reeducation in carrying myself in a new place is quite the parallel. By hanging them time and time again, they repeat incantations of authenticity and gratitude as I move with – and sometimes against – the wind. Recently I have discovered a new beloved item, though her presence in my space has never been a conscious decision. Upon unpacking in Dublin for the third time, I found a sweet figurine of a girl, just shy of two inches tall, dressed in traditional Basque garb. She wears a white headscarf and a draped red skirt, and she is holding her teeny hands together under her bust. Her face is painted with a slight smile. I have no clue where she came from or how she ended up in my random-things-bag (amidst obsolete chargers and luggage tags). But somehow, she keeps turning up. I remember my surprise fishing her out of yet another random-things-bag when unpacking in Istanbul. From then on she lived on my bedside table, watching over my books and jewellery dish and the water glasses that soon piled up. She serves no purpose other than watching over her fellow trinkets, but her little frame warms my little heart. She wafts nostalgia through my space in a way that only one’s culture can. She fills my ears with the sound of an energetic Hegi, my mouth with flavours of tongue and garbanzo stew, and my memory with laughter from friends I haven’t seen for years. She mostly reminds me of my father, who probably had something to do with her being mine in the first place. I’ve also been paying close attention to the things accumulated by friends and acquaintances - backdrops of dinners at mutuals’ and confidants’ apartments. During a recent trip to Munich,
I met a kind man, originally from Egypt, and now a long-time resident of Germany. As someone who has moved through many countries, cities and flats, I asked what things reoccur in his spaces. For him, books are vital to completing a room. Over our conversation, aided by salted margaritas and crisps, he points out the most memorable books of his collection - those that he recommends to others. Over time, he has purged many books from his collection, leaving them on the streets when moving from place to place. This was striking to me. His book-lined shelves are kept company by horse figurines and thriving plants. They provide the backdrop for his and his partner’s home. But they also remind him of how he has impressed upon all the places he has lived; impressions in the form of open-fated roadside books.
A close friend in Dublin also shared his cherished item with me. His walls are methodically decorated with postcards and photos of friends, his recipe for filling his space. Among this ensemble is a print of his name in Chinese script, written in traditional ink brush. Though originally adopted from China, he resonates entirely with his Irish culture, from language to music to wit. He remembers getting the print while meandering through a Chinese street market with his mom upon returning to his birth city later in his life. He speaks of this token with a sense of awe - though he has no obligation to the culture of his origin, he feels drawn to his roots even if solely by acknowledging them. The script is blue-tacked to the wall alongside memories of his Irish upbringing, his items partnering the foreignness of his biological past with the comfort of his adoptive identity. My other flatmate has a similar approach to what she carries. For me, the postcards and prints that decorate her walls portray her magnificent taste; in media, art, influence, and more. For her, her walls are the perfect canvas for her geographical anthology. She incorporates every place she has lived into every space
she dwells, illustrating her adaptability and all the places that have shaped her. This room perfectly fuses the plethora of lives she has lived. Her kitschy Midwestern fishing collectables belong in the scene just as much as her Swedish abstractionist prints. Her tales of Minnesotan summers leave me with a thirst for murky lakes and melodic loon choruses. One of her most prized possessions is a wooden, postcard-sized sign originating from her childhood cabin on the lake. Hovering over a happy canoeing couple a vintage font reads: “Oh to be outdoors… Wish you were here!” The cabin is no longer in her family, but the memento immortalises those many stuffy summers spent eating Snickers salad and drinking cheap beer. Another dear friend – the first I ever made at university – explained her travelling collection to me. Displayed on her mantle, previously on a windowsill, and originally in her family bedroom, are her grandmother’s rosary beads, her grandfather’s crucifix, and her uncle’s prayer book. It wasn’t until moments after her description that she realised their common Catholic theme. Her makeshift altar provides a crucial closeness to her family, especially over so many miles and the change that accompanies distance. The rosary given to her by her grandmother drapes over her frequented deck of tarot cards, a more relevant practice for her than the sacramentals. Her intention is for the tarot to cleanse the beads, not for any abomination towards her grandparents. Besides being a reminder of her family, she doesn’t
quite know why these items always move with her. Yet, I observe her mantle as the perfect juxtaposing union of her spiritual life and her personal evolution. While my flatmate acknowledges the adornments of my room from her stance in the doorway, she also notes that there is no shame in collecting. We love the things on our shelves, under our beds, scotch-taped to our mirrors and swimming in our jewellery dishes. It isn’t the form of the thing that we love, but the past that they represent. We love the people that live through them, the smells that waft through them, and the memories that exude from them. Snapshots of the countless people and places that I owe my path to live through my silly things. Because of this, I say no to minimalism.
THE FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE
Ellen McKimm reflects on abortion access in Ireland.
Abortion in Ireland has long been a topic of debate and discourse — particularly at Trinity. Abortion rights are an inevitable evolution in Irish electorate thinking regarding secularisation, globalisation, and a decline in the church’s power, leading to more liberal policies and laws. This hop, skip, and jump, as outlined in a somewhat linear fashion by many modern textbooks, is often an oversimplification of a complex movement that still has unfinished business in our fragile democracies. One such lifelong advocate for abortion rights is Ivana Bacik, the current leader of the Labour Party and former Trinity law lecturer. In an interview with Misc., Bacik outlined that her involvement in this movement was somewhat inspired by her mother, a “staunch feminist” who originally campaigned against the original Eighth Amendment in 1983. However, this pro-choice feminist stance taken by Bacik was not always met with praisequite the opposite. As a student, almost immediately following her election as President of Trinity College Dublin Students´ Union (TCDSU) in 1989, she went to court along with the other SU sabbatical officers, where they were threatened with prison by the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child for providing women with information on where to access abortion services in England.
Reflecting on that time, which must have been profoundly frightening and stressful not only as a young adult navigating the world but also as a woman in an oppressive religious and cultural context in Ireland, Ivana refused to buckle under the pressure. Ultimately, Mary Robinson stepped in, and her powerful arguments persuaded the Judge to refer the case to the European Court of Justice. Bacik, and others, were eventually spared prison time. The radical nature of the SU activism last year under László Molnarfi was not the first time the
not about ego but about voicing or taking the often brave actions that advocate for just and fair change.
The separation between academic institutions like Trinity and activism is often blurred
SU has stood up for social justice causes and social change. Instead, it is part of a legacy of activists whose pathway was paved on Trinity’s campus. The separation between academic institutions like Trinity and activism is often blurred. Engaging in public discourse and debate is essential for developing critical thinkers and independent minds. Still, it also provides a hope that change on campus can lead to change elsewhere — that we can make our corner of the world better than we found it. While I do think it’s important to ‘hold space’ for criticism of the SU’s often superficial actions, it would seem that, by historical standards, they are at their best when their actions are
This hope for the creation of a more just and fair society has been a catalyst for Bacik’s activism. It was the women who contacted the Union as a last resort to find information on how to access abortion that stayed with Ivana, and in her own words, “provided me with an enduring passion for human rights activism, along with a strong motivation to secure abortion rights for women”. Despite this passion, the road ahead was not easy for Bacik, as she described the experience of being spat at and abused in the street many times over those years. Despite such abuse, she stuck with her principles - and the campaign for abortion rights. She later went on to work on the national executive branch of the Together For Yes campaign, which finally succeeded in repealing the Eighth Amendment and legalising abortion in Ireland in 2018. Yet this seemingly joyous occasion was sad for many involved in the campaign. Roe McDermott, a contributing writer for the Irish Times, reflected on that time by saying, “this pressure to perform unequivocal happiness was external, as comments such as “Get over it” were directed at women who expressed conflicted emotions.” For many women, such as Savita Halappanavar and other women
who lost their lives to these oppressive laws or travelled miles often alone, this victory would come far too late. For many who still cannot access this healthcare, repeal remains too little and far too late.
For many who still cannot access this healthcare, repeal remains far too little and far too late
An independent report conducted by Marie O’Shoe found that despite the repeal of the 8th Amendment, many pregnant people are still forced to travel to access terminations on medical grounds. The amendment’s narrow legal framework means many are still unable to access services when they need them. The 12-week provision of abortion is still seen by many to be far too restrictive, along with the three-day wait. Abortion access is described by the National Women’s Council (NWC) as a “postcode lottery”. This means that health professionals can still be prosecuted for providing abortion after this limit except under strict circumstances. This report was recommended and later endorsed by the NWC, repeating calls to increase the geographical coverage of abortion access and to make the threeday wait optional, among others.
While the fragmentation of left-wing parties is often the subject of debate - at least for the part of Labour, Bacik expressed a clear intention to work closely with other left-wing parties to amend the current restrictions. Calling for a “pro-choice movement, and students’ unions should now launch a national campaign to pressure the Government to implement the review’s recommendations and ensure that we win these necessary changes for abortion rights in Ireland.”
However, given the recent
chaotic scenes in the Dáil chamber during the election of the Taoiseach, students may prove to be a more reliable partner in the pursuit of justice than other political groupings in Leinster House. The left wing’s lack of cohesion not only acts against their self-interest in many ways but also harms the likelihood of ending 100 years of Fianna Fáil/ Fine Gael governments — allegedly a stated aim but has no strategic follow-up. It seems clear that when Bacik suggested the left stick together in negotiations for the next government this request for cohesion and collaboration fell on deaf ears. So, it will be interesting to see in the lifetime of the next government whether or not social justice issues prove to be a more unifying factor that brings cohesion. For better or for worse, Trinity students throughout the years have used disruptive methods to pursue their political aims, and it seems when there is a cohesive fight for a particular aim, students of this college have more backbone or a better degree of clarity than the powers that be. While the sentiment of cohesion between the left is an arguably notable endeavour, if the encampment is anything to go by, real radical social change is best achieved in social movements on campus rather than in parliaments. Rather, they should reform cohesion-building pow-
The role of student activism remains a critical symbol of social change and gives voices to a new generation
er structures instead of combative ones that force alignment for parties of similar political persuasions. In saying all this, I am reminded of a previous interview with Provost Linda Doyle for this same publication, in which she stated her strong preference for seeing a high turnout for SU elections across the board. More proportional turnouts to the entire student population would aid the SU’s legitimacy and better equip it to meaningfully engage with the issues of our time under a more concrete and robust mandate from the student body. Yet, perhaps, like the hopes of the left-wing parties to act as a united front, expecting the SU to reform in such a way is also wishful thinking. Either way, the fight for women’s rights and equality over the past decades is far from over. While issues like abortion have been normalised (at least for now), there has been a clear evolution and shift in cultural values within the Ireland context. The role of university and student activism remains a critical symbol of social change and gives voice to a new generation. As Roe v. Wade demonstrates, these gains cannot be taken for granted; they must continue to be fought for. Yet this debate for far too many is settled. That spirit of activism around these issues that Bacik demonstrated so clearly during her time on campus has dwindled post-repeal. The question of the future of this movement remains unclear. However, one thing is sure for these campaigns to flourish on a national level, partnership will be critical to their success.
ONES TO WATCH
In years and issues past, Misc’s pages have proclaimed the names of students soon to be known far beyond campus - think a feature on Eavan Boland or articles written by Samuel Beckett, Leo Varadkar and David Norris. Here, Eliora Abramson, Margot Guilhot Desoldato and Lucia Orsi collate some names that Trinity might also come to be known for in decades to come.
FREYA O’HANLON has carried out extensive research into the negative dimensions of TikTok’s algorithm. Her project has highlighted that TikTok automatically promotes inappropriate content to teenagers between the ages of 13 and 15. This includes videos about depression, eating disorders, violence and even suicidal ideation. O’Hanlon won a prize at the Public Health Scientific Conference for her work and, in her own words, “the long-term goal is to influence EU policy around social media for children and teenagers.” Her project will be discussed by those working on EU legislation in the coming months.
HOUSE OF FUNK is the brainchild of DJs Dance Ferdinand and MonkeyBoy. The duo launched The House of Funk on Instagram in October of 2024 and describe themselves as loving everything “from the old school to the new school - just as long as it’s melodic and magnificent”. MonkeyBoy, according to their Instagram, can be described as “horny, hippie, hectic, and high spirited” while Dance Ferdiand is self-proclaimed “loose legged, galactic, psychedelic, and sensual”. These enigmatic descriptors are perfect encapsulations of the energy they bring to their shows. Their events are high energy and seek “to serve as an education into the tremendous tunes that make you want to shake a leg and pop a hip!” The duo debuted at The Sound House, where they have returned multiple times, as well as performing at famed Pav Friday.
SADBH CAUFIELD is a graphic designer based in Dublin. Inspired by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sadbh’s work combines elements of photography, drawing, and art, infused with poetry and text to create captivating pieces that display a sophisticated talent for the visual form. The bold primary colours that dominate her work have caught the attention of TrinityFM, who have previously enlisted her to design some of their posters, and she has also featured her work in Trinity’s TN2 Magazine. For those who fancy a nosy, her designs can be found on her Instagram page, @caulfieldbyart.
SELMA CATIBUSIC is the current editor of the Tuathal, Trinity’s only Irish-language magazine. Having previously contributed her own poetry to the publication, Catibusic now oversees the production and editing of Irish prose, articles, poetry, art, and photography. As the number of Irish speakers continues to rise, the Tuathal provides a major channel for cultural creative expression in Trinity, helping to forge a community of Irish speakers on campus. Speaking about her role, Catibusic has said, “we need to keep reminding people to write and write and write because at the end of the day, language is a form of expression and why not give Gaeilge a go!”
PIERRE MURCHAN was selected as part of the SPAR European Cross Country Senior Men’s Irish Team and was named University Athlete of the year by the National Athletics Awards in 2024. As well as his athletic career, Murchan is also a Genomics Data Science PhD Student.
JOHNNY DABROWSKI is a Politics and Geography student from Warsaw. In 2019 he joined the Fridays for Future movement, which led to his involvement in Youth4Climate and the Earth Day Network. His work with these youth-led organisations and initiatives is centred around advocating for better climate education, and has successfully pushed for administrative and institutional changes. On behalf of the Earth Day Network, Dabrowski coordinates a climate education coalition, which has brought him to the United Nations Climate Change conferences in Glasgow, Sharm El Sheikh, Dubai and Baku. Following Cop28 in 2023, he also met with the Provost as part of the Trinity Sustainability Team’s effort to consider and implement some of the conference’s takeaways at university level. He hopes to pursue climate advocacy in the future.
ELOISE RODGER is a writer from London. An English scholar as well as a prolific poet, last year she was commended for the Moth Poetry Prize for her poem ‘Half Life’, which you can read together with many others on her Instagram, @eloiseiswriting. She was the editor of Icarus’ 74th edition, which saw the publication of work of an extremely high standard by students, alongside that of widely known featured writers, the likes of Simon Armitage and Lucy Caldwell. In her own writing, she is interested in exploring unreliable narrators and the peculiarities of growing up. Currently, she is working on her debut novel, a black comedy about a grieving sister and the grim reaper. She is represented by RCW.
SYGH is a three-piece band transforming the Dublin music scene. The trio met in 2023 while all in different bands, frontwoman Ashley Bowes having come from a metal background and bassist Adam Grogan and drummer Aaron O’Reilly both in the same rock band. Their previous bands disbanded at similar times and the three came together after O’Reilly responded to an original song Bowes had posted on her Instagram, asking if she wanted drum and bass to record the song. Since then, the trio has played countless gigs selling out headline shows in Whelans Upstairs and Workmans Cellar as well as playing in the Works Festival and Happy Days Fest, while also writing, recording, and producing original music. The band is currently recording their debut concept album, ‘Reverence’ and are hoping to play T-ball, which they described as their “bucket list for 2025”. They also shared they have been booked for the lineup for several independent music festivals coming up this and next year.
BETH STRAHAN
is a Drama and Theatre Studies graduate from Belfast. She cut her directing teeth with Trinity Musical Theatre’s ‘Sweet Charity’ in 2023. She then went on to direct her original production, ‘Cailíni’, later that same year. ‘Cailíni’ toured to the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, which landed Strahan a freelance career, directing productions in the Grand Opera House, and eventually being cast in Netflix’s upcoming ‘How to Get to Heaven from Belfast’. With her friends and collaborators, she set up her own company, ABLAZE Productions. Currently, she is working on a commission from Droichead Arts Centre, alongside being TCDSU/AMLCT’s Communications and Marketing Officer.
MISC DURING WWII
A timeline by Stephen Conneely.
September 1, 1939 - Nazi Germany invades Poland, yet again violating the Treaty of Versailles. The United Kingdom and France declare war on Germany two days later.
Satirical columns titled ‘Letters of a German Spy’ and ‘Confessions of an English Agent’ are published in following issues.
“The Provost, who is held in the highest respect and surrounded with all the panoply of rule, appears at first sight to correspond to our Fuhrer”
“The only other magazine connected with the College is an underground publication, of obvious left-wing social democratic tendencies, probably run by a branch of International Jewry - T.C.D., as it is called”
“Police. This brings us to the vexed question of the Trinity Gestapo with its Himmler, the Junior Dean.”
October 26, 1939 - Misc.’s first editorial of Michaelmas Term, with students returning to lectures as war sweeps Europe.
“‘England with bare and bloody feet, climbs the steep road of wide Empire’ - Oscar Wilde, circa 1890. God forbid that the climbing down be as painful as the steep ascent. May it come, when it does come, with as little blood as possible […] This will be the prayer of intelligent observers in many neutral countries, as well as here in Ireland.”
“Germany is, as her spokesmen say, a young and expanding country […] This Government, with its strong imperialist policy (“dreams of world domination”, as the British newspapers, shocked, express it), has much in common with the Government of Britain when that country was young and growing”.
“Cromwell’s England”, of which Wilde speaks with such admiration, dealt with the Catholic Irish in the same energetic manner that Hitler reserves for the Jews. It is, we learnt regarded as bad taste for the Irish to refer to this.”
May 7, 1945 - An armistice is called in Europe, ending the bloodiest war the continent has seen in modern history.
On the day of the armistice, a small group of students burned the Irish tricolour flying on campus, in protest of the government’s policy of military neutrality during World War Two. Misc. writes:
“It is sad to consider the blemish on our university, which, we fear, will mark for some time the remembrance of what the end of the war meant in Dublin”
”When our national tricolour was burnt, our dignity smouldered with it. The flag can be replaced easily enough, but it will take longer to replace our dignity”.
May 18, 1945 - Misc. begins its editorial with a quote from famed alumnus Jonathan Swift: “… neither do you know or enquire or care who are your friends, or who are your enemies”.
“ Only a fool enjoys the experience of war. Only an insensitive dolt could find it in him to be happy in a world delivered over to a holocaust, even if he is lucky enough to be outside the death and confusion […] Ireland, who’s good fortune it has been to have an exemption from the sad fate of Europe, blesses this fortune with sincerity”.
*Important to note that between 1939 and 1945, Misc. began to publicise who their Editor in Chief was, bringing much more accountability to the role and perhaps decreasing the number of outlandish and purposefully controversial editorials and articles in print.
“I HAVE NOT TAUGHT A MAN FOR SEVEN YEARS”
Hosanna Boulter speaks to Professor of Contemporary Irish History Lindsey Earner-Byrne.
Professor Lindsey Earner-Byrne almost cancelled this interview.
We were coming to the end of the interview when Lindsey admitted that she had almost cancelled on me that morning. It was the day after the US election — for many women it was a day that felt heavy with the grief of what could have been and the dread of what was to come. The leader of the free world will be, once again, someone who engineered a limiting of female reproductive freedoms, has openly joked about assaulting women and was found liable in court for sexually abusing a woman. With the weight of that knowledge, I was not surprised to discover that Earner-Byrne had found coming to an interview about her life’s work – which involves analysing how the decisions and ideals of those in power affects the everyday lives of societies most vulnerable people, particularly women and children - tricky to do that morning. However, as with many other occasions over the course of her academic career, Professor Earner-Byrne persisted. Until very recently, Professor Earner-Byrne struggled to get her academic work published in Ireland. No questions were ever raised about the quality of her work, rather she was told by Irish historical journals that her work was “too niche a topic for them”. The irony of such feedback is that she is a historian of modern Irish history – where else should someone publish work on modern Irish history but an Irish historical journal? Perhaps it was the discomfort that her work generated that caused her fellow historians to dismiss and reject her academic papers. Professor Earner-Byrne has, for example, written about gender-based violence during and after the Irish War of Independ-
Her work highlights the life stories of vulnerable people whom the state sought to supress, exclude and lock away
ence, and worked to expose how much responsibility the Irish Free State bears for imprisoning thousands of women and children in Magdalene Laundries, Industrial Schools and Mother and Baby Homes. Her work highlights the life stories of vulnerable people whom the state sought to suppress, exclude and lock away. In this way she holds up an uncomfortable mirror to our perceptions of Ireland’s recent past.“It’s difficult to constantly challenge something” Professor Earner-Byrne admits. Over the course of her career, Professor Earner-Byrne has fought for women and other vulnerable groups to be included on an equal footing in the narratives we tell about contemporary Irish history. She undertook a PhD on the Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry at University College Dublin and went on to be a lecturer of Modern Irish History there. In January 2021 she became the Republic of Ireland’s first ever professor of Irish Gender History at University College Cork before moving to Trinity in 2023 to take up a position as a professor of Contemporary Irish History. Professor Earner-Byrne sometimes worries that she is teaching in an echo chamber.
I’m going to ask certain questions of the sources that somebody from a different background may not ask
“I have not taught a man for seven years” she admits, “I am a bit stopped at the moment thinking: What can I do to reach a different audience?” Men used to make up around ten per cent of her students, but over the past decade she has watched that number dwindle to zero. The books she has published and the talks and papers Professor Earner-Byrne gives, many of which are not explicitly about gender, tend to be received by a mainly female audience as well: “the audiences are still very hermetically sealed, we are still kind of talking to ourselves”. Turning to Trinity more specifically, Professor
Earner-Byrne reminded me that the way the current undergraduate History degree is structured means that students are not given the option to study gender history until the end of their second year, at the very earliest. “I am a little bit concerned that you could have people bypass entirely the issue of gender”, she says.
The concern about students of History potentially never being exposed to gender history ties in more widely with part of Professor Earner-Byrne’s reasoning for wanting to become a historian. She believes that understanding the history of power is a way for us to gain a better understanding of the inequalities that are still inherent to Irish society today.
However, the primary reason Professor Earner-Byrne became an academic was to quite radically change the field of History. She explained, “I didn’t
want to have a book that looked the same, except chapter nine was about women”. Instead of awkwardly inserting women into exclusively male historical narratives, Professor Earner-Byrne has sought to change the very questions that academics ask about history. At this point, I stopped to ask Professor Earner-Byrne where she thought we were today. She paused. “We’re lucky if we still get it, but we got our chapter”. She then pointed to the books about Irish history that regularly appear on university reading lists, some coming in at over over a thousand pages, that mention a woman only once or twice. Nevertheless, Professor Earner-Byrne does see some cause for hope.
“I now do not include all the readings that I could on reading lists for my modules as I do not want to overwhelm people. But when I started, I used to struggle to get three pages of recommended readings [for my gender history modules]”.
As time goes on, Professor Earner-Byrne observes that those coming to teach and write about history are becoming more diverse, which is something that she celebrates. “I’m going to ask certain questions of the sources that somebody from a different background may not ask”. She concedes that there is still a long way to go, but sees the vibrancy of gender history at the moment as a cause for celebration. “It’s a tough day” Professor Earner-Byrne told me as our interview drew to a close, “but there are reasons to be hopeful”.
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Erasmus isn’t just about making new friends, but about having old ones to stay, finds Conor Healy.
I’msitting in a booth on the RER, outbound to Charles-de-Gaulle airport from Paris City Centre. It’s 11pm, and I’m clutching a piece of poster paper emblazoned with the words “Bologna Babes”, haphazardly put together in my flat a few hours before. I’m on my way to surprise Meabh and Alannah at their gate. Their flight had been delayed by six hours because of snow in Paris and they had spent most of the day snapping pictures of them looking morose, slumped on the floor of Bologna airport.
They would be the newest in a slew of visitors my flatmate Grace and I had entertained while on Erasmus, but not the last.
Each year, a large chunk of third year students disappear from Trinity, embarking on Erasmus voyages to different spots around the continent. Hotspots include Paris, Bologna and Barcelona, but no corner really remains untouched by a Trinity student determined to try something a bit different for a year or semester. Lots of the discussion around the Erasmus programme is highly individualised. Each year at Law Ball there’s an award given to the person “Most likely to find themselves on Erasmus”, a satirical poke at the trope that the exchange programme is all about individual growth and development. However, sitting on the outbound M2 to CDG (That’s Charles-de-Gaulle, for us Parisian locals), I chronologically place Meabh and Alannah on the list of guests me and my flatmate Grace have had to our little flat in the 15th arrondissement - they’re number 13 and 14. It brings to mind a whole other aspect of the Erasmus experience: the opportunity to visit friends in other countries. To the wide-eyed opportun-
The world is suddenly a whole lot more accessible when your nearest and dearest have been flung across
Europe and beyond
ist, Erasmus is so much more than your friend jetting off to a random European city. The world is suddenly a lot more accessible when your nearest and dearest have been flung across Europe and beyond; all at once, you have an excuse to visit a host of new cities (and free accommodation). Heading off on Erasmus, you are at the optimal age for considering a futon mattress on your friend’s apartment floor the epitome of grungy college glamour. Love is a language best shown through making mochas using local coffee beans in their new moka pot, and generosity is divulging the location of your favourite Sunday flea market where they sell hammered silver jewellery for a fiver a piece. Of course that isn’t to say that any of our guests were opportunists for coming to stay with Grace and I. Rather, it’s to paint a picture of Erasmus that recognises that the experience is made not just by where you go, but by who you are with and without. It’s often said that being around real friends is akin to being at home. This makes friends visiting on Erasmus a paradoxical experience - you’re simultaneously at home, yet far from it. In this way, visits from friends, the coming and going, keeps you tethered to home while creating a new one. Exchanging memories about people we went to school with alongside my hometown friends while wrapped tightly in a new trench coat at a bistro overlooking the square at Le Contrescarpewho says you can’t be at home in two places at once? This strange intertwining of timelines and locations meshes into the indescribable sensation that seems to fall on those who go on Erasmus, highlighting the centrality of visitors to the experience as a whole. To some extent, though, it is still ultimately an individualised experience. The memories you make of a city, the people you meet, are all pieces of thread you weave together to make a tapestry of the time
you’ve spent abroad. That sounds idyllic, but friends coming to visit grounds this experience, in the same way you might feel when reading personal poetry in a room full of your peers. All of a sudden your tapestry is a possession you share with those who have come to see you. This allows your experience to become more realised than it could have been otherwise. I may not be able to give you a historically accurate walking tour of Paris, but I can point out the spot where we had a few too many below the Eiffel Tower, or our favourite bar where I realised I fancied the German boy from one of my law modules. And what’s my new Parisian trench coat if not something to be picked apart as ‘performative’ and ‘cliche’ by those closest to me?
An underground jazz bar it had taken them months to find, the gay club that played Luigi Mangione edits on the projector
have visited Bologna for many years had they not ended up there on Erasmus, and if I had, my trip probably would have been noted for immersion in the beautiful culture, awe at the ancient architecture. Instead, I was fortunate enough to receive a curated experience - an underground jazz bar it had taken them months to find, a statue that had a lewd backstory, the gay club that played Luigi Mangione edits on the projector.
When I got to visit Meabh and Alannah in Bologna, I swapped my trench coat for a denim jacket and let myself be carried away in their experience that they had forged. In the same way as I took guests to my favourite bakery, to my stop for college on the metro, to the dive bar where they did five euro pints on a Tuesday - they took me to their spots, anecdotes woven from their previous experiences. I might not
The sign I’m holding is tattered, and utterly more indicative of a crafty, harum-scarum side of myself which decidedly doesn’t add up to the elegant refined persona I pretended to create while in Paris. It’s akin to ones I might have made in a science fair at school - a true Parisian would have done this in cursive script using sloe-black ink, as opposed to a green sharpie they picked up that morning. Yet, as tacky as it is, the poster is what will set me apart from the others at the arrival gate for the flight from Milan. You can’t quite recreate the Irish penchant for tat, and the blotchy poster will serve its purpose for those who will know what to look for. Law Ball is around the corner, and our year has been pumped full of individuals like myself who are all worthy contenders to fulfil the brief of having ‘found themself’ on Erasmus. If I was feeling particularly sanctimonious (Parisian, dare I say) I’d challenge that the award should be scrapped for a collective nod of the head for those who found each other while on Erasmus. I’d smash the plastic tiara they give out into smithereens, and blow it over all of us who went away, and lived and relived experiences time and time again for all those who came to see us. Then again, the same individuals whose visits would qualify me to say such a thing would be the same ones to immediately distance themselves from any association with such notion in horror. In this spirit, perhaps the award should stay the same, but maybe our personal reflections on what Erasmus is ought to be what changes. It’s not an individualised experience - it’s a collective transition. It’s a gaggle of 20 year olds who change their Snapchat bitmojis to be wearing berets and poke fun at their friends posting Instagram stories with Edith Piaf playing in the background. It’s three people trying to get ready at the same sink while two more argue over whose turn it is to sleep on the floor that night. It’s a boy in a new trench coat hoping his friends from home will find his Erasmus-inspired poster a little bit funny when their plane finally lands.
TOUGH PILL TO SWALLOW
Irish women fought tooth and nail for legal access to medical contraception, online disinformation threatens to undermine that process, writes Faye
Madden.
“I should go on the pill, but I’m nervous. I’ve heard it can have really bad side effects.”
For the past number of years, I’ve frequently heard some variation of this statement from women in my life, whether it’s friends, relatives or even acquaintances on nights out.
When I ask these women and girls what side effects they are concerned of, the risk of weight gain, low mood and a potential decrease in their future fertility are the most commonly shared answers.
The rise of these sentiments has not surprised me. Like the women in my life, I have seen how the negative rhetoric surrounding hormonal birth control has spread rapidly across social media. In recent years, countless content creators, most of whom have no certified medical background, have built large social media presences off of their content criticising the use of hormonal contraception.
hormonal imbalances as a result of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome or chronic stress. There is no scientific research to suggest this condition is caused by the pill.
Other posts suggested that hormonal contraception significantly increases a woman’s risk of developing certain cancers, such as breast cancer. Again, there is very little medical evidence to suggest this to be the case. Yet, these posts had thousands of likes and hundreds of comments and the false statements made had received no fact-check warning from Instagram.
In the UK, the proportion of women using the pill as their main form of contraception has dropped from 47% in 2013 to 27% in 2023
Influencers with large followings, who are often also young women, have gone viral on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram for their worrying, and often anecdotal, claims about the pill.
Just from typing “the pill” into my Instagram search bar, I am inundated with posts making all sorts of claims about the contraception, many from accounts with thousands of followers. Looking at the first 20 posts on my search feed, I am met with a video claiming that the long-term use of the pill decreases women’s fertility and causes “lazy ovulation”.
Lazy ovulation, medically known as anovulation, is a condition where the ovaries do not function properly. The condition is most commonly caused by
The creators who push these inflammatory and misleading claims are only incentivised by the failure of these social media platforms to crack down on misinformation, receiving increased account engagement with their fear-mongering content, leading to subsequent monetary gain.
In an article about birth control misinformation on social media, Lauren Weber and Sabrina Mahli of the Washington Post put it plainly: “negative content draws more clicks, allowing [influencers] to reach a wider audience to sell their products and services”
This misinformation has certainly had real world consequences on women and their choice of contraception. Though Ireland has seen an increase in the number of women taking the oral contraceptive pill in recent years, likely attributed to the recent introduction of free oral contraception for women between the ages of 17 and 25, our neighbouring countries have experienced significant declines. In the United Kingdom, the National Health
(NHS) has reported data that that the proportion of women the pill as their main form of ception has dropped from in 2012-13 to 27% in
land and Wales are at the highest level on from 184,122 in 2012. Dr Sue Mann, the NHS director for women’s described online mis “Online misinformation other forms of hormonal contraception is a ics who have come off the pill as they think it could infertile.”
the most is the tion of where this distrust pill comes from? I believe are a multitude of factors which
of medical research into women’s health in compar ison to men’s and a widespread societal ignorance surrounding the reproductive and gynae
But an aspect which I believe has direct ly enabled the rise of anti-contraceptive-pill rhetoric in recent years is amongst the current generation of young women of just how significant of an achievement the introduc tion of the pill was for the feminist movement and the
Sandra McAvoy stated that the lack of legal contraception “delayed the emancipation of Irish women – not least by subordinating their rights to life and health to their reproductive functions”. Following legalisation of the pill and oth er forms of contraception in Ireland in 1979, which was likely af many Gen Z young adults were already born, women were granted the freedom of fami for the first time in the Access to hor traception granted wom omy to choose when they nant which allowed them to sue careers outside of home and was a vital step in destigmatising influenced by the Catho throughout the 20th is essential that we ex caution to ensure that unqualified, bad-faith not entrench itself consciousness and stray trusting scientifically-back medical advice. Women are entitled to choose any form of contraception that they would like to use and we should cele brate that Irish women in 2025 have that choice.Howev acknowledge battle that the
creating open dialogue
sues that many women face due to the use of hormonal birth control, while also ensuring we do not create irrational fear of these contraceptive methods and con tribute to the already-rampant miscon ceptions that plague women’s reproductive health.
IVANA BACIK LOOKS BACK
The TD, leader of the Labour Party and Trinity alumna recalls her days as a student.
Is there a memory that stands out to you when you think of your time at Trinity?
There are many memories that stand out for me, but perhaps the strongest is from my first time walking into Front Square as a Junior Fresh student on the first day of Freshers’ Week. It was a wonderful feeling to have got through the Leaving Cert and to have won a place studying Law in such an historic university. From that day on, I loved my time in Trinity and am very proud of my long association with the College, across many years and in a range of different roles; as a student, as President of the Students’ Union, as a lecturer in the Law School and as a University Senator.
Where was your favourite social space (be it a cafe, pub, park, club or other) to spend time in as a student?
It may seem odd now, but we Law students in the late 80’s did all our socialising either drinking coffee while perched on the ‘chocolate boxes’ (strange brown seating cubes) in the Arts Block, or else drinking something stronger in the Buttery Bar – now a very bland canteen, but then a dark and mysterious licensed crypt setting in which the Union Ents Officer regularly hosted fantastic live gigs.
Did you have a favourite class or professor who influenced you?
As a student in the Law School, I was incredibly lucky to count among the lecturing staff many leading experts in their specific legal areas, like Professors Gerard Hogan, Yvonne Scannell, Gerry Whyte and William Duncan; and also two future Presidents of Ireland (Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese). But I have particularly fond memories of Professor Kader Asmal, champion of the Irish anti-apartheid movement, who went on to become the ANC Minister for Higher Education in post-apartheid South Africa. I took Kader’s highly memorable and entertaining lectures in both International Law and Labour Law. I loved his quirky teaching style and the way he wove political and legal philosophies together. Influenced by him, I went on to take postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics, just as he had done. Kader died in 2011, having played a pivotal role in the making of the new South Africa.
Do you have any advice for current Trinity students?
My advice is: throw yourself into campus life! You have an amazing opportunity to spend time studying your chosen subject on an iconic campus. Enjoy it - and embrace all the rich diversity of activities that the college has to offer.
