Sophia Arceo is a third year English and Classics student from Chicago
Priya Evans is one of Misc’s Erasmus Editors. She is also Managing Editor for Hearth Magazine. She has previously contributed to publications within Trinity and beyond.
Aoibheann Kearins is Misc.’s Science and Technology Editor. She has also contributed to the University Times.
Zach Keenan is a second year English Literature and History student. He is a first-time contributor to Misc. and has previously contributed to Trinity News.
Ciara Mangan Lynch is a first-time contributor, and is a final-year Law and History student. She has previously contributed to Trinity News.
COVER
Conor Healy & Katie Brady
Eve McGann is one Misc’s Erasmus Editors. She has received a Student Media Award for Features Writer of the Year - News and Current Affairs and been nominated for Journalist of the Year for previous work with The University Times.
Elaine Murphy is an English Literature and History Student, and is Misc.’s Community Editor.
Jules Nati is a third year English student and Misc.’s International Editor. Previous contributions include translations for JOLT.
Saffron Ralph is a fourth year English literature and Classical Civilisation student, and has previously contributed to TN2 and Icarus.
Doire Ó Súilleabháin is an English Literature student, and has previously contributed to Misc. Magazine and Trinity News.
Philip Theiss is a second-year student and the Comment Editor at Trinity News.
ART
Sophia Arceo
Síofra Corrigan
Honor Lynch
Maya Manning
Shea Mullen
Chiara Paternostro
Saffron Ralph
Ava Swartz
Jessica Sharkey
Isabella Walsh
Page 2, 15, 16, 17,19 7
Page 28
Page 10,4
Pages 27
Pages 8,9
Page 23
Page 25
Page 21
Pages 12, 13
Editor Conor Healy | Deputy Editors Eliora Abramson, Katie Brady | Assistant Editors Joy Aladejana, Lily Ainsley |Layout Editor Eliora Abramson |Political Editor Daniel Bowe | Community Editor Elaine Murphy | Culture co-Editors Nico Bianchi, Sienna O’Riordan | Social Editor Nicolle Riley | Science and Technology Editor Aoibheann Kearins |History Editor Gavin Jennings | International Editor Jules Nati | Erasmus co-Editors Priya Evans, Eve McGann
Conor Healy
Editor's Letter
The Misc Matrix
Philip Theiss
Warda’s Second Life
A conversation with Warda Mslah and life after leaving Gaza
Ciara Mangan Lynch
A Commodified Culture?
How commodification of the Irish culture has both saved and hurt the country
Aoibheann Kearins
The Algorithim Will See You Now
The science behind the shadowban and what it means for free speech
Zach Keenan
Diplomacy Ends a War
Considering democracy 30 years since the Dayton Agreement
Sophia Arceo & Jules Nati
Irish Hellos and Irish Goodbyes
What brings students to Ireland and what pushes them away?
RATROCK
Eve McGann
Staying Connected While Living Apart
Reflections on over communication and technology as a means of replacement for human connection
Doire Ó Súilleabháin
Saffron Ralph
Elaine Murphy
The Moon Under Porter
Musings on Tiktok, George Orwell, and your local
Attitudes to a Genocide Globally
An exploration on Palestine and Trinity’s Erasmus student
Contextualising Kav
Amist antisocial behavior, thoughts on the discourse surrounding the accommodation
Priya Evans
In the Art of the Parisian Metropolis
Life, art, and resistance all around us
Poetry and Fiction
A Misc. Crossword
EDITOR'S LETTER
InOrwell’s 1984, Misc. Magazine wouldn’t exist, and as such, it would never have existed. Our magazine would have been neatly bound up in a cylindrical chute and whisked away to some furnace, where whimsical articles pontificating niche aspects of the social undercurrents flowing through Trinity would have met a fiery demise. While I can’t say this hasn’t already been the faith of at least some copies of Misc. (most likely the one I gave to my own parents - loose papers around the house inevitably end up as kindling for the stove), the point here is that the very things which would have necessitated Misc.’s retrospective extinction in 1984 are those which make it a vessel for power and change in our world now, with a propensity for influence that we often overlook, but a capability that would’ve been labelled as dangerous by Big Brother’s pen. In our second edition of this year, a collaboration with arts & culture magazine Ratrock in Trinity’s sister college Columbia, we’ve aimed to amplify this danger as best as we can. As large language models loom over traditional forms of media and polarisation oozes into every crevice of public discourse, Misc. and Ratrock have aspired to transcend such binary distinctions (here physically embodied in the Atlantic Ocean) by paying a resounding tribute to the freedom of speech and expression.
Nina Simone once said freedom is to live without fear. Coincidentally enough, the Mad Men trailer on Netflix says something to the same effect, albeit followed up by an ode to the lost art of billboard advertising. Whichever faith you subscribe to, the message seems to ring true to what we’ve tried to achieve with Ratrock in this issue. Freedom from fear when it comes to speech, however, is a bit of a ruse. There’s no such thing as true universalism, so it follows that there’s no speech one can engage in that ultimately will be the right type of speech - only one which seems as justifiable to oneself as is possible. That is to say, celebrating freedom of speech is not always about knowing one is right when saying something, but accepting the vast swathe of opinions and perspectives that exist in the world, and bravely choosing to speak anyways. The articles published in this edition of Misc. all seem to be woven into this train of thought, to varying extents. Most poignantly is Claire’s piece at the heart of the magazine, a sobering portal into a college campus where freedom of speech is not just a value, but a resistance. Claire and I first met during our exchange semesters spent in Paris last year, recognising journalists in each other in 7-9pm human rights classes on Wednesdays. When conceptualising the collaboration between the publications we were involved with, we never could have foreseen the manner in which the free dom to speak freely and openly might vary between our two home colleges. This collaboration thus acts as a pedestal to platforming articles which speak truth to experiences like hers - indeed, Orwell once said he wrote
because there was some lie he wanted to expose, some fact to which he wished to bring attention to. I promise this edition doesn’t allude to the 1984 author as much as I’ve taken liberty to here, but Orwell’s psyche does crop up in this magazine in Doire Ó’Súilleabháin’s transposing of his 1940s polemic on the criteria for a perfect pub onto the Dublin pub scene and the broader commercialisation of the ‘perfect pint’. Our revived Poetry and Fiction section opens up the door to engagement with political themes in a broader sense, allowing our two competition winners to express themselves in a more original and novel way. Elsewhere, the political heartbeat of this edition is felt in Saffron Ralph’s mapping of the attitudes towards students supporting Palestine whilst on Erasmus around Europe, and in Priya Evan’s observations of how street art in Paris has captured a social and political movement in a more powerful way than the masterpieces hanging in the Louvre. More of our writers look at language in and of itself - Ciara Mangan Lynch’s piece jigs between Gaeilge and Béarla, and in doing so, uses ‘Irenglish’ to contemplate how people can respect Irish traditions amidst the nation’s cultural revival. Zach Keenan’s reflection on 30 years of the Dayton Agreement critcically analyses on the peace proccess, and its choice to include some ideals but conceal others. Indeed, SciTech Editor Aoibheann Kearins deals with speech head-on by dissecting the phenomenon of shadowbanning - what do we say when we’ve unknowingly been silenced? Perhaps the importance of freedom of speech is best captured by our first piece - a poignant interview with a refugee who escaped the horrors of Gaza in 2023, beautifully articulated by Philip Theiss in a way that breathes a quiet but powerful truth into the notion that freedom of speech is not always about overcoming a fear of speaking, but the choice to do so in the face of unimaginable adversity. The themes that emerge in the aforementioned articles as well all those other pieces which I haven’t mentioned here layer together in a way that reimagines freedom of expression again and again, in different lights, contexts and perspectives. In doing so, we hope that this edition of Misc., in collaboration with Ratrock, acts as a testament to the space for discourse that publications like ours have always strived to provide, and that other publications will continue to accommodate moving into the future. Misc. hasn’t just yet found itself in an Orwellian panopticon that would necessitate its demise, but then again, we wouldn’t be surprised.
-Conor
THE MISC. MATRIX
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Warda’s Second Life
Philip Theiss speaks to Warda Mslah about life and grief after leaving Gaza
Dragged from the ruins of her home in Deir al-Balah, Warda Mslah was pronounced dead. Her lifeless body was wrapped in cloth, ready to be surrendered to the earth. The morgue doors shutbehind her, sealing her among the nameless rows. Yet in the hours that followed, beneath the chill of metal and ice, a faint and defiant breath returned.
“It is impossible,” she recalled. “I was under the rubble for two hours, my heart stopped, they put me in the shroud and into the fridge. My family came and said goodbye. But God wanted me to live.”
Stories like Warda’s don’t often survive the news cycle. All too often is Gaza’s daily destruction measured in statistics — number of casualties, people injured or displaced. Her survival punctured that anonymity. What happened to her was not symbolic, not metaphor, but a literal return from death in a place where death has become horrifyingly routine.
When I met her in Cairo nearly two year later, the aftermath was still written into her body. With a surgery scheduled for the following Monday to remove shrapnel from her skull, burn scars tracing her face and arms, and her hands stiff from the platinum fixators inserted into broken bones, the lasting effects were clear. But some injuries were harder to name. “The first thing I remembered when I woke up,” she said, “was the air. I smelled it and saw the light. I didn’t know what had happened.”
She spoke about a vision she had whilst in intensive care. “Baraa came to me,” she told me, her voice trembling. “He was only a year old when he died, but he came as a boy of four. He gave me water and washed my wounds. He said, ‘Oh flower, God willing you will heal and come back better than before.’ Then he turned, waved, and disappeared into the white.”
That was how she learned he had been killed. Her husband, her son Baraa, and several relatives died in the strike. She and her daughter Mimi survived. “I lost my husband, my son, my inlaws,” she said quietly. “We were six martyrs in that house. And I was almost the seventh.”
Today Warda lives in Cairo with Mimi, her five-year-old, sharing a cramped apartment with her sister on the outskirts of the city. They did not come by choice. She was evacuated through
Rafah, as part of limited medical transfers arranged in the weeks after the initial bombardment.
What was supposed to be a temporary refuge for treatment has become an indefinite holding pattern. The Egyptian government grants Palestinians only a 45-day tourist visa for evacuation, and these
What happened to her was not symbolic, not metaphor, but a literal return from death in a place where death has become horrifingly routine.
rarely extend beyond that; most Gazan evacuees now live with legally expired visas, unable to renew, and thus locked out of basic rights.
Without valid documentation, every day comes with added uncertainty. She cannot formally enroll Mimi in school — registration requires residency papers, which she lacks. Private schooling comes with financial and bureaucratic hurdles that are nearly insurmountable. Each errand across Cairo is an act of calculated risk: the risk of scrutiny at checkpoints, of being asked for a permit she cannot present.
"We thought leaving would be easier,” she sighs, “but alienation is hard." The arrangement offers no safety, only stasis.
Her daily routine now is treatment and waiting. One operation has been performed in Cairo; others are still needed, especially for shrapnel lodged in her neck. “If they remove the fragments wrong, I could be paralyzed,” she explained.
She does not speak about politics or with anger. Instead, she lingers on what it means to survive when others did not. “My youth has gone,” she said. “I live with fragments in my body. Some people say I am lucky. But when I look at myself, I see a ghost.” And yet she insists she loves life. “God gave me candy,” she said, using the Arabic phrase for an undeserved gift. “I love to smile, I love to go out. I love life.” In moments she seems almost defiant in that claim — not in deni-
al of what she’s lost, but in refusal to give up what remains. She points at Mimi, restless at the edge of our table, and smiles. “I want her to study, to become a doctor, to treat me, to treat others.”
But Cairo has narrowed her possibilities. Medical bills accumulate, schools demand paperwork she can't possibly provide, and the future is made of waiting: waiting for treatment, for papers, for news from Gaza, for a horizon beyond exile. “We talk on WhatsApp with my father in Gaza,” she said. “But not always. The internet is bad. Sometimes weeks pass.”
Gaza is never far from her. She dreams of her home, though she knows it no longer stands. She longs to return but fears what that would
“If
mean. “I love Gaza,” she told me. “It is in my blood. But if I go back and see my house, see my son under the rubble, I will die again. So I stay here, with Gaza in my heart.”
She does not frame her experience in the rhetoric of resistance or martyrdom. There are no slogans in her speech, no abstractions. What comes through instead is the exhaustion of survival, the quiet rearrangement of a life stripped to its core. “I was supposed to be buried,” she said, her voice flat, almost expressionless. “But I came back. Now I just want to live in peace, to see my sisters, to raise my daughter. That is all.”
I go back and see my house, see my son under the rubble, I will die again. So I stay here, with Gaza in my heart”.
Based on an interview conducted in Cairo in July 2025. Warda Mslah (م (consented to have her real name used.
‘
A Commodified Culture?
Ag cur ceisteanna ar an nós is déanaí faoi láthair’
How has thec ommodifcation of Irish culture impacted the nation, asks Ciara Mangan Lynch
s dócha go mbeidh suim ag gach uile duine atá ag léamh tríd an alt seo a gcuid Gaeilge a fheabhsú, toisc go bhfuil suim an domhain sa Ghaeilge na laethanta seo. Is minic a fheicimid faisnéis ar líne ag ceiliúradh na Gaeilge, agus ag moladh an oiléain ar fad don chultúr uathúil atá againn in Éirinn. Is minic a bhíonn spéis ag daoine i mo shaol féin, agus an cultúr Gaelach atá go smior i mo shaol. Ní nach
chonaic mé lebhair de id
Mancháin
dheasc sa ledó imeacht ar shlí na a léiríonn an suim atá ag
Ach caithfimid ceist a chur orainn bhfuil fíorshuim ag daoine sa Ghaeilge na hÉireann, nó an ea gurb é an nós is
Tugtar faoi deara ag léamh an ailt seo - níl mhaith agam. Níl na nathanna cainte tá Teanglann agus Foclóir oscailte in aice liom agus mé ag scríobh. Tá náire orm nach bhfuil saibhreas na Gaeilge agam, agus ceapaim go bhfuil an náire chéanna ar mhórchuid na ndaoine a bhfuil suim acu sa Ghaeilge. Deirtear ‘is fearr Gaeilge bhriste ná Bearla cliste’ ach ní léiríonn an seanfhocal seo an náire, an iarmhaireacht, agus an aiféala a bhaineann leis an Gaeilge briste a bheith agat. Tá aithne agam ar cúpla Ghaeilgeoir, agus caithfidh mé a rá, ní úsáidim an Ghaeilge leo. Tá Gaeilge líofa ag mo dheirfiúr, agus bainim sochar ar a cuid Gaeilge gach uile am a bhíonn an teanga uaim. Déanann sí na ceartúcháin ar gach ríomhphoist a roinnim, agus léann sí tríd na hailt Gaeilge atá á léamh agam do mo thráchtas. Níl Gaeilge ag daoine
ar bith sa teaglach, ach rinne mo dheir fiúr an-obair a cuid Gaeilge a fheabhsú, agus anois tá an Ghaeilge mar dara tean ga líofa aici. D’fhreastail sí ar an nGael tacht le Coláiste na bhFiann samhradh i ndiaidh samhraidh, agus b’shin an áit a shocraigh sí feabhas a chur ar a cuid Gaeilge, agus is dócha gur éirigh léi leis an aidhm sin. Tá áifeala orm nach bhfuil an obair chéanna déanta agamsa.
Bhí ionadh orm nuair a bhí spéis ag daoine ar an gceol traidisiúnta ar ardú ar an idirlíon cúpla bhliain ó shin. Ba mhór an ionadh orm nuair a bhí suim ag mo chairde féin sa cheol agus iad ag lorg moltaí ó thaobh banna cheoil agus “good trad”. Tá ionadh fós orm go bhfuil suim sa Ghaeilge agus sa cheol traidisíunta fós ag ardú na laethanta seo. Nuair a bhí mé i mo pháiste, bhí mé den smaoineamh gur olc an rud é an ceol traidisiúnta a sheinnt. B’iad mé féin agus mo dheirfiúr an t-aon bheirt a bhí ag seinm ceoil go minic sa bhunscoil, agus nuair a thóg mé isteach na huirlísí chun port a chasadh do mo rang, ní raibh suim ar bith ag mo phiaraí ar scoil. Ní roinnim an scéal seo chun trua a fháil ó na léitheoirí, ach léiríonn sé an 180° atá déanta ag daoine ó thaobh an ceol traidisiúnta na laethanta seo. Tá súil agam nach é an ceol traidisiúnta an teocht is déanaí ina bhfuil suim ag daoine, agus is mian liom nach n-éireoidh siad bréan de. Is rud spéisialta é an ceol, agus déanann sé maitheas don chroí é a chloisteáil.
Cén fath a bhfuil spéis na ndaoine óga sa Ghaeilge agus sa cheol traidisiúnta ag méadú, go háirithe sa choláiste seo? Is dócha nach mbíonn ceann de na léitheoirí ag éisteacht le The 2 Johnnies gach maidin Luain (comh súil liomsa - deirtear an phrás - “fork spotted in kitchen”). Go stairiúl, ní raibh dlúthchaidreamh idir an choláiste agus cultúr na hÉireann. Ach anois, is minic a fheiceann tú an fáinne Claddagh ar lámh duine éigin san Arts Block, agus bíonn brat na hÉireann ag maisiú na malaí timpeall na háite. Is siombail iad na rudaí seo, a léiríonn an suim atá ag ardú i measc daoine óige inniu. Ach, caitear a rá - gur suim éadomhain í an suim atá ag daoine sa chultúr Gaelach i láthair na huaire, agus ní cheapaim go bhfuil sé ar intinn ag daoine óga taithí cheart den fhíorchultúr Gaelach. Tuigim na fáthanna stairiúla nach bhfuil taithí den chultúr Gaelach ag morán de dhaoine
Éireannacha sa lá atá inniu ann, agus is mór an trua é. Ach, caithfidh mé a rá, nach dtuigim an fáth go bhfuil suim ag daoine sa Ghaeilge agus sa cheol traidisiúnta ag ardú na laethanta seo. Mar a luaigh mé thuas, my own experience of Irish culture has not always been one I have been particularly proud of.
been set up to protect and preserve Irish traditions and culture, have fallen victim in recent times to this need to perform our culture, reducing themselves to performers of a tradition that people claim is being celebrated, but instead is being erased.
Commodification has both saved and damned our culture
I have not written this piece with the goal of spreading my own disillusionment, but rather to en courage you - if you are going to undertake educating yourself on Irish culture, music, song and dance, please do it properly. Learn surrounded by your peers, learn from your peers, learn from your elders and your youngers and everyone in between. It is a hol- low victory to be able to play music well if there is no one there to listen. Our culture is one that is meant to be shared. The nathanna cainte that we all learned for our Irish orals echo this sentiment - ní neart go cur le chéile, ar scath a chéile a mhaireann na daoine, srl. Is leor é go bhfuil dea-rúin agat agus tú ag iarraidh do thaithí leis an gcultúr Gaelach a fheabhsú.
Anuas air sin, my experience of Irish culture has always been coloured by the fact that it is a culture that is best experienced when one steps back in time, to a time of bothántaíocht, to a time of relationships idir óg agus aosta, to a time when it wasn’t shameful to practice Irish music. Much of my music was learned in the sitting rooms of my teachers, and much of my confidence as a musician developed playing in the houses of other people. As I said before, any experience that I had performing music for my national school peers in classrooms were tinged with shame. It was not my peers who complimented my music, or encouraged me to play more, or invited me to play music at their birthday parties. It was my elderly neighbours at Mass, it was my teachers, and it was my mother, constantly asking us to bring our instruments wherever we went, making sure that people knew we were musicians and we were worth listening to. Trad is precious to me, and I am protective of it, and I am often disappointed by the callousness with which peo ple treat it these days, particularly on social media. My aim in this piece is not to condemn those who are trying to improve their own standard of Irish, or their own appreciation of Irish culture. If that were the case, would be condemning myself alongside everyone else. Instead, I want to demonstrate that our culture is being commodified rather than properly engaged with, and in a way, that commodification has both saved and damned our culture. Irish dancing is now a sport for the stage, and I have watched the decline of céilís with my own eyes. The music classComhaltas branches have become by those who seek celebration in of medals from Fleadhanna Cheoil. ture has become something to be peted for, and it is as disappointing as is true. The reality is that the people who most broadly celebrated our culture for what it is, an expression of the self through music, song and dance that is so wonderfully unique, are simply dying out.
performance of Irish culture is haping all across Ireland and by the Irish diaspora today. I would argue that even the organisations, like Comhaltas, that have
The commodification of cultúr na hÉireann is our own fault. We engage in the glamourisation of it on social media, and we make jokes about the apparent terrors of an tuiseal ginideach, and an modh coinníollach. The commodification of an Ghaeilge agus cultúr na hÉireann has only served to dehumanise the very thing we have committed ourselves to saving. We must engage in the onerous task of making sure that when we are participating in Irish culture, and we are practicing our Irish, and we are celebrating its beauty and its uniqueness, that we are constantly striving to be better than we were before. A culture is something to be immersed in, not something to be bought into. Performing pride in Irish culture is simply not going to do the trick. It is a difficult task, but it is one that is infinitely worth doing. We are not starting with a blank slate. Is mór an obair atá déanta ó thaobh cearta teangacha anseo in Éirinn, agus is dócha go bhfuil bóthar fáda i bhfad romhainn. Bhí ár dteanga dhúchais coiscithe fadó, ach inniu, tá an méid Gaeilgóirí atá ag úsáid an teanga gach uile lá in Éirinn ag méadú. There is more and more emphasis on increasing our interaction with the Irish language and culture, across social media, in College, and even through legislation. Táimid fós i mbun oibre chun an teanga a chosaint agus a chur chun cinn.
And how do we do this work? I don’t have all the answers. I can say that the work is more than just shouting ‘yeow’ at a seisiún, and videoing people playing trad and posting it on your Instagram. There is no singular answer to the question I have posed, but there is a singular intention. The work is making sure that at every stage, you are engaged in our culture in the way you are meant to - surrounded by and celebrating with community. It is purposeful, it is difficult, it is worthwhile. Leagfaidh tua bheag crann mór.
The Algorithm Will See You Now:
The Science Behind Shadowbanning
Aoibheann Kearins unpacks the secrets behind the censorship of online speech and the ramifactions of a culture of silence
Imagine you’re in the exam hall. The room is silent, the audience waiting in anticipation. You step up to the podium, ready to deliver a moving speech about how much you love Misc. (and rightly so), only to realise that the microphone isn’t working. No one can hear you. You don’t know whether this is a technical glitch or if someone unplugged the mic, but either way it’s too late, the audience has left, and you deliver your speech to the abyss. Now shift that scene to the online world, and you have just experienced shadowbanning.
Shadowbanning has become one of the strangest and most quietly powerful forms of online control. It isn’t a ban, and it isn’t a warning. There’s no message tell ing you you’ve crossed a line, no one telling you your mic is muted on Zoom. Your posts remain vis ible to you, but without ever be ing informed, almost no one else is seeing them. In a time when de bates about free speech feel more relevant than ever, there’s some thing deeply unsettling about a form of censorship that can turn down your mic silently, algorithmically, and with out acknowledgement.
The thing that differentiates this type of censorship from an ything before is that it is seemingly blameless. Shadowbans are enact ed not by a person, but by an algorithm, an enormous, constantly evolving machine-learning system trained on extensive datasets. Crucially, these systems are built by teams of engineers making thousands of small design decisions: what datasets to use, what counts as “sensitive”, which patterns advertisers dislike, how strictly to detect “harmful” speech. None of these choices are neutral. The final model doesn’t under-
stand context, humour, satire, or culture. It only understands correlations. It learns that some keywords tend to appear in “problematic” posts, and in recognising patterns that resemble past violations, it attempts to keep content “clean” by overcorrecting and punishing anything that fits the statistical profile of trouble. Whether the content is actually harmful is irrelevant — the algorithm is designed to minimise controversy for its Silicon Valley creator, freedom of speech be damned. This is where algorithmic censorship becomes particularly slippery. The models that rank and remove content are trained on huge datasets in which certain words are disproportionately associated with violations. This means a post using a word like “violence”, “sex”, “protest”, or phrases like “mental health” or “selfharm” can be flagged, down-ranked, or quietly suppressed. Technically speaking, content moderation systems have no concept of intention. They simply learn that certain words produce “bad” outcomes according to the training data, and so these words become radioactive. An educational post about sexual health can be treated like explicit content, a political critique can get lumped in with hate speech, an activist organising a protest can be mis taken as an extremist. The censorship happens before a human ever sees a post, vanishing into algorithmic limbo.
As awareness of shadowbanning increases, people are beginning to try to find ways around it. Many creators have taken to substituting flagged words with
An educational post about sexual health can be treated like explicit content, a political critique can get lumped in with hate speech, an activist organising a protest can be mistaken as an extremist
emojis, replacing vowels with asterisks, or inventing entire codes of euphemisms to avoid suppression (“unalive” for “kill”, blood emoji for period, “seggs” for “sex”, etc.).
There is no issued list of “taboo” topics that the algorithm tends to flag, which has led to people self-censoring a wide variety of words. This self-policing is perhaps the most dystopian part: the feeling of being in a digital panopticon, where every word feels like it might be algorithmically incriminating. When online users see anatomical terms or sexual identities being asterisked into oblivion, it perpetuates the narrative that these are things that shouldn’t be talked about -that is, if it makes it to your feed at all.
your words were too risky to distribute.
Your speech doesn’t need to be deleted to be controlled, it need only be hidden
This creates a strange psychological pressure, a sense that the algorithm is always monitoring, always judging, always reacting to signals you can’t see. People start changing their language — avoiding certain words, censoring themselves, softening political statements — not because they fear punishment, but because they fear invisibility. The algorithm becomes a silent editor, shaping what gets said and what gets abandoned before it’s even typed.
What’s even more troubling is that platforms rarely admit this. Instead of “shadowbanning”, they use palatable phrases like “reduced discoverability”, “limited distribution”, or “content sensitivity classification”. No matter what you call it, the effect is identical: your speech is technically allowed, but practically invisible. You’re speaking, but the algorithm has turned down the volume. From the platform’s point of view, this is ideal. A ban is messy, dramatic, and opens them to backlash, while soft suppression is tidy and deniable. Platforms argue that moderation is necessary to protect users, but their method of doing so merely creates a form of censorship that is neither accountable nor contestable.
This phenomenon affects everyone in the digital world. Students, societies, activists, and minority communities often rely heavily on social media to make their voice heard. When an algorithm decides that certain political terms are “controversial”, or that Irish language posts resemble spam, or that event posters look like bot-generated content, entire conversations can be stifled before they even begin. For example, during protests or referendums, posts with specific keywords can experience sudden drops in reach simply because the algorithm is dialling up its sensitivity. No one explains or even confirms this. You’re left guessing whether you’ve been penalised, randomised, or whether the system simply decided
This brings us to the uncomfortable truth at the centre of algorithmic censorship: your speech doesn’t need to be deleted to be controlled, it need only be hidden. The modern day public squares of Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter are governed by unseen moderators who decide who can be town crier on any given day. These systems prioritise whatever creates the least friction for the platform — whatever keeps engagement high and advertisers comfortable — not what is meaningful for society.
In a world where the right to free speech is increasingly fraught, the question becomes: what does freedom of speech mean when the very infrastructure of public conversation is mediated by opaque algorithms? When a machine, rather than a moderator or community, decides which words are too risky and which ideas are too inconvenient to surface? When your right to speak is intact, but your ability to be heard depends on whether you’ve used a word the algorithm has been taught to punish?
Shadowbanning shows that in the digital age, censorship isn’t always loud, dramatic, or ideological. Sometimes it’s statistical, accidental, or the result of a machine learning the wrong lesson from the wrong data. Whatever its cause, the effect is the same: speech without reach, expression without audience, and a public sphere shaped by systems we aren’t allowed to see or understand.
So as you stand in the empty exam hall, crumpled speech in hand, it hits you: perhaps the real threat to free expression isn’t the platform removing your voice — it’s the algorithm deciding it’s not worth amplifying.
“Diplomacy Ends a War”: 30 Years of the Dayton Agreement
Zach Keenan reflects on what’s changed in the last thirty years since the signing of the Dayton Agreement and the impacts on democracy
Can peace last in a divided Balkan state?
This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the Dayton Agreement. This peace agreement officially ended the Bosnian War (19921995). It also created an unnecessarily complex political system, disregarded war crimes and genocide, and left the region in tenuous circumstances.
The website of the National Museum of American Diplomacy, which runs under the United States Department of State, contains an online exhibit with the title “Diplomacy Ends a War: The Dayton Accords”. This brief exhibit discusses the efforts of “Secretary of
In trying to allow for fair representation, Dayton instrad ostracised other groups and created an emphasis on dividing the country by religion and ethnicity
State Warren Christopher and then-Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke” in late 1995 to broker a peace agreement with the Presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia “to end more than three years of war that had already claimed over 200,000 lives and forced 2 million from their homes”. Ironically, or rather controversially, the peace negotiations were held in the U.S. military’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The controversy was not limited to the setting of the accords, as it seeped into elements of the Dayton Francis Boyle,
an American human rights lawyer who served as counsel for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Boyle once stated in an interview that “Bosnians, if they went along with Dayton, risked becoming the Palestinians of the Balkans”. While the accuracy of this statement is far off considering the modern context, the sentiment remains. Much of the risk involved for Bosnia in agreeing to Dayton was down to how its political system and borders were to be organised.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is now comprised of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, with the self-governing administrative unit Brčko District formally being part of both entities. Possessing borders with Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, the country is split into ten cantons. Religious divisions are where most of the country’s problems lie, with Bosnia being made up of mostly Bosniaks (Muslims), Bosnian Serbs (Orthodox Christian), and Croats (Catholic). This means that there is a tripartite Presidency made up of individuals from each of these groups. However, the individual candidates must fit one of these categories and cannot be simply, say, a Bosnian or a Jewish Croat. In trying to allow for fair representation, Dayton instead ostracised other groups and created an emphasis on dividing the country by religion and ethnicity. This division was one of the main causes of the war, notably with the Bosnian Serbs of Republika Srpska attacking the Bosniaks. This came to a head with the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 in which 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were massacred by Serb forces, and which is widely recognised as an act of genocide by the international community. While the U.S. itself recognises the Srebrenica massacre as genocide, Republika Srpska was a by-product of Bosnian Serbs ethnically cleansing Bosniaks.
Established at the beginning of the war in 1992, it removed Bosniaks, as well as Croats, from annexed lands to replace them with Bosnian Serbs. Thus, in allowing for the official creation of Republika Srpska in the agreement as its own separate entity within Bosnia, American diplomacy ended a war but did not end its tragic effects.
Diplomacy shouldn’t
be merely about stopping a conflict but rather enabling it to never return
In 2020, Dunja Mijatovic, the then Commissioner of the Council of Europe for Human Rights, wrote an opinion piece in which she notes some of the failures of Dayton. She explains how Bosnia’s constitution “provides for a complex and expensive administrative and political system, one that is clogged up by excessive protection of ethnic interests and mechanisms that have enabled nationalist politicians to veto important decisions that could help the country to move forward”. This is, of course, an implicit reference to Republika Srpska as an entity. It is also a nod to how Bosnia’s hopes of joining the European Union could be impeded by its political system. Likewise, Mijatovic notes in a 2020 piece on denial of the Srebrenica genocide that “In some cas es, war criminals hold prominent public roles in the Republika Srpska entity of Bosnia and Herzegovi na, run for public offices in Serbia or keep an active public life, during which they promote the same ab horrent views and lies that led to so much human suffering.” Daniel McLaughlin, reporting for the Irish Times in July on the thirty-year anniversary of Srebrinica, wrote that “Republika Srpska resists attempts to transfer any of its powers to the state, and its long-time leader, Milorad Dodik, fre quently threatens to seek secession for the region rather than allow its deeper integra tion in the Bosniak-majority country”. Allegations of corruption against Dodik have also raised concerns for Bosnian membership in the E.U.
The Republika Srpska President, his two children, and various companies fi nancing him,
have been placed on U.S. sanctions lists in recent years. With talks of Bosnian membership in the E.U growing, and the European Council opening acces sion negotiations in March 2024, these issues will only draw more controversy. In May, the Central Eu
ropean Times reported that “Last December, the RS national assembly instructed Serb officials to block all EU-related decisions in national institutions, drawing strong condemnation from the EU Delegation and embassies of the US, UK, Germany, France and Italy, who called the move a “serious threat” to BiH’s constitutional order”. As the E.U. continues to face border issues with Russia as well as issues of Kremlin influence on the likes of Viktor Orban’s Hungary, why would it open the doors to another potential security threat?
The Dayton Agreement faced the problem of resolving a violent conflict which, to its credit, it did. However, it did not consider the future implications of the system it created. Diplomacy should not be merely about stopping a conflict but rather enabling it to never return. If Bosnia is ever to join the E.U, it will likely need to reform its constitution which poses the threat of the conflict returning. This is where the U.S and the wider international community must act as a watchdog and work towards Bosnia’s success. Diplomacy may end a war, but can it protect peace and promote progress?
Irish Hellos and Irish Goodbyes
Sophia Arceo and Jules Nati explore modern day Irish immigration and emigration; what brings students to Ireland and what pushes them away
In 2023, Trinity College Dublin was ranked the 16th most international university in the world. Moreover, Trinity’s website adds that, as of 2021, there were a total of 116 countries roaming freely around campus.
What draws so many people from all over the world to merry little Ireland? This concept is compelling considering the amount of Irish people that emigrate from Ireland to make a life elsewhere. Why is a country historically synonymous with emigration and diaspora now becoming a haven for many young people all over the world? To shed some light on the question, we spoke to two kind and willing international students to offer their experiences,
Eliana was brought to Ireland in a whirlwind. All she knew was she did not want to go to college in the south of the US; she chose Ireland ‘because it was English speaking but not England’. She adds that she did choose Trinity because of its reputation.
Sibilla too came to Ireland because it was the choice that espoused her needs best: ‘‘It is convenient for EU students to apply for higher education here as the cost is almost the same as in other EU countries. I can say that I came to Ireland because I was looking to move to an anglophone, affordable country.’ This last sentence is key: Ireland is an anglophone country and offers affordable tuition - at least more affordable than the UK, which is what Eliana said as well. So, those two features (language and affordability) are enough to consider Ireland as your home for a more or less long time. However, is this enough to make people stay? Is Ireland, ultimately, the final port, or a bridge to somewhere else?
there definitely is some romanticism.’ On the role of international students in the romanticisation of Ireland, Eliana has a broader take than Sibilla’s. ‘I think [romanticisation] does benefit Ireland in some ways like increasing tourism’, she continues, although she then admits that she sees how this increase in tourism and movement towards Ireland might not be all roses. Eliana also tries to analyse how Ireland’s romanticisation affects those who didn’t choose to be born here. Ireland's long story of emigration hasn't reached an end yet. How is it that, while the beauties of Ireland have attracted so many from abroad to move here, they have not been enough to make Irishborns stay?
By looking at this country as a guest, like international students do, Ireland can be the launching point towards a bigger world.
As Irish student Sophia O’Neill put it, emigration is “rooted in the [Irish] gene since the famine”. To say that the emigration of Irish people will cause the Irish identity to become muted could not be further from the truth. If there is anything an Erasmus experience has proved to Sophia, Charlotte, Eoghan, and Emma, is that being Irish is an identity “true to heart” regardless of where they are. On the other hand William describes Irish culture to be “found in small pockets”: there is a reason that many Irish abroad always end up amongst other Irish. Yes, while Sophia plans to “sponge in as many other experiences as possible”, to be Irish abroad is to scavenge the city for a good pint of Guinness .
Sibilla feels the strongest on this. After having been here for only a month, she says: ‘I am now more open to the possibility of staying here in the future. [...] the idea of living in Ireland indefinitely is growing on me.’ On the question of romanticisation, Sibilla thinks Ireland is being ‘rightfully romanticised - It is a fascinatingly beautiful country with a complex history and diverse environment.’, adding that she believes ‘the international spread of this romanticisation is mainly due to us international students’, who ‘spread word of the Irish experience first-hand’. Her point of view, of course, is in respect of whether she found what she expected to find once coming to Ireland: and her reply is yes, and even more so.
Eliana is a bit more disillusioned, but still overall agrees on the enticing power Ireland has. In her own words, ‘parts of Ireland are [...] accurately portrayed, but
However, the value of rent is just as absurd as the value of a Guinness in Sicily - and it seems to be the primary decentive for Irish people to stay. Emma Goddard, who has treaded the Irish rite of passage (like a J1) for internships during her college years, currently finds herself working at Bank of America. Her preparation has not excluded her from the ‘norm’ of not being able to afford rent or a mortgage, while Eoghan Kavanagh’s decision to have no choice but to move abroad ‘comes down to wanting to have enough surplus income to enjoy life, buy a house, afford food, and support a family in the future’. And with so many of these young adults’ priorities being independence, it becomes more complicated to stay and navigate the rent crisis than to find better opportunities abroad. One common term being brought up is the Celtic Tiger. Michael Brosnan (second year art history student) recalls growing up and seeing
wages going further in value during the time of his parents than today. For a country having one of the highest GDPs and minimum wage in Europe, the living standard is not reflecting these statistics and what are politicians doing to correct an economy that grew beyond what the size of Ireland could accommodate.
The size of Dublin falling behind the need for growth remains overlooked. Noah Johnson (UCD student in radiology) finds himself ‘unable to predict or rely on the government's aid’. Despite studying an essential field such as healthcare, neither the universities nor the government consider the financial limits of students whose medical placements end up all around the country, leaving students with costly commutes due to delays in openings of new hospitals and delays in the hiring process for many specialisations. So what help do these houses bring if there are no hospitals, schools, or affordable mortgages being introduced along with them?
Moreover, what is described by UNESCO as the ‘City of Literature’ is finding many of its creatives moving abroad where they are able to expand globally. Charlotte McCulloch, one of the founders of the independent literary arts publication ‘Hearth Magazine’ does claim Dublin as ‘the place to do it’ for getting started - she knows her audience, where they hang out, and word is able to travel fast compared to a bigger city like London. Dublin has an attitude Charlotte describes as ‘you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours’, where an entrepreneur like herself alongside her co-founders of Hearth Magazine have found a more cozy city such as Dublin to be a stepping stone to the creative scene. But this, at the same time, poses as a ceiling. This leaves Charlotte feeling a need to do a masters in order to have a stable income in the future.
While the future of Ireland remains unpredictable for Irish people abroad planning on returning for retirement, one thing that remains regarding the Irish culture of emigration is that many of the interviewees described it as ‘stuck’, a connection so fixed that Sophia’s certainty that ‘she will die in Ireland’ is not outlandish. Irish identity remains a fight in Ireland, specifically in cities like Dublin, where William as an Irish speaker calls out how ‘both Irish heritage and language are considered part of the majority but having to fight as an identity and struggle as a small minority’. Due to the Irish identity being ‘double compromised due to borders and culture’, Sophia credits ‘having to defend it makes her more protective of it’. It is no surprise that an Irish person abroad will have their Irish culture find its way into the conversation. Therefore, this obviously contributes to many internationals being drawn to Ireland.
The worldwide renowned Irish hellos and welcomes have attracted many to make a living in this country. By looking at this country as a guest, like international students do, Ireland can be the launching point towards the bigger world. We have popped in here, and have been welcomed by warm hellos.
Even though some of these hellos may be on their way out, the welcoming attitude remains. When asked about how accurate it is to say ‘Irish goodbye’ and go abroad and never come back to Ireland, many were quick to clarify how much they craved going back to Ireland themselves or how often Irish relatives abroad regularly visited.
Migration remains a part of the natural human identity, and it is something that has connected the Irish to so many countries and peoples. If you're lucky and you find yourself seated at a table with a group of Irish people on the other side of Europe, you’ll find Irish people teaching you more Irish history than you learned living in Ireland.
Dispatches from a Campus on Fire
Claire Killian (‘26) is a student at Barnard College of Columbia University studying Art History and Religion.
Everything is happening and it’s all happening right here, right now. The world is spinning fast and slow. A year and a half ago, my roommate and I pressed our faces into the glass of our windows, watching the largest police force in the country consume Amsterdam Avenue with its tanks, guns, and riot gear. Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect. We listened to the campus radio detail brutalization against students, and though the news was chilling, we were grateful to have it all the same. The only thing scarier than a full-force armed invasion of your campus is a full-force armed invasion of your campus that nobody’s recording.
In the time since everything changed, it seems as if nothing has changed at all. The gates, which connect Columbia University to the rest of New York City (the very same that, in 1968, the University swore never to lock again), have remained firmly closed for nearly two years. Equal parts the perfect metaphor and a harsh reality. It is difficult to articulate the speed and totality with which things have changed for the worse at Columbia University. There are arguments to be made that things were never great - which is true. There are arguments to be made that we have no right to be surprised, which have merit. Still, the disdain and totalitarianism with which the administration treats the rest of the university demands shock and defies logic. And yet, for every attempt the administration makes to sink further into silence, I am amazed by the students, faculty, and staff who push back.
Think of what’s below as notes from a world that feels somewhere between a George Orwell novel and a history book you have a sinking feeling you know the ending to. Dispatches from friends across the ocean.
On Phone Calls in Fields:
It’s August and I’m writing an application. An application full of potential and possibility. It is an application to a government scholarship. I am applying to a government scholarship to fund my intellectual academic pursuits in the humanities. Already in anti-academic environment such as the United States of
America in 2025, not a great place to start. In my application to a government scholarship to fund my intellectual academic pursuits in the humanities, I have to talk about my extracurricu lar and non-academic engagements; sort of real-life CAPTCHA test to make sure that I am a multidimensional human being with interests and passions, not merely an academic drone (although I am still certainly expected to have the GPA of someone with no external commitments).
The snag: I work for an organization called the Education Equity Lab*. It’s an admirable organization that teaches University classes in low-income public high schools. It has, however, the misfortune of being named the Education Equity Lab. This is bad, this is very bad. You see, the government has a list of over 250 “banned words” and equity is on that list no less than three times in various forms. These words have been wiped from government websites and instantly kill any grant proposal. They hang like a threat, demanding obedience in advance. So I’m careful, I don’t mention the Education Equity Lab by name, merely whispering about a “collaboration.” But now, the awkward part. How do I ask my Professor, who runs the program, for a letter of recommendation that never mentions the name of the organization we both work with?
And so it’s August and I’m lying on the grass on a phone call with my Professor (my personal number? Her personal number? On a Saturday of all things? Dire times call for intimacy!).
You see, I’m nervous. I tell my professor my concerns. She sighs. She says this is doing the right thing, that I’m being smart by asking her not to mention the Education Equity Lab by name. She sounds weary. She didn’t get into teaching to coach students on what words
they can and can’t say, and in front of whom. This is new territory for us all. Somehow she’s expected to guide me despite never having been through this herself. Ok, she says, we can do this, she says. I guess this is just how it is now.
*Since this event, the Education Equity Lab has changed their name to the National Education Opportunity Network (NEON)...I wonder why?
Observations on Email Signa-
tures:
It’s October and I am taking a class on medieval manuscripts taught by a librarian. When she emails me, there’s a black box next to her name in her email signature. I ask what this means. Is it artistic? Stylistic? A design choice? It’s redacted, she replies. What? It’s redacted. Highlight it. And I do, and when you click and drag your cursor over this black box you realize that it’s not a block but rather black highlight over black text and what’s obscured are the letters PhD.
Columbia won’t allow the librarians to put their PhDs in their email signatures anymore, she says. She
They won’t let you put the PhD - the qualification they hired you for - in your email signature, I gape. She shakes her head. My heart wrenches.
Business as Usual:
It’s November and I’m walking past the gates. There is a protest happening. They happen frequently, which I take to be better than the alternative. Silently, faculty and staff hold pictures of students who have been detained - beaten, brutalized, kidnapped - by I.C.E.. They form a corridor on the sidewalk. To walk through it is to be haunted. Before I.C.E. started terrorizing cities across the country, ripping families apart and sentencing refugees to death by whatever forces they were trying to get away from in the first place, there were already so many holes ripped into the fabric of our on-campus community. How many people in my class are still expelled or suspended for participating in on-campus protests? How many people who had their degrees and their community taken from them?
And then it gets worse. And then in the exact moment when coming together and communing is most desperately needed, for many in New York, it becomes dangerous to do so. There are group chats and story posts and warnings and network - the little acts of a big resistance. But these are lives at stake and there are people talking about them as if they were poker chips. It is the kind of evil that language feels useless at capturing. Something horrific that defies description. Evil beyond words. But not because none of the words fit, in fact, it’s the opposite: they all work. It’s just that none of them are strong enough, none of them capture the true hatefulness of these raids.
In the exact moment when coming together and communing is most desperately needed, for many in New York, it becomes dangerous to do so
says this to me grimly, as a matter of fact. They’re trying to de-academicisize the libraries. They are trying to de-academicisize the libraries. It cannot be said enough times. The University, the historic seat of knowledge, does not value the nucleus of scholarship that is the library nor its cultivators, the librarians. My librarian is a ghost walking, and she knows this. She knows that when she retires, they will not fill her position. They will dissolve her role as special curator of a special collection into the corporatizing ocean of the University and hire a generalist manager to take over her position. This librarian handles papyri scrolls older than Christ and manuscripts completed over generations. She is a highly trained, highly experienced, highly intelligent, highly dedicated woman and she works every day in an institution that is openly hostile to her qualifications.
Their violence, cruelty, callousness. The stakes are so high it feels as if there is not room to breathe.
The Coming Together:
I am reminded, always reminded, that if those complicit in the I.C.E. raids around the city, the censorship on campus, the destruction of the University, and a seemingly endless list of other evils feel the need to silence the students, faculty, and staff, that’s probably a pretty solid indication that we’re doing something right. If our thoughts, our existence, and our actions are so threatening to them that they lock the gates and gag the student paper, then we are obliged to get loud. This is what this “Freedom of Expression” exchange is all about: creating a space beyond borders or gates to be entirely, completely expressive. The only way out is through, and the only way through is together.
Staying Connected While Living Apart
Eve McGann reflects on life away from home, over communication, and technology as a means of replacement for human connection
Irecently took a train from Edinburgh to a town far north in the Scottish Highlands named Portskerra. This is a place where, on a clear day, you can look directly out across the ocean at Orkney island and catch puffins diving from the clifftops east of Melvich Bay. There is a post office, a village shop, and a bus stop which is visited by one bus, three times a week. A fish and chip van comes every Wednesday. On a train back to this place, two thoughts concerned me. The first: when we change trains at Inverness, will the next one appear? (locals had already warned me) and my second thought was informed by a nagging sense of duty: a 7 hour train journey would give me plenty time to tackle the pile-up of messages on my phone and reassure my dad that the storm he had found on his weather app had not reached the Highlands in any kind of alarming capacity. My dad and I won’t text often but he’ll check the weather in Scotland regularly. It’s his own way of keeping up with me. As many friends of mine embark on Erasmus programmes abroad this September, I can’t help wondering whether it’ll be possible to stay in touch while also making the most of the moment, and without just exchanging tales back and forth. Can connections with loved ones ever be authentically and fully maintained when living many miles apart?
These past few months in the Highlands have taught me a lot. My dad follows the weather and my mum likes to call me from the car. I exchange voicemails with school friends and receive emails about the pope from my granny. Unfortunately none of these mediums are sufficient to adequately express the panic/horror of finding oneself front row at an interactive comedy show in which the host talks about necrophilism, and occasionally bursts into singing. Or the agony of being ushered into a tiny, repurposed, tutorial room to sit through a one-hour, one-woman show where you and your 3 friends constitute two thirds of the audience, and a recording plays overhead of the host experiencing a panic attack. This was my weekend at the Edinburgh Fringe. Relaying such events over Snapchat voice memos is just not the same.
And I don’t think any kind of digital communication can be the same, or can even come close to meeting the value of face-to-face interaction because
this form isn’t just about relaying messages or exchanging life stories; it’s about warmth, and closeness, and feeling connected to another person. It’s about funny facial expressions and breaking into laughter at the same moment, and experiencing the intimacy of this connection while the rest of the world buzzes on in the background behind you. Socializing is rarely ever about someone having something to say, however, when technology becomes the primary medium through which we communicate, one of the main ways we socialize is removed. “Chatting” becomes much less possible through one’s phone. Its purpose is not to exchange information; it’s simply about spending time together, communicating for the sake of connection rather than transmission of information. Though it could be argued that people can still ‘chat’ over the phone, the act itself usually implies that the caller has something they want to say and it is far harder to judge the yardstick for length of yapping when unable to gauge the listener’s expression.
Replacing in-person interactions with technology also means that you’re not forging any new memories with that person. You’re not doing new things together, instead you’re simply exchanging summary snapshots of each other’s lives. Our smartphones mean that we are accessible to others all of the time, and this has also increased the level of maintenance that ordinary friendships require. It’s not irregular to text friends every day, even when there might not be anything new to say. It has just become the norm, the expectation, to know what all of us are up to all of the time. Sometimes I yearn for the summers our parents had - writing letters to one another because that was the only way to know what anyone else was up to, stopping briefly in a phone booth trying to catch hold of someone, if you had the coins. These methods of communication took time, effort and much more purposeful intent than it takes to send a DM to a friend on Instagram. Communication was less often, yes, but it was more meaningful.
We’re not meant to be in contact with all the people in our lives, all of the time. Not only because that’s exhausting but also because when you spend so much of your life talking to others about your life, how
much life are you left with to actually live? Plus, there is always the small risk that phoning your parents on a random Thursday at 9pm will result in being broadcasted, on loudspeaker, to all the guests at their dinner party. (I invoked airplane mode and blamed the cutoff on wifi issues). anyway.
As the train rattles on, I relinquish my story about the one-woman show with reluctance. The carriage underbelly races over each track while fellow passengers snore beside me. A few whispered voice notes to my friends back home will have to do. I suppose this medium will have to continue during Erasmus season, but we’ve agreed to also undertake slower forms of communication - letters, email, carrier pigeon. There’s also a collective understanding that communication will be less frequent and the only way to counteract
the effects of this is through visits! A happy ( though costly) fix.
On a train to the north, there is really nothing I want to do less than reach for my phone. I just want to watch snippets of the world go past and be a complete observer. I love trains for this reason. I can watch the world through a window without having to offer anything of myself in return. In a way that’s what I wish I was able to do with loved ones back homecatch snippets of their lives without having to swap it with them for a snippet of my own. Maybe I will write a few postcards. For the time being though, I just look out the window and catch glances into other people’s lives, in that one frozen instance, and I feel like that is enough, in that moment, to feel connected.
The Moon Under Porter
What do pubs, Animal Farm, and Tiktok have in common? Doire Ó Súilleabháin considers.
Iam so very often inundated with videos on my telephone of the worst men you will ever meet in your life attempting to rate, berate and indicate as of late their favourite boozers either in Dublin’s proverbial gullet, or in some other made-up part of the world such as a far-off city I’m told is called London.
Between Eton boys “Scoring Schooners” and Meath men moaning on about “Shtick” and “Dome”, the prospect for the future of travel blogging is looking GRIM. I myself am under the belief that these individuals should have to complete a mandatory vetting process to find out whether their mates actually like them or not before being granted a camera and tripod to make such dribbling nonsense as a “Pint Review” video.
My disdain for such content aside, the recent rise in pub culture has led to heavy ended commercialisation of what should be communal third spaces. The relegation of the pub to a ‘Top Ten List’, the over emphasis on stout quality, the fetishisation of “Authentic” Irish pubs and their gentrification as a result, reviewing culture, content overproduction and general twattery around Guinness is a poisonous stain on tradition, history and community.
My musings, many of which are booze related, have landed me a reading or two of a George Orwell piece written in the mid forties amidst London’s bombings and bludgeonings at the hands of the Axis Powers. The Moon Under Water is Orwell’s lego brick instructions for the perfect pub, Tir na nOl if you would.
The polemic laid out around ten solid sentiments the man would wish to see in an ideal pub. Open
fires that could ignite the ‘modern miseries’ of Victorian woodwork and the ‘solid comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century’ made the aesthetics out to be much less important than pseudo-pint-punters would have you believe.I immediately think of The Palace or McDaids and its bestial sanctum filled with pretentious posers trying to be the next Behan, Mehan or Flann. Fret not friends, for there's food to be had. Sandwiches and biscuits is more my jive than any twenty five euro roast dinner. I've been eating miserably for years and it makes me quite happy. If my wild-western cowboy demeanour wasn't obvious from my appearance, this is where me and Orwell really gel. Dart boards relegated to the public bar, draught stout and caraway seeds, sausage sambos and mussels. Orwell is incidentally the first writer to speak truth to power when it comes to bars selling pickles, and for once, I really feel spoken
the utter piss’ .
What is really at the centre of The Moon Under Water is community. Bar maids with dyed hair calling you ‘dear’ and who know the regulars, not drunkards or blow-in content consumers, all by name. Sprawling expansive gardens where the children can play and a woman can enjoy a glass of cider in the summer with the rest of the family. No radio or piano can quell the chatter because it doesn't exist, nor does Martin Tyler yelling on the TV to appease the one guy in the corner who “wants to hear the commentary” over a Hull City match. Bars are for talking to people and don't get it twisted.
A note on children in bars. It is exclusionary (with the notion of a nuclear family) to bar children from the pub during the day time as it upholds a long tradition of therefore excluding women, the common primary caregiver, a seat at the high stool. Pubs are for drinking,
2,100 bars have closed in the last 20 years in this country and it is largely to do with the abandonment of the ‘local’ while also simultaneously romanticising it
for. Best pub grub in Dub? Probably the WowBurger in Mary’s. Mr. Animal Farm drones on for another few lines about small aesthetic subsidiaries, that when it comes down to it, do not affect the pub experience whatsoever only in so much as for a content farming hooligan would use it to rate the ‘ambiance’ category one to five on his TikTok page. For Orwell, he would prefer his draught stout in a ‘strawberry pink china mug’ : through extensive research I've declared this to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century ‘taking
not for getting drunk, and anybody who’s been tossed down the stairs in Whelan’s by security before will tell you that. So I would say up until seven or eight pm, pubs can and should be a safe environment for all members of the family.
Family is crucial to Orwell here when we’re talking about community. It builds a tighter sense of familiarity as people know each other in their area - through school, sport, carpooling, religious gatherings as well as extended family, so cousins, aunts,uncles etc. Maybe I’m being a bit of a sap as I come
from the countrysidebut the sentiment still stands in cities.
Orwell postulates that when you ask someone why they like a pub they would ‘put the beer first’ but nay the thing that appeals most to Orwell ‘is what people call its “atmosphere”. This is to say, what I’ve been talking about so far, I know for a fact you do not care about stout quality as much as you think you do. You want the perfect pint of Guinness? Go stand outside in the middle of December when it is three degrees or colder, get a pint from an outside bar and stand there drinking it while your toes go numb. Guinness will maintain its taste, texture, shtick and dome perfectly at those conditions
and the climate will ensure it doesn't go warm or flat. But the experience ? A bit cold I’d say.
The average punter is not and should not be choosing their communal meeting grounds based off a scored average of some dope who has only been to the pub once. I sound like a bitter publican but I’m really just a cynical-masochist with a laptop.
Dublin strives so often to commercialise and categorize pubs in a way that we can consume their experience more palatably and quickly. This is largely to do with a lack of tourist attractions. In reality it's about lived experience, not going to a random pub for the experience,. ave a local you like and stick
to it, and you'll learn to like it more. Shoehorning is a risk that people take when they try to categorise pubs too quickly. People wanting the best “authentic Irish pub experience" likely belong in Temple Bar. 2100 bars have closed in the last 20 years in this country and it is largely to do with the abandonment of the ‘local’ while also simultaneously romanticising it. How does this work? Tom’s video on Grogans with its objectively excellent Guinness informs Larry, the viewer through a standardised rating system, that this is where he should drink. Larry lives in Harold's Cross and thus does not go across the road to The Harold House anymore and instead flees to the inner city to sit outside on a lonely stool with hundreds of others who have done the same. Instead of engaging in his local community and drinking where his neighbours and colleagues drink, people who work in the local shop , local schools and so on,, Larry now only drinks in Grogans and the surrounding pubs get run-off business when there’s no seats left. I’m generalising but you get the gist.
Community breaks down as a result of this process that deems other pubs more valuable than others, and this can very much be seen in the continuous interviews which cite bars like Grave Diggers (a great pub by the way)as the number one bar in the city. Please stop commodifying bars. What's the best pub in Dublin? Probably the first one you can find that you and all your friends can sit down and have a chat in. Does The Moon Under Water exist in Dublin ? No -never did, never will, that is if you're looking at it from the perspective of the ten qualities needed for a good boozer/ TikTok rating systems. Does it exist in Orwell’s vision that human interaction is the only determining factor of paradise? Of course it does, just go across the road.
Attitudes Towards the Genocide in Gaza Globally
Saffron Ralph considers the experience of Trinity Students on Erasmus
Since the brutality of October 7th 2023, the Israel-Palestine conflict has remained at the forefront of Irish political discourse and community life. However, responses to the conflict in Ireland cannot be discussed in isolation.
While Ireland has repeatedly demonstrated support for Palestine and protested against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, other European countries have responded with varying degrees of urgency - some slower to condemn Israel’s actions, others outwardly refusing to recognise the crimes being committed.
Trinity has long played a prominent role in student-led solidarity with Palestine. In May 2023, it was one of several universities to organise a protest encampment demanding the severing of institutional ties with Israel. Nicknamed the “student intifada,” this wave of activism emerged partly in response to the mass arrests of anti-genocide protesters at Columbia University.
mistreatment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the hands of German law. Disturbance at their government's unrelenting support for Israel has similarly spread across Germany. As the conflict has escalated, public expressions of support for Palestine have gradually become more acceptable on college campuses, such as RUB. While the university showed openness to on-campus pro-Palestinian campaigns, the Trinity exchange student noted that Ireland’s discourse remained more visible and outspoken. Like many Germans, she expressed frustra-
It often appears as though Ireland exisits in its own distinct bubble, one where pro-Palestinian sentiment is not only common, but overwhelmingly dominant
tion at her government’s reluctance to act decisively, an attitude she felt was tied closely to Germany’s fraught historical legacy.
The global landscape of anti-Palestinian government actions and corporate complicity has shaped Irish responses to the violence in the Middle East. It often appears as though Ireland exists in its own distinct bubble, one where pro-Palestinian sentiment is not only common but overwhelmingly dominant.
Every year, hundreds of Erasmus students arrive at Trinity, bringing with them a wide range of cultural and political backgrounds. While adjustment has always been a part of studying abroad, rarely have political differences across Europe been as stark as they are today. Contrasting national responses to the Israel-Palestine conflict have echoed through the halls of governments, and penetrated university classrooms.
One German student who recently completed her exchange at Trinity described a noticeable contrast between the environment in Dublin and that of her home university, Ruhr Universität Bochum (RUB). There is perhaps no other European country as deeply entangled, emotionally and politically, in the hostility than Germany. Its contemporary foreign policy remains inseparable from the legacy of the Second World War. Between two Irish citizens being threatened with deportation, and videos circulating of Irish demonstrator Kitty O’Brien being violently assaulted by police at a demonstration, Ireland has become hyper-aware of the
For many exchange students, the culture shift is immediate. Europe’s responses to the genocide vary drastically, shaped by history, ideology, and, increasingly, the rise of the far right.
Beyond Germany, political shifts continue to shape national responses. The Netherlands has similarly seen its internal politics sway rightwards in recent years. As of September 2025, 65 percent of Dutch citizens reported dissatisfaction with their government’s handling of the crisis. After Geert Wilders’ far-right party withdrew from the coalition government, a snap election saw Rob Jetten’s socially liberal D66 party come to power. Having criticised Israel’s actions and supported President Macron’s recognition of Palestine, the new government may signal a more assertive stance toward Netanyahu’s administration.
Across two semesters, many Trinity students experienced these differences firsthand. For students leaving a visibly pro-Palestinian environment such as Ireland for countries like Germany or the Netherlands, the shift could be stark. We talked to four students who navigated this alteration.
One student studying in Göttingen, Germany, described a palpable tension between young people’s calls to end the genocide in Gaza and the stronger pro-Israel sentiment among older generations. Despite Germany’s official stance in support of Israel, many student cities - Göttingen among
them - showed frustration at their government’s complicity in the violence. Though support for Palestine was less visible than in Ireland, protests drew significant crowds, leaflets were distributed, pro-Palestine graffiti appeared, and fundraisers were organised to support humanitarian aid.
Students in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Austria reported differing experiences. A student at a liberal arts college in Utrecht described an environment overwhelmingly supportive of Palestine. Palestinian flags, posters, and slogans lined house windows and public buildings, creating a cityscape marked by visible solidarity. In contrast, a Trinity student in Prague noted that pro-Palestinian sentiment appeared mostly among other international students. She described a noticeable shift the moment she left Ireland, a reminder of how dramatically perspectives can vary across Europe. Similarly a student in Salzburg observed a quieter support for Palestine among Austrian locals and students in comparison to that in Ireland. She recalled how the majority of students expressed pro-Palestinian sentiments through social media, and how lectureres would often condemn Israel if the topic arose in class. However, no demonstrations were held in the town during her exchange, and few posters or flags of solidarity were flown across Salzburg.
The varied responses of students to Israel’s genocide in Gaza has had diverse impacts on university campuses across the continent. Irish students have brought Pro-Palestinian opinions abroad, and international students have witnessed the dedicated degree to which Ireland supports Palestine. The Erasmus Programme has enabled students across the continent to share their unique cultural values and experiences for generations. Although Trinity students encountered vastly different opinions towards the genocide while on Erasmus, collectively, their individual experiences illustrate that contrasting views can have positive impacts. Today, it is essential that students around the world use their collective political influence to ensure universal atrocities are protested against and eradicated. In the context of the current genocide in Gaza, university exchange programmes have perhaps never been as vital.
Contextualising Kav
Amidst local antisocial behaviour issues, Elaine Murphy reports on Kavanagh Court student accommodation and the surrounding ongoing discourse
Kavanagh Court is finding itself at the forefront of an, understandably, negative conversation following recent issues of targeted antisocial behaviour toward students. However, despite this infamy, there is little discourse within Trinity that interests the area which many students call home beyond its antisocial issues. Kavanagh Court, or ‘Kav’, is almost always a second choice after the considerably cheaper Trinity Hall.
Kav is located within the ‘North East Inner City’, one of the most densely populated areas in Ireland with a long history of poor housing access and quality. With a 70% increase in population over the last 20 years, today the entire area’s ‘deprivation score’ is marginally above average.* This is because the area now contains both immense wealth and deprivation; despite often being viewed as rough, gritty, or dangerous - its first and foremost socioeconomically diverse. Notably, Kav is located at the tail end of one of four smaller areas, identified as some of the most disadvantaged areas in the whole country.
I have heard many describe Kav, usually in a coded manner, as a not-very-nice, poor area. However, any local who actually is poor will know very well that the area is not homogenous and extremely gentrified. Frankly, it irks me when people frame Kav and its locality as an undesirable place to live, because even though they may not like it themselves, demand shows the area is highly desirable.
I am not claiming that contextualising the targeted antisocial behaviour levied at Kav will prove it to be insignificant. In fact, its significance lies amongst a broader pattern of antisocial behaviour in the area. The 2023 Dublin Riots were a far more extreme example, where racism fuelled violence and looting in Dublin 1, leaving a scar on the area’s reputation. Posters in Kav have gone up with rally cries for greater policing and imploring residents not to interact with ‘local youths’. But what constitutes a local youth? Surely if we think of ‘local’ as describing residence in the area, Kav residents are themselves, ‘local youths’?
The University Times article reporting on the events used the same term, ‘local youths’ to describe the people engaging in this antisocial behaviour. During the 2023 riots, subsequent arrests proved that many people travelled from addresses far from Dublin 1 and treated the area as a playground for their antisocial inclinations. UT does not substantiate their claim of locality, and did not consult non-Kav residents for comment in their article. So, what really interests me is ensuring that this issue of antisocial behaviour is dealt with properly, and not utilised as a Trojan
horse for inaccurate, classist, and patronising profiling of the area.
That won’t be done without Trinity students understanding that Kav is a part of gentrification, and doesn’t contribute to the long term improvement of the area. When Kav was built, these antisocial problems had been long embedded in the area, and locals had been crying out for positive investment in their area. There are community based services working to combat these issues holistically, such as youth clubs and mental health charities, however they have limited resources. If the government chooses to further invest in Garda presence in the area, this serves to tell locals, particularly poor locals, that surveillance is more important than care. I would encourage you now to imagine how it feels to grow up and live in the local area spending your life on the breadline, on waiting lists for the most basic needs of housing and healthcare – to then watch a ‘modern city centre student accommodation complex’ be built on your front door, with rents at €1300 a month, and understand that there is so much money in the world available for youths – just not ‘local youths’.
When identifying what is ‘local’, we must remember this is one of the most densely populated areas in the country, is easily accessible by public transport, and in parts, is profoundly under-resourced. When antisocial behaviour happens, proponents travelling in from nearby leafy suburbs can rest assured it will be blamed on the area not the action. So which came first, the antisocial behaviour or the under-resourced community? This issue is not going to be solved when it is blamed on locality and local people, and certainly not while solutions are being assumed without any nuanced understanding. Are these people deprived, radicalised, bored, enabled? Are students contributing to improvements in the area?
Bearing in mind Trinity’s student wealth divide, where roughly 35% of students are international students, 35% of Irish admissions are from ‘affluent’ backgrounds, and only 5-6% of Irish admissions are from socioeconomicly disadvantaged backgrounds, (where 18% is in line with population). I wholeheartedly believe that international students make up a more interesting and diverse social fabric of the college; but at present, that social fabric is
plagued with gaping holes in the absence of a fair social mix of students.
Since starting at Trinity, I have been baffled at the way people talk about Kav and its locality. Before these incidents there was a palpable dissatisfaction with the area’s safety, and I understand it can be unpleasant to walk down Gardiner Street at night. But I have also personally seen the classist drivel which many deem acceptable discourse in college. I believe classism has driven a certain perception of the area which is simply disrespectful. Any real solution will have to start with Kav being able to work with other stakeholders in the community, instead of believing the community to be a sole cause and themselves, a sole victim.
Dr. Katriona O’Sullivan is both a Trinity graduate and someone who has lived in the area. Her book, ‘Poor’, describes her childhood growing up poor, living between England and Ireland. She shows just how hard it is to access education when you're poor and describes, amongst so many other barriers, the classicism and stigma which is present across education and particularly in Trinity. The class mix of Trinity students has created this echo-chamber, a community where affluent students are an effective majority and students from poor backgrounds are artificially marginalised. For international students, Trinity’s admission system and the social mix
it creates has given them an inaccurate view into the broader class landscape of Ireland and I believe in doing so, has enabled and fuelled classist rhetoric toward Dubliners. The recent antisocial issues were categorically abhorrent. Now, while the attention is on Kav, it’s time to interrogate and correct inaccurate rhetoric which fails to consider a complex locality. If you’re living in private accommodation and have money to spare, I would really encourage researching and donating to initiatives in your local community. For Kav in particular, I would highly encourage donations to Belvedere Youth Club, who are doing extremely important work to support young people in the community. Students have limited power to change the institutional issues which plague this area, but we all have power over what words we encourage and tolerate. The stigma we can create or oppose has real material impact, and particularly in regards to Kav, needs some serious changing.
*This data is from Inner City Organisations Network’s website on the North East Inner City.
In the Art of the Parisian Metropolis
Priya Evans on life, art, and finding resistance all around us
Paris has 136 museums, 400 independent bookstores, and a countless number of aspiring artists residing within its borders. The city has a rich history of creation. It has housed the pens of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett. Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh and Henri Matisse found inspiration for their portraits amongst the vibrant culture of Parisian streets. The city cultivates an environment so grounded in art that it permeates each level of society. From museums to murals, metro posters to architecture, art is inescapable. The city of Paris privileges art in society, and an important element of such privileging is the choice to make this art accessible. In fact, art is so accessible in Paris that I’ve heard the Louvre lets you take it home with you for free!
in more extreme cases, anti-advertising activists, these rips often form interesting collages due to the layering of posters. This act of vandalism thus results in an act of art - be it intentional or not. It almost acts as a tribute to the French artist Jacques Villegé, who concentrated his work on building collages made from advertising posters he found on the street. The legacy of creation persists in a city of aesthetics.
The choice to prioritise culture and access reflects the values of France as a nation of liberty, equality, and fraternity
Jokes aside, a simple walk to college, the metro or the local boulangerie reveals the beauty of a city that prioritises art and aesthetics. Wall art by popular French street artist Invader can be spotted in almost 1,500 locations in Paris. These colourful mosaics scattered around the city weave into the everyday lives of locals and tourists alike. Inspiring copycats, a mobile game, and a treasure-hunt-like following, Invader’s work brings art to the people, stretching beyond the confines of glass casings and barcode tickets.
A showing of art in Paris appears to me not only when I visit a world-famous museum, but also on my daily college commute. It surprised me how quickly I adjusted to the Parisian pace of living. 45-minute Dublin bus delays are nothing but a distant memory, and a mere 5-minute wait for the next line 10 metro had become a major disruption to my daily flow. That was, until I stopped to look around. At least once a week, my commute time lines up with the changing of the posters on the opposite platform. I look across the tracks to see RATP workers pasting a new poster atop layers of outdated advertisements. I enjoy watching this act of simultaneous concealment and revelation, but I prefer something that happens later in the evening, on my journey home. The pristine poster often falls into a manner of apparent disrepair in a matter of days, developing large tears. While some of these tears are the result of bored commuters picking at the edges on their way home or,
In these ways, and many others, art in Paris expands beyond the boundaries of the Louvre complex or the walls of countless other museums in the city. Buskers on the street play jazz that inspires dancing just as much as the bands performing in famous jazz clubs like Caveau de la Huchette. Street artists in Montmartre create beautiful portraits in minutes. When art is everywhere, it becomes a shared experience, a shared resource. It proves that art is not just for the elite. Street art is a result of passion, a means of expression. Witnessing art in the everyday evokes the feeling of the Romantic poets who defined poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. What is art other than a necessity built from passion and emotion?
The city of Paris has made art extremely accessible to visitors. Many public institutions are free or cheap for students and young people, with most public museums being free to enter for EU citizens under the age of 26. While I won’t give away all of my student budget artistic life hacks at once, I will say that all forms of art, from paintings to opera performances, have never felt more easily accessible to me than they do in Paris. The choice to prioritise culture and access reflects the values of France as a nation of liberty, equality and fraternity. France allocated €8.32 billion to culture in its latest budget. While this only composes 1% of the overall budget, a sizeable influx of capital into the artistic sector allows it to continue to thrive.
In Paris, the individual is encouraged to become the curator. The sheer quantity of art that is on display requires the individual to make decisive choices. Do you spend your time standing in front of the works you have been told to respect the most, or do you find a small etching hidden away in a corner that leaves you en-
grossed for hours? Street art, contemporary art, impressionism, cubism, realism, neoclassicism, the list goes on. The exposition to so many different forms of art allows you to make your own choices about what you privilege. Art is political, as is the art you choose to engage with. Political discourse takes place on the walls of the Louvre in oils, as it does on the walls of poorer parts of the city, in the identities expressed in spray paint.
In Place de la République, protesters gather frequently to advocate for various causes. The monument in the centre of the square depicts Marianne, the personification of the French Republic. She is surrounded by statues representing equality, liberty and fraternity. In recent years, this monument has been covered with graffiti. Whether against the violence taking place in Gaza, the role of the police, or the violence of the far right, each time, the city of Paris cleans the white stone, effectively erasing the voices of its citizens. While Paris has strict laws against the vandalism of public monuments, it is important to acknowledge the nature of such vandalism. Parisians are using graffiti on symbolic monuments to express political outrage. Graffiti is, after all, a form of art, albeit one that does not receive the same privileges as traditional oil-on-canvas.
Non-institutional art helps to form the culture of a city. Cafes have long been established as social institutions that shape the societal, political and intellectual life of Paris. Important historical moments started over cups of coffee consumed in the “public sphere”. Different establishments became associated with different schools of
artistic endeavours. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir frequented Cafe de Flore. Painters Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir preferred Café Guerbois in Montmartre. In contemporary life, cafe culture persists in Paris. People continue to frequent public forums, chasing the desire to participate in the theatre of urban life. However, with the rise of social media and the increasing authority of online life, how much of this participation comes from performance and the aestheticisation of experience? So often, people frequent institutions simply to take photographs for Instagram or film TikToks, rather than immersing themselves in a communal environment. It is sad to visit Monet’s Water Lilies and watch visitors view them through a screen.
In a world which increasingly decentres art, replacing analysis and interpretation with a rat race for views and engagement, it’s a refreshing experience to disconnect from the online world and live for the beauty of the real one. Engaging with art is an integral part of being human. It allows us to see through another’s eyes, learn from our history and reinterpret the present. It has persisted as a necessary human endeavour, and I hope that the prevalence of social media in our society does not erase the privilege of the public having easy access to art. After all, not everyone can get in and out of the Louvre in eight minutes.
Fiction & Poetry
Noah Roper
M.Phil Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies
The snowman shook the frost sealing its two wide coal eyes and awoke finally on the world’s last island. Time had ceased to be during this long sleep: the clocks ticked their last before sleep had become an option, when the seconds began being counted by the thudding of bodies and the clicking of teeth, but now even the sun and the moon merely hung frozen on the edge of black oblivion. There was no telling when anything was.
So the snowman sighed forever and then stopped to survey what was left.
The island was not large and had no distinguishing features. It was all sand, dry in the now but stained a dirty red that denied any glisten that might have been expected from a gleaming beach. The water didn’t help with that – viscous and grey it lay fat, heavy, dying, dead, putrefied bubbles gasping in final stand the only movement. Lifeless. Nothing sparkled in the depths, nor did it capture the silent beach and reflect it up to some great heavenly sky as it might once have, catching the eye of an artist for a postcard or a painting. Island paradise. Sun. Sea. Schools of fish and nests of turtle eggs buried beside coconut eggs fallen beside their tree. Tufts of grass lifting their heads above the parapet. Laughter in the waves and creation in the sand. Bodies stretched out under a palm tree parasol, limbs pointed and tan, following the myriad colours shot out from sinking rising sun.
The snowman’s first smile. Nostalgic or sardonic? None were there to see. None would have known either way, the snowman had a way of escaping scrutiny by standing tall and outside the restrictions of the fixed even as everything else became nailed down, tapped in, teeth sharpened. Once, when it started and time shortened, they sneered its way but soon became bored and sneered elsewhere because what use is sneering if a face is incapable of returning it. Sneers are drawn to sneers are drawn to shouts are drawn to wails are drawn to teeth are drawn to violence are drawn to violence are drawn to violence are drawn to…
And so soon nobody took any notice of it. Toothless, the snowman became the forgotten observer, ignored even by the once captivated children to whom the skinny and brittle twigs had provided unimaginable comfort. It stood watching as those bodies that once bathed in the warmth of the sun now lay baking in blood. As feet crushed egg and limb and grass alike and there was no way of return.
But even observing became difficult.
The sparse steppes of brutality can’t hold attention for long and desensitised eyes fail to see the growing pools of blood and bone when humanity becomes all teeth. Brief interludes of beauty were once enough: a bee landing on the end of its carrot nose; the whispering between leaves on a tree; a young deer’s first steps. But these sights became fewer and fewer as the bloody fires continued burning across the lands below the snowman’s eyes.
It was one day when the seconds ticked so slowly and loudly in the ears of the little that was left, that the snowman’s wavering belief that a moment of beauty would ever come from this finally shattered. So it stopped seeing and instead went to sleep. Whether it would wake up again it did not know, but it had anticipated something more now that it had although it did not know what. Clearly it had not quite given up all hope but now, eyes open again, that last self-deception slipped away.
Looking around again, the island was bare red and bare. Sand that might have hidden emerald gems of bottle shards, cracked shells of fossiled yore, even mangled bones to scar soil, sat instead silent and empty. Stained but empty. Just as the unblemished body of the snowman was packed together by the compression of the infinite perfect snowflakes, so too was the beach untouched by any marker beyond the mass of sand. What once had made up everything in all its spectral glory had been ground and ground to simple dust. There was no history in the last dune, only the snowman with whom memory would melt.
It expected to see signs of what was and what had been but no. Consumed into nothing now. Consumed into nothing forever.
Only the snowman on this mound of dirt where it had stood since the early days, resting atop the earth. Back when this mound was a mountain shrine to the
greatness of earth: cold, epic, teeming with life big and small. It remembered its first day, opening eyes plucked from the gods, black and eternal, to see the wobbling face of the creator. Twitching and stuttering in perpetuity, then was the only moment that the edge softened as she breathed slow and calm life into the last soul on Earth. A lopsided grin caught in that pause, tranquillity for a beat – just one – in a life that never knew it. Still more than most could ask for.
And the snowman kept that with itself, even while watching her run and run until forever crashed into never and chaos caught up. Even the gods she had so betrayed were gone now. Just the snowman, the sand, the sea.
The snowman remembered a time before the seas had a name and the sand shimmered with delight at every breeze that kissed its warm cheeks. When birdsong sailed across the waves to wake the multitudes beneath the surface as the sun gave colour to the trees and the clouds. When the moon was the orchestrator of the sacred shadows, keeping time by the long tidal strokes of the waves on the shore. When the creator stopped and smiled at the skewed carrot nose she had planted just to the left of the centre of the snowman’s face.
This, the snowman’s voiceless elegy for the age before time from the age after it, was heard by none.
What does it mean to know a world and to lose it? Perhaps the snowman had its answer then. The only one that would ever know what it means to have everything and for everything to be gone. Those early days when she first spread the fire, dancing in greens and purples about the land and blessing it with explosions of noise and life. How quickly it would all burn down later as the soot stained rage turned life into death. How quickly one would feast on another and another would feast on another and another would feast on another. Cruelty devouring itself as the fire of life corrupted with the taste of death. What could be done? Irrelevant. Now there is nothing but memory and soon that will be no more.
Perhaps that is what the snowman thought as the last soul extinguished.
Perhaps a tear slipped down a soft cheek, jerking and spluttering its way down the snowman’s body until it reached the ground, where it vanished silently and without a trace. The sand stared still, bloody and unmoved and the snowman fell asleep forever again, weeping for what once was.
UNCONSUMED
I awoke to nothing if not chaos. Bleak bareness that of a long lost Delos my eyes capture Only stumps of wood breath and paint the landscape And red Splotched and distinctive Carries weight in remembrance Pangs heart in haunting prominence The world I find is an Imploded charter myth Falling in on the only thing left of worth Has so my mental detachment soothed me so to hysteric hope Had not the muse of delight been filled as she ate me whole
In the midst of her ancient groove
Goat horned Pan twiddles my mind Relishing in such cosmic agony
As Dendrites soaks up the saps and the madness of me Or had consumption wiped them out
Perhaps a body to be found a mile from here that saw nothing of me Bulged and seeping it would be With the world I know
And my captive enemies Fervent I yawp Who is to consume me
Caitlyn O’Reilly Senior Freshman Classical Civilisation and English Studies
A MISC. CROSSWORD
ACROSS DOWN
National flag known for big names and bands (5,3,7)
Middle of recreational area is the green heart of large apple (7)
POTUS aims to include all in this nation (7)
Nerve and scientific acumen lead the way in exploring start of 1 across (4)
To have pensively trod in Columbia’s campus enhanced by famous French sculptor (5)
Gastronomic diversity may deliver Italian sauce in central Prague (4)
Long robe found at sea flanked by indefinite articles (5)
Characters in hasty longhand formed by foundatin pen (5)
Deep clefts in national landscape may be followed by nosy confusion (7)
Editor may condition you to instruct or improve (5)
U2 tribute to Billie Holiday invokes this spirit of Harlem (5)
Cool guy expected to include Roman 500 (4)
Ancient letters core to neological chat documents (5)
Colloquial name for a person living near TCD (1,3)
Digging a trench ain’t inclusive strategy for a protest (7)
Time for resolutions when ball is dropped in Times Square (3,4)
Gratitude and generosity from morning till night for national holiday (12,3)
Not the first change for rolled up sleeves in the national constitution (6,9)
Can’t remember what this is about! (7)
Get on board to browse online (4)
Mandela and Horatio have this wrestlling hold in common (6)
An improper assist could lead to activity (6)
It sounds like a genuine dance (4)
Red or blue for first election? (7)
Timeless law regarding freedom for welcoming national monument (6,2,7)
Seasonal pharmacy stock provides stage for miracle on 34th street (5)
Attempt to produce a piece of writing (5)
Nice yellow cab to start tour of the city (3)
Trendy retro acid includes one with distinguishing marks (7)
Higher being may despatch this very welcome gift (3,4)
Unusual gong, for example, suggests it’s time for a festive tipple (6)
Took a seat and reversed vechicle to help find one’s way (3,3)
See 9 across (4)
Trinity and Columbia for a cultural exchange in a not-for-profit win (4)
