FREE OBJECT MISSES MANAGEMENT TRIPOS OFFER

Gormley sculpture to leave Trinity after last-ditch attempt to stay fails

As the new academic year begins and hordes of fresh-faced freshers fescend upon Trinity, the greetings exchanged by reuniting students this Week can be heard taking on an unusually somber tone.

“How was your summer?” goes the usual refrain, as most years, cheerfully chirped in a brave attempt to recall the rhythms of human connection. “Great!” comes the perennial dishonest response. Both parties pause. The summer was not Great. It was lonely. For company the medics had only piles of unread books; for the englings, piles of read ones. For the mathmos, soulless financial internships; for the economists, soulless parents.

“...did you hear?” The inevitable question, mumbled in hushed tones.

“About Free? Yeah.”

No one had heard from Free Object over the summer, at least not directly. Prominent in College almost to the point of intrusion, last year everyone had known Free Object. The tall Trinitarian topped The Tab’s Top Ten BNOCs of May Week 2018, no doubt tipped by their stunning cameo in the May Ball fireworks. But after that, no one had heard from Object. No posts on Snapchat or Facebook, not on their Insta or Finsta, not a hint of what they’d been up to. Friends and frenemies alike were perplexed.

“I went from seeing Free every day to complete cold turkey,” Jamie Franklin told Travisty. “For a while I didn’t think anything of it, everyone sort of drops off the map at the start of summer. But when it was the middle of August, I got worried. Then I remembered how quiet Free had been before I’d last seen ‘em. Eventually I put two and two together, which was really hard and took about a month.” Jamie is beginning his third year of the Engineering Tripos. “It must have been exam results.”

Before long, rumours began to swirl online amongst the vacationing Trinity students—the TCSU-in-exile, if you will. The Interrailing-on-daddy’s-money, if you won’t. Before long, Jamie’s suspicions were confirmed when Toby Morland—that weird second-year classicist—uploaded an album to Facebook of every 2018 class list posted at Senate House. When Travisty reached out to Morland for a comment on the ethics of sharing such private information in a public forum, a booming voice was heard from the Master’s Lodge, which was very scary and Travisty promptly legged it.

The class lists clearly showed that Free Object had failed to attain a 2.1 or higher in their Tripos examinations. Friends and admirers of Free Object knew that this meant that Object’s last ditch attempt to stay in Cambridge for one more year, by studying the Management Tripos, had failed.

“It’s a real shame. I’ve tried calling, but I can’t really say what’s going through Free’s mind right now,” said Jamie.

Despite Object’s short stay at Trinity, none can doubt the impact they have left on the student body. A polarising figure, Free Object has elicited strong opinions, which, in Travisty’s frank opinion, often bordered on outright prejudice—it was not uncommon to hear students loudly complain that Free Object was “completely out of place here”, “an eyesore”, with some even going so far as to say that Object “detracted from the College”.

But despite the hate Free Object found at Trinity, the past year also brought love. Mimi Hopper, Free Object’s girlfriend, spoke candidly to Travisty.

“Obviously it’s a huge blow for Free, but it’ll be alright. We’ve still got each other,” Hopper told Travisty with a smile. “We’re still figuring out what this means for our relationship, and yeah that means like, lots of difficult talks over Skype. Like, last time it was so emotional, we ended up not even talking, we just looked into each other’s eyes the whole time.”

At the time of writing, Free Object is enjoying one of their final days in Trinity by relaxing on the Backs. Travisty wishes them all the best.

Jovan Powar