14 OPINION OPINION 14
TRINITY RINITY NEWS EWS
Tuesday, September September 30 30 2008 2008 Tuesday,
ROUND-UP
‘Any Garda coming across a drunk has only one option’ Demise of the PDs The end of the road has come for the Progressive Democrats. Mary Harney admitted this month that although she would love to think that the PDs had a future, she had to be realistic. Now Harney, fellow TD Mr Grealish, Ciaran Cannon and Fiona O’Malley have recommended that a formula of words to wind up the party be drafted and put to the party’s national executive next month. Noel Whelan advises them to ‘stop being self-indulgent and pack up without delay.’ Mark Hennessy writes in the Irish Times, ‘the party did not need a new leader last April when it appointed Senator Ciarán Cannon. It needed an undertaker.’ He believes that the handling of things since the general election has been bizarre, and that as a leader,
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Cannon proved ineffectual and forgettable: ‘[Cannon] adopted few public positions, and when he did he failed to capitalise on them. And he made zero impact with the public.’ Sarah Palin Opinion has been dismissive of Sarah Palin. In the Irish Examiner, Dr. Florence Craven compares Palin to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, an eighteenth century socialite and beauty. She campaigned for votes for Charles James Fox, who later became Prime Minister, reputedly trading kisses for votes in favour of Fox. Dr. Craven writes, “more than 200 years later, Sarah Palin is proving to be similarly useful to the Republicans in the US, only this time women’s votes are the target.” This summary of Palin’s
usefulness could be considered almost complimentary in comparison to Steven Harrington’s opinion in the Irish Examiner. He writes, ‘you can dress up hypocritical, cynical and destructive right-wing nonsense in drag to your heart’s content. It’s like putting lipstick on a pig... US Republicans have a nearly perfect record of domestic and international mismanagement. Let’s throw in corruption for good measure.’ Ouch. Public Drunkenness The Irish Times’ Newton Emerson pokes fun at Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern’s plans to introduce €100 on-the-spot fines for public drunkenness. He maintains that it is not an offence to drink, therefore cannot be an offence to get drunk, as the Human Rights Act 2003 forbids
punishment for actions that were not an offence at the time of their commission. He points out that as alcoholism is a recognised medical condition, on-the-spot fines would discriminate against the mentally ill. Under the Equal Status Act 2000, it is illegal to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of age. He concludes therefore that targeted use of fines against underage drinkers would be discriminatory. After examining all the flaws on-thespot fines present, he realises that any Garda coming across a drunk has only one option. ‘Taser them.’ Meanwhile, Quentin Fottrell writes in the same paper of the Straight Edge phenomenon. This punk movement that has been knocking around since the 1980s, but is only recently coming to the fore in Ireland. Its members don’t drink,
do drugs, or engage in music piracy. Some also abstain from sex. He writes, ‘Our drinking culture allows us to remain the clever outsiders, one shot glass away from needing to conform. The Straight Edge movement found a more imaginative way to connect and rebel.’ Lack of Participation in Cern There was controversy over the fact that Ireland is not a member of Cern (The European Organisation for Nuclear Research). Jason Fitzharris writes in the Examiner that he finds it difficult to understand how we can promote ourselves as a knowledge economy if we are not members of one of the world’s most important scientific organisations. David Sowby believes that the reason we are not members of Cern is ‘the presence of the dreaded word
“nuclear” in the organisation’s title.’ WJ Murphy, on the other hand, believes that ‘the immediate results of the Cern project would not justify the pouring of millions of hardearned Irish taxpayers money into it.’ Dismal Irish Television It seems that the Autumn/Winter TV schedule of the Irish stations is causing those without sky or ntl some distress. The Independent bemoans the fact that RTE1 has scheduled not one, not two, but thirteen reality TV shows, ranging from the dull (‘Showhouse’) to the inane (‘Fáilte Towers’). The Indo believes that the BBC’s format of original dramas, documentaries and news coverage far surpasses ‘superficial reproduction of press releases and tabloid-style reporting.’
HEAD TO HEAD: FEES DEBATE
Can you afford an extra €8,000 a year? SHANE KELLY
T
he Minister’s recent announcement that the reintroduction of tuition fees would raise €530m sounded very impressive indeed. The minister was forced into an embarrassing u-turn the next day, admitting that far from raising €530m, his new model would raise only around €35m, this would then be subject to 40% tax relief, so in the end, would be much closer to €20m. This put an end to the Minister’s plans to charge just the “super-rich”. The only way he can raise enough money through fees is to charge each and every student up to €8,000 per year, a move supported by the university presidents. Can you afford €8,000 per year on top of the current costs? So let’s examine the facts. Since the abolition of tuition fees, we have seen the greatest expansion of higher education in Irish history, as seen in the latest HEA access study, we now have a participation rate over 50% in higher education, something unthinkable before the abolition of tuition fees in the mid 1990s. The goal is to see all parts of society represented in third-level in proportion to their presence in the general population. More than 10% of all first-time entrants are now classed as mature, for example. Though only a start, it is a promising trend, and similar trends have been noted for people from low-income backgrounds, people with disabilities and people from minority backgrounds. All independent studies have shown fees to have a negative effect on those underrepresented groups. By deterring entrance to college in respect of people from middle and low income families, the progress that has been made over the last decade would be lost, our commitment to social justice would be in tatters and our economy may be
damaged beyond repair. Proponents of a fee-paying system argue that the public funding of tuition represents a transfer of wealth or a subsidy from the less well off to everyone else, because the financial returns of higher education accrue mainly to the individual. This, however, is a fundamentally flawed argument, as it does not take into account Ireland’s progressive taxation system. Those who earn more pay more tax. Third level graduates pay up to 70% more in taxation over the course of their lifetime, and as such contribute significantly to the exchequer. Is it really the graduates’ fault if the government does not spend this money wisely? The Australian model of student loans and increased taxation seems to be the model preferred by Minister O’Keeffe. However, what the minister will not tell us is the Australian model is under review by the Australian government because it currently does not work. The unpaid accumulated student debt in Australia stands at over 15 billion dollars. What the minister will also not tell us is that about 30 percent of all student loans remain unpaid in Australia, and so the state will have to pick up the tab. Wouldn’t it be better to just invest in higher education in the first instance? A system that increased the overall cost of college would encourage higher take-up of bank loans and credit cards. We know that as the costs of college increase, student debt and levels of hardship rise concomitantly. The reintroduction of tuition fees would have the following consequences: higher drop-out rates, a dramatic decrease in the number of people from middle and lower income families going to college, a lifetime of debt for those already struggling to survive in such a high cost economy, an increase in the number of students having to work while at college as well as falling participation rates in clubs and societies at college. If students are forced to work more hours while at college, all of the evidence shows that test scores will drop. Is that the way to increase our knowledge economy? Shane Kelly is President of the Union of Students of Ireland.
Free fees support the wealthy FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI
I
t is now well over ten years ago since tuition fees for third level were abolished and replaced by what has been called the ‘free fees’ scheme. The underlying intention was that higher education should be seen as a basic entitlement and made available free at the point of use to all citizens. This would be funded by the state, with the taxpayer directly paying the fees for each student. And it was envisaged that participation in third level would increase significantly, and in particular amongst disadvantaged sections of society. Perhaps the choice of the term ‘free fees’ for this was unfortunate, since nothing is ever free. What was in fact done was that the burden of paying the fees was transferred from the student to the taxpayer. As those people who were below a specific income threshold didn’t pay fees anyway prior to the free fees scheme, the net result was that the taxpayer took over responsibility for paying the fees of wealthier citizens. To underscore this point, no additional resources were allocated to the disadvantaged, and moreover part-time students (who disproportionately come from poorer backgrounds) got no support at all, not even free fees. In the meantime, the middle classes enjoyed their windfall by sending their children to private secondary schools, so that one of the main effects of free fees was to benefit private secondary education and asset strip good state-funded schools. Whatever the motivation was of those who abolished fees, the reality was that it turned out to be a programme for supporting wealthier people at the expense of the disadvantaged: it was, in short, a redistribution of money from the poor to the rich. But that was not the only problem. In the
mid-1990s, when free fees were introduced, universities were told that public funds would support them by maintaining the fees at appropriate levels. This has not happened. Since the introduction of the scheme, the total taxpayer support per student at third level has, in real terms, almost halved. The reality is, therefore, that it is the universities and not the taxpayer that have had to carry the burden of free fees; money has been siphoned from the universities and handed to the country’s wealthier citizens. The reality is that in a developed country that aims to be knowledge intensive, universities are very costly to run, because they need state-of-the-art buildings and infrastructure and world class staff. That is always going to be expensive, and probably beyond the capacity of the taxpayer to handle without significant tax increases. What we have now is a system that under-funds the universities, while disproportionately giving financial support to better-off people. That is quite simply unsustainable, and not even very laudable on ethical grounds. Universities have themselves had to raise private money to support disadvantaged students. But this needs to be properly funded by the state, which in turn cannot afford to do so because, under this scheme, it has to make large payments to the middle classes. The priorities are all wrong. I am therefore in favour of the reintroduction of tuition fees. Indeed, I regard their reintroduction as inevitable. However, I am also of the view that we need to put in place a proper system to ensure that nobody, whatever their means, is prevented or discouraged from pursuing third level studies; in other words, we need to have an effective system in place that provides grants, scholarships and loans, so that there is nobody who cannot afford to go to university. This is not hard to achieve. Harvard University is probably, in terms of fees, the most expensive university in the world. But it has a higher proportion of disadvantaged students than any Irish university. It is time for change. Ferdinand von Prondzynski is President of DCU.
OLD TRINITY
Rusticated jibs and disapproving skips PETER HENRY DOES YOUR skip disapprove of sprees? Has your wife been pestering you to clean your rooms? Has your new jib friend been rusticated? Trinity College has many peculiar words, turns of phrase and acronyms which are its own. The words used in the above sentences would be more familiar to a student here in the 1960s, but they remain part of our cultural patrimony. Much of the language used by our predecessors has been obliterated by time and taste. Older ways of talking about things – reading for a
degree, or going up to College – have, sadly, become considered slightly embarrassing and have fallen out of use. Long forgotten is the “skip”. No, not one of the oversized bins which deface our quadrangles, but a college servant who tended to the needs of the student in rooms. Oxford and Cambridge students still have their “scouts” and “gyps” respectively, and skip is likely a combination of these two words. “Spree” was once – in the late 19th century at least – a term for an alcohol and banter session in rooms. It hardly needs to be said that it is an Anglicisation of the Irish word for fun, spraoi. The undergraduate in rooms lived with his “wife”. Not the result of marriage, and certainly not a woman, Wife simply referred to what we now call a roommate. The word became
a little ridiculous when New Square sets were converted for the use of three people each – no one wanted to be accused of polygamy! Innocent junior freshman students were once condescendingly called “jibs”. The word is over 200 years old: it appears in the irreverent late18th-century Advice to the University of Dublin with the spelling “gib”. Thankfully, we do retain some of our vocabulary. We attend commencements rather than graduation. We live in rooms in College, even if we only have one room, and even if the office of the Registrar of Chambers insists on “campus accommodation”. An angry-looking man dressed in a military-style uniform once spoke to me about the dark old days when, he said, “you called us ‘porters’ and we called you ‘sir’.” With all respect to him, porters they were and porters
they remain, despite the current fad for “security guards”. “Trinity College” is a far more dignified title for our establishment than “TCD”, but the three-letter acronym was in use by the mid-18th century, and probably earlier. “UCD”, on the other hand, was not always the common term for University College, Dublin- “National” was the Dublin student’s colloquialism for that NUI college until the 1960s. Trinity’s other special abbreviations are its unique and sought-after postnominals. The illustrious fellows are entitled to write “FTCD” – Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin – after their names. Scholars traditionally write “Sch” after theirs. The frequent use of that abbreviation seems to have fallen victim to the bland spirit of egalitarianism, and even the names of the members of the Scholars’ Committee are not suffixed
by “Sch” in the Calendar. Trinity Hall in Cambridge is colloquially referred to as “Tit Hall”. Not here, where we currently call our own Trinity Hall “Halls”. This plural version is not an old usage, but one which has been in vogue long enough for it to earn a place in the Trinity lexicon. Your bachelor’s degree will be, all going well, an “honors” degree. For some reason the correct spelling is not used in reference to Dublin University degrees. Both of these oddities are preserved in the Calendar. The word buttery is one of several words which are also used at other universities. It is not related to butter, as one might assume, but is a word for a liquor store room. It comes from the Latin butta – a cask – via the AngloFrench boterie. We share the name of Michaelmas term with many other universities
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– Hilary and Trinity terms we share with Oxford. They are named after the feast days of St Michael the Archangel, St Hilary of Poitiers and the Most Holy Trinity, the last being our titular feast. Also in common with other universities are the terms for expulsion and suspension. As one goes up to a city and down to the country, so one is “rusticated” rather than suspended and “sent down” rather than expelled. There are undoubtedly many more examples of words special to our university. Words must have come and gone over the years which were never recorded, or which I have not encountered. The eager jib shouldn’t be afraid to use these terms – or bring them back into use. At the very least their use will serve to irritate jealous acquaintances from National.