Irish Student Newspaper of the Year 2008
BRAIN DRAIN
UNFORGETTABLE
Can young entrepreneurs save us?
Team erases memories from mice
BUSINESS 18
SCIENCE 19
Tuesday 11 November 2008
PISTE OFF Snow holidays on a shoestring budget TRAVEL 20
www.trinitynews.ie
Issue 4, Volume 55
Flyers out as SU promos slammed
€800,000 Pav plan revealed
By Naomi O’Leary
» Function room available to sports clubs » New toilet facilities to end queues » Pav may remain closed next September By Conor James McKinney THE DUBLIN University Central Athletics Club (DUCAC) plans to begin work on a major redevelopment of the Pavilion Bar this summer. An application for planning permission was lodged late last year, and granted on February 1st 2008. Architects Arthur Gibney and Partners, of Harcourt Street, have drawn up the plans, which were approved by the College Site & Facilities Committee in November 2007. The new Pav will be extended out on either side, such that the only outdoor seating remaining will be be at the front, to the immediate left and right of the front door. To the right of the existing building, as viewed from the front steps, will be new toilets, which should see the end of the queues that currently form for the facilities during busy periods. To the left will be a function room, accessible through sliding doors from the main indoor seating area, which will be available for sports clubs to rent out. Both new wings will have a glass and timber frame facing the front of the building, with panelling at the rear. In all, around 89 square metres of new floor area will be added. In another sign of College’s commitment to universal access, a lift will be installed at the north-east corner of
the building to allow wheelchair users to access the bar area. The existing concrete staircase at this point will be replaced by a more modern metal structure. DUCAC have not been able to provide an estimate of the cost of the development Dr. Trevor West, DUCAC Chairman, said the project would be “pushed hard” as of yet. Trinity News understands from one source however that the project is expected to cost €800,000. The last major work to be carried out on the building in 1989/90 – when women’s changing rooms and other facilities were added to the ground floor – cost around £250,000. Part of the Pav’s €116,000 profit for the last financial year will be put towards the redevelopment. A further unspecified amount will be returned as usual to the main DUCAC budget to support its activities. One matter of concern for students is that it looks likely that the Pav will be closed for part of next year, leaving Trinity with no bar on campus for that period. A DUCAC spokesperson was keen to stress that there was no desire to close the Pav on their part, since the profits made from Continued on page 2
Med Day participants were well prepared as the scene outside the Physiology building attested. Photo: Rachel Kennedy
Cancer Society get cheeky By Deirdre Robertson College News Editor ‘CLOTHES MAKE the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society’ said Mark Twain. Yet Trinity College Cancer Society would strongly disagree with this statement as they launch their 2009 naked students calendar. The society has warned students not to be too surprised ‘if you catch a glimpse of college studs in the nip around the Ussher library or other unexpected spots”. The calendar is a fundraising initiative by the society who have raised over €80,000 in the past two years for cancer research. ‘Students go starkers – all in the name of charity!’ says the society of their new calendar, which will be released on 24th November. This latest fundraising idea will see the ‘crème de la crème of Trinity hotties’ strip off in various locations around campus. Speculations are rife that the Trinity Rugby Team will be assuming ‘compromising positions’ on the college pitch but nothing has yet been confirmed. The Trinity Cancer Society members are far from the first people to publish a naked calendar in aid of a charity. In 2007 12 students in University College Cork posed naked for a calendar sold
The November spread from UCC’s naked calendar. during their Rag Week. The students volunteered to strip off in various locations around college including the science lab, the café, a classroom and the canteen. The photographs raised €5,000 from the 1,000 calendars bought. This influx of donations is explained by the Trinity Cancer Society’s opinion that ‘the novelty factor of seeing unsuspected people strip is a moneymaker.’ UCC’s inspiration, in turn, came from the 2003 film Calendar Girls which documented the true story of a group
of middle-aged Yorkshire women who were trying to raise money for Leukemia research. Since then, naked calendars have emerged in every aspect of society from Sligo farmers to French rugby players to the Dublin Firemen Brigade. The Trinity Cancer Society has become one of the largest societies on campus having signed up over 1,300 members. Alumni student Rory McGowan set up the Cancer Society in 2006 in order to raise cancer awareness throughout college and raise money for research. Trinity is the only university in Ireland that has a
Cancer Society. Previous events organised by the society have included members running the New York Marathon, the ‘Pink Party’ run jointly with DUBES, a Buttery table quiz and the annual Daffodil Day collections in which 40 volunteers raised €10,000 selling daffodils, pins and keyrings. This year, however, the society has planned more elaborate events. The Charity Ball on 25 November will be the first mixed Charity Ball in Trinity, a Full Moon Thai Party will include the essential glow paint and buckets and the afformentioned naked calendar promises to ‘get your blood boiling on those nippy Winter evenings’. According to the society, the calendar will ‘celebrate the beauty of the naked body’. Society members described it as the ‘first annual Trinity College Cancer Soceity calendar’ suggesting that this is an event students can look forward to every year. Claire Duffy, Marie Claire Collins and Suzanne Gaffey pointed out that students who pay €6.99 for photographs of their naked peers will not only gain ‘a feast for the eyes but (will) also be supporting an extremely worthy cause’. ‘Think Calendar Girls meets the Full Monty but with an added twist, naked people you know!’
JUNIOR DEAN Emma Stokes has sent an email warning students not to distribute promotional material within college as it constitutes “littering”. Ms. Stokes noted that many flyers advertise “cheap alcohol”. This warning has particular resonance following much negative portrayal of Trinity students in the media. An Independent Complaints Panel decision in April upheld that Student Union promotions on campus encouraged excessive drinking. The Panel ruled that the Student Union promotions were in breach of the Mature Enjoyment of Alcohol Society (MEAS) Code of Practice on the Naming, Packaging and Promotion of Alcoholic Drinks. Anonymous members of the public had made complaints about promotion for the “ENTS Christmas Party” and “Twisted Tuesdays”. The ‘Ents Christmas Party’ was held at the Purty Kitchen in Temple Bar and was promoted by posters advertising ‘mulled wine, Santa’s helpers with vodka supersoakers! €2 drinks!’. The Panel concluded that this was a drinking game, likely to encourage excessive drinking. In the case of the SU event ‘Twisted Tuesday’ held at Citibar, the Panel considered the use of the term ‘twisted’ and the student market at which it was aimed. It ruled that the phrasing encouraged excessive drinking. Citibar said that the event was run by the SU and when a complaint was made, every action was taken to pull all promotional ‘Twisted Tuesday’ material. Alcohol watchdog MEAS has asserted that Licencees Citibar and the Purty Kitchen are responsible for their promotions, even when those promotions are run by a third party. Former Ents officer Ed O’Riordain, who was in charge of promotion of both events, said that he found the promotion of events on campus was already severely restricted. He stressed that over regulation and bureaucracy of the necessary promotion was an inhibition to the creation of a vibrant student social life, of which SU events remain an essential part.
HOUSE 6 SKETCH
“Ring the alarum bell!” THE RINGING of the alarum bell didn’t have quite as dramatic an effect on House 6 as in the closing scenes of MacBeth, when it called the tyrant’s armies to battle, but as the fire alarm sent out its urgent peals on a particularly dismal afternoon last week it certainly sent the hacks scurrying. This unexpected distraction from the vital business of the day rendered the great and the good of College society temporarily powerless as they huddled together under umbrellas, bemoaning the time spent away from their various machinations. Here was Joe O’Gorman, telling anyone who would listen that the official gathering point in such emergencies was the Campanile. There stood Ronan Hodson, who was the best dressed of the bunch and knew it. Notable by her absence was Orlaith Foley, evidently having decided that her role as Welfare Officer charged her with remaining in the building lest any student needed rescuing from the potential flames. Her fellow SU officers, natural leaders to a man, kept their heads in the midst of crisis – though it was apparent that
even as they stood in the downpour, the minds of these public-spirited gentlemen were still bent on casting down the Great Evil that menaces the the student way of life. As the shrill clamour of the alarm ceased, the thoughts of all four ran as one: the bell tolls for fees. Thankfully, the denizens of House 6 didn’t have too long to wait - had they gone down with pneumonia out there in the cold, whatever would we have done without them? - as our beloved College Fire Safety Officer was on hand to give the all-clear. Commendations were given to all present for the timely manner of their exit: the evacution took place in under a minute, confounding those who feel that the hacks have too little appreciation for their own importance. Eyeing each other with redoubled suspicion, back went the stalwarts of officialdom to resume their daily grind. PS: It’s a long way down from the second floor, but Martin McKenna seems to possess, among many other thing, the power of levitation, such was the speed of our editor’s ingloriouzvzs flight. But hush! Here he comes now...