Academia

     

     There are few places as well known in Dublin as Trinity College. It might seem strange to you that I have not take a tour of the illustrious college before now, but I had walked around the campus a few times and I was going to wait for my parents to come and take the tour with them. But, last Sunday (and yes, this was last week; sorry, I have been busy) I went down to the city centre to take a tour because I thought it might be something fun to do. The tour itself is relatively cheap and short, the most expensive and time consuming part is the Old Library and the Book of Kells, which are not a part of the tour.
       My tour was given by British alumnus, Mark, who studied at Trinity during his undergrad, it getting his master's at Columbia and wants to go back to Trinity for his PhD...so let us just say he is pretty smart. The tour takes you to the four main squares on the Trinity campus and tells you a bit about the architecture and the history. I am not good with architecture, but I will do my best to inform you about Trinity's history through the pictures that I took there. Disclaimer: I did not go to the Old Library or see the Book of Kells. The ticket for them has no time limit and I thought I would keep it till my parents came. The line to get in usually takes about 30 minutes and it was rainy and cold that day. I will inform you about how fabulous these to things are once I see them.

This is the bell tower on Trinity's main square. It only rings on two occasions: for funerals, and to call students to exams; which is quite funny.

      The college was founded in 1592 modeled after the collegiate universities of Oxford and of Cambridge, both of which are the university’s rivals. It is one of the seven ancient universities of Britain and Ireland as well as Ireland's oldest university.  Originally established outside the city walls of Dublin in the buildings of the dissolved Augustinian Priory of All Hallows, Trinity College was set up in part to consolidate the rule of the Tudor monarchy in Ireland, and it was seen as the university of the Protestant Ascendancy for much of its history. Although Catholics and Dissenters had been permitted to enter as early as 1793, certain restrictions on their membership of the college remained until 1873 (professorships, fellowships and scholarships were reserved for Protestants, and the Catholic Church in Ireland forbade its adherents, without permission from their bishop, who would inform them that they could attend, but would be excommunicated from the church. This rule was not changed until 1970, causing attendance to go from 3,000 to 18,000 students. Women were first admitted to the college as full members in 1904.

Speaking of women, this is a statue of University Provost George Salmon.

His deep conservatism led him to strongly oppose women receiving degrees from the University. He eventually agreed to dropping his veto in 1901 when the Board voted in favour of allowing women to enter the university. This was one of his last acts as Provost. Symbolically in January 1904, just after he died, the first women undergraduates were admitted.

Out of Trinity's 18,000 students, only about 800 are allowed to live on campus. At the end of the students second year, they can sit special exams. These cover everything they learned during their first two years. If they pass they are allowed to eat in the special dining hall, waited on by butlers, seated with professors and scholars, and allowed access to the university's wine room.  They are also paid to attend Trinity and do not pay tuition, they are given residence on campus for up to five years after they graduate. About 2,000 students take these exams every year and only around 70 pass. Mark was one of them; I told you he was smart.

This is one of the buildings next to Berkley Library (pronounced Barkley, but named for the same man who founded Berkley in California). The students do not use the Old Library which is famous because there is not real catalog system. Books are arranged by size, so in order to find one, so have to know the length, width, and height of the book you are looking for. This particular building (pictured) is across from some buildings that the university thought to dull and depressing, so they had an international competition to see who could build a better one. When this won and was built, they then considered it far to opulent.

Trinity College was truly beautiful, it made you feel smart just walking around, and even the guide Mark admitted that on a snowy winter's morning it felt a bit like Hogwarts with students and professors rushing around in the snow.  To bad for me that it is basically Ireland's equivalent of Harvard or Oxford. Oh well...we cannot have everything in life...