Tossers.
Jack Leahy
While I’ve never openly enquired, every time I meet someone from beyond the Pale, so to speak, I do semi-seriously wonder if they own cattle or any other livestock.
That was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek, mildly humourous way to get the artistic juices flowing, but when I think about it, I’m not sure that I’m joking.
I feel somewhat hypocritical as I grapple with the premise of this collection of musings, having attended one of the notorious South Dublin private schools and moved onwards to the famously humble Anglo-Irishness of Trinity College. But on we go regardless.
For its obvious attractions, Trinity brings in huge numbers of non-Dublin students, all of whom we Dubliners ignorantly label “country folk”. I believe it was UT’s very talented columnist Rachel Lavin who took offence to this attitude during Freshers’ Week, insisting that she did in fact come from a town. At the time, I just sniggered.
A year of a more diverse (I sound like some eejit, but I can’t help it) educational environment has taught me a lot. At the end of my first term as a College student, I was delighted – I still am – with my choice of institution because I thought it was a great place to come after my particular secondary school.
My initial justification was that I liked the similarly friendly and encouraging environments. Now, I am forced to ask myself the awkward question as to whether or not it’s because I like an environment that makes me feel better than others. When Jonny Cosgrove said that you’re always told if someone goes to Trinity, he wasn’t wrong. Shame about the ball, though…
I digress. But I do have to ask these questions, especially when I hear of the experiences of some of my friends who didn’t go to a south Dublin school. A good friend and classmate spent half a year in UCD prior to her time at Trinity, and was asked if she had ever seen anyone stabbed. She’s from Malahide, for God’s sake. It’s hardly Kosovo. I’ve done it myself too, having once referred to a Northern friend’s hometown as ‘a war-torn environment’.
Dismiss this as observational analysis or unrepresentative if you wish, but this display of south Dublin ignorance and superiority really is representative of how many south Dublin private-schooled kids think. I enjoyed my time in secondary school and support the ethos under which I was taught, but if I have one criticism it’s that we are led to believe that our way is superior to all others. This is perhaps best epitomised by my alma mater’s embarrassing decision to title a Past Pupils’ Union debate “We believe that a Jesuit education would have saved us from economic disaster”. Pompous, pathetic, but not exceptional.
All of this has been written a hundred times before, particularly in the aftermath of the Blackrock-led “ski-gate” of Spring 2011. I know of a few Blackrock alumni and some of them are the nicest people I know, and they hate this kind of story tarring them all with the one brush. What I’ve come to realise, however, is that they also hate the reality of their classmates that propagates and promotes the stereotype as opposed to bemoaning unjust criticism.
What I mean by that is that the attitudes portrayed by the skiing assailants aren’t unique. The manifestations were unusually conspicuous, but if someone wrote the very same story as a parody or caricature you’d laugh and agree. The “Ross O’Carroll-Kelly” series too is not without reasonable foundation. A Drumcondra-based friend of mine swears that the ‘Guide to south Dublin’ edition that propounds so-called stereotypes according to location categorises us perfectly. He calls it spoilt, we call it superior.
So what does this attitude mean for potential new, non-urban friendships? To be fair, plenty of my schoolmates have made crowds of new mates and embraced their new life as a College student. I don’t mean to sound like I’m congratulating them for talking to a Kilkenny girl. But here we stumble across the omnipresent SDPS (south Dublin private school) clique.
In all honestly, most of the place is a clique; south Dublin’s uniquely insular sociology means that we all know each other. Even if we’ve never met, we know each other. And we all know that we all know each other because let’s face it: everyone loves a bit of Facebook creeping. This isn’t a criticism, because it really can’t be helped in these parts, but it can be intimidating for someone who arrives in College in a strange city without a soul to accompany them. Twelve lads from my year make up a particular UCD class, and most of the friends they’ve made all come from Dublin. One of my better College friends, propounding stereotype in that he has to drive to his neighbours in Galway, is the most confident and outgoing person I know and even he admits to real loneliness in the early months of term.
A few weeks ago, UT deputy editor Ronan Burtenshaw unleashed a series of unflattering tweets concerning Jesuit education. I took issue with some, but one thing he did allow me in an otherwise crushing defeat of an argument was that such institutions do some great charity work.
In fifth year, I had the privilege – all too literally – of going to Zambia with Habitat for Humanity and the school. We raised €80,000 and used it to travel there, all 30 of us, and build 3 houses in a Zambian community.
For the two weeks we were there, we did bring a degree of optimism to the village in Ndola in the Copper Belt. I’m not going to say we didn’t work hard and contribute because we really did. But the pre-trip criticisms levelled by those we branded as “jealous” become more rational as time goes on. “Why should I pay for a load of rich kids to go on a holiday?” asked one woman at a fundraising event. Good question: why didn’t we pay our own flights? Why didn’t we send the entire €80k to Zambia rather than using half of it to conspicuously feel good about ourselves and deny local workers employment? The ethos is admirable and the benevolence is undeniable, but I worry such pursuits are just another medium for conspicuously demonstrating privilege.
Of course we knew these questions existed, but no debate ever occurred, nor was any encouraged. The project was always spoken of in terms of the extraordinary benefit to ourselves rather than those who would be given housing. Diaries were taken, and I remember the horror of one trip member as another took note of what animals he had seen and what food he had eaten that day, rather than record any feelings or observations.
Phew, what a rant. This was quite a painful article to write, because it tells me things about myself that I’m uncomfortable thinking about. Some of the nicest, most benevolent and down-to-earth people I have come across were recipients of or involved in SDPS education, and it’s certainly not all bad. But the attitude of a not inconsiderable number, much maligned as it is, is exactly as generalisation dictates. I’m probably no different, and it’s definitely hypocritical to write so harshly of a self-important and insular culture to which I do in many ways belong. But hey, I went to a south Dublin private school, of course I’m a hypocrite!
