Trinity has lodged an official application for University of Sanctuary status, in the hope of gaining recognition from a programme that pushes colleges to be more inclusive for asylum seekers and refugees.
College expects to hear in the coming weeks if its application for the programme – which has already accredited six Irish universities – is successful, amid an ongoing effort to improve its response to refuge and asylum issues in Ireland.
But Trinity is unlikely to expand the number of scholarships – which currently stands at four – that it offers to asylum seekers, according to Gillian Wylie, an assistant professor in the School of Religion, who helped oversee the application.
In an interview with The University Times, Wylie said that the College has been working towards University of Sanctuary status “ever since maybe three or four years ago”.
University of Sanctuary Ireland, which gives the accreditation, is currently Trinity’s application, she said, adding: “I hope we will hear within the next week or two whether that has been successful.
Wylie said Trinity has for years been “looking at different ways the university can respond to human forced displacement, refuge, asylum issues and so on”.
Being part of the scheme, she said, requires Trinity to show an understanding of “what it means to be a person forcibly displaced, the kind of dynamic of refugee situations and so on”.
Wylie is not directly involved in Trinity’s Asylum Seeker Access Provision programme – which offers four scholarships a year to asylum seekers – but said: “As far as I know, they will be the same again.”
She said Trinity didn’t fill the four scholarship places it offers last year, a factor she explained by saying that “we advertised very late”.
“The hope is to make sure to fill all four scholarships” this year, she said.
Last November, in an interview with this newspaper, Lucky Khambule, a founding member of the Movement of Asylum Seekers of Ireland (MASI), criticised Trinity for only offering four places to asylum seekers.
“When that was announced, I said: ‘This is Trinity, now. Just think of four, and you think of how big this institution is, and they can just start with four.’”
“Why not go with 15? It’s something that is doable, but it is all about the change in attitude. This is what it’s like when you deal with the government. The government has the ability to change things but the attitude is not there.”
This week, Wylie said she hopes a new government will commit to tackling the issues faced by those living in Ireland’s direct provision system.
“The pandemic”, she said, “has really shown how unliveable the direct provision system is”.
Currently, Dublin City University, University College Dublin, the University of Limerick, University College Cork, NUI Galway and Maynooth University all have University of Sanctuary status, while Athlone IT is the country’s first College of Sanctuary.
