When I first met Joe Duffy, I was surprised at just how familiar his voice was. Indeed, when I was growing up, his voice often played in the background of my childhood, on the kitchen radio or over the car stereo. Duffy is a household name thanks to his work at RTE, but when I thought of Duffy, I thought of the radio presenter. I had never thought of him as a former president of both Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) and the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) – an activist with a strong voice who fought passionately for all students, for inclusivity and equality in Trinity, and who was briefly expelled from the college in 1980.
And Duffy, who hails from Ballyfermot, admits that he had no idea that all of this was in store for him either when, having repeated two leaving certificate subjects, he started university to study social work. “I was a nervous wreck going in on that Monday in October, absolutely a nervous wreck”, he laughs. “I was afraid of the place, didn’t know anybody in there, hadn’t been studying for the four years previously. I had difficulty finding the first lecture hall, which was the Dixon Hall. There were about four or five hundred people in the room trying, straining to listen by Louden Ryan, the economist. It was obviously the same lecture he gave every year, and you didn’t know what to do, just took notes.”
I was a nervous wreck going in on that Monday in October, absolutely a nervous wreck
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And Duffy admits that his transition from a full-time job to third-level education was not always an easy one to navigate, and at times it felt lonely and frightening. His response? “I just took to the library for the year, just buried myself in a place in the Berkeley library, called official publications, in the basement”, he says. “I buried myself down there because I was afraid of failing. I was paying my own way, and I had given up work, so that meant that my family didn’t have the money that I had been handing up every week.” Duffy confesses that during his first year, he frequented the library most days (including Saturdays) from dawn till dusk, only taking breaks for lectures. All his hard work did come at a cost, and he admits being “crippled by shyness and modesty”, often missing out on big events.
“I remember one Friday night in May leaving the library at 9pm when it was closing, and I’m walking out through Pearse St gate, I think it was, and there were all these lights up, and marquees and people were starting to come in and I said ‘ah there must be a party or something on in one of the rooms’”, laughs Duffy. “And I came back in the next morning at 9am, and I was surprised at the number of empty bottles and beer cans on the plinth in front of the Berkeley where the globe is, but there were no signs of life or anything. I think a month later I discovered that that was the Trinity Ball.”
Things did change for Duffy, and he credits getting involved in student activism as something that allowed him to “completely open up to Trinity” and gain confidence. His passion for student politics was sparked during the opening of the Nassau Street entrance. “Trinity put out a statement saying Trinity is opening up to the people of Dublin,” says Duffy. “And I knew from being there that there was a certain class of Dubliners who got in and I wrote back to the Irish Times saying, ‘ there’s only three people from Ballyfermot in this place, its population 45,000. There’s no one from the Westland Row area so to say that Trinity is opening up to the people of Dublin is laughable’”. From that point onwards, it was Duffy’s mission to improve the university for the better and open it up to the world. With this in mind, he decided to run for the position of TCDSU president. “My mother and father fell off their chairs when I told them I was standing for the president of Trinity”, says Duffy. “They’d never been in Trinity for a start, even though both of them lived in the city centre all their lives. They didn’t know what I was doing. My mother recently said to me as we were driving by in the car ‘Joseph, what did you do in there?'”
My mother and father fell off their chairs when I told them I was standing for the president of Trinity
The answer to that question is that Duffy did a lot. However, he considers setting up community week, a series of events held in Trinity each year for the public, as one of his biggest achievements. “One of the things I wanted to do was bring in a circus”, says Duffy. “It’s a brilliant location for a circus, safe, secure and at the centre of Dublin. There were two of us on the board, so we brought it up at board level. Now they were, talk about falling off their dusty thrones, their jaws dropped. Wild animals? They weren’t worried about the idea of wild animals being in the circus, they were worried about wild animals escaping. As if there would be a lion or a tiger marauding around the rooms in Trinity!”
And Duffy’s advice to new students is heavily drawn on his own experience as a fresher, get involved in societies, be open to meeting new people and have fun. “Students are open to meeting new people. Most of my friends now I met in Trinity, including my wife”, says Duffy.
“Absolutely no studying for the first month, just get to know people, just concentrate. If by the end of the first month you have two or three new friends, then you have had a good first month in Trinity. Make a big effort to link up with people in Trinity even if it means sacrificing your lectures for the first few weeks.”
“And remember all the societies get a few bob from the college. My two young fellas have just finished there, one of them I think ran the Food and Drink society. I think he ran it into the ground now, but the main reason is because they got free stuff. Join a society, and you will get free stuff.”
His last piece of advice: go see the Book of Kells. “I never saw the Book of Kells”, he laughs.
