Trinity is a strange place, full of ambitious young turks out to do the best and screw the rest. In this environment it’s absolutely vital that you know exactly who’s who and what’s what on campus, otherwise you’ll end up with a knife sticking out of your back…
Capitation Committee
The Capitation Committee is where all the high-level horse-trading and politics happens between students in College. It earns its name due to its remit – to distribute the “Capitation fee” – the money students pay for their services in College. It’s composed of a few College staff and the five capitated bodies: the Students’ Union, the Central Societies Committee, the Graduate Students’ Union, Trinity Publications and the Central Athletics Committee.
Over the past few years, the Capitation Committee has seen a fair few pitched battles between these bodies. Last year, the GSU managed to wangle the cost of another staff member out of the SU by promising to disaffiliate all postgrads from the SU if they didn’t pay up. The SU gets paid for each student they represent, so rather than lose a few thousand postgrads, they coughed up the cash.
The Central Societies Committee
Also known as the CSC, this has to be one of the most politicised organisations in College. The job of the CSC is to help manage and fund Trinity’s 100+ student societies. It’s just like one big family of dysfunctional kids who compete for funding and membership, and as a result, don’t really get along.
The CSC has a committee composed of students – this year its Chair is the inoffensive but efficient Jack Paterson, while Matthew Smyth double-jobs as Treasurer of the CSC and Chair of Players. He’s going to be a busy, busy man.
Neither of these guys run the show though. The real boss of the CSC is its Honorary Treasurer, Joseph O’Gorman, who also claims the titles of Assistant Junior Dean and proprietor of Trinity Tours – he’s got more pies than he does fingers. Opinion is divided among societies about whether or not Joe is a benign influence or “worse than Hitler”, as one young hack described him. Joe has a habit of picking his favourites and letting the rest perish, which maybe explains the strong divide in student opinion on him.
Trinity Publications
Trinity Publications are the renegades of College politics – with no institutional memory to speak of (their staff is entirely composed of students, so every year the committee turns over and the year’s lessons are forgotten), they have up years and they have down years. Generally, they can be considered to be fairly politically neutral, except on issues of freedom of speech, although the Students’ Unions bigwigs are completely terrified of the damage they can do to their nascent careers.
With the smallest budget of all the capitated bodies, Pubs is usually seen as the kid at the big boys’ table. That doesn’t stop it from occasionally kicking up a fuss though. Last year they caused a mighty to-do over an attempt by the Senior Dean to censor newspapers, bringing the argument to the CSC and SU committees.
Check back after the next issue to read more about the sad, hollow world that hacks inhabit.
