When becoming editor of the College Tribune only a month ago now I was handed a zip-loc baggie of keys and told that I would lose my mind every production week and that, while it would eventually be returned to me, it would never quite be the same. As I find myself up late one Saturday night, chugging back coffee and Lemsip (freshers’ flu apparently did not hear Issue 1 was coming out), I am surrounded by sprawled papers pulled from the archives in an attempt to find out how one would even start to describe a paper as unique as The College Tribune.
In honour of our 40th Volume and the plethora of editors and writers who have made the Tribune what it is, I called our very own Jack Power, European Correspondent for the Irish Times and Volume 30 editor, to tell us about his experience back in 2016.
Power has been a news reporter at the Irish Times since April 2017. Roped in to help cover student union elections, a young Power was indoctrinated into the Tribune, as so many have been before. During his time here, he led several investigations of breaking UCD stories, such as his article entitled “UCD Left To Pay €3 Million Overrun of Confucius Centre to “Avoid a Diplomatic Incident” with China”.
Power explains: “UCD had run €2.5 million over budget. I put in an FOI (Freedom of Information) request that I filed that showed the President at the time writing to the Department of Education, basically saying, in a panic, that the project had run several billion over, and the Chinese gov that were part of the project weren’t going to pay anymore. He was going cap in hand to the Irish government, looking for several million euros to help finance and fund the project. It ended up running on the front page of the Irish Times that day, and I just remember it because it was one of those great leaps and moments where, as a student journalist, you’re putting it up to UCD. My favourite memory was toward the end of the year, someone had said to me that the Deputy President and Registrar, Mark Rogers, was seen walking over across to the Tierney building with a copy of The Tribune under his arm. It’s a lesson that even though it seems like a small operation in a tiny basement office, it can make the college administration sit up and take notice.”
The Tribune has had no shortage of ‘stir the pot’ writing. From its inception, this paper has always been a place where anti-establishment writing and investigative journalism have taken place. This paper has always operated on the college student mentality of ‘feck it, why not?’ The result has been truly polemical journalism that represents the student voice here at UCD.
The Tribune was a paper created by the Sunday Tribune Editor Vincent Browne in an effort to keep institutions accountable for their actions. Set up with the encouragement of UCD President Art Cosgrove, this once-small student publication has taken many forms over the years; from hard-hitting journalism to tabloid editorials, it has remained in UCD as a reminder of the importance of student voices.
“The extent to which the authorities are eager to shut it down is a sign that it’s doing its job correctly. It’s also a lesson in journalism: that one good story leads to another. People see, “Oh Jesus, The Tribune has a story about the funding cock up in the Confucius Centre, and then you’ll have some other document that says university officials or someone in the Students’ Union to get out there, and then they’ll come to you.”
In the words of Browne, “The surest way of knowing whether The College Tribune was doing its job was how much the college ‘authorities’ disliked it, deemed it ‘irresponsible’ and wanted to shut it down. That’s the test. Go to it.”
“The previous editors get quite protective of its survival because the paper isn’t funded, but for the Students’ Union or the University it is a more precarious situation,” says Power. “Nobody gets paid here. Because there is that level of support and love for The Tribune, there is a great network of people who were involved that will always give time to The Tribune and are really invested. Great work in student journalism and independent journalism has allowed it to last 40 volumes.”
There is a cult-like essence to The Tribune, a form of assimilation each editor has had to go through. Selling your soul to the paper for one year (or more), you suddenly join the other survivors who, a year or two away from their time as editor, can’t help but look back fondly on their traumatic yet exhilarating time in the office.
“We were always in that office, every day of every week; the door was always open, and people were always in it. You’re working on this tiny student paper, tracking down an article that someone promised you they were gonna write. You’re worried about the money coming in for the advert to pay for the printing, but you are also having a laugh and hanging around campus for the year.”
Now, no college paper would be complete without a good old-fashioned rivalry. While each editor has taken on different approaches and feelings towards another student paper on campus, Jack Power seemed to have had a friendly relationship with his Observer counterpart in 2016, having dated her in his year as editor. Whether or not this was the reason that relationship ended in unkown; all that we can be sure about is that each paper would not survive without the other.
“The Tribune and The Observer are great papers for students to get themselves in the journalism sphere and in a creative environment,” says Power. “So many journalists got their start in student media. I got involved in first year; they roped me in to help cover Student Union elections. I kind of started in politics and news stuff. The politics side of the paper was where I found out how much I enjoyed journalism.”
“There was also the time when UCD tried to bring The Tribune under the university wing. I remember many meetings of them trying to turn us into a society or some other university format, and we held the line. Trying to explain to them that we were an independent paper, independent of UCD in particular, and how important it was for there to be an indépendant newspaper. Eventually UCD just kinda gave up.”
Well, The Tribune certainly hasn’t. For all the things this paper is- chaotic, stressful, cardiac arrest-inducing- it has also been and will hopefully continue to be a place where students, above all else, feel heard. If there is a goal for this volume, it is to continue to push the belief that has been supporting this paper for the past 40 years, which is that independent student journalism tells the stories that others are more afraid to. Call it ignorance, carelessness or bravery, our journalists have mustered their talents in delivering hard-hitting journalism that may or may not get this paper sued or kicked out of UCD. All the while, knowing damn well some poor students, starved for writing experience, would scoop it back up and continue with this paper, pushing forward this legacy of college journalism we hold so very near and dear.
Sophie Gliott – Co-Editor