From the Ever Given closing down the Suez Canal, to Omicron closing down the pubs, many moments caught us off guard in 2021. Right here in Ireland, we had our own dose of unwelcome surprises, between Merrion-gate, Zappone-gate, and the reopening-of-Front-Gate to allow tourists on campus despite the continued raging pandemic.
The general public refuses to be played for a fool once again in 2022. Eager to remain one step ahead of fate, people have taken to social media, particularly TikTok, to predict upcoming major world events. These predictions range from the broad and safe, such as Queen Elizabeth II dying (if she’s not already dead!), to the bizarrely specific, such as Taylor Swift announcing her pregnancy on the 13th of December.
There are countless 2022 predictions out there, but our little corner of the world remains unreported. What will the new year bring for Trinity College? Will the Book of Kells be stolen by the DU Athletics team? Will the man in charge of the Perch queue be elected SU president?
With all this uncertainty, I turned to my tea leaves, pondered my orb, and consulted the ghost of Patrick Prendergast, and I have made some accurate and definitive predictions for Trinity College in 2022.
The door to the Lecky Library will be reopened
The students of Trinity College Dublin have had enough. We scraped through online lectures, we attended Zoom balls through gritted teeth. We survived the lawless police-state that was Halls during COVID, we outlived the terrors of the security guards at the entrance. You would think our bravery would be rewarded, but our only compensation has been further suffering and humiliation.
When the college reopened fully in October 2021, the world rejoiced. No longer would we zone out of online lectures from home, we could zone out of lectures in the grandeur of the Ed Burke. Still, however, there remains a black spot right in the heart of the college, far greater than anything seen before. The entrance to the Lecky Library in the Arts Block remains closed, despite the rest of the college reopening. Everyday, brave students leaving lectures must drudge their delicate feet out of the Arts Block and into the cold, walking all the way around the corner to the Berkeley entrance when an entrance to the Lecky was right there. A full half of current undergraduates have not even crossed this threshold. This must change. It will change.
Whether reopening is brought about by the college simply deciding to do so, or by a fierce and bloody revolution led by a newly militant student union, the reopening will come. If we can afford a brand new touchscreen vending machine in the Arts Block, surely we can afford to let a door do its one job.
Conversations with Friends will not be as well-received
In 2020, Normal People took the world by the storm and gave Trinity a romantic reputation far more than we deserve. In 2022, the angst-ridden, pornographic gap in our lives will be filled by Conversations with Friends, a TV adaption of Sally Rooney’s first novel. As a fan of the book, I have concerns. While the book has some fascinating characters and ideas, it will not be as easy to translate to the screen as Normal People. The relationship between the two protagonists, and their eleven year age difference, is by no means portrayed as healthy, but as a significant emotional core, Frances and Nick will be harder to digest than Marianne and Connell. The motivations and story arcs of each character will also be harder to discern without the finer details and backstories that Frances provides within the exposition. A lot of plot and titular conversations will need to be revamped and adjusted significantly to the screen to capture the observations and complex emotions that made Rooney so popular in the first place.
The upcoming show has admittedly been well-cast, and I genuinely hope Conversations with Friends has the same success as Normal People, but just as Rooney herself admitted that Conversations with Friends was more of a practice-novel with more flaws than Normal People, the TV adaptation of Conversations with Friends will likely receive nowhere near the same acclaim as Normal People.
Greg Arrowsmith will appear on Love Island
Even if Conversations with Friends isn’t everything we hope it might be, that doesn’t mean Trinity won’t get a taste of stardom this year. TV’s favourite social experiment, Love Island, is famous for its iconic and abrasive personalities. Following the popularity of its recent Irish contestants Maura Higgins and Matthew McNabb, they will surely be on the hunt for another bombshell from the Emerald Isle. Who better than our very own ents officer? After a gruelling year of assembling marquees and being forced to cancel parties, Grents deserves to kick back in a Spanish villa and find someone who has never read a single Piranha article about him.
Not only is it what he deserves, it’s what Love Island needs. The show is known for its sultry and silly challenges, and just think of the amazing games our Ents officer could come up with: “Hungry for Love”, an Irish Famine-themed game in which islanders have to throw potatoes in the basket of their partners while scantily dressed in peasant attire, or if you want to go a bit more modern, “Make Love Great Again”, an obstacle course based on the January 6th Capitol Riot in which male islanders must scale a wall and lather themselves in red, white and blue slime before breaking into the bunker where their female partners are hiding (all the while dressed as a sexy viking, of course). If Trinder is anything to go by, Greg will be a national sweetheart in no time – and he might even score the SU sponsorship from BooHoo.
Garth Brooks will visit Trinity
Arrowsmith won’t be the only big name on campus in 2022. After placing the country under aphrodisiac in 2014, Garth Brooks is finally performing in Croke Park in September 2022. While five performances might not be music to the ears of residents near Croke Park, it sounds like an opportunity to all in Trinity. What better way to show how Cool and Hip we are than to invite the king of country, the poor man’s Bruce Springsteen, to our hallowed halls? Think of all the exciting things Brooks can get up to during his visit— receive an honorary patronage from the Phil, buy a vegan sausage roll that is immediately stolen by a seagull, perform with the Trad Soc (I’ve never listened to his music, but I assume he’s up to our standard). If we play our cards right, he might even play Trinity Ball.
Trinity’s secret wine cellar will be rediscovered
This January, the government implemented a new minimum pricing policy on alcohol, and debates on the effectiveness of this new policy have been brewing since its announcement. It has been largely agreed that the only people truly benefiting from the new law are the owners of the Newry Sainsbury. We in Trinity, however, will not have to worry ourselves with illicit journeys across the border. We students of innovation and enterprise will find a solution right here under our feet.
According to rumours, a group of Trinity students in the 1980s found an underground wine cellar via a secret entrance near the Buttery. While these were eventually caught, there’s nothing to stop a new bunch of desperate students rediscovering it. I admit that wine is not my drink of choice, but beggars can’t be choosers. The secret cellar might even double as a nightclub since they’re in high demand these days. Either that or the Museum Building, since the most lively things in there right now are the dinosaur bones and no one’s in there to notice a nightclub springing up anyway. If all else fails, I foresee a student-wide bonding experience occurring in the form of a coup to take over the Pav.
Photo by Satwick Chandra
