Fleur de Lys flashback: O-Week

To celebrate the 150^th anniversary of Trinity College, each month this year we are going to dive into the time machine and share stories and deliberations of our past students, as recorded in our annual student publication, the Fleur de Lys.

And we can tell you right now that our students have been losing their gowns, locking themselves out, ‘spooning’ each other in, and having the time of their lives at Trinity seemingly since the beginning of time.

In the 1963 edition of the Fleur de Lys, the editor wrote:

The business of measuring ourselves against those who have preceded us is probably one of the most widespread of our activities at College – and one of the most difficult to avoid.

This is due one supposes, to our respect for the past. Clearly, we are inheritors of tradition; but it is beyond most of us to state … what this tradition contains …

Only the most glamorous, the most spartan, or the most outrageous incidents pass into College Lore, and as a result the authors appear to us as a race of hearty, clannish giants of inexhaustible originality.

To begin, it is only prudent to reflect upon O-Week and all its glory, as our 2022 freshers arrive on campus and start settling into their new home.

In 1980, Eric Lucas wrote…

'An empty room. No – more than empty: forebodingly bare. Four green (bilious) walls not merely waiting, but demanding, to be filled and animated and owned by talk, trivia and time.

Outside, corridor conversations between unknown voices soon, perhaps to be coupled with face, name – personality?

A hall, resonant with chatter and clatter. The unmistakable (and no less forgettable) sensation of ritual; not only the larger number of participants, but also the apparently accepted method of participation. Benedictus something or other – Amen; and the pelting spoon on wood. My surprise is, I suppose, equally surprising.'

Just as our 2022 freshers will come to understand, and as all those who have passed through the gates of Trinity before them can appreciate…

‘College is a place of opportunity. A place where narrow-minded academia is discernible only in representatives from the Law Faculty and where the remainder are exposed to a variety of intellectual, social and sporting activities which could only be envied by those who spend their university careers commuting on Victorian Railways and where the Union Café is the hub of daily life.

Trinity is an institution where the absence of parental control allows the individual to develop the skills of self-reliance and independence in a way which requires at least some consideration of other groups in the surrounding community. A place where [students] can become, with persistent dedication, [adults].'

(Apologies to anyone in the law faculty, and, somewhat ironically, Michael Fullerton – who penned the above quote – went on to become a barrister.)

Michael Fullerton (TC 1975) with Prue Loveridge (TC 1979) at Trinity College in 1979.

Michael Fullerton (TC 1975) with Prue Loveridge (TC 1979) at Trinity College in 1979.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish our freshers all the best for O-Week; may it be as ‘glamorous, … spartan, [and] … outrageous’ as all those that have preceded it.