American Presidential Election
This American election has been perhaps the most interesting in the country’s history, the final run between Donald J. Trump and Hilary Clinton was incredibly close, with Donald, winning by a very small margin, becoming the president-elect
Mr Trump has become one of the most infamous, divisive figures in politics today. The entire process of selecting a commander in chief has become a trending joke online.
Donald Trump has made some outrageous claims on what he plans to during his presidency, such as, of course, “The Wall” across the Mexican border, and his plans to deport illegal Mexican immigrants and Muslims. The election was such an absurd ordeal, it was an easy target for jokes for the rest of the world, with trump being compared to a reality TV show contestant countless times, seemingly hungry for drama. While it’s admittedly it’s rash to think he could actually live up to all of his claims, over half the population support his ideals of fear and hatred, and that is very dangerous, even comparable to Hitler. After he was announced as the president-elect, there was a surge of possible hate crimes of every variety across America. Across the world, the Politics of America have always been a centre of attention, since it is a superpower in the world, and now that trump has done the unthinkable and actually won, people are more fixated on it than ever, with many Americans coming out in outraged protest. Some people have said “I think it’s ridiculous that he won”.”It’s a sad day for politics, but a wakeup call for the establishment” “When he first announced he was running, it was a joke!”.
Interestingly, while Trump won the election, statistics have revealed that nearly the entire millennial population voted for Hilary, which serves as a great deal of insight about how society has changed over the generations. In fact, Hilary Clinton, had more votes, but Donald managed to win more states, due to some convoluted rules that I can’t be bothered to research nor explain.
Both Candidates have their fair share of scandals from Hilary’s emails being leaked to women speaking out against trump harassing them. Both have so much dirt under finger nails that neither option was particularly enticing, still everyone I’ve spoken to agrees that it is ludicrous that “The Donald”, actually came out on top. Although Hilary and Trump were both in my humble opinion, pretty bad candidates for president, and despite what she’s done in her past, as well as her plans for a no-fly zone in Syria, which has been met with heavy protest. She is to some more fit to lead. Still, now all we can do is wait with baited breath and see what happens.
–Solomon Boussefiane
This year, TY students have volunteered to participate in the concern debates. Concern are an international humanitarian organisation dedicated to tackling poverty and suffering in the world’s poorest countries. The students involved debate whether they propose or oppose a motion, these motions are popular issues that are in the world today.
The 11th of October
The first debate was on Tuesday, 11th of October in Saint Mary’s Arklow. For this debate four TY students were involved, the team’s captain was Izzy Nic Craith and her fellow debaters were Evan Kenny, Jordi Wortmann and Saoirse Kirwan. They were opposing the motion that “Ending World Hunger by 2030 is an impossible dream”. The team spoke about the world’s aims and it’s focus on redistributing food and wealth, Farming, GMOs, Entomophagy and Education. The team put up a good fight but sadly, the motion was proposed by the adjudicators.
The 26th Of October
On the 26th of October the second Concern Debate took place here in our school against Creagh College. They were proposing the motion that “France should allow religious symbols in public institutions”. The team consisted of Saoirse Kirwan (team captain), Elisa Pandolfi, Michaela Byrne and Victoria Flemming. The team’s were head to head with very strong points and rebuttal but the adjudicators chose to oppose the motion AKA in favour of Creagh.
The 15th Of October
On the 15th of November 2016, the Concern Debate against Colaiste Bhride in Carnew commenced. The team this time was Saoirse Kirwan(team captain), Victoria Flemming, Jordi Wartmman and Leanne Kavanagh. The motion was “Europe is failing Africa”, the team was opposing convincing the audience if anything was failing Africa, it was Africa itself. Our teams performance was incredible, all eyes were on their speakers who spoke clearly and passionately about the subject. The adjudicators pointed out that the other team had insulted us and docked marks. Sadly, we lost 1-2.
-Saoirse Kirwan
On the 28th of October, four TY students collected for SOCGA also known as Special Olympics Gorey. The reason the students collected was because a family member/family friend, Anna participates in swimming and bowling with the organisation. The collection took place in Dunnes Stores and the collection raised a lot of money for the charity.
Special Olympics is first and foremost a sports organisation for people with an intellectual disability, but it provides athletes with far more than the physical benefits of sport.It’s about fun, friendships and team spirit; it’s about a feeling of belonging, and ultimately improving quality of life. Special Olympics changes lives in so many different ways. And gives these special people a sense of competitive drive.
On a happy note, Anna won gold in her last swimming competition thanks to the support of these TY students. -Saoirse Kirwan
The two women who came to our school were Kate Breslin who worked as a nurse and a midwife in Dublin and London for many years.Brenda Hyland, she joined An Garda Siochana the same year she became Rose of Tralee, which also catapulted her into the world of media and fashion modelling. They were both very nice and they were both easy to talk to.
Etiquette was the second workshop that I’ve done on Thursday 20th of October. It was a very educational workshop and we all learned much from it. At the first we were told about what is etiquette and why it is important. We learned about proper posture, different kind of handshakes, how to properly dine and sent up a table properly which will probably be important in the future. The best part I think was walking on the red carpet like literally it was a red carpet and we had to put a book on our heads and walk to the other side on the room. It was really fun, we were all laughing. The main goal was to teach us good manners and how to present yourself well.
I would recommend this workshop as it would benefit you in many ways and it was really fun.
I really enjoyed the workshop eagles flight, we done this workshop just before we went to Galway and I undoubtedly our group benefited from this. This workshop is all about team building and I believe that our group really bonded while doing this workshop. Firstly we were split into five groups and we played a game called “The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine”. The aim of this game was to look at the ‘best approach’ to a project and see how well your team works together. “The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine” really showed many peoples competitive side and we got to see who was extremely competitive.
Later on in the day we were tasked with the challenge of building a bridge. We appointed an overall manager who helped every group and then we had 4 co-managers who were given the task of building one element of the bridge with their team. We achieved the record for the quickest bridge built. Over all, this workshop was brilliant.
Self defence was one of the best workshops. It was very interesting and helpful as it is a good life skill to have if we are ever attacked. The workshop lasted for one day up at the rugby club and we had two instructors. They showed us all the different techniques you can use to defend yourself against someone.
We worked in pairs for while as one person would hold the boxing pad and the other person would hit it or kick it. We used the pads for a while as a practice for when we would fight against each other and the instructors after lunch. Lunch went by quickly and we then started fighting against each other and the instructors.
The instructors wore safety gear from their heads to their toes, and we wore helmets. It was really fun grappling against each other and the instructors as some people didn’t realise how strong or good they were until this workshop! This was a very enjoyable workshop and I would love to do it again!
Self defence was one of the best workshops. It was very interesting and helpful as it is a good life skill to have if we are ever attacked. The workshop lasted for one day up at the rugby club and we had two instructors. They showed us all the different techniques you can use to defend yourself against someone.
We worked in pairs for while as one person would hold the boxing pad and the other person would hit it or kick it. We used the pads for a while as a practice for when we would fight against each other and the instructors after lunch. Lunch went by quickly and we then started fighting against each other and the instructors.
The instructors wore safety gear from their heads to their toes, and we wore helmets. It was really fun grappling against each other and the instructors as some people didn’t realise how strong or good they were until this workshop! This was a very enjoyable workshop and I would love to do it again!
-Isabelle Keegan
Tinpot Radio is a workshop that I did on the fifth day and it was a bit difficult for me at first as we had to write two scripts, one like an advertising for a thing of our choice and the second one was a 60 second update debate like where you talk about a topic and one agrees and the other disagrees. It sounds really easy, but it was harder than it sounds. Talking wasn’t the only thing we had to worry about, the timing was also a big part for example on the advertising we only had 30 seconds and it couldn’t be more or less so it wasn’t that bad after we finished recording everything. Whenever we would record two or three groups would go into this small van and inside it was a recording studio, couches and a tv, where we could watch the people in the recording booth.
The last part we did I really enjoyed and it was making our own music playlist where we decided to write the title, artist, how it starts, how it finishes and the time etc so it wasn’t just writing the title and the artist but it was really fun. I was terrified at first about recording but it was definitely a very good and eye opening workshop. –Oliwia Pomietlarz
The poetry slam workshop was a very interesting workshop and was very fun to partake in. The workshop was done by Steven Murray an accomplished poet. Steven started the workshop by reading one of his own poems and giving us his opinions on poetry and how it is written. He then gave us various exercises to carry out such as writing down five of your favourite song lyrics and five habits you have. We did exercises such as these for roughly three periods and they would eventually help us to write our poems.
After lunch Steven showed us some poems by other poets to help us figure out what we wanted our poem to be about. We were then asked to write our own poems they could be about anything, and be as long as we wanted them to be. Once we had written our poems we gave them to Steven who read them and then put them online. This workshop was very enjoyable and taught us all the different steps and ways to write a poem.
-Alex Crowe
Gorey CS TY Newsletter 