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Trinity College Dublin staff follow ancient traditions in the election of their head, but one voter fears their loss as the state encroaches.
On 1 August, the campanile bell of Trinity College Dublin will toll to announce the inauguration of a new provost. In a way unique in the Republic of Ireland and increasingly rare anywhere in the world, it is those who teach and research in the country's oldest university who elect its head every decade. And this month, that's exactly what we did.
Trinity was founded as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth Near Dublin in 1592, but now functions as a traffic island in a city that has burst its bounds and flows ever outwards. Late medievalism still thrives there in some ways, this election being one of them. The nearest equivalents can be found in the Oxbridge colleges and in the election of rectors by students in the ancient universities of Scotland. However, this was Trinity's moment.
As a relative newcomer, it was my first chance to vote. Thus, on a bright spring morning I registered and collected my ballot papers - one of some 500 people doing so - and waited for the proceedings to start.
The election campaign...