There is no question that Trinity is an international college; ranking the 31st most international college in the world in 2024, according to Times Higher Education. But is it a diverse one? In Trinity’s Strategy 2020-2025 plan, the first goal is to “foster an ever more diverse and inclusive community,” but what does that look like in practice? The Strategy aims to have 30% of the student body come from outside of Ireland by 2025, a goal which the college has easily surpassed in 2024, with 35% of its students coming from abroad.
At first glance, one might think that these statistics translate to a diverse student body. But this is not necessarily the experience of students and staff. In the same Strategy, Trinity aims for 25% of undergraduate students to be from what it deems are “underrepresented groups.” These include Trinity Access Programme (TAP), Disability Access Route to Education (DARE), Higher Education Access Route (HEAR) and mature students. Yet, as 35% of students are stipulated to be international – as stated in the plan – the imbalance of 10% demonstrates that the college is still prioritising international students, with 2212 more international students than there are students who are underrepresented (as of 2023).
A Trinity Spokesperson expressed to Trinity News that “the pathways into admission to Trinity are themselves diverse. We have admissions via the CAO, we have HEAR, DARE and TAP. We have the International Foundation programme, the Sanctuary Scholarship programme, as well as direct applications.” While there may be diverse pathways to admission,diverse pathways to admission do not necessarily reflect diversity in practice. To provide some comparison, 35% of UCD’s student body is from underrepresented groups.
This raises the question; what does Trinity mean when it talks of ‘diversity’, and what supports are there for these students? For TCDSU Welfare and Equality Officer Hamza Bana: “my definition of diversity is: I want to walk into a room and not feel I have to act a certain way. I do not want to be the only ethnic minority person in that room… I would not feel safe in elitist clubs or societies because they are all White… For me the term diversity means I can walk into a space and feel I belong there.”
“Just increasing the International Community does not mean I (as a Black student) will feel more safe”
One point to note is that the terms ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’ are not once explicitly mentioned in the Strategy 2020-2025 plan for increasing inclusion and diversity. However, the importance of international students is repeatedly mentioned throughout. For Bana, this is an issue: “just increasing the International Community does not mean I (as a Black student) will feel more safe. If you’re just going to bring in Americans, Australians, for example, I’m not going to feel more safe. If I don’t feel safe, if I don’t feel I can talk the way I want to talk… there’s no diversity in that.”
Other students who identify as ethnic minorities spoke anonymously to Trinity News about the perception of diversity on campus. “A lot of the international students are white Americans or Europeans,” said one student. “Increasing the amount of international students doesn’t necessarily equate to increasing diversity since, as much as there are many international students, I find that there is a heavy concentration of white and Asian international students, rather than a variety of BIPOC,” another student expressed.
In fact, there is very little data available when trying to uncover the full picture regarding ethnic minority student numbers at Trinity. In Bana’s experience; “There weren’t many resources to say ‘Hey these are the amount of POC or Ethnic Minorities on campus’.” Yet, many students that Trinity News spoke with expressed unease at the prospect of Trinity recording the ethnicity of students.
The lack of concrete data however, presented as an issue for Bana when he spearheaded the Ethnic Minority Support Group in 2023; “The only reason I was able to figure out if there was a demand for an ethnic minority support group was because I made a survey myself in partnership with László. And obviously surveys aren’t perfect.” However the College has, in Bana’s eyes, “finally recognised that being able to figure out who needs the most amount of help, and how many these people are [would be useful]. It’s a great step in the right direction – but this should have been done months, years ago!”
When asked why he felt the need to create a support group for specifically ethnic minority students, Bana replied; “before the ethnic minority support group they had the International Chats to talk about where [students] came from… They tried to introduce an ethnic minority support group before, and I was speaking with two staff members there who said we did that, we tried it, but we felt that we couldn’t really [continue it] because we’re white, which is so fair!”
“[…]staff are less confident in providing support to their ethnic minority students”
While international students have a support network in place, staff are less confident in providing support to their ethnic minority students due to, as Bana described, being themselves, majority white. A certain lack of confidence in acknowledging and discussing race seems to be a theme for the Administration. When asked if he thought the college was explicit enough when it came to discussing race, Bana exclaimed that “100% the college could be more explicit [when talking about race]. I think there’s a little bit of hesitation when it comes to race, but not saying anything at all isn’t going to help.”
For Bana, not saying anything could lead to an attitude within the administration of “‘we don’t see colour, anyone can come to Trinity.’ But there are still barriers in coming to Trinity, and that’s the work of TAP [to help with], they’re doing a great job.” There was an effort to address this culture by College, highlighted in the Racial and Ethnic Equality Working Group 2021-2022. The first of its kind, their report directly investigated racial and ethnic equality in Trinity. Among a list of thought-out recommendations, the report calls for more “enrollment of underrepresented groups, who can potentially take up lecturing positions as a first step towards the broader inclusion within the HEIs.”
“American students (8% of all students) are double the number of TAP students (3.9%)”
Clearly, the recommendations of this report are largely yet to be implemented when it comes to underrepresented groups in students, an issue also raised by Bana. This can be reflected in TAP student statistics: approximately, American students (8% of all students) are double the number of TAP students (3.9%). This indicates that the college is more ‘international’ than it is ‘diverse.’
Unfortunately, this is also reflected in the lived experience of students, with one ethnic minority student stating; “I feel as if the college doesn’t seem to acknowledge their support for BIPOC students like myself, and especially with the rise in racist and anti immigration rhetoric nowadays, the college has made little effort to address an important issue facing the community.” Bana described how “As a Trinity student, I feel I belong here. But as a Black person on Trinity campus I still feel unwelcome.” Yet, he expressed that “I’m hopeful, I am hopeful.”
For the college’s part, Trinity’s spokesperson did acknowledge that “internationalisation activities are one aspect of how we achieve diversity in the community in Trinity. Diversity is a far broader issue, covering geographical and socio-economic issues, gender, religion and faith, sexual orientation, disability and more.” With Strategy 2020-2025 drawing to a close, and the college is supposedly developing a new policy on race, diversity may take on a new meaning for Trinity. But, as it stands, should the student body be asking: are we content with how the college measures diversity? Or is it time to start demanding more from Trinity?
