Interviews
Name: Ludivine Rebet
Title: President of the Phil (University Philosophical Society) since March 2015
Trinity Degree: 4th year BESS (pursuing a joint honours degree in Business and Sociology)
Pictured L-R: Ludivine Rebet talks to Apple CEO Tim Cook
Tell us about how you got involved with the Phil?
The transition to college was much more overwhelming than I had anticipated. At first I found it difficult to build friendships with others in my course - lecture halls were so big and anonymous! I rarely saw the same person twice. This motivated me to join societies in order to make friends and fill my timetable gaps with activities. I had done some public speaking in school so at first I got involved in competitive debating for the Hist. Debating led me to interact with a lot of students from the Phil. The society makes a really big effort to include and integrate Freshers and the GMB soon became my go-to place to eat lunch, meet new people and find interesting events to attend. It ended up being the perfect fit for me and the place where I built my strongest relationships in college.
What are the key ingredients for a good debate?
It completely depends! There are many different types of debating competitions and events, with completely different metrics for 'winning'. In our weekly Thursday night chamber debates we seek oratory, personal experience and passion. It's important to win over the audience and to engage them emotionally. Competitive debating tournaments on the other hand focus on critical analysis, clashing points and providing a clear and concise balance of harms. In any case, you find yourself swayed from proposition to opposition and back with speaker after speaker providing you with a plethora of reasons to believe their side.
As society President for 2015-16 what are your ambitions for the year ahead?
That's a big question. We have so many things we want to achieve! We're constantly expanding on the diverse range of events we organise. My main focus is on facilitating all of the teams in bringing their ideas to life, while also remembering to have fun in the process. We have a team in charge of running our Thursday night chamber debates, another which coordinates all competitive debating activity and runs the Trinity intervarsities, another whose aim is to integrate Freshers specifically, a fourth which is in charge of our social events and receptions, a schools outreach team, a finance team, a PR team and our registrar who maintains our relationship with alumni and keeps the archives. As well as helping all of these teams out, I'm responsible for organising the visits of V.I.P guests to the society.
One of my main areas of focus is to broaden the range and scope of our events. We have over 10,000 members and our aim is to run debates, panels, talks and social events that will engage every single member at least once in the year. We brought back the Phil Ball in December, and we're planning on having a few more events of this scope in Hilary Term. We collaborated with QuizSoc on Trinity's first 'University Challenge: Societies Edition' and brought together over 40 different societies in the Debating Chamber of the GMB. This was a great way to entice non-Freshers to interact with the Phil and for students from different societies to get to know each other.
Michael Stone, the head of Players, and I also set up a joint Phil/Players subcommittee to organise a commemorative festival for the 1916 rising. Both societies are very excited to be working together and putting a creative student stamp on the occasion. We're planning historical recreations and plays, a debate, a spoken word night, a photographic walking tour, an outreach programme for school kids, paper-readings, a variety of panels and a few more unique events, such as putting on an interactive celebration of the proper wedding Joseph Plunkett never had.
Best known for attracting stars from across the globe. Who will be visiting the Phil in 2016?
We've had an amazing run so far and hosted 11 high profile Honorary Patrons in first term. It was really wonderful to start off strong with Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge) on the first day of Freshers' week. Since then we've been lucky to host speakers ranging from hat designer Philip Treacy, to first female-director of CERN Fabiola Gianotti, founder of Pixar and President of Walt Disney Animations Ed Catmull, the five members of Snow Patrol and Apple CEO, Tim Cook.
We have many more exciting guests to come in 2016! Some of the Honorary Patrons confirmed include author Margaret Atwood, CEO of Pepsi Co. Indra Nooyi, internationally renowned performance artist Marina Abramović, comedian Kevin Hart, key hip hop influencer Ice Cube and Chief Strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns David Axelrod.
What has been your most memorable moment from your time as President?
There have been so many great moments this year. I really enjoyed working with our treasurer to secure sponsorship over the summer - it is very rewarding to be treated as business partners in a professional setting and was one of the early successes in my term as president. On that note, I’d like to thank PwC for their generous support and genuine interest in the society and its members.
Tim Cook’s visit was another highlight as it was one of the most demanding, logistically speaking, so far. We held it in the Exam Hall which is a larger venue than the GMB, many media outlets reported on the event, and Apple Inc was really interesting to work with. The stakes felt higher, especially as the ceremony took place during reading week, when half of my committee had travelled home and were unavailable to help out. It was extremely rewarding to see the Honorary Patronage turn out to be such a great success.
If I can I'll add a third 'moment': the Christmas Dinner with this year's council, and last year's officers held in the Phil Conversation Room. Each team cooked a different dish and we had an incredibly fun evening. It was the perfect way to end the term after everyone's hard work on societies and college work.
The society is housed in the GMB, tell us something we didn’t know about this special building?
This building really is a home to so many students in Trinity. It’s constantly full of people having fun, whether playing pool or snooker in period rooms, chatting over lunch or attending society events.
One interesting architectural feature of the building is the stain glass window in the stairwell between the Phil and Hist level. It depicts Epaminondas and Demosthenes, the greatest of all orators in Greek mythology. It was dedicated to the memory of Marshall Porter, a university graduate killed in the Boer War. It’s a lovely nod to the building’s purpose as a space for discourse and ideas.
What ways can alumni get involved with the society?
There are so many ways for alumni to get involved with the Phil! The network is incredibly strong and we love interacting with our alumni and finding out old stories and all about how the Phil was run in the past. You can pop into the GMB any time to say hello and take a look at the building.
On Thursday 10 March at 7.30pm we're hosting our annual ‘Honorary Members’ Debate. We’ll be electing new Honorary Members to the society on the night and the idea is to fill the chamber with as many alumni as possible. We’ll also be hosting a dinner before the debate, and the usual reception after the debate, and we would love to see you there. We’re also putting together our own Phil alumni magazine which you can expect in your email inboxes before summer. For further information please contact president@tcdphil.com.