THERE IS an interesting letter in a recent issue of the college newspaper, Trinity News. I don't mean the letter relating to a law apparently adopted by College Fellows "which still allows the Provost to hang one Catholic a year from the Campanile", though that is interesting too (and I agree with the writer that the Campanile seems singularly unsuited to the purpose). I have not got space for everything.

No. The letter I speak of refers to the arts section of Trinity News. The writer expresses his complete lack of interest in this section:

don't read it and neither do any of my friends. Would there be any chance of leaving it out or at least making it disposable like the property section of the Irish Times?"

He adds a slightly intimidatory PS: "I have lots of friends".

The Arts Editors (there seem to be at least two) append an arch response, saying they look forward to the writer's comments on other things he has not read: "Almost any book would do."

From this it seems clear the Arts Editors have no intention of seeing their section excluded from the newspaper. They are not in the least cowed.

I am not going to enter a private wrangle in (the hallowed grounds of) Trinity College but this dispute in embryo raises larger questions, and my own newspaper has been drawn in.

I prefer to think of the property supplement of the Irish Times as detachable rather than disposable, though disposability clearly applies to all newspapers by definition. We must strive for precision.

The idea of our property supplement, as I understand it, is that while you are (for example) reading in the newspaper "proper" about inedible meat, your spouse or significant other can simultaneously read about unaffordable houses. This is our idea of a balanced newspaper here in Westmoreland Street and we are rightly proud of it. Our contribution to harmonious homes on Thursday evenings is very probably underrated.

But the letter brings up once again this unsavoury business of foisting arts and arts coverage on an unwilling public, and the public's long and largely successful battle against such imposition. What disturbs is the secretive, coded nature of the war, its polite viciousness ("Almost any book would do") and the guerrilla warfare mode necessarily adopted by the beleaguered public ("I have tots of friends").

Arts promoters generally work quietly, without revealing the full extent of their paranoid megalomania, though the Northern Ireland Arts Council has bravely gone public with far reaching plans to force ordinary God fearing people, even in rural areas hitherto considered safe, into involvement with the arts. Theirs is a voice in the wilderness.

The job of the arts promoter is akin to pouring castor oil down a child's throat. What can be done with people who simply will not recognise that a good dose of the arts is what they need? One newspaper's fanning supplement regularly seems to be distributed free on the DART and Dublin Bus routes, so producing arts pages in supplement form might similarly turn out to be a excellent idea, attracting otherwise idle travellers who have perhaps neglected to buy a newspaper at all.

The whole business is as difficult in its way as getting rid of unwanted slurry. At any rate, Trinity News has done a service to its readers by drawing their attention to the problem while they are still young, fresh and enthusiastic.

They are not all so enthusiastic. One student he wails the lonely life of House 7 residents, the use of whose common room is apparently restricted to visitors: students meanwhile "are forced to sit it often on their own their only companion an antiquated gas fire".

This is extremely sad. Another writer complains of the "Monday to Friday" nature of college life, which sees frantic whirls of five day social activity succeeded by "anti climatic" (sic) weekends.

Trinity College is always full of surprises, so the report of these unusual weather conditions, experienced only on Saturdays and Sundays, should not come as a great shock. However, I am concerned about the effect of these conditions in a building with antiquated gas fires (as mentioned above), and would be interested in reading a more detailed report. The college surely possesses a number of meteorologists, budding and flowering, who may be able to throw light on the phenomenon.