Twenty years ago, I, along with seven other members of the students' union executive, was expelled from Trinity College for one year. Within hours the Board and Fellows of TCD obtained a High Court injunction barring us from the "grounds and lands of Trinity College near Dublin established by Queen Elizabeth in 1592".
As the High Court injunction came into effect, the "Trinity eight" led a march of 2,000 students out of the "grounds and lands of TCD"; as soon as the last student had stepped on to Dame Street, we turned around and marched in again. Today we would have to march as far as City Hall before the last student would be off Trinity property, as the grounds of Ireland's oldest university now extend up Dame Street and as far as the Grand Canal in Ringsend.
The past 20 years have witnessed extraordinary growth in this island campus, surely one of the most wonderful locations of any third-level institution in the world. Within the past two decades the student population in TCD has more than doubled from 6,000 to 14,000.
Trinity now owns most of Foster Place; it has recently purchased the office block on Dame Street occupied by Riada stockbrokers and is on the look-out for more property in the vicinity of the college. Most of Pearse Street and Westland Row have been bought up by the college.
Twenty years later you'll recognise Trinity property on Pearse Street - it's effectively bricked up, turning its back on the city. Even newer buildings like Goldsmith Hall in Westland Row have in-built massive shutters which block out the city at dusk.
The IDA centre in Pearse Street in also in the property portfolio and there are plans to bridge the Liffey with a faculty in the new docklands development.
The Trinity students may not be on the march, but the college property buyers certainly are.
But the major building expansion is taking place inside the front gate. A quarter of a billion pounds has been spent by the current Provost, Dr Tom Mitchell, on new buildings in the last decade - in itself a remarkable achievement.
A major new library will be squeezed between the cricket pitch and Nassau Street, and pressure of space will drive a massive sports complex and swimming pool underground at the Pearse Street/ Westland Row junction.
Trinity is booming. Strolling through it last week, teeming with students, shadowed by the Campanile, Front Square and the Rubrics, it's easy to see why Trinity was the jewel in Queen Elizabeth's crown in 1592; indeed they still toast her good health at the Commons meal, free to fellows, every evening, and today Trinity is definitely Dublin's - if not the country's - educational gem.
By the way, it is still - after Dublin Zoo - the most visited tourist attraction in the country, and notwithstanding the pleas of the people of Kells, their most famous library book will not be returned by the college for "security and access" reasons.
Copies of every book published in Ireland and Britain must be submitted to Trinity, creating a wonderful national resource and heritage, all well-guarded by the college.
The buzz, excitement and wonder of learning is as evident as ever in Trinity. Despite student numbers it is still a calm, reflective treasure island.
Twenty years ago the focus of college was the spanking new arts block; today the focus has shifted eastward towards the science end. The issues dominating college life include the financing of the new sports centre, parking and food.
While students, in the colourful words of students' union president Dave Tighe, have to suffer food that improved from "gruel to slops", he deplores the opening of a new college restaurant, the 1592. "With a chef who formerly worked in the Hotel de Paris Moulin, offering a wonderful menu with such offerings as `a seafood terrine, poached salmon in a ginger and chablis sauce, followed by a Baileys Irish cream torte', all for £12.50, it sounds great - but students are barred! It's a pity they don't put the same effort in student food," adds Tighe.
The new O'Reilly and Smurfit building - they're not big graduates but big givers - have tilted the balance away from front gate. The engine of college may be at the east end but the heart is still in Front Square.
The big story in Irish third-level education in the last quarter of a century is the massive - and unprecedented - growth in numbers.
In the late Sixties there were just over 20,000 third-level students in the Republic. I know it sounded like more. Today there are over 114,000 - I know it sounds like fewer.
But the shocking aspect of the growth has been the relatively small changes in the socio-economic background of students.
Nine out of every 10 children of the "higher professionals" will go on to third level. At the other end of the income scale the figure is the exact opposite - one out of every 10 will get to college.
Twenty years ago, in my sweet innocence, I wrote to The Irish Times highlighting the fact that only three students in Trinity were from Ballyfermot; today that figure has risen to 14 - 14 out of 14,000 ain't bad.
In fairness to Trinity, its overall level of "less well-off" participation is now on a par with other universities. Trinity's access programmes have effectively doubled working-class representation in the college within the last decade from 2 to 4 per cent. This is mainly due to the efforts of the Provost, who has launched a number of different projects in this area.
Links have been established with 11 second-level schools in disadvantaged areas, mature students get a chance to prepare to go to third level, and a new Post Leaving Cert course to assist young people who do not have enough points for third level has just started.
Twenty years ago a young person in Ballyfermot had a 1 per cent chance of going on to third level, compared with 44 per cent in Mount Merrion. Today the Ballyfermot figure has risen to 6 per cent, with the south Dublin figure up to 60 per cent. This is society's problem - not just Trinity's. But as far as I can see there are two major forces pulling at my old alma mater.
The first and strongest is the international battle for research funding, attracting post graduates. It gives a university - and an economy - a cutting edge. Trinity has been phenomenally successful in this area. From computers to children's disadvantage it has gone out and won contracts, often from State agencies.
The other pull, and much less powerful it is, is the effort to assert the college's position in the city. Everybody welcomes the move into the nearby business streets - after all, an open-city campus is the norm in the US. If only they would open the windows!
On the other hand there have been heroic efforts to make some of the college courses relevant to the lives of those who can't get into the place.
Two major developments in this regard have been the addiction studies centre - it has a fantastic reputation among professionals and community groups and a new research arm is about to be set up.
The other development has been the children's research centre, with a strong emphasis on disadvantage. There is a new institute for learning disabilities being set up in Foster Place.
There are now more evening courses than before, but UCD, with its long history in the area and its 10 outreach centres, has effectively cornered that market.
The third and probably most potent force in Trinty is tradition. Hardly surprising after 400 years of pomp, property and power that TCD should treasure tradition so highly.
The area of college life that manifests this strongly and has changed so little since 1592 is the composition of the all-powerful College Board.
Despite the fact that £8 out of every £10 spent every year by the college comes from the taxpayer - various education ministers have argued that it's even more than this - Trinity guards its independence closely.
The Board of Trinity is elected by the Fellows of the College, and up to the Seventies they were all fellas. And who elects the Fellows you may ask - it's the Fellows.
They are a self-electing, self-perpetuating, self-governing body.
When, in the Universities Bill, the former Labour party education minister Niamh Bhreathnach, in response to demands from many universities, attempted, in her words, "to modernise their governing bodies, with different levels of staff - academic and non-academic representation, a better gender balance and representation from business community and taxpayer", she was met with stiff resistance from Trinity, primarily in the form of the senators elected by TCD graduates - Shane Ross, David Norris and Mary Henry.
Luckily for Trinity, the three TCD senators held the balance of power in the Seanad. Bhreathnach argued that "96 per cent of Trinity's income comes from the taxpayer - they should have representatives on the Board, and should reflect the real world".
Trinity's disporportionate Senate representation has long been a contentious issue. The graduates of TCD elect the same number of Senators as the combined graduates of every other university - and, of course, graduates from the institutes of technology are denied any representation whatsoever.
Which of course doesn't even address the point as to why those who can't get to third level should be barred from voting in Senate elections.
The three TCD senators held the balance of power in the upper chamber and they have seldom used it to better effect than when they set about "emasculating" Bhreathnach's modernising efforts. The Minister argued that in looking for broader representation on university boards she was simply responding to demands from the various colleges - but, in her own words, "Trinity objected to being touched." Bhreathnach wanted university boards to reflect "the wider community in college, and increase accountability and transparency".
When the Bill was eventually "`emasculated" it left Trinity with one government rep on the 27-member board - and that person has to be acceptable to the college! This will be the smallest taxpayer representation for any third-level college. The Trinity senators could hardly control their delight as the "defeated and diluted" Bill was passed.
In the words of David Norris, "Senator Ross and I voted against the Bill at a certain stage to serve a warning that where we held the balance of power, we were not prepared to accept anything other than full respect and guarantees of intellectual independence and academic freedom. These concessions were generously made by the government. Every amendment I put down after consultation with the board, provost and fellows and scholars was accepted."
Bhreathnach is vehement that she never attempted to interfere with academic freedom and independence. "The Bill was changed radically and the ideology behind it was defeated and diluted. During my time in the house I have not seen a bill so emasculated as the Universities Bill, through the combined forces of the opposition, and independents, when the government was in a minority position."
Eventually Bhreathnach allowed Trinity to introduce a private members' bill that would allow a single government representative on the board and allow them to keep their references to "dear Queen Elizabeth I". This is still going through the Oireachtas.
I believe Trinity made a mistake in not fully embracing Bhreathnach's Bill. After all, Trinity's position in Irish society is assured, even it its identity is somewhat blurred.
During our modest but noisy student protests in 1980, then board member WB Stanford overreacted and indeed was overly complimentary to us when he uttered the immortal words: "`We beat the rebels in 1916, we will beat them now." The outside forces are still at front gate, but if "college" lets them in, I think they would discover that the vast majority of Irish people treasure Trinity.
As Trinity powers into the 21st century it is ironic that while the Provost, Tom Mitchell, is probably the most socially progressive in its 408-year history, the educational wonderland of Trinity is still effectively closed to the children of a large proportion of the population.
'Tis a pity.
