ÂÒÂ×´óÉñ

THE CAMPUS TRINITY TODAY increased staffing. Secondly, a more vexed question was aired – the ability to maintain the right atmosphere. ‘Recently, as the size of the University became greater and greater, the tendency has been to increase the size of the colleges, although such cramming has necessarily strained their framework,’ wrote a student in the 1960 edition of the Fleur de Lys. Despite such cautionary tones, the student outlook was broadly optimistic. A new university opening in Clayton – Monash – would begin taking students in 1961, thereby relieving demand on the University of Melbourne and, it was perceived, the colleges. Moreover, however, Trinity had weathered these changes before and the students appreciated that the problem had always been satisfactorily dealt with.3 Upon completion of Cowan, new construction almost ceased. Plans for a building north of Behan were shelved when the Australian Universities Commission didn’t support the project. Then, a performing arts centre on the south-east corner along Tin Alley was proposed and plans were drawn, but shifting attention and increasing financial challenges saw it, too, put on hold. (The centre would be realised in a fashion 42 years later, on the same site, when the Gateway Building opened in 2016 with an art gallery and music practice rooms.) INTO THE EIGHTIES The Right Reverend John McKie, while proposing a toast in 1982 to the newly- installed chaplain, the Reverend Dr Peter Wellock, reminded the student body, ‘It is a big college now and it is difficult to meet with a crowd of people that one does not know. Do please regard it as a duty to be hospitable and welcoming.’ Residential student numbers were 250 as the College raced to keep pace with the overwhelming demand since moving to co-ed residency eight years earlier. Australia’s economy was booming in the 1980s, but the decade was bleak for Trinity’s bottom line as the federal government began phasing out funding for residential university colleges. International education was still in its infancy in Australia when Trinity explored the possibility of establishing a pathways program in 1989 to expand the College’s offering and create a new income stream. It was a gamble, and one not all were in favour of. The project forged ahead, however, and the Foundation Studies program attracted a handful of students in its first year. A few years later, the program was supporting more than 100 students annually; within a decade, that figure exceeded 1000. (Today, it’s almost 2000.) THE NEXT CHAPTER In 2018, early works commenced on Trinity’s next revitalisation in the area that once housed the college laundry, chicken sheds and other domestic facilities in the early 20th century. As the years went on, this patch included a chaplain’s residence in ‘Vatican’ (c.1925), male domestic quarters in Dorothy (1936), and, in the early 1980s, Moorhouse – residential accommodation for married theological students. For the more recent generations of students who have called these buildings home, this north-eastern corner was viewed disparagingly as ‘Tasmania’, a veritable isolation from the social camaraderie and interaction of buildings forming a quad around the Bul. Therefore, the new buildings will make way for a residential wing more conducive to student socialisation. The building is scheduled to accommodate its first intake in 2020, allowing 100 additional students to benefit from Trinity’s collegiate atmosphere and opportunities. 1 Fleur de Lys, vol. 4 no. 35, October 1935: 26 2 Report of ÂÒÂ×´óÉñ Council for 1956-57 to the Diocesan Synods of Victoria: 4 3 Fleur de Lys, Nov 1960: 4 The newly- completed Behan Building from Royal Parade, 1935. Epitomising the post-war architectural style of the mid-1950s, the Memorial Building (Jeopardy) was completed in 1958. New meets old; the first stage of Cowan Building juxtaposed next to the 1930s Behan Building, 1962. BELOW: The Gateway Building (2016). ‘The new buildings will make way for a residential wing more conducive to student socialisation.’ 19