The statue wars continue: Last week protesters at the University of Virginia draped a tarp over a bronze of Thomas Jefferson, declaring the monument “an emblem of white supremacy” and demanding that the students of Jefferson’s university be subjected to racial reeducation.
There is, however, a better way to engage with statuary honoring figures one considers problematic. The Scrapbook was recently in Dublin and took the opportunity to visit Trinity College. On the school’s main quad, next to the central campanile, is seated a white marble likeness (well, a likeness if the man had a tendency to grimace) of George Salmon, provost of the university from 1888 to his death in 1904.
Salmon is perhaps best remembered not for his scholarship as a mathematician and theologian but for his intransigent opposition to women being admitted to the school. The joke has it that he said women would be admitted over his dead body, and he promptly expired after coeducation was approved for Trinity.
Given Salmon’s retrograde opinions, why hasn’t he been pulled down from his plinth? Because the women of Trinity College, Dublin, have a better way of expressing themselves. According to The Scrapbook’s student guide, upon graduation, Trinity women make a point of having their pictures taken with the dyspeptic figure. Instead of tearing down the remembrance of someone whose views are anathema to modern sensibilities, they cheerfully engage with the statue to celebrate their victory. It’s a refreshing alternative to the victimology so popular this side of the Atlantic.
