V1i14

NEWS

PANOPT

NEWS

THE ARTS EXPAND AT YALE-NUS

A Yale-NUS Student Publication

ISSUE NO. 14

TUESDAY, 26 AUGUST 2014

President Pericles Lewis leading seminar discussion in the course “Joseph Conrad and Southeast Asia.”

EDITORS’ NOTE A week after the first issue, all newspapers have disappeared from their boxes, several emails have popped into our inbox and many conversations have erupted in the dining hall.

We look back and think: this is the kind of critical discourse our community needs, and which PANOPT is committed to.

We realize certain individuals in our community disagree with some views expressed in the last issue. Yet as an independent paper on campus, this is inevitable. We will often publish opinions that do not resonate or sit well with everyone. We will even go as far as to say that we welcome these opinions, since these are the articles that spark conversations and make us reflect deeper about our community.

PANOPT is a platform for all voices— from the loud voices to the whispered ones. A newspaper that only sides with the majority is not representative of its community. Moving forward, we welcome guest columnists to write in to us, and we will soon launch a website where these invigorating discussions can occur online.

This issue onward, we will also be introducing a Letters to the Editors section.

For every future issue, should you wish to share your opinion on a public platform, please write in to yncpanopt@gmail.com by Friday, 5PM. We do not publish anonymous letters, and each letter has a maximum word count of 200 words. We also want to stress that readers should criticize the arguments expressed, and not the writer. Personal attacks only reflect badly on you, and the ad hominem fallacy is inexcusable. Due to space constraints, we may not publish every letter.

For our last issue, despite having multiple individuals contact us with praise or criticism, we only received one letter to be published, which is on the last page. We urge readers to go beyond private conversations and voice these views with the rest of the community. We look forward to hearing from you.

Joyan and Spandana Managing Editors of PANOPT

YALE-NUS, SINGAPORE

YALE SHORT COURSES story Yonatan Gazit, May Tay | photos Aleithia Low

T

wo weeks before classes began for the sophomores at Yale-NUS, seven Yale professors made the trip halfway around the globe from New Haven to Singapore. They were here to visit the Yale-NUS and NUS campuses, as well as to teach mini-courses for the Class of 2017. These classes lasted from August 6–14, and their diversity was evident in titles ranging from ‘How to Find an Asteroid’ to ‘Reimagining Bruce Lee: A Writing Workshop’ and ‘The Moralities of Everyday Life’.

The courses were created to strengthen Yale-NUS’s connection with one of its two parent colleges, Yale University. “One of the things we’ve been concerned about all along is making sure we take good advantage of the resources of both our parent institutions, Yale and NUS. With NUS, partnerships can happen more conveniently and almost automatically because we are just across the bridge. With Yale, we need to put in some extra effort,” Dean of Faculty Charles Bailyn said.

These courses were exciting for both the students and professors involved. Natalie Tan ’17, who attended Professor Rick Prum’s course on the ‘The Evolution of Beauty’, elaborated, “It was inspiring to meet someone so passionate and dedicated to something.

[Professor Prum] was telling us that he has been an avid bird watcher since he was eight… and he has kept the excitement ever since.”

Christian Go ’17 said that Professor Guiseppe Mazzotta taught him a lot in his short course, ‘Dante’s Divine Comedy’. “I thought we would be doing a lot of the things we did during LitHum, such as close reading and text analyses…but what enriched our experience was Professor Mazzotta’s expertise as an Italian Studies scholar. He really emphasised the

context of the Comedy,” he said.

The professors, too, were impressed. “[The students] so outperformed my expectations that it stunned me on a daily basis. They were wildly inventive,” Professor Matthew Polly, who taught ‘Reimagining Bruce Lee: A Writing Workshop’, said. “One student did a mock tabloid interview, another a screenplay where Bruce Lee didn’t die, and yet another a musical. One...decided to write a brilliant rap song from Bruce’s perspective. And as if that wasn’t enough, he then laid down the track with a vocal assist from his classmate.”

Some students, however, felt the courses could have been better executed. “The course was structured and taught haphazardly; it tried to cover too long a timeline and too much ground…Professors should take into account the fact that it’s a short course—6 days—and focus on specific content or themes,” Toh Hui Ran ’17 said.

Overall, the courses were a learning experience for all members of the college, be it students, faculty, staff or visitors of the college.

Tan agrees, “I do feel like it was less of a course and more of an engaging experience.”

Above: Yale-NUS sophomores in discussion during a short course.

26 Aug, 2014 | 1

Left to right: Dr. Jason Carl Rosenberg, Heidi Stalla, Professor Mark Joyce and Dr. Nozomi Naoi (front).

story Yonatan Gazit, May Tay | photo Alyson Rozells

F

our new professors joined Yale-NUS’s Art’s Department in the 2014 Fall Semester, including the first Department Head, to help establish the school’s Arts Department, according to a press release by the college. A few Yale-NUS students say they have hopes for what the department can bring to the school, and how it will play a role both within and outside of the classroom.

The new department head, Professor Mark Joyce, along with three other Assistant Professors, Heidi Stalla, Jason Rosenberg, and Nozomi Naoi, will join the Arts Department at Yale-NUS this semester.

David Chia ’17 is excited that this faculty will provide new learning and mentoring opportunities for students interested in the arts. “For sure, I’m excited about being able to engage in conversations with more professors who share similar interests as I,” he said.

According to Professor Rajeev Patke, Director of the Division of Humanities, the new department will not only help promote the arts throughout the college, but also further develop the school’s liberal arts curriculum. “You can’t have a liberal arts college without a rich, robust arts program. It cannot just be a good, robust curriculum, it also needs a set of co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities,” he said.

“The liberal arts experience is both what goes on in the classroom, and what you do with the rest of the time you’re in college.”

The arts department will offer more opportunities in theatre, music, creative writing and the visual arts, according to the press

2 | 26 Aug, 2014

release. Dr. Rosenberg, Director of Student Music, says he hopes to create a diverse music culture at Yale-NUS, with community events, such as “an annual concert series featuring members of the Yale-NUS community, the greater Singapore community, and world-class musicians and performers.”

Chia, who is enrolled in Rosenberg’s Integrative Music Theory course, said he is excited for the new possibilities the Arts Department brings. “A semester from now, I can see myself doing a photography course, a pottery course, an acting course, visual art course ... the possibilities of artistic engagement is just exciting!”

The department also hopes to build collaborative relationships with NUS faculties. “We have great opportunities for collaborating with theatre studies students at NUS and bringing them over sometimes. It’s a large, complex vision of how the arts will grow,” Patke said. Rosenberg hopes that this relationship will extend beyond NUS, to other schools in Singapore as well.

While the arts are not featured much in the current Common Curriculum, students feel that its inclusion may be enriching. “I suppose [arts are] not an obviously employable skill. We could decide that it doesn’t add to the academia of the place, which is why it should be taught as elective only. Or, you could argue that we aren’t here necessarily for employable skills we’re here to develop as human beings,” Jamie Buitelaar’18 said.

Heidi Stalla has her own research project

exploring the benefits of incorporating the arts into Literature classes. “Students replicate the form of a written text as closely as possible by translating it through the language of performance, dance, visual art, or music— before attempting any act of interpretation,” she said. “This process has shown to deepen overall understanding and appreciation of texts, especially texts that are considered esoteric.”

The department will also try to embody part of the school’s motto, “In Asia, for the World,” by incorporating different geographical and temporal periods of art into its curriculum.

“The historical and geographical planning part is simply this: we want people who specialise in the contemporary and the modern, and we also want people who specialise in the premodern,” Patke said. “As for the geographical dimension, we don’t want people who simply specialise in western or eastern art. We want art from all parts of the world.” Rosenberg said he hopes to model the Music Department based on this ideal. “I will strive to make the diversity and vitality of the music program reflect the diversity and vitality of the student body,” he said.

Yale-NUS already has an exceptional arts community, according to Buitelaar, and the addition of the Arts Department leaves it’s future looking bright. “Frankly it’s one of the best arts communities I’ve ever seen, and I mean ever,” she said. “The kind of community that supports each other, and when people have ideas no one shoots them down, they try to see how they’ll work, that’s amazing to me.”

DOES

FEATURE/SPORTS

IN DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH

YALE-NUS

PARTY?

column Kaushik Swaminathan photo Christopher Khew

story Kavya Gopal, Joyan Tan

A

ugust 6, 4.30PM: 30-40 sophomores gathered in the multi-purpose hall (MPH) for a school-organized talk on Navigating Social Spaces. For a “mandatory” session for all sophomores, attendance was painfully low. Students gathered in small groups in the almost-empty MPH and discussed alcohol consumption in serious voices. To the question, “What is the party culture in Yale-NUS?” a loud voice shouted, “There are no parties!”

August 15, 10.00PM: Loud EDM music blared in the MPH. Disco lights flashed in an otherwise dimly lit space. Alcohol flowed into one cup after another; too many to count. The exact attendance is unclear, but out of 270 students invited on the Frosh Mixer Facebook page, 141 ‘went’ and 6 ‘maybe’-ed.

While many students may echo the sentiment that ‘there are no parties’ in Yale-NUS, the Frosh Mixer tells a different story. Nicholas Carverhill ’17, who organized the Frosh Mixer with several other sophomores says, “Given the comments that I have received, I think that the Frosh Mixer was a resounding success.” If Facebook can be trusted, having 141 students out of a student population of 322 attend the Mixer is not to be underestimated.

As the Frosh Mixer got in full swing, a completely different ‘party scene’ was also on campus that night. In Common Lounge 1, the Chill Club organized an inclusive alternative to the traditional conception of a party for all students to hang out, play some music, or get a back massage. Dr. Jason Rosenberg, the Director of Student Music said, “I went in there and there were many people with ukuleles. It was very welcoming with a beautiful collection of people just playing music together.”

The Frosh Mixer and the Chill session were not mutually exclusive: “A lot of people came, either on their way to the Mixer or on the way back to sober up”, Carmen Denia ’17 noted.

The latest of events, the Social Night organized in DREAM as a bookend to Orientation, provides interesting insights into the party culture emerging amongst freshmen.

The night started out with full attendance, while the organizers announced the award winners. As the official event came to an end, and alcohol emerged, many freshmen chose to leave. Those underage or simply disinclined to drinking ended up passing their coupons to the half that remained. Eventually the population dwindled to around a fourth; this group, on average, consumed more than 5 drinks.

Janejira Jirundorn ’18 says, “Partying feels like the norm here. I definitely feel like part of

OPINION

Y Frosh Mixer organizer Nicholas Carverhill ‘17 (far left) with other students at the event.

photo Christopher Khew a minority who doesn’t drink at all. During my adventure trip, there were three litres of rice wine and vodka consumed amongst a group of 13 people in one night. Only two of us chose not to drink.”

So is partying truly the norm here? “The ‘party culture’ at Yale-NUS is certainly more docile than in North American or European schools,” Carverhill says. “That is not to say there are not a number of students who organize club outings, it’s just that the proportion of the students seems to be smaller.”

Why is the party culture in Yale-NUS more docile? Jared Yeo ’17 suggests that a key reason is our location. “We live in Singapore where we have access to clubs outside and can go out very easily. It’s not like New Haven, where we have to establish our own culture,” he comments. Another reason voiced during Navigating Social Spaces was that alcohol is simply too expensive in Singapore. Cost places an upper limit on alcohol consumption that does not facilitate excessive partying. We are still students, after all.

So the answer to our initial question seems to be, “Sometimes, but not much.” Is the lack of a party scene a problem? While some students may resent the ‘overly conservative’ culture, this is a situation that ensures choice.

Denia suggests, “There is a gradient of people who party. Some will never come for Chill Club; others will never step into a party. And then there are those who go for both.”

The availability of clubs in Singapore means that party-goers will not be deprived of their choice to party, while a docile party culture in Yale-NUS means that others will not be pressured into partying simply because everyone is doing it. No remains No. Yale-NUS College exists within Singapore’s borders. The culture in this land, to some extent, influences the culture in our college. We are more conservative than say, America. Those who come to Yale-NUS expecting a party culture like that of Yale should remember that while we are not NUS, we are also not Yale.

ale-NUS is an infant born from the womb of over four hundred years of collective academic excellence in Asia and the United States, and it is a child that often asks questions that adults don’t have answers to. In the three years since its inception, the school has redefined what it means to be a

BEACH GAMES story and photo Dave Chappell

O

n Saturday 16 August approximately 20 Yale-NUS freshmen and Sophomores, many still nursing hangovers from the night before, were roused from their beds in the early hours of the morning. The reason? The U Sport’s 2014 beach games.

Every year, teams from across Singapore and neighbouring countries descend on Sentosa beach for a day of sun, sea, sand and sweat. This year three Yale-NUS teams joined them, specifically to compete in the dodge ball tournament.

Easily the least experienced teams in the whole event—with only one training session under their belts—the odds were stacked against Yale-NUS. The three teams fought hard, but sadly were only able to win two of their games, one of which was against another Yale-NUS team. This resulted in them being knocked out in the first round. Nevertheless, the competitors still had a great deal of fun, with the early knockout providing an opportunity to relax on the beach and soak up the sun.

The players remain optimistic about future dodgeball competitions and are confident that they will perform better in upcoming tournaments.

Yale-NUS students at the U Sport’s beach games.

26 Aug, 2014 | 3

liberal arts institution and it has done so on the shoulders of giants, borrowing from the infrastructural establishments of NUS and the interdisciplinary academia of both Yale and NUS, all the while carving a unique identity for itself independent of the two schools. As a microcosm of the entire world, far more than either one of our parent universities, Yale-NUS is founded, built, and run by a community truly embodying eclecticism and as a consequence, every individual here has a different perspective on how the school is run and what its future should look like. As one of the many mediums to express our angst or approval, student publications have a responsibility to adhere to the principles of journalism and publish even the most incendiary of materials, provided there is merit for it.

There remains a common misconception that PANOPT, the first student publication on campus, is a newsletter monitored by the administration of our school; this is no longer the case. As an independent student publication, it has the authority - and responsibility - to publish any material that informs the student population of a concerned viewpoint, regardless of whether a significant majority disagrees with it. In fact, that is what makes our school so special. The vision and mission statements (specifically from the faculty’s point of view) explicitly acknowledge the importance of freedom of expression, why there can be “no questions that cannot be asked, no answers that cannot be discussed and debated.”

Student publications, much like PANOPT, are in a position of power to deliver news in a large-scale and influential manner, and in doing

so, every publication acts as an independent monitor of power. In exploring views on the school administration, its policies, and general conflicts on campus, PANOPT provides the community with a reliable and diverse position on those whose power and actions affect us most. The active participation of our student body in the evolution of our academic, fine arts, and athletic departments signals that nobody here is apathetic and will let change take over them unquestioningly. Along this long and convoluted road to defining the identity of our institution will be roadblocks that divide us, and in such a time, a student publication’s loyalty is first and foremost to its community. While news organizations and publications represent many constituencies, be it a corporation or college administration, the journalists in said organizations must maintain an allegiance to the community and the larger public interest if they are to provide the news without fear or favor.

Perhaps what is most obviously being forgotten in the entire conversation on independent publications and their right to comprehensive and proportional reporting is that the reader is allowed, and often, even encouraged to disagree with the content that is being put forth. But when it is done in a disrespectful and insincere way, not only is it shameful on the very concepts of liberty and freedom of expression our community so proudly attempts to embody, but it is also misrepresentative of the character of our cohort. “If liberty means anything at all,” as George Orwell says, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

LETTER TO THE EDITORS The PANOPT editors have done an excellent public service in publishing Mr. Richardson’s article. The controversies arising from its frank statements highlight the fact that the author has succeeded as a journalist of a true STUDENT publication by feeling the pulse of our community and diagnosing an issue that lies at its very heart. This gives us the opportunity to engage in an respectful debate, not one cloaked by anonymity. In honour of our liberal arts education, we must value the eccentric opinion of any individual as a means of continuously questioning our own beliefs.

4 | 26 Aug, 2014

To this end, I would like to introduce an even more radical idea than simply triumphing in the IFGs to remind NUS of our independence: as a collective, we have the power to make an unmistakable statement by boycotting the IFGs. As much pleasure as participation would give us from a sportsman’s perspective, it triggers off a chain of tacit consent to being considered a NUS faculty. We can quell this problem especially in the field of sports, where our “institutional identity” is shaped most transparently. To fully achieve our aspirations as a unique, trailblazing community, we must

safeguard our institution in full independence.

Today, Yale-NUS is in those most critical first stages, about which Tocqueville writes: “Peoples always bear some marks of their origin. Circumstances of birth and growth affect all the rest of their careers”. In this sense, our affiliation with NUS and its distinct–old– structures must not be “parental” if we want to develop our very own character and culture.

We should regard NUS as an architect of our school’s foundations, who now hands down proprietorship to us, the staff and students of Yale-NUS. —Aaron Kurzak ‘17