NEWS
VOL. 2, ISSUE 6
TUESDAY, 11 NOVEMBER 2014
MONEY TALKS
YALE-NUS, SINGAPORE
IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH
story Yonatan Gazit and May Tay photo Christopher Khew
T FinAnalyse finalists present to the judges.
story David Chappell | photo Pareen Chaudhari
O
n Wednesday, 5 Nov. 2014, looking like a scene from Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street (albeit minus the obscenities) the Investment Mastermind’s FinAnalyse final got underway. Over the course of the night, the five FinAnalyse finalists would be fighting it out to be declared the winner of the competition and Yale-NUS College’s most financially trustworthy. The title was ultimately won by Team UOB, which consisted of Alan Lo ’17, Manas Punhani ’17 and Maria Ivanenko ’17, with Team Signpost coming runner-up. As the culmination of an entire semester of financial training, the finalists were required to impress a panel of distinguished judges with a 13 minute presentation on their chosen firm, as well as field five minutes of questioning. The panel was composed of three judges: Victor Chng, an equity investor and co-author of “Value Investing in Growth Companies,” Maxwell Robinson, an associate and Principia Management, and Dean of International and Professional Experience Anastasia T Vrachnos, who “invests in students.” Up for grabs were $300 worth of vouchers, a number of certificates and dinner with the distinguished panel of judges, as well as invitations to Victor Chng’s talk on value investing. During the final, five companies were put under the scrutiny of the “masterminds,” as they are called. UOB, Tiger Airline, Cosmos Steel, Signpost and Hyflux were all compared with their competitors, had their sectors examined and their business decisions called into question. Once all that was done, the
teams concluded on the business’s prospects, before recommending a sell or buy. This, however, was only the end of a twomonth competition. At the beginning of October, a call was put out for masterminds to form teams of 2-4 to collaborate, learn, analyse and pitch, as the posters put it. Initially, all participating teams were required to present a two page brief of a company of their choosing, at which point five teams were shortlisted to take part in the final. FinAnalyse evolved from humble beginnings but its organizers had lofty ambitions. Originally devised as a small scale competition, by the founders of the Investor Masterminds, as a means to test their skills, the contest has now expanded to a formalised competition designed to promote investment skills. Payal Lal ’17, one of the organisers, commented that the competition’s primary focus is giving “participants exposure to analysing companies”—a skill that Lal, and her fellow masterminds, believe is important to develop for handling money in later life. Speaking at the event, Elson Ong ’17 stated that the competition had been given a broader scope so that competitors did not have to specialise in one area of finance, evolving substantially from the original idea. However, the Investment Mastermind Team is not done there. According to Lal ’17, FinAnalyse 2014 was “a pilot round for a bigger competition.” She hopes that next year’s FinAnalyse contest will be organised on a larger scale, across NUS.
he student health insurance covering all Yale-NUS College students “provides very affordable top-notch medical care,” according to the admissions website, and ensures basic medical bills are covered in the case of accidents and illnesses. YaleNUS students share the same student health insurance as NUS students. Alongside enjoying its benefits, however, students generally appear to have had mixed experiences with the insurance, including being confused about the extent of coverage and incurring unexpected health care costs for some. Simonas Bartulis ’18 was seeking reimbursement for a medical referral to a specialist at National University Hospital (NUH). According to the University Health Centre (UHC) website, students must get a referral from a UHC physician in order to see a specialist at an approved hospital, the full list of which can be found on the website. The website states that any other visit to a hospital that is not an emergency is “strictly nonreimbursable.” Seeking reimbursement in itself is a difficult task, according to Bartulis, “because they only give you four hours in the week when you can go to the UHC and talk to the insurance officials, which is I think from 10-12 on Wednesdays and Thursdays,” he said. Despite acting according to the insurance policy’s guidelines, Bartulis said that he ended up not getting reimbursed. “I had to give them all the documents which included the ... note from the doctor that I was sent to a doctor from the UHC, but [the appointment] got changed last minute because a new opening opened up so I could see the doctor earlier,” he said. “This ... should have been in compliance with what the insurance company takes as ok, but ... I never got the money back.” Erika Shibuya ’17, on the other hand, managed to successfully claim about 55% of the medical expenses she incurred when she contracted Dengue fever a few weeks ago. This was within two weeks of submitting all her receipts to the UHC office. The process was “relatively smooth, [although] it was confusing because the NUH told me to go through a much more elaborate process of mailing my receipts somewhere ... [while] when I called
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NEWS/FEATURE UHC they said just pass the receipts to them … [and] it went fine,” she said. Students who intend to get reimbursed for treatment in the NUH Accident and Emergency (A&E) department must make sure they first obtain a referral from the UHC. Only in emergency cases can students go straight to NUH and be reimbursed for the treatment received. Even so, this has to be during offhours for the clinic, and such reimbursement can only be made up to twice a year, according to the UHC website. If the A&E case requires a referral to an outside hospital, the entire costs may not be covered by the insurance. According to the UHC website, only up to $50 worth of the costs will be covered in the latter case. The NUH website states that a typical A&E consultation fee is $108. Nowhere in the online sources the reporters consulted is a definition of an emergency given. That said, students may not have to be deterred from having to get referrals from the UHC. According to Dr. Patrick Tan, the UHC director, referrals can be written very quickly for students if needed, although if students are in very serious conditions they can head for the hospital directly. UHC doctors review the latter cases individually to determine if reimbursement should be given. Otherwise, the student must pay the full charges incurred during that hospital visit. The reimbursement amount differs for international and local students in some cases. International students have additional coverage under the Group Hospitalization & Surgical Insurance (GHSI), which covers up to $30,000 per year for eligible hospitalization and surgical expenses. Local students are not covered by the GHSI if they are hospitalized. Instead, they are insured up to $50 for daily room and board, $500 for a surgeon’s fees, and $23 for daily treatment among other fees covered by their insurance. One reason why local students
get less coverage compared to international students could be because many already have existing external health insurance plans. Certain treatments are not covered under the student health insurance. These include preventative treatments such as vaccines, medical check-ups, and Sexually Transmitted Disease treatments. The Yale-NUS admissions page appears to include dental treatments in the health insurance when it states that “There are also dental services and UHC’s specialty clinics on-campus” in a FAQ on health insurance. Dental care, however, is also listed in the exclusion policy, the exception being “accidental injury to natural sound teeth. It is unclear if the college will make any revisions to the student health insurance. According to Chris O’Connell, student programs manager, “The Yale-NUS administration is aware of student concerns and … trying to identify what the best course of action is to provide affordable, effective coverage.” Earlier this year, Dean’s Fellows and Vice Rectors participated in several training sessions regarding UHC services, supporting students with health concerns, and mental health services, according to O’Connell. The Dean of Students Office website was also recently updated with more information on health insurance. In the event of health incidents or emergencies, students are urged to reach out to the Dean’s Fellows or contact their respective Vice Rectors. When asked about health insurance policies in other universities, O’Connell replied that they vary across institutions, although many require some form of coverage for students. “Some universities require students to enrol in the university-sponsored plans while [others] allow you to waive that coverage if you have external coverage. The inclusion of dental, vision, and mental health services really vary – some institutions include them with the health
The University Health Centre is available to all Yale-NUS students.
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insurance plan … [some] offer them as optional “add-ons”, while other universities don’t offer them at all,” he said. The health insurance plan that covers YaleNUS students does not apply to overseas travel during or out of the school term, but the college ensures that all students participating in College-organized international travel, such as Week 7 trips, are equipped with supplemental travel insurance. In the meantime, Bartulis worries that he may have to make tough decisions due to financial constraints. “I have to put my own health at risk ... maybe it is not worth pursuing that appointment because I don’t know if I’ll get any [reimbursement] or when.”
DOUBLE DEGREE WITH LAW:
IS TWO BETTER
THAN ONE? story Kavya Gopal photo Christopher Khew
A
Liberal Arts education is often characterized as a safe haven for those with a hazy idea of their major. With two years before making the nail-biting, sweatinducing, life-defining decision, many students do not begin seriously making a choice till their sophomore year. But some students at Yale-NUS never had this luxury of time — meet the Double Degree with law Program students. By virtue of knowing exactly what they are majoring in the moment they set foot on campus, DDP students have a very different experience from most at Yale-NUS. Currently, 22 students are enrolled in the program — nine sophomores and 13 freshmen class. It is not until the second year of the program that students take multiple law courses at NUS. As such, this semester was the first chance for the sophomore DDP students to understand what their legal education entails. So far the experience has helped students step out of the Yale-NUS bubble . Ong Chee Yeow ’18 said, “Taking NUS law courses and going out of campus gives us a good chance to meet new people and professors and take courses outside the ones offered here”. However, as with any startup, there are bound to be teething issues. One resounding sentiment is the lack of opportunities to take Yale-NUS electives. Natasha Sim ’18 said, “The point of coming to Yale-NUS isn’t so much to do Foundations of Science but do stuff I’m really interested in outside of law. For Law we really need all the modules, but do we really need so many common curriculum courses?” The emphasis on taking the common curriculum courses also reduces the ability of DDP students to pursue minors. Because DDP students only have five Yale-NUS electives but full-time Yale-NUS students have 20, DDP
FEATURE/OPINION
The NUS Law campus is located in Bukit Timah.
students must dedicate all their electives to a single discipline in order to have a minor. Zhiwen Yap ’18 said “It kind of defeats the purpose of a liberal arts education. I wish there was a way to eliminate common curriculum courses so we could have more electives.” Another structural issue relates to the timetabling of modules. Even though the syllabus has been tweaked for second class to have no law modules in their first year, there are further talks of restructuring. Law modules that should be studied simultaneously in a semester (such as Tort and Contract and Legal Analysis), are taken separately by DDP students, resulting in comprehension problems. Furthermore, study abroad opportunities are limited to the fourth year for DDP students. Yap added, “It’s kind of funny because most of my peers will be doing their semesters abroad in year 3. And when they’re back I’ll be going.” The crisis of identity is only amplified as a DDP student. While highly integrated into the Yale-NUS community through the residential program and first year Yale-NUS only classes, there is a slight disconnect that exists with the law students. Ong said, “The law students have a very different culture from Yale-NUS as they gather in seminar rooms to discuss readings, assignments and cases.” He added, “There’s a drawback being in a program where you’re half here and half there. Splitting the attention between the different courses means we don’t really get the full experience of either of them.” However, Yap pointed out that having the foundation year to build relationships at YNC was important. She added, “I don’t really lose contact with people here. Most people don’t see everyone in classes anymore, so most interaction is mostly during residential living at nights when I’m back on campus.” Despite questions of identity, DDP students have one another to fall back on. Because they share classes, bus journeys, and a unique set of problems, the DDP students are a very closeknit community. Yap said, “The joke is that we’ll get an apartment and live together in our fifth year when we are not guaranteed housing.” At Yale-NUS there is a lot of uncertainty, but even more so with the DDP. The program is an exciting venture that has the potential to create a super breed of liberal arts lawyers.However, it
runs the risk of being underwhelming if it does not treat seriously the feedback it receives from the pioneering batches.
HEALTH MATTERS AND INSURANCE guest column Payal Lal
I
t was sunny and it was raining, which made the day even worse than it had already been. I was just outside the UHC, walking towards the Yusof Ishak House to search for an ATM.I had just been diagnosed with chickenpox and didn’t have enough cash to pay for $60 worth of medication. As I searched for an ATM, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was passing on my infection to anyone around me. The doctor had made it clear that my condition was very contagious and had been so for the past couple of days. “Oh dear, oh dear” she exclaimed, when I told her that I live in a dorm and am an international student. I waited for her to say something more and perhaps give me a solution, but she said nothing and continued to type an email to inform the administration that I had chickenpox. I asked her “What can I do to prevent spreading the infection?” “Just stay in your room for the next two weeks” “What about the bathrooms?” “Oh dear, oh dear!” At this point, I figured that I’d have to find a solution by myself. I texted my suite mates to check if they were immune to chickenpox. Luckily, most of them were, and the one who wasn’t agreed to use the other toilet on the floor for the next few weeks. One can only wonder how the situation would have played out if I had a roommate, much like international students do living at PGP, an NUS student dorm. When I finally found an ATM, withdrew cash, and bought my medicines, I wondered if I should walk back. I had taken a crowded NUS bus from university town to the UHC. But now that I knew I was infectious, I felt bad taking the NUS bus. I wasn’t quite sure
how chickenpox was spread. The doctor had not been too clear. But I knew I was ‘highly infectious’ so I tried avoiding contact with people as much as I could. I could feel my body temperature rising and didn’t think I had it in me to walk back in this strange weather. So I ended up taking one of the public buses instead, which was far less crowded than the NUS bus. Things fell into place once I got back to RC4. My suite mates and friends regularly brought me meals to my room. I skyped a few of my classes, and my professors were very understanding. The building management gave me two weeks of free air con credit so that I wasn’t uncomfortable. I told my worried mother that I was more pampered here at YaleNUS than I ever was at home. Luckily, my chickenpox was mild and no one got infected. But I continued to wonder how things would have worked out had I not been so lucky. What if my suite mates had not been immune? It’s very possible that chickenpox would have spread like the common flu does during the peak stress week. Moreover, chickenpox in adults can affect the brain or cause pneumonia. In such extreme cases, I would have to go back to the UHC, as the doctor at the UHC told me, potentially infecting several people on the way. Contagious diseases come about all the time and I question our current infrastructure to battle them. Fortunately, this isn’t an unsolvable problem. Something as simple as a medical telephone service coupled with medicine delivery to the doorstep could make a tangible difference. If I didn’t have to visit the UHC and could have just been diagnosed over a phone call or video conference, fewer or no people would have come in contact with me as I made my way to see the doctor. A medicine delivery system could facilitate the delivery of medication to the doorstep in exceptional cases wherein students infected with a highly contagious disease aren’t in a position to go to the UHC . Such a system would also play a great role in the continued availability of a doctor after having been diagnosed. From my own experience, I had several questions during the course of my illness and had to depend on my doctor in India to answer those questions, since the UHC currently does not provide a direct communication channel with doctors or nurses. Another solution is to build more facilities and provide quarantine rooms. While I was lucky to not infect any one of my suitemates, shared spaces such as toilets make it difficult to avoid such infections and maintain strict quarantine. Having said that, Yale-NUS does not have the infrastructure to counteract all the loopholes of NUS’ Health Care policy and it is important for the administration to take note of this concern that affects and will continue affecting our community.
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OPINION
SAFE HAVEN: NOT YOUR CALL
guest column Nicholas Carverhill | photo from the Sultan Knish blog
M
y moral sensibilities are profoundly influenced by the recognition that I live a deeply privileged life. As a white, heterosexual, cis-gendered male, I have never had the core of my sense of self questioned or challenged as abnormal, deviant, or, at worse, abominable. The appropriate response to the column published in last week’s issue (“Why ‘safe,’ ‘inclusive,’ and ‘community’ should not be seen in the same sentence”) ought to be intense self-reflection. Many of us benefit from the same inconspicuous, yet profoundly real, privileges that I do, and we should be cognizant of that truth. That realization would likely reverse much of the crass rhetoric that was published in defence of “intolerant” speech. To say that people are “too easily offended” flippantly misses the most important point – that often those who are guilty of producing offensive speech have no capacity to empathize with those whom their speech denigrates. The column confuses the right to speak with the right to be immune to intense condemnation. It is unacceptable for posters to be removed; it is equally unacceptable to say that one is being censored if their speech is broadly condemned for being bigoted and intolerant. That person may choose to reply and defend their opinions; however, if they make the choice to then self-censor in the future, so be it. I am often told that this reeks of moral absolutism and liberal condescension, because the way that intolerant speech is condemned is in a tone that implies superiority. There is a subtle, but meaningful, difference between making arguments that appeal to morality, and arguing from a moral high ground. The former is a rational and important process that questions the very essence of whatever is at stake; the latter is a perspective that a listener may adopt. As I noted on a Facebook thread on the topic, “the assumption that my opinions are impervious to change is merely that, an assumption. My opinions change all the
time, and are refined by conversations and encounters every day. […] Simply because I seem resolute about my defense of pluralism and the protection of marginalized groups from derisive speech is merely the product of me being given reasons why that is something worth defending. If someone were to make a compelling moral argument about why people and communities are better off without backlash against bigoted speech, I would likely pivot my worldview on the subject.” There is a deeper balance that must be struck here though. Those who are often in a position to speak and spew regressive rhetoric are often also the ones that are in my position – absent any serious barriers to their self-actualization. It is thus far too easy for a person in this privileged position to claim that they have an inalienable, but hopelessly nebulous, right to freedom of speech. It comes at the expense of the dignity of others; its opportunity cost is the sense of safety of other human beings; and its benefit is often never
LETTER TO THE EDITORS
articulated. If you claim an absolute right to free speech, but choose to broadcast an opinion that is materially and morally damaging to a community, expect to be called out for what it often is: bigoted, discriminatory, and worthy of moral condemnation. If the consequence of this response to intolerant speech is silence, I am happy to defend that trade-off so long as I never actually prevent you from speaking or replying. A much more nuanced analysis of freedom of speech reveals that while those who are not marginalized are indeed free to express themselves to a great extent, those who are marginalized are often unable to express themselves to same extent as a consequence of their alienation. In this respect, it is not enough to say that everyone deserves absolute freedom of speech because one group is structurally freer than the other, and actively contributes to that asymmetry through their speech. My responses to what I view as intolerant speech, as well as what I know is intolerant speech (based on the consequences it has on others), will always be couched in morally stern language. My linguistic choices serve merely as an analogue to the damage that is done to our peers’ dignity and as a representation of the moral severity of the speech to which I am responding. The arguments that my words construct, though, are exactly that, arguments; they appeal to moral or practical considerations, and are not dismissive of the crux of the issue. We should constantly strive to create communities that are as safe and inclusive as possible because a consideration for the wellbeing of others is a responsibility that we bear; especially for those of us who won the lottery of birth and thus have never felt unsafe or excluded. Discriminatory speech detracts from that objective, and no one has the unilateral right to determine whether their speech should stand uncontested when it marginalizes others and robs a community of its collective dignity.
Send your letter to the editors (maximum word count 200) to yncpanopt@gmail.com by 5 P.M. on Friday for the chance to have it published here next week.
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