CLOCKWORK/NEWS
Vol. 4, Issue 16 Wednesday, March 8, 2016 Yale-NUS College, Singapore www.theoctant.org
NEWS Student Government Elections: Why the Apathy?
OPINION On Justice Scalia: What He Stood For Moving Our Benchmark A Personal Account
OPINION What is Our Time Here For? The Meaning of Yale-NUS College and the liberal Arts
STUDENT GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS:
WHY THE APATHY?
Welcome back to Hell… week: We hope you all came back from the mid-term break refreshed… we certainly did (check out our website theoctant.org to see our brand new makeover). Now it’s back to the grind, with internship applications and assignments due. Good luck! Lord of the Flies: Is your suite bathroom quickly turning into a fly graveyard? We hear that pouring hot water down the drain only control the numbers. Try using drain clearing acid as well? On another note, get hyped for Aside’s performance of Lord of the Flies!
Story by Elaine Li, News Editor Picture credit to Eduardo Lage Otero
n the most recent Student Government elections, despite repeated deadline extensions, 112 out of 126 nominees turned down their nomination. Students interviewed suggest the general disinterest level in the Student Government was the result of an unwillingness to commit, problems caused by size of the student body and ambivalence towards the Student Government’s role. The Constitution called for fairness and transparency in the elections process. As a result, the newly formed elections committee utilized an open and anonymous nomination system, and actively reached out to the student population. Nevertheless, few students seemed to be actively engaged in the elections. Students list various reasons for rejecting their nominations. “I didn’t even know I was nominated … because I didn’t follow [the elections],” Zhu Fangchen ’19 said. Others chose to ignore it. Cliona Yong ’18, said she chose to ignore her nomination because “I know someone did it to play a joke on me.” Time commitment seems to be a prevalent issue for many nominees who chose not to run. Saza Faradilla ’18 said that she wouldn’t be able to give the Student Sovernment the dedication it deserved due to her existing commitments.
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“I have too much on my plate this semester, but I really appreciate those who are devoting their time and energy to serve the community,” Anne Caroline (Kei) Franklin ’-17 said. Others expressed concern about their own leadership potential and ability to serve the school. “I’d much rather play a passive role than one that is actively inadequate,” Vivyan Yeo ’19 said. Elizabeth Heng‘18, who likewise rejected her nomination, said she felt that the Student Government was driven mainly by a select group of students. The rest of the community is passively in support but not passionate enough to contribute their own efforts, she said. The size of the student body and the platform each student is given seems to play a large role in students’ ambivalence towards the Student Government. Charis Anne Lim ’19, who voted in the elections, said that “since any student in Yale-NUS has so much power in their hands already, it … negates the existence of a government to do things we can do for ourselves.” Similarly, Franklin said that because students “can walk up to almost any member of the faculty or administration to request a personal meeting, a representative body like
Passing through: Now we know that, in the grand-scheme of things, closing the passageway connecting the Elm and Saga dining halls is a relatively minor issue… That said, this is the worst idea in the history of ever! Seriously though, it’s a pain in all the wrong places to have to walk around. Are we not a community of learning, where students in both Saga and Elm can eat together and share ideas with ease? Pretty please, reopen the passageway. Art Imitates Life: Speaking of closed doors, Dave Lim ‘19 & Janel Ang ‘17 have organised a unique art exhibition that seeks to explore residential life at Yale-NUS, Behind Closed Doors. Be there on 10 March at 6 pm at Saga sky garden level 4 for the opening night. You can also explore the exhibition on 11 and 12 April at Saga 05-101. Opening Up: The Octant would like to extend a heartfelt welcome to the visitors on campus for upcoming open day, on 12 march. We hope you like what you see. Consider joining The Octant? Second time’s a charm?: Undaunted by the failure to ratify the East/West Dragon, the Student Government has set to work on having a second attempt at creating and ratifying a Yale-NUS mascot. They’re on a very tight schedule so submit your mascot ideas at tinyurl.com/yncmascot.
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Student Government can seem obsolete.” Even after the student body size increased, the interest and engagement level was lower, according to Ami Firdaus ’17, co-chair of the electoral committee. A lack of competition may also discourage candidates from running, Vincent Lee ’19 said. “I feel like if some students feel that there is no fight, it might not be worth it to run [for student council].” The existence of leadership groups and committees calls to question the necessity for an umbrella organization like the Student Government. “I never had the feeling that we need a body of people to speak on our behalf because whenever there was a need for communication with the [administrators], it could easily be achieved by individuals or individual groups,” said Linh Nguyen ’17, a nominee who turned down her nomination. Of the 14 students who were voted into office, two turned down their position before the Student Government’s inauguration. Thaddeus Cochrane ’19, said: “I feel that the Student Government doesn’t represent the views of the student body, and for me to accept a position on the
student council without at least a 50% majority would be in conflict with my goals for reforming the Student Government.” He also expressed concern at the disparity between respect for the Student Government at Yale-NUS and elsewhere. “Where Student Government is a meaningful and rewarding extracurricular at many other colleges, [Yale-NUS] students see it as a chore,” he said. Firdaus similarly feels that the interest level and engagement in Student Government at our school is significantly lower than in other institutions, such as the National University of Singapore (NUS). “There is a lot more excitement and interest towards the NUSSU [NUS Students’ Union] ]elections as compared to our own.” He attributed this to more politicking and larger visibility in a large university. On ways of resolving the problems Student Government faces, students suggest that promoting awareness of the organization as a centralizing force as well as giving the College the time to grow and mature will help to increase interest and engagement. Yale-NUS College ratified the new Yale-NUS College Student Government Constitution on the 25th and 26th of Nov. 2015.
ON JUSTICE SCALIA
Picture credit to Flickr User Stephen Masker
n Tuesday Jan 28., two and a half weeks before his eventual death, Antonin Scalia, then Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, visited the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Law to give a talk on legal interpretation. In this piece, three Yale-NUS College attendees of the talk reflect on Justice Scalia and his legacy.
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WHAT HE STOOD FOR Collumn by Patrick Wu (patrick.wu001@gmail.com) Guest Collunist
ustice Scalia espoused opinions that reignited debates central to the function and fate of American law. Following his death, a flood of commentators rushed to predict his eventual legacy. Some, indeed, have questioned whether he will have one. But while the specifics of Scalia’s influence remain fraught with uncertainty, there is no doubt that he has left an indelible impact on the law. His opinions and his person will be remembered—sometimes fondly, sometimes harshly, but always vividly. I wish to sketch out, in brief, some of those opinions. It is easy to misunderstand Scalia’s position. For American news networks, Scalia is a “conservative” Justice or an “originalist.” These labels, ripped from other contexts, can mislead. And part of the blame may lie with Scalia; legal commentators have been quick to point out instances where his judicial decisions diverge from his avowed beliefs. Nonetheless, Scalia has been clear, in interviews and in writing, about his avowed principles. For Justice Scalia, the interpretation
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of the US Constitution turns on the original meaning of the text. Unlike other “originalists”, Scalia cared little about what the Founding Fathers may have intended. What matters is what was actually passed into law, or the text of the statute. And in interpreting that statute, he looked to its original meaning, which is determined by how a normal English speaker of that time would read the statute. This is why Scalia’s opinions sometimes included references to dictionaries or other publications from earlier centuries. These documents are a crucial source of insight into what words would’ve meant in those times. Whether you agree or not with this view (see A Matter of Interpretation for good arguments for and against), there is no doubt that it has a certain intuitive appeal. That laws, once made, mean something, and that judges are not free to change that meaning. But Scalia certainly wasn’t the first to endorse this legal philosophy. Rather, Scalia’s greatest contribution was to defend this view vigorously, in both theory and practice, showing how originalism could lead to novel, persuasive, and important legal conclusions. To give just one important consequence of Scalia’s work, legal scholars have largely stopped sifting through Congressional records to uncover some ephemeral “legislative intent.” We recognize, now, that what matters is the text of the law, and not some politicians’ personal interpretations. Throughout his life, Justice Scalia was bombastic, sharp, and sometimes biting. Critics called him acrid; fans hailed him as a hero. It is consequently unsurprising to hear of the controversy surrounding his death. But there is no doubt that for anyone invested in questions of law and legal theory, he was an important voice from the bench. His dissents were stinging; his opinions shaped the legal landscape. His death will be remembered.
MOVING OUR BENCHMARK Collumn by Cheryl Cosslett (cherylnazik@gmail.com) Guest Collunist
attended the talk to understand how “legal interpretation” in the US could be contextualized in Singapore. Having seen multiple instances where the perspective on legal interpretation of the Singaporean government was similar to Scalia’s, I also wanted to see how I could draw parallel between the legal and social challenges faced in the US and those faced in Singapore. Despite my huge disagreements with his “originalism”, Scalia managed to make me see the role of the judiciary and law in a different
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light. In the talk, no longer were issues simply categorized as “right” or “left and “liberal” or “conservative”; they for a moment became both personal and multifaceted. From gun control to death penalty and gay marriage, Scalia delivered sound, unanticipated arguments (albeit controversial and provoking) at least for a person coming from an outsider perspective (non-US citizen). His death has truly affected my experience in retrospect. First of all, I regret how politicized it is at the moment, with discussion on the appointment of the next justice overshadowing his past role. Second of all, and most importantly, it has made me realize how central the US is to my own academic experience and my social experience at YaleNUS—and I believe it is not always a good thing. Not only did I fail to draw any link between his arguments and Singapore, I also question why I wanted to draw any link between the US and Singapore at all. It’s as if I put the US justice system as the ideal for justice systems everywhere. The discussion I have had since his talk (and increasingly since his death) also reminds me of the emotional and intellectual gravity that just the idea of the US supreme court has on a lot of students at Yale-NUS. While I still remember my American friends enthusiastically walking me through tens of US supreme court cases during our orientation trip, nobody—including me—has really been interested in the Singapore Supreme Court, or any other legal systems in Southeast Asia. Similarly, a number of electives I have taken are primarily focused on case-studies, issues, and examples from the US. Understandably, information from the US and opportunities such as this talk are more accessible. But if being at Yale-NUS means having more understanding of Asia, perhaps we can start by paying more attention to the region in which we are located. In fact, Scalia was impactful, even as a dissenting voice, not merely because he had more intellectual superiority or legal qualifications, but because of how well he knew the history and context of both the constitution and the United States as a society.
experienced before. I wanted to bring him up with everybody, if only to say that forces don’t die every night. It was an almost instantaneous nostalgia. It has been weeks now. I don’t have any lesson for Yale-NUS about the inevitability of death or the ability to get along with those who disagree with you. Instead, I’ve been thinking about Scalia’s fight. Many times, he knew his opponent was going to win, but he also knew who he was fighting for and that propelled him on. I do think his opinions led to repressive environments. I do think his statements veered too much towards flippancy. But I also think if we students can find just some part of his spirit—can fight with no expectation of support— we’ll be much better for it. Many of us will probably be fighting ‘against’ Scalia, but we’ll be doing what we love in a very similar way. And if we’re lucky, we can do it with family, friends, and fulfillment till we’re 79, too. The views expressed here are the author’s own. The Octant welcomes all voices in the community. Email submissions to: yncoctant@gmail.com
A PERSONAL ACCOUNT
Collumn by Alex Meyer (meyer.alexander.john@gmail.com) Guest Collunist
eeing Scalia was my first experience being starstruck. Not that I fainted or anything, but it was the first time I could recall counting the number of feet someone was from me so I could refer to the number later. I had watched interviews of him, read his opinions with laughing, frustrated eyes, and even featured him in a song I made from the audio of a Supreme Court hearing. He was a force, I knew, and it wasn’t often a force stepped seven feet from me. Seeing a force came with its surprises, though. Scalia was much older than his opinions showed. He walked with a shuffle, and his face seemed to droop even more than in the flat PBS videos. He also surprised me by being exactly how I thought he’d be. Unapologetically, he sent snarky replies to nearly every question, even those from the head of the law program. When he was asked why he wrote dissenting opinions at all, he said he knew it was a lost cause, but that it was just for those law students hungering for reason. When the secondary school student to my left asked about the wage gap between women and men, Scalia did not falter: if you want to fix it, he said, make a law to fix it. You can predict Scalia answers after a while, and I anticipated that one with pity. When I heard Scalia died a little over two weeks later, I didn’t know how to take it. He had looked old, but he still had had ‘fight’; he fended off a twelve-year-old, after all. It didn’t seem possible for someone with that sort of conviction to die. His passing was thus another first of mine: my first time feeling like I was part of history. I had a vague sense that I had witnessed the end of something important, and the start of something else important. It wasn’t well thought out, nor particularly astute, but it colored his death in a way I had never
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Picture credit to Mx D Dangaran
EDITORIAL TEAM Editor-in-chief Spandana Bhattacharya Managing Editor Dave Chappell Co-News Editor Chan Li Ting Co-News Editor Elaine Li Co-Opinion Editor Justin Ong Co-Opinion Editor Annie Wang Ting Fang Co-Features Editor Yip Jie Ying Co-Features Editor Nicholas Lua Co-Arts Editor David Chia Co-Arts Editor Tan Jia Hui Copy Chief Rebecka Lindeberg DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of The Octant. Questions can be directed to yncoctant@gmail.com
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WHAT IS OUR TIME HERE FOR? THE MEANING OF YALE-NUS COLLEGE AND THE LIBERAL ARTS
Collumn by Michael Moore-Jones, Guest Columnist Photo by Public Affairs
his semester at Yale University I’m taking a class called Successful Global Leadership with New York Times columnist and author David Brooks. In class David frequently refers to what he calls “resume virtues” and “eulogy virtues”. As he described them in his most recent book, “The resume virtues are the ones you list on your resume, the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They’re the virtues that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being—whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed”. It struck me that how we think about these two virtues will to a large extent determine the way we approach our time at college—the major and classes we choose, how we think about grades, and which student organisations we choose to commit to. Not only that: the way that Yale-NUS College, or any institution for that matter, thinks about these two virtues will determine how it views its mission, and how it educates generations of students after us. Daily life, with its classes, meeting and events, loomed over by exams and papers, can make it all too easy to forget why we are here in the first place. I think that is true not only for us students, but also for faculty and college leadership. The resume virtues are ever-present in discourse, to the extent that it can be hard to realise there is anything else. As David describes, “Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.” Juniors are in the midst of applying for penultimate year internships: the Centre for International and Professional Experience (CIPE) and our advisers are stressing the things we need to do to land our desired internship, to in turn get the job we want after graduation. The major and classes we choose, the student organizations we join, and the amount of effort we decide to put into different aspects of student life—I would be disingenuous
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not to admit that my decisions are at least in part determined by how these things may appear on my resume. And the resume virtues are inculcated in us from the top, by our CIPE and major advisers, some of our professors, and even by the thought that Yale-NUS’ long-term impact depends on our own post-graduation professional success. I think that if we fall into the trap of viewing this institution as a unique fast-track to impressive resume virtues then we will have missed an incredible opportunity to shape our own lives, and to “redefine liberal arts and science education for a complex, interconnected world.” The question asked by Yale-NUS’ inaugural curriculum committee was “What must a young person learn in order to lead a responsible life in this century?” It was not, let’s be clear, “What must a young person learn in order to get their desired job?” The liberal arts and sciences are not a unique selling point for a resume, or a euphemism for an elite college. They are about having freedom—four years of freedom, in our case—to learn about ourselves and our own minds so that we can approach everything else we do in life with solid foundations, with “inner character”. I’ve come to think that college is, at its core, about beginning to build a wide and sturdy foundation of eulogy virtues, upon which we can build our external and professional lives. I learned this the risky way. With just over a year left before graduating from high school, I left to work at a technology company. I returned not long after, once I’d learned what education seemed to really be about. It took leaving school to show me that there was a difference between “an education” and “becoming educated”, to highlight the parts of school that seemed fundamentally meaningful, and to show me why it was worth devoting four years to college. To put it another way, in the words of Bill Deresiewicz, who visited Yale-NUS earlier this semester: “College helps to furnish the tools with which to undertake that work of self-discovery... There’s nothing “academic” about it.” I am not saying that resume virtues are unimportant; they are. But I believe we are here for something more than that, and that the decisions we make during college should be about those larger ideals first, resumes second. Resumes can be built upon a sturdy understanding of yourself, but I don’t think the reverse is true. I’m fearful that in the relentless focus on how our time at college will serve our resumes and our careers we will end up wasting the chance to expand our opportunities, and to create the foundations for meaningful lives. Not only that, but I’m fearful that Yale-NUS will forget its mission, falling back on the easy and externally satisfying pursuit of resume virtues for itself as an institution, and for its students. We all play a role in Yale-NUS’ mission, and in setting its tone for decades to come. So, at the very least, let us think about the tone that we want, and whether the decisions we make today are ones we would be proud of when we gather at Yale-NUS in three decades’ time. The views expressed here are the author’s own. The Octant welcomes all voices in the community. Email submissions to: yncoctant@gmail.com
LETTER TO THE EDITORS
Send your letter to the editors (maximum word count 150) to yncoctant@gmail.com by 5pm on Friday for the chance to have it published here next week.
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