VOL. 5, ISSUE 10 NEWS Yale-NUS Athletics Goes to Taiwan Students in Dark Over Wellness Session Limits
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 11, 2016 FEATURES ARTS Speeding Up Student Organization Negotiating the Environmental Claims in Yale-NUS Abject in This Topia Spring is Coming
YALE-NUS, SINGAPORE OPINION Giving Politics Its Due Life After College: Back at the Pasta Bar
YALE-NUS ATHLETICS
GOES TO
TAIWAN story | Pham Le Vi, News Editor photo | Yale-NUS Student Life
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On Oct. 28, 96 students from 11 different sports teams traveled to Taiwan.
ince she took over as Manager of the Athletics Department in June this year, Li Ling has been exploring ways for sports teams to compete outside of Yale-NUS College and Singapore. Her efforts culminated in Yale-NUS’s first athletics-focused overseas trip to Taipei, Taiwan on Oct. 28. “[This trip] is the recognition of past commitments the teams put inside, and is also [motivation] for the teams to stay committed and bring athletics to another level,” Ms. Li said The trip, which lasted for three days, sent 96 students from 11 sports teams to compete in friendly matches against Taiwanese universities. Students interviewed said that they were grateful for the school’s acknowledgment of their efforts in athletics. Tinesh Indrarajah ’17, a member of the badminton and floorball team, said that the students in the various classes, especially those who focused on athletics in the first two years, have put in a lot of effort to build the teams to a level where they can compete and not do too badly. “This trip is the culmination of all the years of effort,” he said. “I would never have thought we could have this kind of trip in our first or second year.” “This is what I trained for,” Rachel Ong ’17, who has been in the tchoukball team since its inception, added. “Going together with the team I trained so hard with, and also with the new freshmen [was a good way] to bond.” She said that she wanted to be exposed to competitive tchoukball beyond what she had seen in Yale-NUS and Singapore, as Taiwan is the top tchoukball nation in the world and Vanung University (which Yale-NUS played against) was the top team in Taiwan. However, not all the teams’ opponents were up to standard. Sharlene Chow ’18 from the netball team said that they “played against people who had barely played netball before and the umpire did not really know the rules”. “It was quite a pity that netball had to travel six hours out of Taipei to Kaohsiung to play an hour of games,” she said.
Still, with such a big delegation, it is inevitable that some sports will receive more attention than others, she said. “It might not have been [as] enjoyable for us as for other teams but I really think that [Ms. Li] did her best,” Chow said. “[Ms. Li] has done a very good job not only in initiating but being fully responsible for the entire trip.” Chow suggested it might have been helpful to split the delegation up for future trips. Ms. Li said that the trip was quite messy since it was organized in approximately one month; Athletics only decided on it after the Inter-Faculty Games (IFGs). She said that future athletics trips would be on a smaller scale. Some students expressed concerns regarding the duration of the trip, and said that the College should focus first on exchanges with local sports teams before overseas exchanges. Asher Chua ’19, captain of the Ultimate Frisbee team, which did not go on the trip, questioned if difficulties in integrating training and competitions due to the trip’s duration limited its benefits. Chua said that during his athletics trip in Junior College, his team trained in the morning and competed in the afternoon for five days consecutively. “[This] kind of intensity [would be] more beneficial for the athletes,” he said. He also said that “more [could] be done locally first before moving overseas”, such as holding friendly matches with different NUS halls or with other Singaporean universities. He added that while the trip was a good opportunity and motivated teams to keep training beyond IFGs, he thought that “it was kind of expensive to fly everyone [to Taiwan over the weekend].” Ms. Li said that students paid 30% of the cost and the school paid the remainder of the cost. According to estimates by The Octant, Yale-NUS would have paid at least over $73,000 for the students. This amount is approximately equivalent to 15 Summer Arts Scholarships, Summer Language Scholarships or Summer Academic Scholarships (each scholarship is up to $5,000). 1
NEWS
Ms. Ling said that the Athletics Department aims to “budget a few teams, probably the top committed teams” to compete overseas at least once a year; these teams would be assessed on commitment levels, training attendance and possibly IFGs or Inter-Collegiate Games (ICGs) results.
STUDENTS IN DARK OVER WELLNESS SESSION LIMITS
story | Dave Chappell, Justin Ong, Enkhzul Badral photo | Serena Quay
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any students and staff members remain unaware of guidelines limiting the number of counseling sessions available at the Wellness Centre, which was introduced by the Dean of Students Office. None of the eight students interviewed by The Octant knew of the policy’s existence While details on the policy remain scarce, Associate Director of Athletics, Health and Wellness, Peter Low, told The Octant that a limit had been introduced prior to his arrival in July. Still, some members of the administration remain unaware of the policy’s details. Students interviewed by The Octant expressed mixed opinions, acknowledging the limited number of counselors but expressing concern at the disincentives that the policy creates According to Mr. Low, the limit is intended as “a general period of counseling engagement” and can be extended on a case-by-case basis at the counselor's discretion. He added the policy was introduced to work “towards empowering an individual to undertake and sustain self-care.” However, the strictness of the limit remains in question. Dean’s Fellow Brea Baker told The Octant that, while she was aware of the limit, “there is not currently any official quota of sessions that the wellness center provides.” When asked about it by a member of The Octant, Wellness Executive, Hoi
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Yee said she hadn’t heard of anything. When pressed on the specific limit, Mr. Low said that it was typically eight-sessions, but didn’t specify the time-frame. President Pericles Lewis said that the limit was a guideline for any one course of counseling. Full-time counselor, Saveria Cristofari, declined to comment on the policy and Dean of Students, Christopher Bridges, and part-time psychologist Claudia Ahl did not respond to repeated requests in time for printing.. Students interviewed by The Octant typically confused the policy with the eight-session per year limit on counseling services offered by the external Singapore American Community Action Council (SACAC). Clara Peh ’19 said that based on her understanding, the eight session limit was only for SACAC, and that students “could visit the psychologist at the wellness center regularly.” Rachel Quek ’18 expressed similar confusion, and said she did not know about such a policy within the wellness center. Even students who had regular involvement with the Wellness Centre said they had no knowledge of the change. Francesca Maviglia ’19, a member of P.S. We Care, was unaware of the policy and said that she felt that it is “a piece of information that should be shared because [P.S. We Care] refer people to wellness counselors if [they] feel that [they] cannot handle the degree of issues.” When students were asked what they thought about the policy, some students expressed concerns. Will Goebel ’19 said that a limit would disincentive some who may really need care from reaching out for help. A limit would be potentially “dangerous, especially for students that have been told that the wellness center is an option,” Goebel said. These sentiments were echoed by Hannah Yeo ’18, who said “[she] specifically chose to see a psychologist [at the Wellness Center] because there was no limit”. Yeo added that if the college adopted a limit then it would be “just like NUS.” Other students expressed concern regarding the stigma that the policy might create. Maviglia said “if you put a threshold with a certain number then once you pass that threshold then you're automatically seen as more serious and there is going to be a larger degree of stigma.” These sentiments were echoed by Peh, who said that having a limit is problematic because outside this limit “people might also have to explain to their parents.” However, some staff members highlighted the need to take the well-being of the counselors into account. Ms. Baker said that the ideal situation would be to have no limit on the amount of wellness sessions, but this would put a lot of pressure on the limited amount of wellness support currently available. She said that “if counselors are being stretched thin, they are not only not taking care of their own well-being [but] they are also unable to support the students”. Some students concur with Ms. Baker’s sentiment. Joceline Yong ’18 said that it depends on what the limit is, and why there is a limit. “A very reasonable limit” would be preferable to prevent a situation where a student would be “going to the wellness center every single day”, which Yong said would be “ridiculous”. Paul Jerusalem ’19, said he is for such a limit if it helps counselors remain accessible to everyone in the community, but questions how effectively students’ need will be assessed when extending past eight sessions is necessary. While the response to the policy was mixed, all students interviewed agreed on a need for better communication about the policy. Izzy Ngo ’19 said that everybody should know about the policy, as it affects everyone, personally or indirectly. “If it affects us a student body then I think we should have a say on what’s being done for transparency's sake,” she said.
FEATURES
SPEEDING
UP
STUDENT
ORGANIZATION CLAIMS AT YALE-NUS
story | Yip Jia Qi, Opinion Editor image | Xuerui Yang
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here are 55 student organizations listed on the YaleNUS College Student Organization Directory, each with its own budget and claims to be made. All of them submit claims through the Dean of Students (DOS) office. Typically, students fill in the Request For Payment (RFP) form and submit their receipts to the DOS office. But not many know about the processes that take place between submitting claims and receiving the money in their accounts. The time this takes seems to vary. In an online interview Grace Kwak ’ 20, a member of the Yale-NUS Orchestra, said that while the RFP form is relatively easy to fill out, “it takes weeks for the money to arrive [in] your bank account.” Rakesh Prabhakaran’17, the President of Yale-NUS Consulting Group, echoes her woes. “Generally I can say that I wait for a few months (two to three usually) to get reimbursed,” he said. Andrew McGeehan, Senior Manager of Residential Life in the DOS office, said that one source of the delays is the claims having to go through three departments: DOS, Yale-NUS Finance, and NUS Finance. Mr McGeehan said the actions of NUS Finance are not necessarily predictable because NUS Finance is “significantly more removed from Yale-NUS”. They do not necessarily understand how we work and why student organizations would make certain purchases. Even when written justifications for the claims are deemed good enough from the perspective of DOS and Yale-NUS Finance, NUS Finance may still come back and request further information. When this happens, the claim has to go back through YaleNUS Finance, then DOS, before reaching the student. After being amended, it has to go through the whole process again. Mr. McGeehan said that the DOS office and Yale-NUS Finance do their best to ensure that claims goes through NUS Finance as smoothly as possible. Sometimes, delays are also caused when DOS and Yale-NUS finance are persuading NUS Finance to accept a claim. When submitting claims, Mr. McGeehan said that it was important for students to know how to give a proper written
As a goal, the DOS office tries to reimburse claims within 30 days from the day students submit their claims to the DOS office. justification of why they are making the claim, being prompt in submitting claims, and providing as much information as possible about the event. This includes providing printouts of approval emails and a name list of participants for events under 20 people. The DOS office is also open to students coming in to seek advice on whether their purchases will be flagged. “If the treasurer is conscientious about sticking to the claiming guidelines there usually won't be [many] issues,” said Kwok Yingchen ’18, former treasurer of I’dECO, in an online interview. On who should be submitting claims, the DOS has a strong preference for treasurers as they are supposed to have the training and experience of making claims, and they can also track the claims being made. That said, anybody can still make a claim on behalf of their student organization as long as they can provide relevant details. Mr. McGeehan said that he does not think any student has tried to maliciously dupe DOS or their own organization out of money, but says that “if the treasurers aren’t properly trained, or if there’s a lot of turnover [of treasurers], no one knows who’s supposed to be doing what [and] then it gets complicated very quickly.” One example he gave is if a group is awarded a $5000 travel budget and it is not managed properly, 4 people can individually make claims of $1500 with no malicious intent, but this results in overspending. Mr. McGeehan said that both NUS and Yale-NUS Finance handle more than just student claims. “There are 50 student [organizations], and then there’s 200 staff, and 100 plus faculty, and all of them are submitting claims through an office that has maybe eight people in it,” he said. Mr. McGeehan understands students’ frustrations when claims take longer than students would like, and says that his office is “consistently looking for ways to make it quicker.” Some of these measures include holding regular trainings for treasurers and, in the future, making training materials available online for those who missed these trainings. As a goal, the DOS office tries to reimburse claims within 30 days from the day students submit their claims to the DOS office.
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FEATURES
SPRING
IS
COMING: A PHOTO ESSAY story | Kan Ren Jie, Contributing Reporter image | Xuerui Yang
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rom the intense stares of the cast in the promotional posters, I thought that Spring Awakening would be slow and somber. Boy, was I wrong. At the full-dress rehearsal on Sunday, what struck me was the musical’s energy and intensity. Supported by loud guitar riffs and the attack of the drums, the cast belted out songs that spoke of love, rebellion and angst: a bold depiction of the confusing process of finding ourselves. While serious topics
Intense preparations in the dressing rooms, before the rehearsal.
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like suicide and abuse are examined in certain scenes of the musical, the strength of the cast’s performance was evident in their ability to act out these scenes with grace and sensitivity. Like every other theatre production in Yale-NUS College, much effort has been put into this one. Daniel Lok ’19, the male lead in Spring Awakening, said that rehearsals began in the 3rd week of this semester. Lok found the rehearsals to be a tiring but greatly satisfying experience. “We’ve been working so hard for the past two months… [now] I feel quite hyped for it.” he said. After the frigid winter, spring is coming.
FEATURES
Game face on.
A quick shot before going on stage!
Confusion.
Mother knows best.
Supported by an excellent band, the cast work their magic on stage.
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FEATURES
The horrors of Latin class.
A resolution?
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OPINION
LIFE AFTER COLLEGE: BACK AT THE PASTA BAR
story | Iulia Iordache, Guest Contributor image | Iulia Iordache
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Iordache receiving her diploma at Grinnell College. Picture credit to John Brady Photography.
he day I graduated from Grinnell College, I felt on top of the world. I had a graduation party where most of the faculty and deans I had ever interacted with showed up to praise me to my parents, the catering department brought me a handmade cork-board from wines I had opened during my time working for them, and the president of the college showed up. Graduation weekend was filled with ceremonies highlighting my accomplishments and celebrating the connections I had forged over the previous four years. I was convinced that ending college and leaving the small town bubble of Grinnell, Iowa, could only lead to even greater things. Fast forward to 5 months later. It’s another rainy day in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and the idea of going to work fills me with a blend of dread and exhaustion. I apathetically take a last look at my lesson plan before rushing off on my motorbike to get to work. It’s just another Monday and I wonder – where did I go wrong? My first boss in Thailand was a sexist though experienced teacher of English who would always make me late for class by chatting me up at 8:59AM. My second boss, while easier to get
along with, had no experience teaching, and kept telling me I was a fantastic teacher although he had never been in my classroom. I was technically a Grinnell College fellow, and was supposed to be doing service – but it became more and more apparent as time went by that my only role in the center was to be a white face (in the words of a university Vice-President), bringing in some more revenue. To top it all off, I had a total of one good friend in Chiang Mai, a fellow Grinnellian who was doing the same job as me and was just as miserable. If the end of college was a peak, then my first year out of it was the bottom of the ocean. I had set such high expectations for what my fellowship was going to be like: I expected things to only get better after college at one of my top-choice jobs. Unfortunately, my first year out of college was sometimes unbearably lonely. I missed the bubble, the critical thinkers who pushed the boundaries of liberalism, and the ability to always find a friend across the hall. Given the professional experience I had accumulated throughout college, I didn’t expect things to go this way. I started out my first semester of college at the entry level working in the
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OPINION
dining hall. I was stationed at the pasta bar and would take orders of veggies and sauce and saute them for my peers. I would stand for about 4 hours listening to various combinations of mushrooms, olives and green peppers, please and then go home smelling like marinara sauce. Sure, there was the occasional cute guy being friendly to the sweaty girl with the apron, but overall it was not my favorite job. Later that year, I moved on to catering, serving meals to professors, the president and the occasional Ta-Nehisi Coates-type visitor. My second year, I worked for Off-Campus Study developing some programming, but mostly sorting paperwork. Junior year, I led a team for orientation, edited a magazine, and was president of the second largest student organization on campus. And finally, my senior year, I was the Vice-President for Student Affairs in the Student Government. My college career started with getting the smell of meatballs and tomato sauce out of my hair and ended with being a guest at meals with the trustees of the college. It took me a while to realize that my Chiang Mai experience was the pasta bar of my post-graduate career, minus the grease. I had set my expectations high for life after college because life in college was everything I could have hoped for, and more. After being successful for four years and having the opportunity to grow in a safe environment, it’s hard to accept that you have to start from scratch. Since the college setting affords you so much friendship, mentorship, and institutional support, it is hard to know what to expect from the so-called real world. You don’t realize how much losing those networks will affect you until you’re left trying to salvage or recreate some sense of community and purpose.
Iordache after a long catering shift.
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Iordache in KL with a couple of coworkers.
To make matters worse, your ability to speak out the way you are able to in college becomes limited. You spend years challenging philosophers and refining your world-view. You learn to demand change, and to expect it to happen. It feels disenfranchising and unfair to learn how to be a change-maker for years, only to graduate and be stifled by the fear of losing your meager salary, especially when the peers you could rely on to back you up are no longer there. I expected to find people to rely on in Thailand because I had never not found community. At Grinnell, I was hanging out on a roof with other first-years during my first weekend there. In Malaysia, where I spent a summer for an internship, I was immediately adopted into a group of fun, 20-year-old Fulbright teachers. Given my previous experiences, I thought that I had the cultural savvy, independence and resourcefulness to transplant myself to yet another new place. I was also convinced that being a teaching fellow was the perfect job for me because of all the Fulbright teachers I had met in Kuala Lumpur. However, I learned that the internships you’ve done do not give you the same lived experience as having a job, because they are not permanent. Once you’re done with your summer job, your friends are still on campus waiting for you to come back, but when you graduate, that feeling of security is gone. My loneliness in Thailand was amplified by the idea that I would magically find another group of similarly aged people to spend time with. My disappointment with my job came from the perception that my job would be just like the Fulbright fellowship I witnessed in KL and that it would be perfect. Instead of focusing on finding the perfect job (because I doubt it will ever be perfect), I wish I had focused on recreating community around myself. Being surrounded by supportive people when your boss is being sexist can help make those moments less difficult and help with mustering up the courage to make the transition to a new, better-fitting job. I don’t claim to know everything about how life post-graduation works. But the essential things I wish I knew before my first post-graduate year would have been: 1. Be ready for the pasta bar, because it takes time to get back at the trustee table. 2. Never underestimate the importance of building community in the dining hall. The views expressed here are the author’s own. The Octant welcomes all voices in the community. Email submissions to: yncoctant@gmail. com.
OPINION
GIVING POLITICS ITS DUE
story | Ng Qi Siang, Guest Contributor image | Lucy Kuo
"Man is a political animal," declared Aristotle in his Politics.
Man is a political animal,” declared Aristotle in his Politics, compulsory reading for every Yale-NUS College student. Indeed, power is an inevitability in all human relations. As students in the liberal arts, we are called to study the human experience comprehensively in order to live as responsible citizens in the twenty-first century. Politics, as our common curriculum acknowledges, is key to the human experience. Yet, its study is diluted within the Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) major instead of having an individual major befitting such a broad and popular field. Granted, there is nothing wrong with students having the choice to study these three subjects together if they wish. Yet, while the Philosophy and Economics components have their own majors and minors, politics does not enjoy the same luxury. In an earlier interview, President Pericles Lewis responded to these queries saying, “We wanted to find majors that were interdisciplinary, sort of the way that the common curriculum is interdisciplinary, for making connections across disciplines. So it's not only PPE: if you look at Environmental Studies, Urban Studies or Global Affairs, those are all interdisciplinary majors.” President Lewis also ar-
gued that the reason for there being no politics major is that the Global Affairs and PPE majors add an interdisciplinary dimension to the study of politics, both in the comparative and international relations perspectives, with sufficient interchange from people in both majors. Yet President Lewis conceded that majors like Literature and Psychology were exempt from this on account of being either broad or popular. Implicit, therefore, is the assumption that politics is a field too narrow and niche to constitute an individual major. The assumption that politics requires Philosophy and Economics to be studied with sufficient breadth is flawed. As a social science, politics synthesizes the empiricism of science and the subjectivity of the humanities, applying itself across different contexts ranging from local government to international politics. If a field must be broad to constitute an individual major, politics more than meets the requirements. Even if politics were a narrow subject, it does not stand to reason that it should be studied only, as conducive as they are, with philosophy and economics. Politics can be combined with many other fields as well. History is no less suitable a bedfellow as Philosophy and Economics – prominent thinkers from Henry
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CLOCKWORK/OPINION
What’s happening on campus?
Beached Whale-NUS: RC3’s third Beach Plz, an annual event that sees Yale-NUS travel to Sentosa beach to celebrate the end of the Fall semester, will take place on Nov. 25. This year, attendees can expect an afternoon of relaxation, German water and to receive a limited edition “Whale-NUS” bandanna. SWF 2016: The Singapore Writers Festival will be held from Nov. 4–13 and features students and faculty from Yale-NUS. Hamid Roslan ’17, Min Lim ’18 and Paul Jerusalem ’19 did readings of their works whilst Al Lim ’19, See Wern Hao ’20, writer in residence Lawrence Ypil and director of the writing program Professor Robin Hemley were speakers for some of the events. And On That Note: In addition to the end of semester theatrical performances, it’s also time for the other arts wrap ups. This semester there will be another To Be Continued photo exhibition by the Yale-NUS Photography Club from Nov. 10-15 and an end of semester concert, On That Note, by the Yale-NUS Singers’ Guild on Nov. 17. End of Semester Dinner: The end of semester dinner will be held on Nov. 15 across all the Residential Colleges. Look out for the themes for each RC, and prepare to come dressed for the occasion! School's Out: Week 13 marks the end of school for the upper classes, but the onslaught of assignments means the ordeal is far from over. Small-Talk: The Octant recently opened submissions for its first ever themed issue on small school culture, focusing on the perks and pitfalls of being in such a small college. This special edition will extensively feature submissions from members of the YaleNUS community. Please submit your pieces to yncoctant@gmail.com. Makan Makan Food Outing: The Dean of Students is organizing a food outing on Nov. 13 from 12-3pm to Timbre Plus and Somerset. The theme for this outing is Filipino cuisine!
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Kissinger to Kishore Mahbubani have argued that history provides an excellent complement to political and policy thinking. Politics and psychology allow students to see how the human psyche affects political relations. Clearly, politics does not require philosophy and economics to be a viable field of study. Diluting politics with philosophy and economics, therefore, hinders our college’s many would-be politics majors during PPE from combining the study of politics with other areas of study. Politics is traditionally a very popular major, ranking third on Princeton Review’s ranking of the top ten college majors. We can infer that a significant number of Yale-NUS undergraduates are similarly excited about majoring in politics. Yet, not all of them necessarily want to study philosophy and economics as well; some may also wish for a more specialized alternative to PPE. Global Affairs fares no better as a substitute, since it focuses primarily on globalization rather than politics,involving significant non-political science content. Moreover, it only covers international politics and thus does not cater to those also having an interest in comparative politics such as economics. Having no individual politics major, therefore, fails to cater to a large number of students with needs that diverge from the objectives of the PPE and GA majors. Many of our fellow students are thus deprived of the opportunity to fully explore an area of fascination for them because of these restrictions. This is a significant problem especially when it comes to tailoring one’s major to one’s future aspirations. The original PPE degree was devised by the University of Oxford as a replacement for Classics to train civil servants. Not all Yale-NUS students, however, are wannabe civil servants—some students may feel that politics is key to their careers outside of the political realm. For instance, if one were to be an environmental activist, a politics minor would be extremely useful in teaching one how to lobby for green policies. In fact, policymakers in niche fields may feel the need to develop different skill sets to succeed—urban planners are arguably better off studying Urban Studies together with politics than Philosophy and Economics. Students know best which majors and minors best fit their aspirations and should thus have the flexibility to tailor their degrees accordingly. This is contrary to the spirit of the liberal arts—students are encouraged to explore the human experience through greater freedom to choose subjects of their interest in any direction their curiosity chooses to go within reasonable limits. The college, despite its good intentions, should not be overly prescriptive as to what subjects ought to be studied alongside politics. Yale-NUS should establish a separate politics department with its own major and minor as soon as possible. This would require minimal resources aside from a slight restructuring of faculty organization structure. While PPE could remain a major option, I doubt its relevance after the creation of a separate politics major, since PPE only requires that two of the three component fields be covered to fulfill major requirements. Majoring in one of these fields and minoring in another will probably better serve student by allowing them to focus on their chosen fields in greater depth. The liberal arts are about allowing students the opportunity for self-discovery by tailoring a broad curriculum according to their needs. The expanded choice of academic tracks provided by a separate politics major would be a significant step in this direction. The views expressed here are the author’s own. The Octant welcomes all voices in the community. Email submissions to: yncoctant@gmail.com.
ARTS
NEGOTIATING THE ENVIRONMENTAL
ABJECT
IN
story | Kwok Yingchen, Guest Contributor image | John Reid
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his year’s Yale-NUS Halloween haunted house, “This Topia”, was an environmentally-themed collaboration between Yale-NUS Artivists, Artslab, and the Student Government. Its unorthodox approach began with an usher quizzing visitors on switching off unused lights the moment they had entered. Huh? One might argue that no matter what a “liberal arts haunted house” seeks to achieve (surely a caricature in the minds of many by the end of the experience), it eminently fails if it doesn’t scare. However, in subverting expectations of the horror genre, “This Topia” makes an important point about how we cope with narratives of ecological threat. “This Topia” breaks the first rule of haunted houses by drawing attention to its own staged nature. Susan Sontag argues that the discrepancy between the imagined threat of horror and its inability to hurt us—because the specters are just actors—makes the genre deeply funny at some level. From the start, “This Topia” gleefully betrays the potential tackiness of imbuing an environmental message into a haunted house. “We
THIS
TOPIA
This Topia was a collaboration between the Yale-NUS Artivists, Artslab and the Yale-NUS Student Government.
wanted to be scary,” it seems to suggest, “but imparting a clear message of responsible environmental action takes precedence!” Making my way through the haunted house, I answered a quiz about recycling plastic bottles (remember to rinse it out first, I added for extra credit) then approached a door leading to a smaller, enclosed room. An usher gave the vague instruction of pay your respects, hinting that this was different, and shuttled me in. Inside, a man was chopping a tree, dead leaves strewn across the floor. Three forest spirits, dressed in classic Pontianak garb, eyed me cautiously. Help me, they murmured. How can I help you? I cried, before realizing that I was supposed to keep silent. Was I compelled to blurt this out of sympathy? Or did I hope it would reduce my risk of an ‘attack’? No chance — a Pontianak behind me abruptly screamed, making me jump. After what seemed like an eternity, I was gladly shuttled back out. The juxtaposition of the “quiz corridor” and “spectral room” marks two common narratives of climate change. The former represents faith in positive messaging—with green innovation
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and each of us doing our small parts, we can save the earth. The latter is our obsessive consumption of images of a devastated planet, whether by zombies or weapons of mass destruction, representing fears that we are already too late. Both narratives simultaneously occupy our collective imagination, creating an uneasy contradiction. The former is clearly naïve, but the latter leaves us no hope. “This Topia” constantly shuttles us between these polar narratives, urging us to understand how they interact. Facing various environmental specters in the smaller rooms, I kept thinking my answering of the quizzes meant I deserved to be spared of their anger. I mean, did my extra credit not count for anything? However, a defining feature of horror is the radical impossibility of negotiating with spectral beings. Julia Kristeva argues that horror epitomizes the “abject” that which breaks down the boundary between subject and object, self and other. It indicates the presence of a powerful actor outside our neat analytics. We know it is capable of hurting us, and we don’t know how to convince it not to. The pessimistic climate narrative reveals a similar environmental abject. Our planet is terrifyingly silent for the most part, but it hides a sinister grin as the atmospheric carbon concentration reaches a crescendo. When it strikes, we know it won’t care to discriminate between “sympathizers” and “adversaries”. The danger, if technological optimism proves inadequate to guard us against environmental specters, is that our panic turns us to the last resort of authoritarianism. Think the staple in post-apocalyptic fiction of the hardened protagonist who survives by trusting no one—with disturbing implications for environmental justice. An Atlantic article recently suggested Donald Trump may be the “first demagogue of the Anthropocene”. A great number of dystopian fictions anticipate the political ends of current surges of xenophobia in a climate of global crisis. The abject is, however, itself a victim of discourse. We stage Pontianak in haunted houses and narratives of planetary devastation to provide catharsis for our fears, but powerful symbolic frameworks mediate these interactions. The traditional haunted house expects us to put up our best emotional defenses, then attempts to run
them down. We look for every opportunity to laugh, to be reminded of its staged nature and hence our invulnerability. In contrast, “This Topia” performs that relegation for us. Each “spectral room” leads back to the bathetic “quiz corridor”. The finale has us chanting to pledge ourselves to “unlimited growth and consumption” in a cult-like manner as the environmental specters grieve, but ends with a corporate-style photo-taking session, as if to say weren’t you glad you left them behind? In that moment, I knew I was. Whether they successfully scared us or not, we are offered the last laugh. Yet, “This Topia” precisely challenges our dominant mode of emotional engagement with the abject. It invites us experience a fear of intimacy, not of hatred. We can’t humanize Pontianaks without erasing their abjection, but we can try to touch them through it, to let them touch us. Don’t laugh, don’t shut the fear out, and maybe you’ll get us a little better, they whispered. How does one sit with a Pontianak to sort through the myth-making, to figure out why our cultural imagination unceasingly insists on a relationship of hostility and not shared victim-hood? If we wish to move beyond the hopelessness provoked by the environmental abject, the interrogation of the horror genre becomes a relevant question. In order to communicate intimately with specters, who or what we become in the process may no longer quite seem human based on how we currently envision the term. But maybe that’s what we need, both to comprehend our fraught relationship with our planet, and to find the political will to engage in drastic environmental action that remains democratic and equitable. The views expressed here are the author’s own. The Octant welcomes all voices in the community. Email submissions to: yncoctant@gmail. com.
EDITORIAL TEAM Editor-in-chief Dave Chappell Managing Editor Justin Ong Managing Editor Zula Badral Co-News Editor Pham Le Vi Co-News Editor Elaine Li Co-Opinion Editor Aditya Karkera Co-Opinion Editor Yip Jia Qi Co-Features Editor Yip Jie Ying Co-Features Editor Nicholas Lua Co-Arts Editor Neo Huiyuan Co-Arts Editor Terence Anthony Wang Co-Visuals Editor Angad Srivastava Co-Visuals Editor Lucy Kuo 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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