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VOL. 5, ISSUE 8 NEWS Wellness Turbulence Leads To Student Dissatisfaction PPE Certificate Reflects Major Problems Octalks: Is Yale-NUS Elitist?

FRIDAY OCTOBER 28, 2016 FEATURES ARTS Inquiring Into Scientific Inquiry Liberal Arts in Singapore: How I Might Even Have a Toothbrush Raffles Got There First There

YALE-NUS, SINGAPORE LITERATURE What I Try Remembering OPINION Language Gaps: English As A Second Language at Yale-NUS

WELLNESS TURBULENCE LEADS TO STUDENT DISSATISFACTION story | Xinyu Luo, Neo Huiyuan photo | Serena Quay

Books on counselling in the Yale-NUS College Wellness Centre.

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ensions ran high during a town hall on Oct. 4, as President Pericles Lewis responded to questions about mental wellness at Yale-NUS College. Mr. Lewis urged students struggling with mental-health issues to reach out to what he called a “very strong wellness team.”

But when the discussion turned to specifics, Mr. Lewis began to struggle. Asked about the number of counselors employed by Yale-NUS, he said that the College employed one full-time and one part-time counselor, plus additional support from Singapore American Community Action Council (SACAC) counselling.

He was corrected by a Dean of Students (DOS) staff member who denied that the school employed a full-time counselor.

Mr. Lewis responded, "But who's the person we're missing?"

On Sept. 23, two weeks before the town hall, Natalie Games stepped down as Yale-NUS’s only full-time counselor.

Ms. Games’ sudden departure arrived at a turbulent time for the DOS Office. as staff members turned over and the merging of health, athletics and wellness to provide more holistic services. In interviews with The Octant, many students expressed dissatisfaction with these changes and how they were communicated, saying that they made Wellness less accessible.

While the DOS declined to comment on the reasons for Ms. Games’s sudden departure, The Octant can confirm that she was

given no choice in her decision. A staff member at Yale-NUS, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Octant that the DOS denied Ms. Games increased budgeting for her programming. When Ms. Games raised her concerns with senior administrators, “the [DOS] offered her two options: resign, or be fired,” the staff member added.

Ms. Games’s departure followed the exit of two part-time counselors at the start of the semester, Shaen Yeo and Joel Yang, leaving the College with only one part-time counselor, Claudia Ahl. To make up for the shortfall in support, the College brought in a locum counselor from SACAC Counselling, Laura Butler, who will remain with Yale-NUS until the end of the semester. A new full-time counselor, Saveria Cristofari, started at Yale-NUS on Oct. 17.

On Oct. 10, Yale-NUS opened a job posting for Head of the Wellness Centre, one week after the town hall and eight months after the former Wellness Coordinator, Shaen Yeo, gave early notice to the College about her retirement. In response to the question about the delayed job posting, Peter Low, Associate Director of Athletics, Health and Wellness, said that the position was intended for Ms. Games.

Staffing Changes But despite the new hirings, students across the College remain skeptical that the mental-health services at YaleNUS will satisfy student demand, with some citing the personnel changes as a potentially destabilizing factor.

Wong Zhiying ’19 said that she found the the initial shortage of counselors troubling, because it is difficult for a single counselor to meet the needs of every student in the College.

Still, Dean of Students Christopher Bridges told The Octant that with the new hirings Yale-NUS now has enough counselors to cover student demand. Bridges added that students receive counseling appointments within a day, even when a counselor unexpectedly quits.

Mr. Bridges added that in a recent review of Wellness services, the DOS found that most students dealing with mental-health crises are able to get appointments with counselors the very same day. The longest waiting time for a non-crisis situation is currently about a week, he added.

Although preliminary results from the Student Government’s Student Life Survey — distributed via email on Oct. 14— indicate 1

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that the mean waiting time for respondents is three to four business days, over 20 percent of respondents said they to wait more than a week between booking an appointment and seeing a counselor.

Additionally, students interviewed expressed concerns that the changes to the counselling setup at Yale-NUS have made establishing relationships with counselors more difficult.

Yonatan Gazit ’18 said the high turnover of counselors is especially harmful for students with long-term issues that require continuous treatment. “A psychologist is not someone you can just replace,” Gazit said. “[They’re] a much more subtle, fluffy, ingrained member of the community.”

Reduced Collaboration The staffing changes have also made collaboration with the Wellness Centre more difficult, according to Manager of Diversity and Inclusion Sara Amjad.

In an interview with The Octant, Amjad said she has not had a chance to think logistically about collaboration programs over the past few weeks.

Similarly, Jolanda Nava ’17, a member of P.S. We Care (YaleNUS Peer Counselors), said the personnel changes have made collaboration with the Wellness Centre significantly harder.

In the past, both Ms. Amjad and Nava have collaborated with the Wellness Centre on a number of mental-health initiatives initiatives, including Wellness Week and listening skills Workshops.

But Amjad and Nava are not the only students at YaleNUS who have noticed the disruption caused by the staffing changes. In interviews with The Octant, a number of students said they have noticed fewer Wellness events and initiatives this semester compared to past years.

Wong Zhiying ’19 said that she has seen fewer initiatives compared to last semester. “Last semester there [would] be stuff like destress and time management and a lot more workshops at the wellness center… but this semester, I don’t see that happening as much,” she said.

In past years, the Wellness Centre has organized multiple initiatives on time management and de-stressing, as well as several workshops.

DOS Restructuring According to Mr. Low, the reconfiguration of the DOS office was intended to promote the holistic development of students and provide a whole suite of services. He added that in the past the three departments have been very siloed.

Still, some community members have raised concerns about the workload associated with combining the departments. Nava told The Octant she has seen Mr. Low working until 9 pm.

Mr. Low said the changes have presented staffing challenges, and that he is still in the process of recruiting people. But, he added, he views those recruitment needs as an exciting opportunity to bring in new people and new ideas.

In addition to the new counselors, Wellness recently added an administrative assistant. Now students seeking an appointment can email the center and schedule an appointment with the assistant. According to Mr. Lewi the staffing changes bring the total number of counselors up to three.

Still, some students say they find the new process frustrating.

One student said she was scheduled to meet Ms. Butler, the SACAC counselor, because her usual counselor was not available, only to be told at the meeting that she could see only one counselor at a time.

According to the student, Ms. Butler attributed the mistake to “the person in charge of scheduling,” who she said “was not very familiar with how counseling [works], so they probably didn’t know any better.”

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Changes in Physical Space The restructuring of the DOS Office also involved a physical rearrangement. On the Wellness side, Claudia Ahl’s office was moved to a vacant room in the Student Services office due to a lack of space in the Wellness Centre. According to Adam Lau ’19, the rearrangement has created the impression that Wellness occupies “a temporary space,” confusing students about where they need to go to see a counselor.

Asked if there are any plans to move Ms. Ahl’s office back to Wellness, Mr. Low replied that her relocation was not a permanent solution, and added that students who have visited her new office have found the experience pleasant.

The office rearrangement has also influenced P.S. We Care, which shared the space with the Wellness Centre. At the start of the semester, P.S. We Care was moved into a conference room in the Wellness Centre, before being transferred back to its original space.

According to Lau, who works in P.S. We Care, the group had previously worked hard to publicize its location, and the rearrangement has made it difficult for people to find them.

Lau added that organizations like P.S. We Care need spaces in which people “feel comfortable enough to share about anything they want.”

“Having constant changes of space does not help that,” he said.

Issues with Communication Moreover, six students said they were unhappy with how the changes were communicated to them.

Sara Rotenberg ’19, director of student life in the Yale-NUS Student Council, said the administration said little about the changes before the town hall.

Xiao Ting Teo ’18 added that before that meeting, “Some people didn’t even know that Natalie existed, much less that she left.”

Mr. Low told The Octant that students should consider where information resides within the administration before complaining about communication. Low added that the DOS shared which specific counselors were available on its website, in communications with Dean's Fellows and in an email from Student Services. As of Oct. 14, over three weeks after her departure. the Yale-NUS Staff Directory still listed Ms. Games as the sole full-time counsellor at Yale-NUS. Nevertheless, students expressed frustration with the administration’s lack of transparency.

Gazit said it seemed as if students weren’t getting the full story, breeding distance and mistrust.

“What do they have to prove to us as students?

We're on the same team here,” he said.

Mr. Low told The Octant that the Wellness email was only intended as the first stop for students to register an appointment.

He said it still made sense for students to schedule an appointment individually if they were seeing the same counseling staff repeatedly. Mr. Low added that the policy was intended to minimize but not prevent walk-ins.

Moving Forward Gazit said the first time he felt his voice was heard was at the President’s town hall, which he described as the first truly open channel of communication between the administration and the students.

Nava echoed those sentiments, saying that the administration was overly defensive at the town hall. Still, she said, it now seems as if administrations are acting on student recommendations.

In response to the concerns raised by students at the town

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Hall the Yale-NUS Student Government, Dr. Bridges and Wellness organized on Oct. 19 Wellness listening session, where students voiced fresh worries about the amount of support provided by mental-health services at Yale-NUS. After the meeting, Mr. Bridges called the meeting a good step forward. “I and the team heard more about students' concerns and ways to partner with students moving forward,” he said.

Currently, the DOS team and the Student Government are working together to plan next steps based on feedback gleaned from the listening session. Mr. Bridges told The Octant he hopes to make such sessions recurring monthly events. Evan Ma ’18, one of the attendees, told The Octant he found the session useful and felt that administrators acknowledged his comments.

Moving forward, he said, the administration should focus on changing the culture of Yale-NUS, creating stability in the Wellness department, and improving communication between Wellness and students.

On top of the administrative changes,, some students and Dean’s Fellows have established a mental-health taskforce to conduct wellness programs and manage related issues. In the coming weeks, the group will hold a faculty talk to encourage interactions between faculty and students, as well as a series of testimonials aimed at reducing stigma and encouraging students

to talk about wellness more openly. More programs will be conducted in the future to help students better engage with the Wellness Centre.

The student taskforce could potentially address students’ need to develop relationships with counselors and build a positive school culture about wellness. Rachel Tan ’19, a student who has used Wellness’s services, said she found the Wellness Centre “a bit clinical and not personal enough.”

According to Dean’s Fellow Michelle Soto improving wellness at Yale-NUS should be a collaborative effort involving students, faculty and administrators. She emphasized that students are an especially important agent of change on campus.

Tiffany Sin ’17, a student who has never used Wellness resources, said the Wellness Centre should not be the only place at Yale-NUS where mental-health is taken seriously. “All parts of the school [should be] more aware of the word ‘wellness’ and not actually like, ‘Oh it's that room next to the athletics people,’” she said. “Professors, [administration], students [need] to realize that our school is maybe not this buzzing, lively place of the best and brightest students that we like to pretend that it is,” The Yale-NUS Student Government will release a report on mental health and wellness on Nov. 1 and host a dialogue on the subject on Nov. 4.

PPE CERTIFICATE REFLECTS MAJOR PROBLEMS

“Is there work to be done on messaging the distinction? Yes.” story | Elaine Li, News Editor image | Rachel Juay

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n response to issues with resource pooling and student concerns, the faculty at Yale-NUS College have discussed replacing the Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) major with a certificate.

In response to issues with resource pooling and student concerns, the faculty at Yale-NUS College have discussed replacing the Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) major with a certificate.

“One suggestion is that PPE might become a sort of certificate on top of your major,” said John Driffill, Acting Head of Studies for PPE. Typically, after a major review, which takes an entire year, “any changes that are suggested will probably take another year in order to decide upon, and for the faculty to accept those recommendations might take another year,” said Steven Bernasek, Dean of Faculty. While further details are scarce, the suggestion has refocused attention on the PPE major.

The asymmetry in PPE due to the absence of a politics department presents difficulties for both students and faculty.

Students expressed concern for the lack of organization within Politics in the PPE major. Seow Yongzhi ’18, a student majoring in PPE, said that disciplines are traditionally organized around core content that provide a sense of progression through the fundamental courses. However, the lack of a “coordinating authority” for politics gives students a sense of haphazardness

when it comes to politics courses. “It’s as if you are there to gather the whiffs of politics across the academic spectrum in order to forge for yourself a sensible path,” said Seow.

Mr. Driffill acknowledged this asymmetry, said that “it seems entirely natural” to establish a degree in Politics because we have Political Science faculty. Jane Jacobs, Divisional Director of Social Sciences, said that she thinks PPE can effectively stand-in for a politics major at Yale-NUS. “We have enough faculty and enough courses to cover a lot of what a political science department might offer [at other schools],” she said.

Mr. Driffill, on the other hand, said that it makes sense in places like Oxford University for PPE to stand in for the other three individual disciplines. At Oxford students exclusively study PPE, while at Yale-NUS major courses constitute a third of students’ course load. “It’s not such a compelling case in Yale-NUS because it’s simply a major,” Mr. Driffill said.

One criticism that PPE draws from faculty is its popularity with students. Currently, there are 12% of students from the Class of 2017 and 16% of students from the Class of 2018 enrolled in the major. Seow provided one reason for this, saying that “many potential political science majors [go to] the PPE major.” He said, however, that he felt PPE could not act as a politics major. On the issue of would-be political science majors choosing PPE, Ms. Jacobs replied that “we’ve not done the survey to find out that data”.

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Rakesh Prabhakaran ’17, who switched from Economics to PPE, offered another reason. He said that “our school’s economics doesn’t compare well to NUS’ or even SMU’s economics department”, and that “graduate school […] would have a huge learning curve, primarily in math and advanced microeconomics”.

Students identified the lack of communication from administration as another primary concern with the PPE major. Ajinkya Chougule ’18 said that there has been “zero communication about the major [...] from the school in general this past semester.”

Students raised further concerns about the crosslisting of courses related to the PPE major. “There seems to be an unnecessary turf war between [...] majors in the school, [...] which I think defeats the purpose of a liberal arts education,” said Chougule. He cited International Political Economy as an example of a module that has both politics and economics in the name, yet was only listed under Global Affairs. In response to an email sent by Chougule to Mr. Bernasek and Ms. Jacobs, the courses International Political Economy and India as a Rising Power, 1947- Present, are now cross-listed to the PPE major.

Faculty also expressed concern that students do not know

enough about each discipline to write a genuinely multidisciplinary capstone, according to Mr. Driffill. However, he wonders “if such fears are not overplayed.” These concerns were echoed by Prabhakaran, who thinks that PPE is a great opportunity because it equips students with skills in both economics and politics, which is the best way to enter jobs like political consultancies.

However, he agrees that there is work to be done, and that “[the school] should be making [PPE] more what it should look like.”

Resource pooling between Global Affairs and PPE also presents an issue for faculty members with commitments in both. However, two professors The Octant approached both declined to comment, saying that they had been told “to refer specific questions regarding the story to the Divisional Director of the Social Sciences,” Ms. Jacobs. Professor Nancy Gleason, Head of Studies for Global Affairs expressed optimism about the relationship between the two, saying that “there is a positive synergy between Global Affairs and PPE.” She added, “is there work to be done on messaging the distinction? Yes.” According to Ms. Jacobs, the Social Sciences Division will meet in the near future to review the matter of inter-major crosslisting, including between Global Affairs and PPE.

OCTALKS: IS YALE-NUS ELITIST? story | Terence Anthony Wang, Arts Editor image | Lucy Kuo

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n Monday, October 17th, The Octant held its inaugural “Octalk”, the first in a series of college-wide discussions involving students, staff and faculty. The session focused on the question “Who Speaks for Yale-NUS?”., It aimed to address the long-standing issue of representation of YaleNUS College’s representation to the public, especially with regards to conflicting views of the students and staff. What emerged, however, was a differentn even more intriguing discussion surrounding identity and perception: nearly everyone agreed that the College was too often associated with the shroud of elitism, and were keen to find out why.

Around twenty students attended the Octalk, including members of the Student Government, the Octant, and the student body at large. Despite the diversity, the students had mostly broadly similar opinions: they believed that the public-at-large viewed Yale-NUS as an elitist institution., with a The majority felt feeling that this sentiment was particularly strong from students of the College’s sister school, the National University of Singapore (NUS). Reasons given included Yale-NUS’s selective admissions process,; the enclosed and isolated nature of the College,; and issues controversies in the past, such as the YaleNUS Library’s restrictions towards non-Yale-NUS students.

Students also expressed that the College, being a young institution, was relatively unknown amongst their peers and acquaintances. Some said that they believed the College was viewed as a “wannabe-Yale,”, with relatively low recognition by the public. They found this particularly worrying as it potentially meant the “Yale-NUS” name would not carry much legitimacy, especially when applying for jobs.

Other perspectives brought up during the Octalk include the idea of Yale-NUS being seen as ‘Western’ due to its liberal connotations. Tand therefore, it is being perceived as foreign byto the Singapore public., Participants also mentionedas

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well as the worry that the College iswas seen as a drain on resources due to the significant amount of financial support offered by both NUS and the Singaporean Government.

However, there appeared to be a divide between the students and the staff andor faculty regarding the issue of public perception.

Overall, both the staff and faculty noted receiving much more positive feedback about the College.: For example, representatives from Public Affairs, for example, said that media personnel that they had interacted with were generally very familiar with Yale-NUS and what it stood for. The issue of awareness, they said, was perhaps not as serious as the students might perceive it to be. They added that And contrary to the negativity that the students brought up, the Public Affairs team said that the media did not highlight such impressions, but instead tended to focus on the College’s diversity and its innovative curriculum rather than the negative impressions that students brought up.

Another theme that gradually surfaced throughout the discussion was that the students attending the talk often expressed a significant degree of self-awareness, sometimes even extending to self-deprecation. Many said that the large amount of support and opportunities provided by Yale-NUS was rare in comparison to other tertiary institutions, and caused others outside the College to question whether Yale-NUS students had done enough to make use of these opportunities. Others mentioned interactions involving both Yale-NUS and NUS students, stating that Yale-NUS students could occasionally come off as “arrogant” or “snobbish” due to an overuse of complex terminology in discussions, which could be either intentional or unintentional. Xie Yihao, ’17, also said he felt that students from his generation sometimes took things for granted, which could further play into the negative perception about YaleNUS given the resources that its students have access to.

Francesca Maviglia, ‘18, also challenged the Yale-NUS community to consider whether they were being elitist through the very act of downplaying the label of elitism as misjudgement,

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or a largely external issue. She said that she found it troubling to start a conversation on misjudgement based on the premise that others were misguided in doing so, thus focusing the discussion on the “mistake” rather than the community’s own behaviour, and how that may contribute to the creation of the label. She also found it problematic that the public was being treated as a mass of people, which resulted in a generalisation of their opinions.

Yale-NUS College President Pericles Lewis said that it was “important to distinguish between being ‘elite’ and ‘elitist’”. He said that even by virtue of the five percent admissions rate alone,

Yale-NUS is an elite institution; however, that would not by itself make the College elitist, as the latter term connotes exclusive behavior. He therefore encouraged students to always be mindful of their attitudes in all interactions, and to constantly exercise humility. Ms. Fiona Soh from Public Affairs also advised students to combat any negative perceptions of the College by giving back to the community; she referred to the example of Warren Buffet, who is remembered more for his legacy and charity than his wealth.

The Octant plans to continue the Octalks series next semester and will make announcements accordingly.

INQUIRIES INTO SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY

story | Kan Ren Jie, Contributing Reporter image | Xuerui Yang

Poor Yorick.

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classification activity, where students were assigned to do various pre-determined types of measurements on a set of skulls, Jindel felt that “we weren’t taking extremely precise measurements”, and that the descriptors used for the skulls were vague.

She hopes that there can be opportunities to do “actual experiments, with proper controlled variables”.

Similarly, Yogesh Tulsi ’20 felt that while his seminar leader was excellent, the course was rather unfocused. Referring to a more recent activity where students had to find a message by decoding a DNA sequence, Tulsi thought that “we were [not] learning for the sake of learning, but for the activity”, and that “the activity overpowered the learning points.” As such, he felt that “evolution really interests me, but SI makes me disinterested.”

he Scientific Inquiry (SI) course, a part of the Common Curriculum, has seen significant changes over the past few years. Previously, the wide range of scientific topics was scrapped in favor of a more focused investigation of evolution and cosmology. This year, freshmen focused exclusively on the topic of evolution, reading the book Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne.

Students have expressed mixed opinions about the course thus far; some have concerns about its rigor and lack of clarity, but others view the course as enjoyable and intellectually stimulating.

Taavishi Jindel ’20 thought that the goals of SI were “interesting and noble”. However, she felt that there were not enough “actual science activities”. Quoting an example of a skull

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The structure of SI has changed significantly over the past few years, but there are still similarities in students’ sentiments about the course. Previously, controversies surrounding a particular SI lecture in the previous year have been covered in these pages.

Reflecting on his experience with the course last year, Joshua Phua ’19, said that with the emphasis on evolution and cosmology, the course “tried to do a lot of things in a short period of time”, making the course challenging for students who may not have had prior knowledge of various concepts. However, a more pertinent problem for him was a “lack of clear vision or objective”, which meant that the learning objectives were not clearly communicated.

Nonetheless, not all students have negative opinions about SI. In fact, many enjoyed a recent computer simulation activity. The activity involved playing a game-like simulation to understand genetic algorithms. A competitive element was included, in which the student with the highest average score in the simulation would win a Raspberry Pi computer or a Starbucks voucher. Kshitij Bansal ’20, who obtained the 2nd highest score in Fossils in the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum. his cohort, enjoyed how “open-ended” the activity was. “We had the freedom to do anything, just as long as you get there,” he said. Regarding students’ concerns, Associate Professor of Science Neil Bansal also commented on an activity where students visited Clarke, the coordinator of this year’s SI course, acknowledged the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in their own time, that a common response given in the mid-semester surveys was to answer some guiding questions. He found the process slightly that the course “wasn’t real science”. However, Dr. Clarke felt stifling, but would want to visit the museum again to look at the that the “dry-lab activities” done in seminars, such as identifying things he missed. Bansal also said that he enjoyed the course as a the difference between human and chimpanzee karyotypes, whole. “The content we’re covering is pretty relevant. Learning was “actually doing science—it’s discovering something, asking about genomes, the philosophy of science, and the thought a question, and thinking about how you can test that.” He also process of scientists is really interesting,” he said. acknowledged that a better option would be to have students do activities in laboratories, but noted that there are practical difficulties in doing so, especially given the size of cohorts.

Commenting on the disparity between the opinions of students and faculty about whether the course was “scientific” enough, Dr. Clarke identified a cause of these differing opinions to be the way science is taught in prior curricula.

“Science is often taught as a body of knowledge, but [what is taught] is actually a body of knowledge that science discovered.” Dr. Clarke thus acknowledged that there is a need to convey the definition of science to students more effectively.

Looking forward, Dr. Clarke said that as a result of the Common Curriculum review last year, SI will be maintained for the next few years. “The course will stabilize a bit, and will continue to be centered around a single topic,” he said. However, several changes that are being considered include a greater emphasis on scientific philosophy (possibly by including a book about the subject) and condensing the content from the first six weeks of the course into the first few weeks. It seems like the course will carry on evolving.

Some skulls that the students were to classify.

JUST BARGE INTO PEOPLE'S ROOMS story | Justin Ong, Managing Editor image |Claire Krummenacher, Justin Ong and Abhinav Natarajan

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This week The Octant features two first year students and two juniors with a very important message: that personal space is overrated.

Both pairs first met under less than favorable conditions, but both insist that they were better off for it. Here’s what they had to say:

I Might Even Have a Toothbrush There: Claire

Krummenacher

’20

and

Fiona

Grace

’20

C: Initially when I came here I was thinking oh, I don’t want to make friends with just Americans, but it really helps to have someone from home that can understand where you’re coming from.

Is there one thing that you two can’t stand about each other?

F: Claire is messy as hell. But I love her for it!

C: I also tend to leave a lot of food in Fiona’s suite and just a lot of books and I might even have a toothbrush there?

F: And it’s good because when she’s there [in my room], whatever she needs is there. And this is why we always hang out in my suite, because I’m cleaner than Claire.

How about you, Claire?

C: I can’t really think of one. I just really can’t think of anything.

I guess sometimes when Fiona doesn’t feel like talking to me she just gives very short text responses. I wish she’d tell me that she didn’t really feel like talking to me right now.

[From the left] Claire Krummenacher '20 and Fiona Grace '20

How did you two first meet?

Claire: I met Fiona during EYW (Experience Yale-NUS Weekend), and I didn’t think she was coming to Yale-NUS because I thought she was going to NYU Abu Dhabi and that made me kind of sad, but I was really excited when I found out she was coming.

F: It’s not necessary that I don’t like talking to you! It’s just that I usually have one hand or something and other things are happening. It’s not you!

C: (Laughs) But that’s all, I can’t really think of any right now.

Just

Barge

into

People’s

Rooms:

Abhinav Natarajan ’18 and Simonas Bartulis ’18

Fiona: Me too! I met a lot of people at EYW and I was like these people, I don’t like them; they’re scary, they’re really smart, they’re also kind of mean. But of all the people that I met, I liked Claire.

And I think that of all the people we were with in the group that day, it was only us that decided to actually come.

That’s great. Because you said they were mean but they didn’t come to Yale-NUS. F: Exactly!

How did you help each other out in times of need?

C and F: Like all the time!

C: We had some really good conversations when we were roommates when we happened to be on the same Week Seven trip to Brunei. It will start with one tangent; like ok, I need advice on this problem, then it turns into a really long discussion about existential life crises and questions.

F: I feel like of the people that I met here, my experiences were the most similar to Claire’s. I feel like when I’m having issues with things back home she’s the first person that I talk to. I feel like I’m most reliant on her with our relationship with the US and our experience of being around here.

[From the left] Abhinav Natarajan '18 and Simonas Bartulis '18 How did you guys first meet?

Simonas: I remember in the first weeks before classes started he was playing guitar near Ritika, and I knew Ritika and I decided to say hello to him and he completely ignored me and I was just like wow. What a rude person and I thought he was really pretentious. Then somebody came up and said ‘oh, we’re going to have all of your classes together’ and I’m like oh great. And then [the person] was like ‘Abhinav also’ ‘cos in freshman year you all have the same group and I was just like oh damn. Cos I hadn’t known him then. But in classes we got to know each other more.

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might actually be a friend?

A: There was one particular moment when, so… yes because I was a very shy person and Simonas at one point I think he invited me out for a smoke [ … ] and he really got me to open up about the insecurities I had at that point as I was just coming out of high school, had a lot of trust issues and stuff. One way he got me to open up was to open up in turn. He opened up to me as a way of building trust, and I was like okay, this is a person who really does want to reach out and I really appreciated that. Eventually over time another thing that happened was that we figured we had very similar value systems and we make similar value judgments about a lot of things.

S: But we always kind of go back to the question of so why are we friends? It doesn’t seem to make sense. Because all of our interests are not just different but opposed to each other even.

A: Orthogonal, even.

S: It just doesn’t make any sense. Still.

‘We always kind of go back to the question of so why are we friends? It doesn’t seem to make sense.’

Abhinav: Wait, my side of the story. I think I just ignored him because I didn’t hear him. I don’t remember this happening at all.

S: That’s ok, don’t remember it.

A: (laughs) What I do remember is the first time we met was probably during the orientation week when there was like a social happening in one of the common lounges in RC4 (Residential College 4) and I met Simonas over there because I was introduced to him through Ritika and he just came across as like a …. like… you know back then I was really shy.

S: Introverted.

A: Yeah, still am very nerdy. But when I first met him I was like ok this is just another person that I’m never going to get along with.

Since then, how did you guys build up the friendship?

A: He bugged me in all of our classes. He like basically…him and Alaine, they like took my case in all of our classes.

S: We made fun of him a lot, we annoyed him. But we also like, kind of just like barged into his room and like wouldn’t leave.

A: Oh yeah. There were many times when Simonas basically barged into my room drunk as hell in the middle of the night and I was like what the **** are you doing here? I’m trying to sleep or do my presets and he would be like you have to listen to this song. So in some ways…

S: His taste in music is s***.

A: Excuse me. Your taste in music is lethargic, if that’s the only way to put it.

S: Better than s***.

Was there a particularly challenging time in your friendship?

A: There were many many challenging times.

S: Give a list of disappointments?

A: Go for it (laughs).

S: Freshman year he would refuse to hang out with me on my birthday even though I really wanted him to. In sophomore year he forgot my birthday even though he said “I’m going to make it up to you for last year”. In general he’s been kind of absent. ‘Cos he’s working a lot.

A: I tend to become a hermit a lot so there are these extended periods, several weeks sometimes where I’m always working.

S: There was a period of two months where he did not speak to me at all even though I tried.

A: Not because I didn’t want to.

S: He didn’t realize, he’s oblivious to these things.

S: I forced myself onto [him].

A: Yes, I’m very oblivious.

A: That sounds kind of wrong.

S: And then I get angry then I don’t talk to him when I really need to as well so that’s, so that’s when I mess up.

S: I grabbed you by the friendship, as Donald Trump would say.

Was there a point in time when you realised that this guy 8

A: I think we can’t stand each other’s interests.

A: But I tend to get lost in my work a lot and at those times I tend to forget about everyone and everything around me.

FEATURES/OPINION

Any tips on how to maintain a friendship?

A: Barge into people’s rooms.

S: I actually do advocate that strongly. People who tend to prioritize a lot of personal privacy and space (this is my situation and not applicable to everyone) but I found that ignoring my need for privacy with my friends is a very good way to connect. So for me availability and openness and honesty is very important.

A: Basically he oversteps any personal boundary there is and like after a while you’re just like well I have no personal boundaries with you anymore.

S: Might as well talk.

A: So barge into people’s rooms, it’s a good allegory for all of that.

LANGUAGE GAPS: ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE AT YALE-NUS story | Francesca Maviglia, Contributing Reporter image | Francesca Maviglia

H

ow many students at Yale-NUS College speak English as a second language? This number is nowhere to be found. A quick glance at our website doesn’t help much.

With lack of a complete breakdown of nationalities, it’s hard to figure out how many students come from countries where English is not commonly spoken. Singapore and the United States are the two of most represented countries, but we also have a number of students from other English-speaking countries such as Canada, India, Australia. The percentage of students who speak English as a second language is thus probably quite small.

Many of the students in this category, including me, have experienced living and studying in an English-speaking environment before coming to Yale-NUS. When I was 16, I left my home country, Italy, to finish my last two years of high school in a United World College (UWC) school; other people went on an exchange to the US for a year, or studied in international school in their country, or attended a program abroad during their gap year. My guess is that the number of students who begin their freshman year with no prior experience of English-medium education is very low. This means that the experiences of these students are not prominent and rarely acknowledged. What are their struggles? Is Yale-NUS a welcoming space for someone who is under pressure to quickly improve their English? I’ve never heard any of these questions being discussed publicly. We talk a lot about how this College is a high-stress environment, be it due to the academic workload, the fact many of us are living on our own for the first time, or the constant questioning of our values, opinions, and identities.

I’ve rarely seen anyone wonder how these difficulties are exponentially amplified when completing your readings can take you twice as much time as it does for everyone else; when you have to look up half of the words in a paragraph before you can even

begin to understand a writer’s argument; or when even socializing and chatting with your friends is an energy-consuming activity.

I’ve been through it. When I started studying at UWC, I remember spending the first few weeks constantly feeling like my brain was being stretched and pulled in all directions. I was tired all the time—not a physical tiredness, but a mental fatigue that made thoughts hard and conversations harder. That sensation went away after a couple of months. The feeling of inadequacy, the frustration of never being able to express my ideas as effectively as I did in my head, the sense of shame every time I didn’t understand what someone said and had to ask them to repeat it, took another couple of years to dissipate, and sometimes these feelings still suddenly resurface. English fluency, as well as accent and pronunciation, are tangled with many factors—from educational background to socioeconomic class—that make it hard to talk openly about. Today, I’m comfortable enough with my English that I’m able to confess these things, and laugh about my mistakes.

But I had to get to a point where I already felt “good enough”.

I was fortunate enough to go through all this long before coming here, in an environment much more forgiving of social class and lack of polish than Yale-NUS is, where the academic pressure did not feel so strong and your formal achievements did not define your worth as much, and where debates (although just as brutal) were won by the strength of an opinion or perspective rather than by rhetorical skills and formal sophistication. Although I still struggle with these aspects of Yale-NUS’s culture, I do so with three years of experience living in English-speaking environments behind me, and with a level of fluency that’s generally sufficient for the things I want to do. I can’t imagine how much harder it would have been had my first entry in the English-speaking world been the beginning of freshman year.

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CLOCKWORK/OPINION/ARTS

What’s happening on campus?

Midnight Society: This new group, for anyone interested in the occult, paranormal stuffs, getting spooked, or in debunking it all, held their welcome tea on Wednesday, October 26, at 8:36 pm.

Month of Movies: To help Yale-NUS College get into the Halloween spirit, Midnight Society will be screening scary movies at 10pm every night at classroom 14 from Oct. 24 30. Not to be confused with Midnight Cinema, which screens movies every Thursday at 0000 hours in the Shiok Shack!

Eat Your Surroundings: If you’ve ever wondered if the plants around you are edible, this exhibition is for you! Mamakan Art Collective opened Gastrogeography of Singapore on Oct. 27, and will be open Wed-Sun, 11am 7pm, at WOWhaus until Nov 30.

Berlin at NUS: Two segments of the Berlin Wall now stand at the University Town Sculpture Garden. It was unveiled by Singapore Minister of Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan, Rector of Tembusu College Professor Tommy Koh and German Ambassador to Singapore Dr Michael Witter on Oct. 18.

Bone Marrow Donation: Yale-NUS ComPact is organising a bone marrow donor registration drive from 9-10th November. This will be held below Cafe Agora and outside U-Town Koufu and will require a cheek swab and filling of a registration form.

Course Selection: The first round of course selection ended Tuesday, with round two starting on Wednesday, Nov. 2 until Nov. 4. We extend our condolences to the folks who were unable to sign up for “Money” and “The Problem of Evil”. Better luck next year!

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I decided to write this article because I’ve been hearing of freshmen who are struggling to keep up with their readings, or are worried about their ability to write essays. I’ve been wondering if, in the context of silence surrounding English as a second language at YaleNUS, these students are asking for help if they need it. I speak now to all the people who belong to this group: are you going to the Writer’s Centre? Are you asking your friends for clarifications on the meaning of a word you don’t understand? Are you requesting your classmates to rephrase a comment in a different way during class discussions? When someone points out a mistake you made, do you laugh or do you shrink a little bit? If you are one of the people who are struggling right now, I want you to know that you’ll be fine.

Maybe you won’t get an A+ in your essays this year (together with many native speakers).

Maybe you will never lose your accent. But you’ll be fine. It gets a lot easier with time.

Finally, as you deal with the difficulties, don’t forget to acknowledge the beauty that comes with being a second language speaker. While right now you might feel your status limits you in some ways, it will also make your experience uniquely yours, and give you possibilities for growth that other people won’t get. Your native tongue is a private space you can choose to go back to, where most of the community won’t be able to follow you.

It grants you the option of pursuing some intellectual endeavors—having a discussion, writing an article—protected by privacy, taking a temporary break from public scrutiny. In an environment as close-knit as Yale-NUS, where the obligatory closeness to everyone else can at times feel claustrophobic, having a virtual space to seek refuge is a privilege to cherish.

LIBERAL ARTS IN SINGAPORE: HOW RAFFLES GOT THERE FIRST story | Kan Ren Jie, Contributing Reporter image | National Library Board, Kan Ren Jie

T

here was once a college in Singapore that was established in collaboration with a leading overseas university. It focused on cross-disciplinary learning and residential life; students lived on campus in a closely knit residential community, with

ARTS

small class sizes and much interaction with their professors. Indeed, the idea of a liberal arts curriculum in Singapore first took shape through this innovative venture.

You may be wondering why I am describing Yale-NUS College; however, these were actually qualities of Raffles College.

Not to be confused with the current Raffles Institution, Raffles College was established in 1928 as a higher education institution, in collaboration with the University of London. The similarities between Yale-NUS College and Raffles College are extraordinary, as I discovered at a research talk entitled “A Building with One Side: Liberal Arts and Illiberal Modernities in Colonial Singapore”, held in the Elm Common Lounge on Oct. 14.

During the talk, Professor Philip Holden from the NUS English Department emphasized the similarities between Raffles College and Yale-NUS. Raffles College was established in collaboration with the University of London to confront the challenge of “global competition of higher education”, which resulted in a “brain drain” from Singapore. Interestingly, the College had the philosophy of an “un-instrumentalized, cross-disciplinary study in the arts, sciences and social sciences”. These terms are familiar to Yale-NUS students.

Beyond the similarities with Yale-NUS, Dr. Holden also highlighted several illuminating instances of tension within Raffles College. In spite of its far-reaching aims, there was an undercurrent of elitism; the faculty members were all European, and gramophones (the closest thing towhat little of a mobile phone they had in those days) were banned, making it a highly westernized, if not insular, environment. The few non-residential students of Raffles College stressed how the College “seemed completely cut off from the rest of its surroundings”.

Students were forced to negotiate the disparity between their lives outside the College and the environment within, as evident in an anecdote given by Dr. Holden. After seeing other students wearing frocks and dresses, a female student felt so insecure wearing her traditional Chinese dress, the samfu, that she soon switched attires to conform. Male students were required to dress in formal western attire for every lecture, while professors wore academic gowns in spite of the heat. Hearing these interesting facts made me extremely thankful that we can now go for lectures in our Performance Hall in plain t-shirts and shorts!

Dr. Holden also highlighted a particularly interesting conflict between the University of London and Raffles College about the curriculum. While subjects such as local and regional geography were offered, Dr. Holden argued that Asia was studied in a detached manner, as an “object” instead of a reality. Raffles College wanted to remove the compulsory study of “Anglo-Saxon” aspects of literature, replacing it with ancient languages or Latin.

However, the University of London argued that Raffles College could not “change so important a part of the English syllabus.” We see in the conflict the great struggle to produce a new generation of cosmopolitan Asians, not bound by English literary traditions.

Ironically, this same struggle between the foreign and the local would be played out even after Singapore’s separation from Malaysia in 1965. Dr. Holden noted developments such as “the marginalization of Chinese language (e.g., dialects) under Mandarin, and the rise of English as lingua franca” as contributing towards this ongoing struggle. Indeed, the freedom that we now have in reading diverse and at times controversial texts as part our curriculum may be seen as a product of this struggle, and we should not take that for granted.

Raffles College and Yale-NUS College: The ‘Then’ and The ‘Now’.

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ARTS/LITERATURE

Today, Raffles College no longer exists; it was merged with several other institutions to form the NUS we know today. However, Dr. Holden observed that “the liberal arts never vanished”— its legacy lives on in the resurgent popularity of cross-disciplinary studies in recent times. In the late 1990s, amidst Singapore’s new focus on “thinking schools, learning nation”, intellectual flexibility in local universities was seen as desirable. This sparked interest in creating a residential college system with interdisciplinary learning, and led to the establishment of NUS’s University Scholars Programme, and subsequently, the construction of University Town in 2011. As such, Dr. Holden remarked that there has been signs of “returning back to a reinvented expres sion of the liberal arts ideal” in Singapore’s education landscape.

In this vein, Yale-NUS College is not an isolated phenomenon, but hearteningly, the “conclusion of a two-decade-long narrative,” a “startup college” with roots far deeper than we realized.

Dr. Holden ended his talk by elaborating on the current state of the Raffles College campus. Upon reclamation by NUS in 2005, it was renovated and is now the campus of the NUS Faculty of Law. As suggested by the title of Dr. Holden’s talk, the campus is now “a building with one side”—it is incomplete, with the apparent façade (and original marble plaque) of Raffles College, but with a greatly different function and purpose. However, perhaps all is not lost for Raffles College. Perhaps our College, established with rather far-reaching goals as well, may be considered an intellectual successor to the previous model of liberal arts in 20th

century Singapore. If that is so, may we become the other side of the “one-sided building”, that final piece in a jigsaw puzzle that reveals a beautiful image.

Raffles College and Yale-NUS College: The ‘Then’ and The ‘Now’.

WHAT I TRY REMEMBERING

I

n my mind, a gallery of windows, sun melting across glass. i track

differences: hair grown past your ear, fingertips heavier on shoulder blades. to share

EDITORIAL TEAM Editor-in-chief Dave Chappell Managing Editor Justin Ong Managing Editor Zula Badral Co-News Editor Pham Le Vi

moments apart, i beg to trade geographies, scavenge for details to keep. my hands recall your body: an extra scar on your forearm, the peeling of skin from another sun. yet there is too much to say, and so i leave it to rain, light condensed on windowpanes.

Teo Xiao Ting is a 3rd year Psychology major from Elm College. Her poems have been published in anthologies such as This Is Not A Safety Barrier and SingPoWriMo (2015). She can be reached at teo.xiaoting@gmail.com, or baited by plants and tea.

LETTER TO THE EDITORS

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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