RI Petition

Something interesting caught my eye the other day. Somebody from RI, my alma mater put up a petition calling for the removal of the principal. I think it only made the news because of the sheer outrageousness of the whole thing.

Let me state that in the RI I went to, there was a high degree of tomfoolery. It was a place that was much like a looney tunes cartoon: violent but forgiving. People were up to all sorts of hi-jinks. People threw toilet paper against the ceiling to make paper mache. Somebody left his footprint on the ceiling. Teachers had limericks written about them. People got locked inside the toilet for laughs. Played squash against the blackboard.

But there were other incidents that took a darker hue. There are plenty of memories that give me a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia when I think about them. RI was a place where I was challenged for the first time, and I had to do things to prove that I had character, for example I had to go on a 20km route march. I had to write a school play, represent the school in competitions, master a musical instrument. Take pride in my own achievements.

But there were things about RI even back before it became a very competitive and unwelcoming place. People could be a little self-centred and only respected you if you did something that impressed them. They weren't very helpful to each other, and would look past you if you didn't have enough social status.

By and large, I was OK with the people who were there. Whether or not they were my good friends, I could always count on them to behave with honour and act according to the bro code. There were sufficient examples of people sticking up for me that I would have confidence in them as human beings.

There were a few things where I wasn't proud of RI. They didn't protect my mental health very well when things weren't going well for me. (Thank goodness I found a way to get back on my feet and in a way earned back my mental health). I didn't feel that somebody reached out to me to help, although to be fair, in retrospect people were concerned about me and I would have received more help if I were more receptive to help. There were bullies and I did get my things thrown around on the school bus, although it stopped once he got the message that he would be physically deprived of oxygen if he were to do that again.

There were certain things that disappointed me, although many of those things took place when I left. I was in one of the batches which moved from Grange Road to Bishan. RI had been in Grange Road since before I was born, so I barely understood that it was very much a temporary premises, RI was there for less than 20 years, which is basically a blink of an eye. But it felt that Bras Basah and Grange Road's RI was a very “old school” RI, which still retained a very working class and conservative mentality of the world. It was an RI which was still good at football. The RI of Bishan was the first place where we had computer labs, where people bought cassettes and CDs. It was a more internationalist, tech-savvy, cosmopolitan and worldly RI that took its place. Football was no longer an ECA in RI, quite possibly because the kids of my generation would get thrashed at it.

Perhaps when bad things happened to the old RI, things were kept under wraps. The RI of Bishan seemed to be a version which became more like what it is today – a bastion of the privileged elite. In fact, I was quite oblivious to the fact that a few of my classmates were children of civil servant royalty – maybe a minister of parliament or a permanent secretary or a superscale grade.

I was very disappointed when I heard about some of the scandals that made the news. I used to be embarrassed at some of the hi-jinks that I detailed earlier, but I don't think any of it was outrageously bad enough to go viral. The first one that really disappointed me was the “Elite Girl” scandal, where one of the RJC kids (who was the daughter of an MP) basically rubbished the idea about the growing divide between the haves and have nots. I think it got bad enough that she would be persona non grata if she comes back to this country.

Perhaps I wanted to believe that RI was some kind of a classless society. It was easy to believe, especially in RI's Grange Road era, where the economic advances were very broad-based, that we had finally transcended there being an economic divide in society. RI was that wonderful paradox: it was a symbol of Singapore. On one hand, it was an academically elite school and yet, it was supposed to be have students from all backgrounds. At least, that was the fantasy, that we were unlike the other traditional colonial elite schools who were the exclusive scion of the moneyed class.

Then there were a few other blackface incidents. One of my schoolmates was a playwright who – I respected his talent, but I thought he may have been a little thin-skinned about being a minority in RI. And make no mistake, RI is not a great place for a minority, and minority races are underrepresented in the school.

This petition felt different. For the first time, it felt that this institution was under attack itself. Perhaps I attended the school in a different era. I thought of the school first, and then secondly I thought about the school as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. I'm wondering about the guy who wrote the petition.

There is this thing about foreign students. I was a foreign student in Snowy Hill, and while I will always be proud of Snowy Hill, I also know that it's not my home. I could have attended many other universities, and there's nothing special about that university. Well, it's special, but it's not like a country that I would die for.

I'm starting to wonder if the guy who wrote it is either a foreign national or the son of a new immigrant, given that he did make a few English mistakes in his writing. Of course, every one of us at school has slagged off our teachers behind their bags for laughs. But we were careful not to do it in front of them, and while we weren't always very concerned about the reputation of the school (I can't imagine the number of crazy things I did while in school uniform) it's another thing entirely to want to decapitate the school's leadership.

So I actually went and signed the peittion and slagged off the kid for good measure. It's one thing to be disciplined by the school authorities for something as outrageous as this, but quite another thing to have to face up to a playground taunt, having to deal with a rebel within the ranks of the rebels.

As a former alumnus of RI, attended during the 90s when most of you were nothing more than a by product of your father's horny imaginations. I am here to tell you young punks that your conduct is nothing short of a disgrace.

During my time, we had to wear slacks every day and sweat as much as a horny female. The teachers made the rules and we had to live with them, whether we liked it or not. We had to sit in sullen silence as somebody threatened to slap our faces every 5 minutes.

While it is alright to want to aspire to independent thinking, what most appalls me is that such a flimsy and shoddy case is being built. You are asking him to be fired because he's turning off your air con and asking you to get a proper haircut? Many people have gone through RI and found it a character building experience. Are these pussies going to be our heirs and successors?

Teaching is not a popularity contest. You have to do the right thing whether the kids like it or not. It is OK to bargain against some restrictions that may be overly excessive. Reasonable to petition against the scrapping of an ECA (after having actually discussed this with a real person instead of hiding on the internet like a craven coward) But calling for the head of your principal is beyond the pale, especially on grounds that are as flimsy as the ones that are stated in the writeup.

People rebel against authority because of injustice. Like Lim Bo Seng against the Japanese, Lee Kuan Yew against the British, maybe even a few opposition party members. None of you are fit to be in that category. The frivolity with which you conduct your business, and the flimsiness of your stand make this whole affair a complete sham.

I was in sec 1 more than 30 years ago. I've seen a few things I didn't like – the shameless wayanging, the “elite girl” incident, people throwing away other peoples' lecture notes, a few blackface incidents, but never have I seen anything exposing the rot in the soul of RI more than a bunch of whinging brats offering to throw their leader under the bus over a few petty grievances.

I personally feel saddened that in this day and age, people who think that it's "personal correlation to judo" instead of "personal connection to judo" are allowed to wander the hallowed walls of our august institution. I am also disappointed in the people of my generation who have raised brats like the ones I see over here. Raffles Institution has fallen so far in standards as to be as bereft of character, like the graveyard that used to occupy the Bishan plot.

I am petitioning the board of directors for authorisation to allow the people who run the school to find the person responsible for this petition, and have him banished from Raffles Institution forever I am calling for people who sign this trash to have this on their permanent record If believe your generation calls this "cancellation")

If you think that calling for the head of your school principal is A-OK, I assume that this would also not be rough justice.

PS: Just because I'm an anonymous coward and a hypocrite, it doesn't mean that you guys aren't thin skinned cowards who can't face somebody calling you out for being unworthy Rafflesians and thin skinned narcissistic pricks who do not have the balls to face criticism.

One of the things is that the guy instigated quite a few people in RI to rise up against the principal. This is something more serious than blackface people embarrassing themselves. You actually got at least 100 people to join in the mutiny with you. You've made the principal's job more difficult. And if the school board feels that they have to fire the principal, then it sets a very unpleasant precedent that students in the school can remove the principal just by staging an uprising.

The principal, on the other hand (who may even be a younger person than me) has also done himself no favours. There was a blackface incident last year, where somebody turned up as a minority blackfaced Foodpanda delivery man. It was something very insensitive, possibly in breach of the religious harmony act, and he should have been punished. But the principal stopped short of doing something courageous and punished him. The principal, I felt, owed him at least a mock execution.

Quite possibly there were a few cutbacks to school programs. I'm starting to wonder if they were pushed down from the board, or from the Ministry of Education. Some of the CCAs, some of which had a pedigree in RI, had their plugs pulled. But the petition seemed so cheerfully nihilistic that I somehow doubt that it was truly about these weighty concerns. The guy just seemed more pissed off that the principal was withdrawing a few privileges.

There are quite a few question marks about the principal. He may have been unlucky enough to have had to implement quite a few unpopular changes to the school. Maybe RI was supposed to no longer have a monopoly on many of the special enrichment programs, and they were more broad based. This would be in line with making the Singapore school system less elitist. And there were criticisms of his style.

Somehow, though, this seemed to wind me up. The guy seemed to be doing something malicious as an insider. He was a traitor to the Rafflesian community. Maybe he was a spoilt brat who thought he could get away with anything. It's unfortunate that there are a few other people who have genuine reasons to feel upset at the principal and are being instigated to turn on him in a public forum. But this has made RI into some kind of a laughing stock, and highlighted the internal division between people in the school.