Pretty Piece of Paper

If the very institution that I earn my certificate from teaches me one thing and practices another, what does it say of both my certificate and the institution?

It was bittersweet to open my university email and find this graduation notice today: “Congratulations on completing the Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Centre (CTPCLC) Certificate Programme in Community Development & Leadership! We warmly welcome you into the CTPCLC alumni family…”

I say it was bittersweet because my Yale-NUS College (YNC) experience pushed me to understand more perspectives across communities and was the reason why I embarked on this additional fellowship with the National University of Singapore (NUS) in the first place. However, a few days ago, the President of NUS announced that NUS had unilaterally decided to close down YNC without prior consultation with the staff, faculty, and students of YNC, i.e. the people who mattered most. It came as a rude shock vis-a-vis the programme I embarked on with the CTPCLC. My two years with the CTPCLC taught me the importance of giving others a voice and believing in the consultative process in addressing social and community issues. At a Question and Answer Session with YNC, the President of NUS conceded that he chose not to consult with the student, staff, and faculty of YNC before deciding to close it down. The same president endorses centres such as the CTPCLC through its establishment as an academic unit within NUS.

As a CTPCLC fellow, I took classes on communicating social issues and community-based research methods. I also embarked on a 6-month-long practicum with the Singapore Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF). A group of NUS students and I embarked on a research project titled ‘Assessing the needs and aspirations of low-income families in conceptualising social services for Community Link sites’. Community Link is an initiative under MSF. The project sought to understand low-income families’ needs and centre low-income voices to better Community Link services for low-income residents.

I witnessed first-hand the value of personally engaging with low-income families through focus group discussions and carefully listening to their needs before providing recommendations for Community Link. We had many weekends of meaningful dialogues on the challenges faced by low-income communities in Singapore. The data we collected from the focus group discussions then enabled MSF and CTPCLC fellows to strive towards the goal of better meeting these underprivileged communities’ needs.

The consultative process empowered those involved and was an ethical and responsible approach in making decisions where others’ lives and livelihoods were concerned.

Even when I went on to other internships, such as one with the Singapore Ministry for Culture, Community and Youth, I saw my department’s dedication to the consultative process. They made a point to engage professional consultants on decisions concerning our national symbols. I could tell that my training in CTPCLC was valuable because it gave my MCCY team confidence in allowing me to be a part of the focus group discussions. Alas, I find myself in a space where the president of NUS, who by extension is the institutional leader of the CTPCLC, does not seem to endorse the very spirit of an academic unit which he represents. In his responses at the Q&A, he cited reasons such as the sensitive nature of the YNC closure not to warrant a consultative process. However, the egregious secrecy of his decision prevented many first-year students from making prudent financial decisions regarding YNC’s relatively hefty tuition fees and the Tuition Grant Scheme. The president made the announcement only shortly after the deadline for student fees. Other concerns about the process included the president of NUS confirming that he notified Yale University in 2018 of his unilateral decision to end the partnership while keeping the rest of the Yale-NUS community in the dark. This would have meant keeping mum for almost three years before organising a last-minute Town Hall on 27 August 2021 to announce the already-made decision to an unsuspecting community.

If I put myself in the shoes of a policymaker back in my days attached to MSF, I would expect no less from any resident who accuses me of subterfuge.

Suppose an advocate of the NUS President regarding YNC’s closure were to scoff at my naivety and dismiss me along the lines of ‘welcome to the real world’. In that case, I question the office of the president for not preemptively and strategically investing in a real-world education, after which I may have perhaps better understood his ways — to pursue a ‘strategic direction’ for NUS and YNC without first understanding NUS and YNC.

I now receive this certificate with a mix of gratitude and ambivalence. While I am grateful for the faculty and student fellows I had come to know along the way, I am also very ambivalent about what a piece of paper like this means in the greater scheme of things. If the very institution that I earn my certificate from teaches me one thing and practices another, what does it say of both my certificate and the institution?

The logical course of action would simply be to heed my sense of what I believe the CTPCLC to be. After all, much of my lived experience was with CTPCLC rather than the abstraction of NUS. I, therefore, continue to stand by the consultative process because I believe the lives in every community deserve it.

Otherwise, I attach here nothing more than a pretty piece of paper: