The Star Online: Metro: Central
The Star Online: Metro: Central |
| Controversial college opens in Singapore Posted: YALE University formally opened a controversial liberal arts college in tightly governed Singapore, saying there was demand for "critical thinking" in the city-state and other Asian nations. The Yale-NUS College, a joint project with the National University of Singapore, had been criticised by faculty members of the leading US university due to Singapore's restrictions on protests and on student political activity. "Singaporeans, and Asians more broadly, have a greater hunger for pedagogy that truly encourages critical thinking and a model of liberal arts and science education adapted for the 21st century," Pericles Lewis, president of the college, said in a speech. He said that "we're not setting out to change any political discourse, but we're giving students the tools to be active in citizenship, to think about the issues". The pioneer batch of 157 students from 26 countries – 97 of them Singaporeans – was selected from a pool of over 10,000 applicants and began lessons this month in temporary facilities. The college's own purpose-built campus with residential facilities will open in 2015 and is designed to have a full capacity of 1,000 students. The college is the first established by Yale outside its campus in New Haven, Connecticut. "We believe that the college has the potential to serve as a model for others, particularly in Asia," said NUS president Tan Chorh Chuan. In a resolution passed in April 2012, the Yale faculty expressed "concern regarding the history of lack of respect for civil and political rights in the state of Singapore". It called on Yale-NUS to uphold civil liberties and political freedom on campus and in broader society. Campaign group Human Rights Watch accused Yale of "betraying the spirit of the university as a centre of open debate and protest by giving away the rights of its students" at the new campus. "Instead of defending these rights, Yale buckled when faced with Singapore's draconian laws on demonstrations and policies restricting student groups." Singapore's education ministry said at the height of the controversy that student demonstrations on campus would require approval from the Yale-NUS administration. — AFP |
| 114 pieces of Night Festival artwork go missing Posted: ALMOST a third of an art installation that was displayed in public has gone missing after the opening of this year's Singapore Night Festival last weekend. Artist Karen Mitchell, who will not be replacing the 114 missing pieces as she does not have the time or the budget, made an appeal yesterday on her Facebook page for the pieces to be returned. "When any one piece is removed, it deprives others of enjoying the experience of interacting with this installation fully," she wrote. Her installation, called Everyday Aspirations, was set up along the alley between The Substation and the Peranakan Museum. It was made up of 365 pieces of "words of aspirations", such as "laugh" and "smile". The artwork involves small wooden panels with words cut into them using a laser. The pieces, stretched across a space 14m long, are used to cast shadows of these words onto a wall. The different shadows overlap one another, "to represent the shared aspirations of everyone", she said. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network |
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