An open letter regarding FOCs

An open letter regarding FOCs

For the longest time, I struggled to find the right words to address all this. I figured it would only be right to speak first to those that matter the most.

To Mummy & Papa,

I'm sure you would have read the recent news regarding NUS and the Freshmen Orientation Camps/Projects, and like any loving parent, you would no doubt be worried sick wondering if I am implicated in all this. I am at once embittered, angered, disappointed, saddened, unsure and apologetic. So to get all of this out of the way: Yes, I have participated in unapproved activities before. No, it was nothing like they describe in the papers. No, I have never done anything without a freshman's consent. Yes, we made sure nobody was hurt. No, The New Paper is not telling the whole truth. Yes, the stories are exaggerated. Yes, I am safe.

"A lie can travel halfway the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes."

Calling the article a mischaracterization of NUS freshmen activities is an understatement. To be able to publish a story like this says a lot about the journalistic standards of Singapore and The New Paper. Before this saga, I was apathetic. Today I am embittered. The activities written in the paper are sensationalized, their lewdness exaggerated, their outrageousness maximized. The orange shirt push up photo you see as the cover has already appeared in the same paper a few years back under a similar title, and even more heinously, it's not even from NUS. The videos circulating around are either not from NUS or from years before, of which the organizers have already been disciplined for. All those currently implicated are absolutely innocent and I'm absolutely angered that they have been accused in the first place with no real evidence other than a possibly bitter freshman's "testimony"

As much as you condone these activities and these seniors for doing such unspeakable acts (once upon a time), these are the very same seniors that taught us to discern the right way of doing it and the wrong way of doing it. These are the very same seniors who taught us how to make mature decisions, how to not let your emotions or impulses get the better of you. The very same seniors taught me how to do all these things safely, both physically and mentally. The very same seniors taught me that we support our fellow man by building each other up, not tearing the enemies down. So no matter how tempting it may have been to characterize NUS seniors as perverse, understanding these nuances in the complex and often harsh reality of life made me a better and more holistic person today.

The road to adulthood is paved with stupidity. To pretend it is anything but is to live in denial. A denial that what feels like the whole of Singapore is going through. It seems ludicrous that plenty of "adults" that have gone through their own periods of drinking, partying and general stupidity can act high and mighty once their time was up. Let's not pretend that these students coming in are all angel fairies that need to be protected from the realities of "adult" life. We are adults. And we need to make our own stupid decisions too. They teach us to make better ones. So, No, I'm not sorry for not behaving according to your delusional worldview, and I'm not sorry if it offends your delicate sensibilities.

I am saddened for this current batch of freshmen and seniors because I know the road ahead will be tougher than it has ever been. From today onwards, there is an added level of paranoia, fear and uncertainty among all those who may have intended to step up like we once did. And by missing out on such experiences, they lose what made our NUS lives so enriching. Participating in any capacity in an FOC is thankless job, one that thousands upon thousands of seniors sign up for year after year. There is no compensation, no reward, no real reason to give up precious vacation time to come back to school for this. Yet, we do. We do, because we became a closer family through these camps. I have walked in the shoes of a freshman, an OGL, a camp organizer and a Project Director for orientation. I know that my outlook on life and society around me has been deeply shaped by these experiences, and I want to share these experiences with the incoming freshmen just as my seniors have done for me. Every time I walk out of my front door during summer vacation, it's for orientation. You know that. And I know you look me in the eyes every time and simply ask that I do not do anything stupid and stay safe. I assure you, because of my seniors, I KNOW I'm not doing anything stupid. 

To end off; To my brother, my cousins and all prospective freshmen who at some point will consider NUS as their institute of higher learning, I can only offer my sincerest apologies. The vocal minority has prevailed once again, and you must suffer the consequences for it. Maturity is not a given in any society, and pandering to the lowest denominator does not make us any stronger in any way. Hopefully, the journey that has brought you here has endowed you sufficiently to discern the right from the wrong, the truth from the half-truths. The same path that I took that so enriched my young adulthood will undoubtedly be unrecognizable from your own, but I wish you to become as intelligent, compassionate and wise as those who came before me. 

Vincit Omnia Veritas.

With Love,

Hall Thoughts: Part 5 (JCRC)

Part 1: Orientation (Done)
Part 2: Juggling Commitments and Time Management (Done)
Part 3: Inter Hall Games (IN PROGRESS)
Part 4: Points, Masterlists, and most importantly who "should" stay (NOT DONE)
Part 5: JCRC
Part 6: Leadership

Seeing as the open call for elects have already been released, I figured I should give some of my thoughts on the JCRC, Junior Common Room Committee. I know it's weird that I'm skipping ahead to part 5 when I haven't done the previous 2. But hey, reasons.

Like before, there are going to be over-generalizations as much as I can try to avoid them. Particularly, I will make a lot of effort to not generalize what I "think" other people think, but that does not mean I'm going to stray away from patterns that I notice which could be totally wrong or unfounded. There is a lot of misinformation around complex issues and Hall is no exception.

I suspect this will be the first piece that I'll post on facebook, so I'm totally prepared to face the backlash (Psst, I'm totally not.)

Anyway, this is what I think of the JCRC.

~~~

For those who are unaware, Junior Common Room Committee is the top of the food chain in tersm of student body groups in the hall system. To simplify it, it would be closest to the Student Council in other schools, although they do not take care of discipline or conduct issues. They pretty much act as a liaison between the SCRC (Senior Common blah blah blah, basically profs that stay in the halls and act as some sort of senior resident here) and the rest of the students.

Now that explanations are out of the way, here are my real thoughts. The JCRCs that I have experienced over the last 4 years have all fallen short of my expectations. This statement can be explained in 1 of 2 ways: either my expectations are too high, or they have been performing way below what should be a reasonable standard.

A lot of my issues with them tend to be leadership-based, so I will try to stay on topic and focus on issues that apply directly or primarily to JCRC members and the system they reside in.

First and foremost, there is very little accountability on JCRC's shoulders. Sure, they are scrutinized to an absurd level before things even get started. But they seldomly need to take responsibility for their actions or their mistakes after the fact. We have seen a lot of under-the-table Masterlisters coming in and contributing nothing to hall. We have seen very disproportionate treatment of particular CCAs or groups of people. And we have also seen people being taken advantage on for being nice, usually those who give up their time for causes nobody else wants to do. As of 4 years, I've seen one case of repercussion on a member, and that is for a pretty extreme case. The milestone inconsistency from last year was never addressed. The milestones for gold and silver bandings were jacked up to pretty difficult levels in an effort to reduce inflation. Guess what, many groups actually pulled it off, but ended up given an unfair banding due to the same inflation issue. Many had to back their milestone documents up and email back in order to get their deserved banding or just accept a lower banding than what you were promised. It's pretty bullshit. Most still ended up getting lower than what they deserved, although I would say, a few did get higher than they should have. Keep this in mind as I talk about the subsequent issues.

The system breeds a certain level of self-serving-"ness". I've often heard about "elects-hunting", which is essentially peer pressuring a new guy into taking a job that has no volunteers for a relatively long amount of time. That practice is immensely stressful for the person involved, borderline unethical. And the part I disagree with the most is that they often just sweet talk their way in. See, the biggest concern most people have is the lack of time, either that they prefer to study and maintain their grades or they would rather keep doing their 3 or 4 activities. And you know it's incredibly bullshit when someone actually tells this naive, uninformed kid that you will confirm have time to pursue other things, and that JCRC won't take up that much time. How can you say that in the same breath as saying that you may have to give up a few CCAs in order to do JCRC? Everyone who has eyes knows that this is a time-consuming job. This is not an outlier case, it happens pretty much every year with every "potential" candidate. Don't start their task off with such a blatant lie.

Now, a lot of my peers add on to my rant and say "They don't understand what people on the ground are doing!" I don't quite agree. The analogy I like to use here is the PAP ministers. Unlike other countries, they often take up portfolios that they have little prior experience in and they operate so high above the chain of command that they cannot possibly understand every group of people under their charge. That is an essential limitation that I am willing to accept. Because leadership on that level requires very broad, abstract understanding of how to move forward on a big-picture level. I get it. What I'm not willing to accept on the other hand is the inconsistency. Inconsistency with different issues. Inconsistency with different people. Just the inability to be fair. The points thing comes to mind most frequently but I'm sure there are many more examples out there. Many things that we as hall residents do become reduced to tickmarks on a checklist and the human element is then lost. Effort is hard to quantify and as such, CCAs that rely on hard numbers usually win out, like bizcom or photographers, while groups like Dance or SMC. It's a lazy fallback when you don't know what to do and you've never really thought hard about this issue. The block/social comm is also another big issue of contention that I won't mention here less I overkill on this topic.

Most if not all the JCRCs I've witnessed has never gotten past the "keeping the ship afloat" phase. They usually just run the day-to-day and try to prevent everything from falling apart. I remember coming in as a freshmen and thinking that the amazing freedom and maturity of university students means that they would be able to really push things forward in an awesome or semi life-changing way. Things like RHEX fall under this category. Initiatives that serve to better the community in whole or in part. But I didn't manage to see this in my time here. I do see a bit of small initiatives here and there by CCA heads (like the Phoenix Press newsletters) that try to better the place. But I haven't really seen anything substantial by the most powerful among us. I don't even see the effort to move forward as a community. All I see is a lot of routine and a lot of lip service. The closest is the archival thing a few years ago, which while useful on paper, has yet to serve as a practically useful tool for incoming leaders. I don't even know if they have still been carrying on with this practice, because I know I haven't been asked to submit anything. At this point, you can't really look at them as leaders so much as liaison, and that's exactly my viewpoint for the later part of my years here. 

At the start of every election, the elects will often state why they wish to pursue this position. Often times you will hear about passion or making this place an even better one. What I've come to realize is that your intentions as a person no longer matters to me. I don't care if you are the most kind-hearted, genuine, sincere, trust-worthy, hard-working person on the planet. I just care about what you plan to do and whether you can do it. Because I've seen good people falter under the weight of the decisions they have had to make, the sacrifices that they have given. After 4 years here, I can't see this as a altruistic or morally right thing to do anymore, being a JCRC member/leader. All I see is another task that needs to be taken up by some poor shmuck with CAP to burn.

~~~

tl;dr Don't be a JCRC member unless you think it's going to help in your resume. Above are 4 reasons why it's a still a terrible idea.

Addendum: Unfortunately, due to length, I was unable to add my own suggestions or changes that can improve this system. But believe me when I say this is a systemic problem, meaning a good leader can come in and make everything sunshine and rainbows again, but it's still gonna collapse once he's gone and nobody good replaces him.

Hall Thoughts: Part 2 (Juggling Commitments)

There will always be issues in hall. I just thought I'd write them down and condense my opinions in one place. And like before, I will try my best not to generalize other people's opinions, using mainly facts or my own thoughts, because I think it's unfair not just to those I'm slandering but also to the ones I agree with.

I want to make it a 6-part series. No real reason on why the number 6. But so far, what I have in mind is something like this.

Part 1: Orientation (Done)
Part 2: Juggling Commitments and Time Management
Part 3: Leadership
Part 4: JCRC
Part 5: Undecided
Part 6: Undecided

I actually had a really good idea on what to write for the final part, but I forgot. Sorry. Anyway, it should look something like this.

Which reminds me, I have laundry to wash.

~~~

So right now is the CCA selection phase, as freshies are pulled here and there towards activities they themselves have no idea if they are interested yet. It's an annual cycle that parks itself right before serious lessons or assignments start so freshmen never really have a good handle on their craziness of their schedule until after the fact. And this is compounded by the fact that they actually have not started on their tutorials yet, giving them another false sense of "hey, I got this..."

Regardless of how much they think they got this, captains and chairpersons area always advised to select and retain more members that they think is necessary, because inevitably, the number starts to taper off once everyone gets into their midterms. I assume everyone reading this will understand why.

So why am I talking about this? Actually I don't believe there is anything wrong with this. It's just the way the world works today. If you find that this way of doing things is not right for you, you find another way of doing it. Some people truly do end up dropping out of their hall life because they cannot cope with so many commitments. But yet, if we really look deep and ask ourselves if we Can't do it, or we don't Want to do it, what answer do you expect to get? Then we go another level and ask, why is it that all these people around me and countless before have managed to juggle hall and school and remain excelling at both?

Juggling multiple commitments is not easy. You are constantly pulled in different directions by different factors. Why put yourself through this much angst of ANOTHER time-consuming activity. We do it because we enjoy being there. We enjoy the activities that we joined. At least, that's what it's like for me. There's nothing wrong with trying something out and realising it's not the right fit for you. I didn't find my 3 favourite CCAs on my first try. Neither did most of my peers. But what's important is that you give it a sincere try. It's meaningless to put your name to something that you aren't really interested in. There's no point joining 7 CCAs and attending less than half for each. There's no point signing up and saying you have no time. You will never ever have enough time for anything if you have that attitude. All of us struggle to find our own ways of juggling, but why did we put in that effort in the first place? Different people have different reasons. Some will say they want to test themselves. Others will say they want to accompany friends. At the end of the day, whatever reason they have for putting themselves through this, it was worth it to them.

And if you ever want to pull through and juggle hall alongside your many other commitments, you also need to find a reason that's worth it to you.

~~~

Never believe anyone for a minute that they have "no time". "No time" is the ultimate excuse right behind "I want to focus on my studies". I believe people are very simple. They will always be able to make time for the things they want to do.

Let me make a very simple analogy that everyone can relate to. Suppose you come back after a long, hard day. You're tired. You're hungry. You're probably also in need of a shower. Which one do you satisfy first? Sleep, Food or Bath? Everyone has a different priority. Sometimes, even the same person may do something different due to the circumstances. Sometimes, you may even end up not doing one of the 3 at all. Everyone has experienced one of those days where you end up so deadbeat tired you can literally sleep on the floor, even if you're hungry or dirty. And here's the kicker, even the super clean freaks do this as well. Those that cannot go without a shower, also have had days where they just crash somewhere without cleaning themselves. That's because in that moment, priority goes to sleep more so than his own neuroses. Everything boils down to priorities. Everyone can put aside certain things if they really want something. In this case, it happened to be sleep. It doesn't make him any less of a clean freak. It's just the circumstance.

So coming back to hall and commitments. I'm not making the argument here that people don't study or they don't prioritise academia. But what I am saying is that it's always possible to put those things to one side. And I'm not just pointing to books as a culprit. Sometimes people will say they need to go out with their girlfriends or friends or even another competing CCA. To me, life is really about how much you want to be present for. And I prioritise my life with that in the center. Eventually, if you miss out on something regularly enough, people will just assume you won't show up. By then, it wouldn't even matter if you had the right intentions.

Never believe someone who says he has no time until he starts sleeping less than 2 hours a day. I have been in that position and I was still able to find time for my friend's birthday BBQ. Would I do it for everyone I knew? Heck no. But some people are important enough for me to take out 4 hours of my time during a critical school period. Some people are worth it. Some things are worth it. Ultimately you have to be the judge and decide whether this moment is worth losing some sleep or study time over. Sleep is not precious. I can always sleep more some other day. But if I miss this moment, will I get another chance?

~~~

Knowing this means that you have to come to terms with the fact that people just aren't interested in what you want them to do. To deal with this, there are 2 approaches, make the environment worth that guy re-prioritizing or get rid of them. I regularly take the latter approach if I find someone not worth my time, even if it is at the expense of a higher workload. Because I feel the effort expended to woo him is simply not worth it.

As for me, I made it a point to be present for every RHOC meeting, event or activity. Because I knew it was important that I can and will do anything alongside my RHOCers. I made it a point to attend as many softball trainings as I could because I knew that I wanted to be good enough to play on the team based on my own merit. I made it a point to finish my Phoenix Press assignments on time, because it was something my friend truly believed in, and since my initial impetus is to help her; it only made sense to help her all the way. And last but not least, I made it a point to say yes every time a friend asked me out for an outing, because I knew whatever else I might have been doing instead will always be less meaningful than spending time with my friends.

School doesn't make any demands on my time, Because at the end of the day, I'm not going to remember the super helpful lecture or the amazing grades I got. All school does is make requests of my time, and I say yes pending my other commitments.

I want to end off by saying this. Figure out what you truly want to do with your life. Figure out what's worth sacrificing for. This post is not meant to teach you how to juggle hall and school. If hall is really not what you want to do with your time here, my sincerest suggestion is to find something worth spending your time on. Hall is simple another avenue for people to get together and do things. If you're not interested in that, then don't force yourself into loving it.

Hall Thoughts: Part 1 (Orientation)

Seeing as I have a little off time now, and the fact that I need to brush up on my writing for a bit, I thought I would take a shot at writing about some of the issues going on in hall.

It would seem appropriate to say here that I will try to avoid over-generalizing opinions of other people. I will mainly use either logic or my own personal opinion without trying to represent anyone else. I think that's fair for everyone when inevitably someone rages, they have someone to direct it towards.

Also, I'm waiting for my laundry to dry.

~~~

Let's start with my favourite topic! Orientation!

So by now I assume a good number of people have heard about our decision to disband RHOC. By that I mean, we will not be continuing our legacy that has lasted at least a good 20 years, and we will not be, as much as I can help it, interfering or advising the new batch of orientation committees.

There are a number of reasons for this, and people have started to question myself or my members about it. Most of them start with "Eh why nobody want to do RHOC anymore? You all cannot find successor ar?" I wish it was as simple as finding a successor.

To fully understand why, we have to backtrack way way back. All the way back to when RHOC lasted 3 weeks. I cannot imagine a RHOC that lasts 3 weeks. Neither can any of my contemporaries. But from what I understand, RHOC is this huge entity of fear, excitement, fun and mostly reactionary movement from clueless freshmen that stretches even into the school time. This RHOC would have incredible things, from typical orientation games, to an insane Cozy Bedroom tunnel constructed our of Comm Hall tables that stretched from our front porch to where T-lab is now, to a phoenix explosion so loud people once called Clementi Police to come down to investigate, to a Sentosa day that lasted from morning til the next day, to Block Orientation that actually made the freshies slide down the slope in every block, to IBG that actually had some competitiveness. What we have today, is simply a watered down version. Many of my predecessors could only dream of doing something as massive as this.

And most amazingly of all, it was planned within a 3 month period when exams end in May til end July.

With that, I come to the first reason for ending RHOC; because it will always remain a sliver of what is an actually impressive package. When we RHOCers start planning, we always ask ourselves and our incoming committee members whether they want to maintain the traditional activities. Invariably we will say yes, because we look back at our seniors and marvel at the great job they have done and wonder if we will ever reach that same greatness. We have set our expectations based on the successes of the past and naturally, want to emulate that same success, either through direct imitation or through capturing the essence of the activity or the camp. The fundamental problem with that it's impossible for us to go back to "the good old days", because today's safety restrictions and expectations are much greater than they were before. It's easy to point the finger at OSA or even SCRC and accuse them of clamping down too harshly on the camp planners, but it turns out that this problem is simply a symptom of perceptions throughout the nation. Sentosa has banned both (unofficial) overnight stays as well as burning of campfires or BBQs. Parents are calling into Hall Office before the camp even begins. This is not the same world our seniors lived in 20 years ago. We couldn't get away with things even if we wanted to.

I do not see a future where the circumstances around RHOC start moving in the opposite direction, where we are encouraged or at least supported to go to the extent that our seniors did. I can only see our activities become more and more restricted. Since we place such a huge importance on continuity and legacy, it is only inevitable that RHOC becomes more and more watered down. This is perhaps one of the reasons why we always seem one step behind other faculty camps, or even RHEX in terms of genuinely fun activities, because we are tied down by both our and the hall residents' expectations of us to remain a "legacy", a legacy that they did not know have been eroding and eroding ever since an administrator first started paying attention to hall camps.

On a similar topic, we move on to reason number 2, the new generation of campers. The RHOC that we know today is based around the "1990s freshmen". They had different tastes, different preferences and most importantly different levels of tolerances. At that time, it wasn't unusual to see freshmen in actual confusion and frustration but yet still go through with something forced upon them. Pain was a powerful way of bonding people. I understood that very clearly when I was still wearing an NPCC uniform. It's sad to say but today's kids aren't like that. They have been pampered by parents throughout a good part of their lives and do not simply accept that they have to go through group suffering, choosing instead to just walk away. Last year, we had this "revolution" incident during the Big Ball Game, where some freshmen actually demanded their rights to not be treated terribly and wanted to just walk away. This year, I was so afraid of that happening en masse that I actually stationed more seniors at the ground floor and prepped them to "counsel" and reduce damage.

This may seem like a small problem, but its sinisterness lies in its deception. For every one such case where walking away is brought to our attention, regardless of how dramatic it was, 5 of them slip under our radar. Like most, I was never aware of the fact that so many people were walking away. It is only during my time as chairperson, that this really hit me right smack in the face. With PDPA seriously enforced this year, we had to directly collect information from freshmen, and it became starkly obvious that there was a serious number of people who were not even going to give the camp a chance, outrightly telling us that they are checking into hall but not attending the camp. And that is even before the camp has started! As camp coordinators, we can only focus our attention and actions on whoever is present, and if they are not present, we totally cannot do anything about it.

What I suspect is that future generations of freshmen will be less tolerant to the type of camp that we run. We are not as friendly, as approachable, or as "entry-level" as other camps. I think anyone who has attended RHOC understands that there is a level of strictness precisely because of the legacy that it carries. The trend that we have witnessed is that more and more freshmen are unwilling to put themselves through this, and more freshmen are willing to walk away back to their rooms, while the camp is happening right outside their rooms, if they find it unsatisfactory. This was an unimaginable circumstance to RHOCers 20 years ago, but this is something we constantly see today.

There will be some out there who will ask us to tone it down to cater to this ever- growing group. My problem is that this is already toned down and yet freshies are leaving before they ever reach the end. There is only so much I can do in this aspect of the camp because we have been here too long already. Our seniors have done too good a job to teaching us to think this way. I no longer know how to do a Big Ball Game that doesn't involve tekkaning people. In fact, I cannot even imagine someone less fierce conducting it. That is the extent to which I am , as Dr. Ho will put it, "in love with the plan." The way RHOC was set up and how it developed over the years has made it into this form that all of us have experienced. Whether as RHOCers, we like it or not, is irrelevant. But to fail to capture that essence is to do it injustice, at least for those of us who have understood the message that the seniors have passed down. I am both unwilling and unable to change RHOC into a form that can cater to this new generation of freshmen, the ones that run at the first sign of pain. And I know that this is a growing population, which will become larger as the years go by. It is simply a sign of the times. We must accept that. Everyone of us in the meeting room were asked to imagine a form of the Big Ball Game that doesn't alienate this group. None of us could do it. That is why I believe disbanding RHOC and setting up a new orientation programme from scratch is the ideal way to go, with as little assistance from present RHOCers as possible.

And then there are the problems that we never found a fix for. One thing that I don't suspect will change in our favour, at least in the next 5 years, is the hall vs faculty competition. There has been a constant competition for freshmen attention between these 2 groups ever since I stepped into hall. At least from what I observe, faculty events are either getting a lot more support, or way less oversight, because both the scale and the engagement is getting more and more ridiculous. There are fundamentally elements that act in their favour, most importantly, the prime timing of their FOPs as well as the undivided attention they get, seeing as there is no competition from outside bodies. Halls cannot act as early because the dates never come in soon enough. Students must always accept their course of choosing before they even think about coming into hall. And with that, there is a good solid month or 2 of attention on them. Furthermore, all their camps require applications, which means the interested campers self-select and get surrounded by other interested campers, creating a false impression that their entire faculty is filled with such people. Contrast that with the forced nature of hall and the cramped schedule of our orientation and its easy to see why the appeal of faculty is so strong. And with the problems I already mentioned above, the differences become even starker. I have contemplated this problem with RHOCers over the years and often we simply see it as another limitation that RHOC must endure. With OSA clamping down harder and harder on hall camps, not just ours, but other halls as well, along with seemingly little interference for the faculty ones, it just seems like a losing battle. I once joked that for a faculty camp, you can have zero programmes but enough OGLs and freshmen and everyone will still consider it a success. The success of a faculty has no dependence on neither the excellence of the execution or the competency of its coordinators. They literally, in all sense of the word, just need to get their freshmen and seniors to show up.

All these are things that are inevitable, and if we choose to force our way through, we will only prolong the inevitable. On the other hand, we can start to fix things that we can fix now. We have real problems in the hall right now. We can try to fix them.

For FOPs, meaning RHEX and RHOC, we have quite a lot of oversight from the SCRC. At least from my perspective, there is a serious disagreement between our agenda and what method we believe is the best way to achieve it. I think we want different things and when that becomes contested, people become frustrated. Take the never-ending angst fest that is RHEX. Nothing puts it quite into perspective as having 4 consecutive RHEX heads telling their successors that same thing; the job is not worth it. The SCRC has its own pressures from upper management. We understand that. But at the same time, we want to feel like our management has our back, that it's willing to support and guide us when they see the conviction we have in what we do. Now, we see a lot of shutting down and shrinking away instead.

I'm a pessimist. I don't assume things will turn out better just because I want it to. I see 2 options to end this conflict. Either the SCRC changes its perspective, which none of us believe will happen to a degree that we are satisfied with, or we change our perspective. I believe if you install a new group of people to run orientation, you will attract a new breed of people. Since this group of coordinators are new, they are more open to influence, and since this is a key event for hall, the SCRC will most likely have a hand in ensuring that this runs smoothly. If the influence from the SCRC is there, it is possible that the camp they run attracts the kind of people who agree with SCRC, because that's the nature of the camp. Take RHEX for an example, RHEX will always draw in people who like RHEX, and people who don't like RHEX either will get turned off and don't apply, or they will still apply and end up finding something they like about hall. This cycle repeats itself and it's not inconceivable that you attract people who have similar tastes. I think the same thing can be done regarding SCRC. The timing just takes more time to adjust because there is still a resistance to them present in hall.

So these are all the external reasons. There are also some internal ones. RHOC has a very serious demand on students' time. Everyone who has been through RHOC has had to sacrifice. They have had to sacrifice their vacation time and more importantly, they have had to sacrifice time making friends with freshies during the most optimum time. The demands on an undergraduate's time is getting greater and greater. Summer school, internship, IA, SEP, NOC, community projects, etc. The list goes on and on. I cannot bring myself to "coerce" somebody to carry on doing RHOC because at the end of the day, RHOC is just a camp. It's just a camp for 200-odd people who had so much fun with each other they won't remember what you gave up for them. I can't bring myself to make them give up the things that really matter for something as insignificant as a camp.

All I can do is present the options and let them decide themselves. Sometimes I even advise them to drop RHOC, because they would be sacrificing too much. I have already seen when students cannot juggle, and often they make the choice and have to live with it. I am proud that I come from a line of people who has kept up this legacy. I am proud of the people who have made this sacrifice alongside me. But at the same time, I can't help but wish my juniors didn't have to. That they could have had the time to spend making friends with freshmen. Because that's what I wanted.

In short, I hope you understand why we chose to disband. Do not reduce our rationales into "cuz nobody want to do lor" I think that's is really disrespectful of the agony we went through to make this decision. We really do hope for a better future. We gave up our chance to do it next year, so that others may do it better. This is a new opportunity for the hall. Maybe you can succeed where we have failed. Good luck.