Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Analysis of the incident in NTU - flaws in logic

I read that lots of people in the net is saying that the student (David) was told by A/P Chan that his scholarship was revoked and hence David became angry thinking that A/P Chan was the one initiating the idea. Then the killing. I think there are a couple of issues with such logic that need to be addressed:

1. I believe that unless there is a huge breach in confidentiality, A/P Chan should not even know whether or not any ASEAN scholarship is withdrawn. Scholarship matter belongs to the university and only the university staff administering the scholarship are supposed to know whether or not they are withdrawing any scholarship from anyone. If indeed A/P Chan somehow knows the scholarship issues, this matter should be investigated.

2. If any scholarship is withdrawn, the scholarship should have been withdrawn before the beginning of the new semester. Hence, it seems that the student has a long time to think about? I am not sure what exactly happen, but it may be too short (<2>

Student - lecturer relationship can easily get sour for many things. What the university should do are:
1. Employ lecturers who can teach and can read students' feelings better.
2. Teach lecturers to do that.
3. Provide avenue for students to complain. Many times, students feel disillusioned and greatly disappointed for not knowing where to lodge complain. When complaints are put up, nobody seems to care.
4. Hold sessions to seek feedback from students under pressure, i.e. students having scholarships, having to take loan, etc.
5. Find a better way to communicate any bad news. Ready counsellor at all times.

In the current hard time, there will definitely students who are affected by the recession. There must be measures in place to help such students.

In all honesty, being an ex-student of NTU, there are TONNES of things that the university should have done better in preventing such an unnecessary death and incident.

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