The month of September is littered with significant occasions. There's 9/11, the day we remember the victims of the terrorist attacks on New York. There's the F1 race in Singapore, where the rest of the world casts its gaze on our little island and marvels at our organisational prowess - and ability to turn on every light bulb in the country.
And there's something else, far more frivolous, that still never fails to occupy column inches whenever September rolls round. It's... drum roll please... the beast otherwise known as University Orientation.
Tht's right. At this time each year, thousands of young Singaporeans begin a new phase in their lives by enrolling in higher education. Leaving home for the first time, they bundle into hostels in search of boy-girl dormitories and late-night roti prata. Adulthood, freedom and independence - there's plenty to look forward to.
That's until they have to attend orientation, where someone will invariably get hurt, cry or feel offended enough to write to the newspapers to complain about the proceedings.
This year, it was Singapore Management University's turn to be in the media glare, when its risque orientation games caused some girls to burst into tears. Apparently, they were made to hug members of the opposite sex and share biscuits with them - with the boys leaning over the girls in push-up positions. Angry netizens have since labelled the whole affair 'sexist, irrelevant and humiliating'.
My first thoughts about the girls were: They should have upped and left, like what I did many moons ago when I was a university freshman.
Such was the trauma of my orientation experience that I remember it with painful clarity. I lasted two days before feigning illness (though I now wish I'd had the courage to simply walk out) to escape five more days of silly games, ritual humiliation and pointless curry favouring.
By then, I'd already passed a sweet (it was much smaller than a biscuit, mind you) to a boy with my mouth, lost my contact lenses when a sniggering senior emptied a bucket of water over my head and been smacked on the bum while being made to crawl on all fours through an obstacle course.
Granted, I was then a rebellious teenager who hated the establishment. People who were, in local cmapus parlance, 'siao on' turned me off. I thought I was too cool for school.
But even with the benefit of hindsight, I still don't see the point of orientation. Each time i read about the latest controversy surrounding freshman 'fun', I think: There must be other more tolerable but equally irresponsible ways of getting to know each other. You know, like a beer or three?
Instead, despite being old enough to drink, drive and watch M18 films, it seems a necessary rite of passage for freshmen to regress into squealing 12-year-olds playing games such as Whacko and I Bomb You Bomb.
I wonder too: Isn't the inanity of the initiation shebang doubly hard to swallow for guys? After spending two years bearing arms and defending the country, imagine being told by a spotty theird-year that you now have to do the chicken dance outside Orchard Cineleisure - or else.
Ah yes, being told what to do. That was a pain in the you-know-where. At the grand old age of 18, why did I have to listen to a group of people whom I'd never met before, who were barely older than me and whose sole agenda was to make my life miserable?
Worse still were the freshers who fell for the whole charade and became hanger-ons to seniors deemed to be influential or important. All that ego-stroking paid off, though. The most good-looking/popular first-years were often chosen by the powers-that-be to participate in the hall pageant.
Good times for some perhaps, but not for Plain Janes like me who were lousy at the whole popularity game. Even then, it seemed pretty juvenile to crown a King and Queen of a hostel building consisting of shoebox-sized rooms and shared toilets.
I recall some activities as being fairly dangerous, such a the traditional 'night walk' where we were made to traipse through Lim Chu Kang cemetery in the dark, prime targets for ghosts, kidnappers and mosquitoes.
A common ruse was also that of the 'fake fresher', where a senior planted in the orientation would go missing during the night walk. My fellow freshers were distraught. Cynical ol' me just wanted to go to bed.
Luckily, my orientation disaster did not define my university exerience. Never mind if I was a po-faced spoilsport for most of the week. I still made friends after, which cements my view that forced interaction through a seven-day boot camp isn't the only way to kickstart your social life.
Those who remember their first week with fondness will of course vehemently disagree. They'll say the crazy antics are about getting people to come out of their shells, and that ragging is part of a long-held tradition promoting bonding through adversity. They'll say the cheeky games encourage boys and girls to mix so they can go on to get married and start families like obedient Singaporeans.
There's no need to buy into the bonding-through-adversity nonsense. There'll be plenty of opportunities to build friendships later by joining a sports team or recreational club as I did. Forget orientation, most of these just require you to turn up. And as for the matchmaking argument, I hardly think hormonally charged young adults need any prodding in that direction.
In short, they'll still find ways to um, orientate themselves. And hey, there might still be some mouth-to-mouth biscuit sharing after all.
- By [Sandra Leong], taken from [The Sunday Times], 2 Oct 2011
