Of Student Union and the Old Can A

Remember last semester after a slew of negative blogging about NTU took the school by storm? Which lead NTU to lay ground rules "after consultation" with the Student Union, that all blogs religious and political in nature, HAVE to be registered with MDA, and sought approval with the school. Freedom of speech anyone? Opps, i heard a 'DIONK' in the drain downstairs, someone must have dropped a rock in it.

You can read this article, blogged by a fellow NTU student, on this issue: http://irreligiously.blogspot.com/2010/09/students-required-to-register-their.html 

After the new ground rules was sent, Well, in fact, most students ignored it; some bloggers were infuriated by it; and the Student Union, well, they purrred like a obedient cat in front of the Students' Affairs Office.

 http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cat_vs_internet

Well, as i mentioned on my blogpost on tues, that we received an anonymous contribution from a fellow student who was displeased with the Student Activity Centre (SAC), as just to serve to Student Union (SU), Welfare Service Club (WSC), Cultural Activities Club (CAC) and the Sports Club, and unable to cater to the needs of the student body of being a place for students to study. He wanted to see the Old Can A, which was pulled down for the SAC, retain the old elements of the Old Can A. And not just some meeting point for the SU, WSC, CAC and the Sports Club; and for them to store their stuff  in them.

We provide the first few paragraphs of his contributions:

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The only constant is change. First, it has to be made clear that we are not against development in NTU. There is always some renovation going on in some part of the university. If we’re lucky though, instead of seeing the university just making renovations, we get a new building (Still pray-ing those 3+5 New Halls will materialize).
Far from being rebels or iconoclasts, we just want to make sure that some of the more genuine opinions of the major stakeholder (that’s the students by the way) of this university are heard.


The SU and Nanyang Chronicle are clearly inadequate in this role because they are mere mouthpieces for the administration. We don’t blame you if you are one of the students. We know that these student organizations were established with a pretence of independence and pseudo-neutrality; so much for student leadership and student journalism.

Let’s just address 2 issues here. First, is the place that many students fondly refer to as “Old Can A” or OCA.
Besides being centrally located, OCA has many qualities which are probably unappreciated by the administration. It’s greatest quality is that it is huge and open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With over 23,000 undergraduates, study areas within the university become a scarcity as the weeks go by. Indeed there are many study areas in NTU, but only OCA can accommodate 1,100 people.
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 You can read the rest of the article here: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B0xYOPG2yvilN2VjMjVmYTktZTFhNy00OWUzLWJhMDctOTk3MWMyOWRkYTQ0&sort=name&layout=list&num=50

PS I actually emailed SU on the issue of the new guidelines on blogging last sem, but they gave me a taichi-ed reply. If you all are interested, probably I'll repost it here :)

What do you all feel about the Old Can A? Let us know below through a comment!