Civil Society
NUS students launch petition to reject merger decisions of several colleges, with slogan #NoMoreTopDown
In light of the National University Singapore’s (NUS) recent merger decisions, a joint petition has recently popped up on Change.org rejecting the merger decisions of several NUS colleges, with the slogan “#NoMoreTopDown”.
NUS announced on 27 Aug that it will merge Yale-NUS College and NUS’ University Scholars Programme (USP) into a new college, and will also merge the Faculty of Engineering and School of Design and Environment to form the College of Design and Engineering.
This will mean that Yale-NUS College will cease in 2025, after the graduation of its current first-year students.
Following that, students from various faculties of NUS have launched a petition, titled “NUS – Reverse the Mergers and #NoMoreTopDown”, voicing out their concerns with the policy and its implications.
“We reject the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) recent merger decisions. Inexcusably, the affected parties were only informed after the decisions were made. The mergers are ineffective, lacking in transparency, and undermine the welfare of the affected communities,” the petition page reads.
The students also highlighted that NUS’ decision to impose these mergers “directly contradicts its own values and endangers the wellbeing of its students and staff”, and that the petition was created to hold NUS accountable for its own contradictions.
“We contend that these mergers are not isolated events but are part of NUS’ standard operating procedure for years, as evidenced by the merging of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) and the Faculty of Science (FoS) to form the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS).
“These three mergers directly impact six faculties – FoE, SDE, USP, YNC, FASS and FoS, which constitute over half of NUS’ student body,” it stated.
The petition, which has garnered over 5,200 signatures at the time of writing, also contains a link to a document detailing the students’ full demands.
Firstly, they called on NUS to “reverse the New College and CDE mergers and reconsider the CHS merger in line with comprehensive student and staff input”. The students also demanded NUS to ensure that “all relevant bodies are centered in NUS policy discussions”.
Thirdly, the students called on NUS to “review and supplement NUS’ compulsory module requirements through the consultation of students, staff, and representative groups”.
“Through these reforms, NUS must grant students and staff greater agency over their academic programmes instead of unilaterally imposing more requirements on them,” they stated.
The students also demanded a “review [of] gaps in NUS’ current framework for student and staff welfare, with the direct involvement of students, staff, and representative groups”.
“We therefore demand #NoMoreTopDown approaches across the whole NUS. We call for the creation of policies based on the close participation and consent of students, staff, and representatives in common agreement and for their collective wellbeing,” they asserted on the petition page.
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