The past weeks have not been kindest to many people. Freshmen looked forward to having a fun time, getting to know people and getting themselves settled into a brand new environment. Seniors planned the camps up to a year with the goal of ensuring that the freshies get a fun time and get to know more seniors so that they can be assured that university is not that intimidating.

With thanks to some anonymous posts and ASShole articles, news that were unverified and inconsistent spread like wild fire. Congratulations “alternative news” websites: with your effort, we made it to international news. NUS in defense of its reputation, decided to cancel all ongoing and upcoming orientation programme in the various faculties and halls and conduct thorough investigations.

The public and mainstream media had not considered a few key anomalies with whatever shitty rumors that have been going around. Some of the videos and photos accompanied were those from many years ago or were reported from past years. Otherwise news were lumped together and exaggerated.

Shitty Alternative News Websites Need Juicy Articles and Clickbaits

The first claims about the rape cheers and acts came from NUSWhispers. Whispers is a platform for people to submit anonymous stories. Regulars would know that half (or actually most) of the time, the posts are just there to beef up stories and exaggerate what was real. There were even confessions of people who MUST read every single story before going to bed; or otherwise couldn’t sleep. Stories of sex in hall, horny girls in the library and all sort of unverified nonsense — it’s all a facade for some entertainment to bored people.

Not I say one. There are people addicted to the juicy fake stuff written all over NUSWhispers. Some even feed the trolls.

All Singapore Stuff, and many other alternative news websites, have been putting up more articles about the NUS Orientation saga — adding fuel to the fire. These sites have nothing other than the sole intention of earning advertisement money from your clicks.

Anonymity Does Not Help

Because of the purpose NUSWhispers is serving, anyone can submit anonymous and unverified information to it. Posts on the platform reaches out to its 12-thousand audience. If the claims had been true, there wouldn’t been a need to hide behind the curtain. Complains and concernscould have been raised to the appropriate authorities (such as PDs, Deans/Vice-Deans, Hall Masters etc.). From past camp experiences, the PDs and OGLs continuously gather feedback about the activities so that everyone can learn from it. We are all well-educated people who can reason, justify and be responsible for our decisions and actions.

Actions To Take Now

Regrettably, NUS has already cancelled most of the camps and all the PDs took the necessary actions. What I would like to appeal to the public is:

Boycott sites like All Singapore Stuff that spreads nonsense. DO NOT VISIT their site or share their content. Block and report their Facebook page. After it was done with NUS, it started writing new articles about NTU’s orientation camps, milking as much cash as possible from you cows. Read NUSWhispers with a pinch of salt. (Does anyone even do that on the internet anymore?) Not everything is real; especially when we have bored people who had absolutely nothing to do through their summer and are jealous of the fun people are getting in camps.

Let us allow NUS to conduct all investigations and bring those responsible to justice.

I hope the new semester would go on well, the freshies would still get to settle in and make new friends. After all, the lectures and tutorials are not going to be as friendly. So take this one week and have as much fun as you can — go out get to know people. All this, because university is once in a life time for most people.

Adieu.

Share the post to spread the message.

PS. If you did not know, most camps took almost a year to plan. Cancelled camps cost the students and NUS (well, student funded?) money. Bulk of the money goes to t-shirts, food, venue bookings and logistics that could not be refunded. In the end, the freshies suffer the most and Camp Committees wasted their year. I hope people would wake up their idea to the graveness of the situation and do justice by these freshies and Camp Comms.