NUS’s Stricter Penalties Now Include Expulsion, All To Get Students To Comply With Temperature-Taking

Alongside all the drastic actions governments have been taking, many organisations have also been stepping up their measures against Covid-19.

For students of National University of Singapore (NUS), this means temperature monitoring and online logging twice a day.

In ensuring the effectiveness of this system, NUS has implemented new penalties to keep their students in check – including possibly getting expelled.

What NUS students have to do for temperature-taking

NUS now requires all students to do a temperature logging exercise twice a day, in the morning and afternoon.

After doing so, they must log their temperatures on an online system for the university to monitor.

Students must also take pictures – including dates and time stamps – of their recordings and keep them for a week for random spot checks.

Speaking about the importance of such exercises, NUS senior deputy president and provost Ho Teck Hua said,

“Temperature monitoring is importance because as many as 98 per cent of covid-19 patients have a fever.”

Harsher punishments in NUS to enforce temperature-taking

Given the importance NUS has placed on this exercise, the school has introduced stricter penalties.

Prof Ho has said that all non-compliance in this exercise will be “dealt with in accordance with the student disciplinary procedures”.

False declarations and being unable to provide photographic evidence of readings during spot checks all constitute non-compliance.

Here is a breakdown of the varying repercussions:

First-time offenders Warning letter

9 demerit points (for students staying in hostels)* Second-time offenders Won’t be able to view their examination results for second semester of academic year for a month

Will not receive degree scrolls for a month from issue date (for graduating students)

Can’t submit dissertations of theses for examination for a month from date of offence (for research students)

Community service for up to 100 hours

9 demerit points (for students staying in hostels) Third-time offenders Hearing with university’s Board of Discipline

Will face immediate suspension of up to a month & termination of any hostel agreement

Possible expulsion

*accumulation of 16 demerit points will lead to housing suspension of 12 months

Every bit of effort counts

While this latest implementation has drawn many questions of reliability and necessity, we would still like to acknowledge NUS for their efforts to protect their students.

Needless to say, there will be loopholes in everything, but it is also important to see that every little bit of effort counts.

In such a bleak time as this, we need more than ever to take every possible measure to ‘flatten the curve’.

Let’s hope students of NUS take this exercise very seriously, not just to avoid expulsion but to curb this pandemic as well.

Featured image adapted from Google Maps.