Lately, there has been a post on the popular website Stomp, with a picture of Hwa Chong boys eating ice cream in a bus. The post is entitled "Even students from elite school can't follow no-eating rule on bus". In this blog post, I would like to express my views on this incident.
Firstly, I feel that this post has somewhat stereotyped students from elite schools. In the title, I felt that the author did not have to emphasize that the students were from Hwa Chong. The word "even" also irked me out. Just because we are from Hwa Chong does it mean that all of its students will be perfect? Everyone has their share of imperfections. What makes it so that all elite school students have to be perfect, simply because of their uniform?
However, I felt that the STOMPer was not wrong in posting this issue on STOMP. Eating on buses is against the rules, and I feel that there was nothing wrong in posting this. After all, STOMP was created so that people could give their views on issues like this. Eating on buses is something that Singaporeans should stop, I mean, thousands of Singaporeans ride the bus everyday. Who wants to ride on a bus that's dirty? I feel that posts like this actually can reduce the number of people who commit such acts. No one wants to be publicly humiliated on STOMP. Such posts actually indirectly help society.
In conclusion, I do not feel that the STOMPer was not wrong in posting this. After all, the students did eat on the bus and flouted the rules. However, Singaporeans need to remove the stereotype that all elite school students are well behaved. What makes it so that a student from an "elite" school should act better than a student from a neighborhood school?
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3 comments:
Hi Kenneth,
I would really like to disagree with your entire argument that the STOMPer MMRN has not done anything wrong by posting up such a defamatory post on STOMP.
Firstly, I would like to point out that this is a website, which is open to the entire world, not just restricted to the STOMPers' connections or even just Singaporeans.
By posting up such an article, I do not see how it helps society to eradicate the occurrences of such incidents in the future.
Whilst looking for incidences to back up my point, I searched "talking loudly in library" at the STOMP website. I saw many occurrences of such cases from 2008 through 2011. As such, posting articles on STOMP definitely does not help to prevent it from happening.
Instead, it is a means of humiliation. Maybe, the STOMPer should think, what if he/she was the one who was eating ice-cream on the bus or committed an offence, and was posted on STOMP, how would he/she feel? Happy? Or sad? I believe, the rational ones would feel the latter.
"Do unto others what you want others to do unto you" and "what comes from the heart goes to the heart" are two common maxims of many around us. So, next time, before we post a comment on whatever social media platform (STOMP, Facebook, Twitter or our blogs), we should think: have we defamed someone in the midst of writing what we have written, and how would we feel if someone wrote such a thing about us?
Best Regards,
Nathan :)
Dear Kenneth,
I agree that elite students should not be stereotyped against, but in my opinion, those Hwa Chong boys should not even have eaten on the bus in the first place. In your post, you stated that it was wrong for elite students to be stereotyped against as perfect; however, if these elite students cannot even follow simple rules, do the even deserve to be elite students? Are not elite students trained to become the future leaders of Singapore? How would these elite students be able to lead Singapore if they cannot even follow simple rules?
Also, I would like to disagree with you that what the STOMPer did was right. I agree with Nathan that posting on STOMP would not help to solve the problem of people eating ice-cream on buses. Instead, what I feel the STOMPer could instead do was to tell the students directly that what they were doing was wrong and that they should stop eating ice-cream on the bus. If the students do not heed the warning, the STOMPer could instead contact Hwa Chong Institution's principal by sending a message accompanied by a photograph. If the Hwa Chong staff and students had not even seen this STOMPer's post, would the problem even have been addressed and corrected accordingly?
Regards,
Chong Kai En (2i106)
why are people so annoying
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