Say Not To Racism

United World College have embarked on their latest social mission, this time taking on the widespread issue of students and racism. Although it seems as though racism is only found in countries previously scarred by the topic, the frustrating yet true matter is that racism exists everywhere in the world. Discrimination itself is rare but several students in both local and international are subject to several racist and crude comments, as well as appalling jokes. Due the lengthy period since the international abolishment of racism, the present students have grown ignorant to it’s past effects. It is impossible to change the minds of students no matter how much history can attempt to mold them. But the new mission of the United World College movement is to provide their students with these reminders. The ‘We are One’ campaign, organized by the school’s very own 7th grade BTC (Be the Change) students, is a mission attempting to spread awareness about this topic and increase their peers’ sensitivity towards racism.

Although it is a small project, the group designed a video to show an emotional perspective of how racist insults can affect people. The video featured several students describing some of the insults that had affected them in the past. The video was played in front of United World College’s middle school and was received with a positive reaction. This reaction has proved a unified concern among the students. After the video was played, several sources explained their ‘shock’ and ‘will to change’ to our reporters. A member of the group informed the reporters of their opinion on the topic: ‘We chose racism because we believe that it’s one of the biggest topics we need to irradiate in the world. Although people say it’s not there, racism IS everywhere.’

The group have taken a powerful step towards a more positive learning and social environment, and to reduce all discrimination, especially the cruel effects of racism. The positive reaction was a massive indicator to the students, and an encouragement to building on their efforts in the future; it is a message that has been received by United World College international students with a commitment to care.

Sustainbility On Campus

Grade 8 Students just found out how their school, UWC East, does their part in helping the future generations by creating a sustainable environment for thousands of students to use and sustain at a unique grade 8 assembly.

In a dark hall, a bright and jolly man named Simon Thomas caused all the peacefully seated students to stare at the presentation in awe, with a look of surprise on their faces like when your parents give you the perfect birthday present, the one you always longed for. The same exact face, but instead learning about how the school is what it is today and what it does to do their part in protecting the precious resources of the dying planet that we live on today.

Who would have conceptualized the fact that a school could have a huge difference in Singapore’s sustainability in ways such as the orientation of the building, how the building is designed to do different things like ventilate itself and save water and electricity, how they infiltrate the water they get from rainfall into their plan of preserving the resources? Who would have thought that they spend an average of $160,000 dollars per month on electricity and each month they are doing their best to cut down on it and use the money to educate the students better?

The orientation of the building is set up in such a way that each classroom shaded each other from the hot and tropical sun of Singapore, that way, the school would have to buy blinds and curtains. Of course there is a quality amount of sunlight which enters the room, so to minimize the amount power used by the school for the lighting the school installed automatic dimmers in the lights so it uses only the proper amount of light which is required to light the room.

A classroom in the school ahs fans but why would it have fans when 40% of the $160,000 of the school’s is used to power the air conditioners? These fans are actually built to ventilate the hallways because they aren’t air conditioned. Soon, this cool air will enter the toilets, give out the fresh cool air to the plants in the toilet and is later let out from the open windows. And this process occurs a lot of times because the doors to enter the toilet is opened a lot.

UWC doesn’t just save electricity like that though. Whenever it rains, half of the enormous football field collects the rainwater, which is soon to be filtered and in no matter of time, it will be used to water the plants in the garden and the green grass on the premises of the school. So, instead of using the scarce amount of freshwater in Singapore, UWC uses reuses the rainwater so that they can save a lot of water for the people of Singapore.

How sustainable is this school? How many schools in the world do this? I don’t think the significance of the drastic measures this school takes has been emphasized before. Just imagine if a few schools in every country or state do this. There will be an colossal amount of resources that those schools will save. Imagine the number of resources the world will save for the safety of the future generations. Sure it’ll cost a lot of money, resources and time. But don’t you think it’ll be worth it. According to Mr. Raisdana, if many schools in the world will have a sustainable philosophy, it not only will impact the school but the students itself. The students will soon grow into adults and go into different businesses like law and banking and then soon, these adults will hopefully pass it on to the next generations and soon there will be another sustainable way to help the earth.

Locker Crisis

Over at UWCSEA East Campus, there were some very strong policies that weren’t being followed. The staff were getting very frustrated. It was 2013, the third year of the new campus. There were always some students that disobeyed whatever rules the teachers came up with. It’s not like the rules were very strict or hard to follow, the students were just disobedient. There were a few rules like ‘stay downstairs during break’ and ‘never share homework with friends’ etc. However, there was one particular, vital rule that wasn’t being followed and was starting to affect both students and teachers.

The main policy that was always ignored and forgotten, but were starting to exasperate teachers to remind all the time, was about children using their lockers. All the time, the students would carry their entire bag around the school all day instead of putting it in their lockers. Therefore, it was really irritating the teachers and forced them to make a new policy which everyone then followed; ‘No bags in the classroom’.

To rules like these there are always different perspectives and sides.

“Students should be able to decide what they want to do, they shouldn’t be forced to put their bags in their lockers when they have to walk around school in short transitions” is what Grade 8 student Tyler Gan had stated. It’s quite clear that most students are against the idea of walking up and down the stairs again and again to go to their locker. While the students feel it should be on choice, Grade 8 English teacher, Jabiz Raisdana stated that,

“Classrooms are very packed they don’t have enough space for everyones bag, but I do understand where the students are coming from”. He does strongly suggests that kids use their lockers during class.

However with all of that the main reason that this rule is stressed upon kids is for P.E. During school hours, there are a lot of non-teachers on board that wouldn’t come back for the rest of the year. They had no restriction in taking wallets or laptops out of school bags that weren’t protected. The problem was that since students didn’t want to go all the way back up to their lockers, they often left their bags unguarded either in the changing rooms or just left on a bench next to the canteen. The P.E department was becoming very strict about it and was causing students to have their organisational grade lowered. Just about half the school year had finished and there was a massive incident that had occurred and resulted in the school getting very frustrated.