Nik Mustapha, get a life.
I shudder to think how many students would lose their laptops, if this was the basis of your confiscation. And why all the other stuff?
I think this guy would make a perfect Umno candidate.
Too tired to write much more now (big news tomorrow, hopefully), let me rehash something from the old days:
Unfortunately, UPM’s Vice- Chancellor Prof Dr Nik Mustapha R Abdullah has not followed the MB’s example. In a press conference covered by Malaysiakini, Dr. Mustapha has offered statements that appear to have a shockingly tenuous relationship to reality and readily available proof. I quote some highlights from the report:
the vice-chancellor further said the fracas did not involve any violence and that UPM’s student representative council leader ‘was only threatening’ SPF members due to the latter’s refusal to leave the canteen.
To another question about a press photographer whose camera was damaged while recording the scuffle, the vice-chancellor claimed the reporter concerned, from the Chinese vernacular news website Merdeka Review, had confessed that the damage occurred due to her own carelessness.
Asked to explain portion of the video recording which showed pro-campus authority students shouting and heckling SPF students, Nik Mustapha said they ‘were merely singing and cheering and not shouting’.
“They were singing the song of their hostel, not shouting,” he said.
Compare with the famous video.
If these quotes are correct, there is nothing left to say re: our universities rankings, etc etc. An academic’s first commitment is to the truth. For the No. 1 man at a public university to be able to spin ‘interpretations’ until like that crushes many of our hopes.
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“was only threatening” - sorry, I must not have gotten the memo saying making threats are acceptable on campus. It is a disappointingly shallow interpretation of violence indeed to deny that any occured in this video. If you send the message to our youth that there’s no violence without blood, you will slowly but surely come to find a lot more of it on your hands.
Later in the Malaysiakini report, the reporter with the camera in question, who I know and whose word I can vouch for, flatly denied making any such confession to the university authorities. I mean, I’m willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, but does the VC’s version seem a bit far fetched to you?
“cheering” and “singing the song of their hostel.“. Hmm, perhaps that’s just a very odd hostel song and the poor SPF students simply misunderstood the ‘cheerful’ intentions of the other party. In any case, I’m afraid I will not be inviting Dr. Mustapha to any of my karaoke parties. Nothing personal sir, you understand.
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So, no action taken against any students. “No punishment will be involved as we want to educate them, not punish them,” Very good; except that this education would seem to involve teaching students that thuggery is a perfectly viable alternative to mature discourse, and that Malaysia’s culture of impunity makes it the bolehland of all bolehlands.
Dr. Mustapha also said that the UPM student representative council leader (a position that apparently bequeaths the title ‘Yang Dipertua’) Abdul Manaf Ariffin who was one of the harassers in the video will be allowed to continue holding his post.
The UPM committee’s report on this affair will reportedly not be made public. That’s ok, I’m sure it’s brimming with sensitive national secrets. Good job we have the OSA too.
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Sigh. The evidence is there. Right in front of our faces. Pleeeeease Dr. Mustapha, it is unbecoming for an academic and scientist of your standing to fly in the face of all available empirical truth. Lagi-lagi, expect us all to believe this and your previous attempts to spin this issue :(
But all is not lost! I do agree with Dr. Mustapha on one point: He said the incident was ‘localised’ involving only a certain group of students and was not sparked by racial issues. Rather, it was clearly issues of basic human decency.
Grouses? Courtesy of the UPM website:
Prof. Dr. Nik Mustapha R. Abdullah
Tel : 03-89466001/6002
Email : nc@putra.upm.edu.my
Tags-
Education,
Law Enforcement
Tags: Law Enforcement, Education by Nathaniel Tan
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