NUSWhispers – Confession #19461

I came across this post (https://wrythings.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/the-precious-university-summer-or-10-better-things-to-do-instead-of-rag/) and would like to share some of my thoughts on Rag. This post is long and for those short of time - tl;dr - Rag has lost sight of its original meaning. Rag is costly. Rag has become some phallic competition among some students. It is okay to do Rag once or twice. However, Rag (and perhaps Flag) is ultimately irrelevant, so don't let your university life be consumed by it. 1. I worked with many batches of students involved in planning and execution of Rag (and Flag) on the faculty, hall and university level. Perhaps they are not reflective of the general population, but it is these students who are the primary drivers of many students' Rag experiences. 2. Rag (and Flag) started out as some event during welfare week by the then University of Malaya (Singapore) students' union. Students would go down Orchard Road (from the then Bukit Timah campus) and flag for donations while others would perform to give thanks to the public for donations. Gradually, this evolved to students performing on the lorries while others flagged for donations simultaneously. 3. Over the years, the competition between faculties and halls has increased the amount of grandeur, opulence and pomposity (GOP) in the Rag performances. Props with neon lights, mechanically-driven moving props, incorporating cheerleading stunts and stylish performance outfits. It has deviated far from the original meaning of Rag to give thanks back to the public for their donations. 4. Holding Rag together with high-profile events and at external venues has driven up the GOP in Rag performances. First, it was at the Padang in 2007, then, in 2010 it was in conjunction with the Youth Olympic Games torch relay. In 2011, it was at the Promontory on National Day and last year, it was at the Floating Platform as part of SG50 celebrations. Rag became just another flashy showcase for NUS. Any pretence of Rag being a way to give thanks for Flag donations should rightfully melt away. It is just a phallic competition in disguise. 5. The financial costs of Rag have been well documented in the 2011 documentary "Rag to Riches". It is no less relevant today. The total budget for organising 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2015 Rag is more than $1 million and possibly hitting $2 million. Contrast this to the amount raised for Flag - struggling to hit half a million each year. Imagine if all these money had been donated to Flag instead. 6. Where does the money for the budget come from? The NUS administration defrays a substantial portion. Another small portion is budgeted into nussu's annual budget. The remainder, a substantial percentage, is funded by nussu drawing down on their past reserves contributed by past and present NUS students. One of my friend asked, "Wouldn't it be more meaningful if the money spent on Rag was spent on tuition fees bursaries and free textbooks for needy students instead?" 7. On the faculty and hall level, the greatest driver is a desire to win awards and basically make the respective Rag committees look good. Granted, they put in a lot of effort into planning and executing, but to what end? When there was a Best Rag award, faculties and halls fight tooth and nail for it. Now, the gold-silver-bronze banding has not reduced the competitiveness. For some faculties like the Mercantile and the Lifesaver ones as well as the Blue Hall, anything less than gold is grounds for excommunication and eternal infamy. 8. When you have such strong competitiveness, Rag committees start to align their actions with obtaining the best results, not with that of the original (and more meaningful) objective of Rag. Bickering over technical rules, demanding rule changes to favour their faculty/hall, buying cartons of soft drinks and pouring the contents down the drain so that the cans can be used in the name of sustainability, sending non-Rag people for beneficiary visits so that the actual Raggers won't waste their time. It is fast becoming a farce. 9. Some say Rag is the best time to make friends, especially for freshmen. I guess it is true, but it involves a bit of Stockholm syndrome as well. You are forced to burn your summer holidays going back to school at least 4 times weekly for rehearsals/prop-making and even staying overnight for a 15 minute performance that will probably not be remembered 1 week after Rag. The way that some Rag committees squeeze time out of their Rag participants, some would say it is no better than NS or boot camps. 10. Let's not pretend that all Rag committees truly have their participants' welfare at heart. In one year, the lorries were abolished to discourage building of mega floats and reduce costs. The Rag committees went ahead to build mega props instead and made their prop teams drag them on roller wheels across the NUS campus. In another year, the amount of props was limited to what one prop transport can carry to discourage multiple mega props. Lo and behold, some Rag committees made their prop teams hand-carry the heavy props (without roller wheels) across the big NUS campus. I pitied the prop teams who had to literally carry the burden of Rag on their shoulders. 11. Rag performances' storylines have almost zero variation. They usually start with the good side leading a happy life, then the bad side takes over. Some courageous rebel from the good side will lead the fightback. The good side will prevail over the bad side and both sides dance to a happy ever after ending. 12. Before cheerleading stunts were banned from Rag performances, it has become a staple of Rag performances because, well, it has GOP. Making untrained freshmen and juniors doing cheerleading is rather dangerous because of the heights and moves involved. Other than the well-known case of a Technical faculty girl who landed with her head just outside the mat, there are countless other cases of broken bones, sprained ankles and injured faces/heads. All these in the drive to make the performance look good and achieve the best award. 13. Given the heavy commitment, it is unsurprising that some faculties and halls found it difficult to attract students to do Rag, especially when you burn a summer that could have been used for internships. No employer is going to care about how well you did in Rag. One hall master said some years ago to treat Rag as a form of internship and offered free hall stay for 1 semester. I am not sure how well-received that offer was. 14. That said, Rag is a good time to find friends and form deep bonds, if only because of all the suffering and shit you go through together. The memories are sweet on hindsight, but like NS, once is enough. There is no need to do it repeatedly, especially not at the expense of your future career prospects. If there are any seniors who coerce you into doing Rag, remember that you have a choice to say no. Plenty of students have said no and they have not been worse off due to it. 15. The residential colleges, other than USP/Cinnamon, are not participating in Rag due to the financial costs and the human effort involved. This begs the question - why are the faculties and halls still so into Rag? Is it because there is some intrinsic value in Rag, is it because Rag is a form of Key Performance Indicator that the student leaders and administrators must fulfil every year (e.g. the Mercantile faculty and the Blue hall), or is it because they are clinging onto a tradition without knowing what that tradition entails? Ultimately, Rag is only relevant to the small minority who are invested in it. To the vast majority of the students, it is just an irrelevant item they can forsake in their lives. It has gone from Rag to Ragged. All these, as the French would ask, "Pour quoi?"