Wei Kiat's Blog

I had another refreshing dose of early morning bullshit during assembly today. This time, it was from a representative of the AJC student council (SC). When this representative (a 'she', I think.) stood in front of me, I waited in eager anticipation like a good AJC student I was, for whatever earth-shattering news that she was about to break to the students below her. It turned out that the AJC SC had made a momentous decision! The small group of students that 'represented' the AJC student population had unilaterally gone ahead with a purchase of a clock as a gift for the school and they were kind enough to inform the students today that this little gesture of appreciation to the school cost s$1800!

Did the school really require a clock that cost 1.8K? Was it because the school was recently under heavy attack by vandals and hence, needed a clock resistant to vandalism? Let us put the questionable usefulness of an extremely expensive clock in AJC aside. The real issue was the fact that the SC ordered that clock without first consulting the student population they served and they expected us to fork out money to pay for their ‘wise’ purchase. What happened to their promise of representing the students of AJC? Sure, they helped us express our feverish love and respect for our beloved school extremely well with that costly gesture. However, they lacked the professional courtesy to seek our opinions before executing their grand plan which happened to involve us in the financial issues. This was very unbecoming of a small minority of student ‘leaders’ that branded themselves the student council.

I seriously doubted the collective wisdom of the AJC SC. There was no question that the latest decision by the ‘voice of the student body’ was not a move to win popularity from the people they served. Only one question remained in my mind as I left the assembly grounds: if AJC was democratic enough to let the students vote for various individuals to join the SC and ‘lead’ the school, can the same system of elections that brought the SC to power be used to bring about the fall of the same SC that abused their powers?