This week on A Stray World:
- Trip to USM.
For the sake of a medicinal-herbal-traditional plant competition, I earned a trip to Universiti Sains Malaysia last Friday, no mean feat in itself, until you add the skipping four-and-a-half periods of classes, meeting the people who run the place and a free meal from the teacher in charge of our group.
In truth, this was my first visit to USM, if not my first visit to a university of any nature in Malaysia.
For starters, the land in which the seeds of campus USM sprouted on is HUGE. The terrain of gently inclining hills and steep drops made driving a rather dangerous affair, which means the recent order forbidding everyone affiliated with USM from driving within campus except PhD scholars and lecturers perfectly reasonable, considering the above average speed my teacher was eliciting from her Perodua.
Initial impressions of a capable, respectable institution were supported by a swimming pool close to the entrance while further down the narrow road, a homely, glass-walled building for the alumni greeted us modestly among the randomly sprinkled buildings of research.
Further down, I realised USM's architecture wasn't old as in colonial-charm old, but blocky apartments which would fit into any cuboidal box with nary a space in between if someone invented a shrink ray. If the oversized three alphabets representing the university weren't emblazoned onto the grass overlooking the road, the streets choked with parked cars and coldly technical signboards would fool any would-be-visitor into thinking he had just stumbled into Putrajaya on a weekday.
Finding a spot close to the Chemistry department, we entered the rather cramped first floor smelling of government hospital - a rather distinct cologne if one has ever set foot in a public health institute.
USM Fact No. 1: USM prefers to employ Malays.
Tudung wearing Malays, beard growing Malays, you get the picture. Frankly, the breakdown of the various races in USM I saw that day was greatly skewed from the breakdown of the nation's races by population. While I have no problem with qualified personnel, nobody is naive enough to believe the 'others' aren't qualified to hold administrative positions in USM or any public university in Malaysia for the matter.
Thankfully, USM at least took great measures in employing the best Malays. The administrative charts upon the walls of the Pharmaceutical department revealed an almost disturbing tendency to hire Malays who have graduated with honours from United Kingdom institutions of higher learning; along with the odd foreigner and obligatory 'others'. Though this measure is to be greatly admired, it still means our own local institutions aren't producing individuals who are brainy enough to lead the very universities they studied in.
USM Fact No. 2:Dean's List Students are predominantly Chinese
As much as the politicians who play the racial card claim a 'great Malay rising', the truth is, they are falling further and further behind. The floodgates have been forced open with iron bars for them while the 'others' had to slip by between the ruined walls yet a quick glance of the best of USM revealed only two Malays out of thirty or so Chinese names.
Kudos to USM for revealing the papers to the public, granted, a very limited public. If these numbers were ever published on national newspapers, we would see UMNO and PAS leaders joining hands and waving the keris all the way into campus to oust more Chinese descended scholars.
USM Fact No 3:USM lecturers are qualified
Repeating the same point, USM does employ capable lecturers, even though they be mostly Malay.
There were two professors who took their time to explain the various concepts and ethics (ETHICS!) regarding our medicinal plant project. At least some of the government sponsored Malays have not disappointed our taxpayers.
Both professors were gaily helpful, pointing out flaws in our project as well as lab work we might wish to consider. This was the next best thing to meeting the professor-in-charge of medicinal plants, who was ironically, not available because he was attending a medicinal plant and herbal remedies expo in Kuala Lumpur.
In conclusion, USM is not the place one would wish to study in, unless one enjoys blatant discrimination, and being forced to admit the people hired through discrimination are highly qualified, every single day.
No comments:
Post a Comment