story Avast Vermin
All entities move and nothing remains still,” said the prominent Greek philosopher Pericles in a seminar room somewhere.
With its second year coming to an end, Yale-NUS College is changing too. In various student organizations, many sophomores are now ready to step down from power. However, unexpected problems have cropped up with some elections.
Some groups faced time management issues. The Debate Society’s elections lasted for 24 hours, far longer than planned. True to their principles of robust and fair discussion, the outgoing executive committee had candidates argue each other out for the position. Outgoing Training Director Argo Montative ’18 said, “The only way to appoint a good new executive committee is to test their abilities in the real context of competition and pressure.” The new executive committee consisted of candidates who managed to stay awake for 24 hours.
A similar situation ensued at the European Society elections-cum-formal-dinner. In her opening speech, outgoing president Gin Smirnoff ’17 declared, “Today is a historic day for the development of the European Society. Today we are solidifying the foundations of our big common family. Today more than ever we are united in diversity.” Her speech went on in the same vein for another thirty minutes before the vice-president interrupted to deliver his second opening speech. At the end of a long night, apart from the new executive committee, the European society reached a mutual consensus on who would fund the dinner. All members bar one voted Germany.
Members were not always cooperative and demonstrated a tendency to showcase their national identities. The member from Spain arrived with significant delay at the meeting, having woken up late from his 3-hour siesta. Some moments later, the Italian representative was spotted sawing the air in his attempts to explain the intransitive value of pasta and pizza.
With so many student groups holding elections in the same period, a space crunch emerged for suitable venues. Due to a misunderstanding with the Dean of Students (DoS) Office, Republican Youths Interested in Animals and People (RYIAP) failed to book a venue for its elections. As one of the largest groups at Yale-NUS, with more than a hundred members passionate about cute animals and attractive people, finding a new location in time was impossible. Minutes before the scheduled elections, the outgoing executive committee made the snap decision to hold it in the stairwell of Residential College 4. “It was one of the best decisions I had made,” said RYIAP president Tan Mi Yao ’17. “The acoustics of the stairwell were perfect for speeches,” he said.
A dramatic outcome emerged from the elections for the new captain of the Soccer team. Members were gathered in the Lol Tug Con Multi-Purpose Hall for the elections when men from the American Football team stormed in. They were part of a premeditated coup by the American Football Team to take over the Soccer club. “The schedule said ‘Football Elections’, and that’s why we turned up,” explained Moore Protean ’18.
At the time of publication, 81.7% of student organizations had completed their elections for the next academic year. The remaining 18.3% however, were unable to find successors due to the limited number of students and the seemingly unlimited number of organizations in the College. Jin Jia Lat ’17 told Panopt that he was scouting out incoming freshmen in a desperate bid to find a leader for his organization. He said, “I’m going for a semester abroad in August. What’s going to happen to my club then?”
This article was part of our April 1st, 2015, satire issue. Individuals, statements and opinions in this issue are purely fictional and not representative of any real-world entities.