Singapore Tamil Youth Conference 2016 Manifesto NUSTLS Singapore Tamil Youth Conference 2016 Manif | Page 25

Issue 4: Role of Student Tamil Societies
Arul Oswin,
President of
NUS TLS The Tamil societies in Singapore can form a network. The network can stretch from Universities to pre-
university institutions well. Most of the JC/Polytechnic Tamil clubs are cultural based and put up dance and
drama performances.
Examples: Singapore Polytechnic puts up a theatrical performance called Samarpanam. The potential
producers of Samarpanam can be tagged with the producers of Sangae. This helps to bridge the knowledge
gap between the young poly theatre enthusiasts and the more experienced undergraduates. The university
students can groom the next generation of students to replenish the University society pool.
Sundar,
President
of NTU TLS The greatest advantage is that we can save a lot of resources. We carry out similar but differentiated functions
and our ideologies have some common ground.
We can be of mutual support to each other. They can support events and vice versa. We should support the
events of JCs, Polytechnics and ITE Tamil clubs more. The India Community is very small and we should find
ways to maximize our resources and tap on whatever support we can muster.
Topic of Interest: How can we further enhance the collaboration between student Tamil societies on the
premise that their initiatives and objectives are mostly similar?
Voice of the Community vs. Cultural Orientation
Focus Challenge/Discussion Questions
Cultural
Orientation Does cultural orientation resolve the issues plaguing the
Tamil community?
Does it add value to society other than the domains of
culture?
Do we then want to be restricted to only contribute to
culture?
Given that the community problems have a drastic
impact on Tamil, is being culturally oriented the most
effective way to deal with the problem? Does it not
seem that once again we are focusing on the
downstream effects and not the upstream effects?
Voice of the
Community What are the means that we student organisations can
voice out the problems of the common Tamil person?
Is academia the best way of doing it? Or in other words
is the creation of academic seminars the best way to
approach the problem?
Does having an academic centric approach lead to
elitism?
Suggestions
• Student organizations will face an
existential crisis if left to find a balance
between being the voice of the community
and cultural orientation
• A crucial constraint will be the lack of
manpower to handle the events that will
fall under either side.
• However, they have an added advantage
that the student organizations in the past
did not have: counterparts.
• Creating networks with these sister
organizations will aid the main organization
to balance its portfolio of events and
programmes.
• Thus, what is being suggested here is not a
mere tapping of resources of other
organizations but a complete paradigm
shift, where these organizations are
integrated together and exists as one
singular entity (not officially) but
functionally. Thus, this streamlines the
processes as well as allows for cross-
borrowing of expertise and resources
Possible Problems
• Some leaders of student organizations reported that there is lack of interest in our community organizations, and this
disinterest can be attributed to people trying to disassociate themselves from Tamil language.
• However, apart from this general current of disassociations , there are certain specific associations that are attached to
student organizations.
• For example, there is a misconception that joining these organizations will detract you from concentrating in your
studies and getting good grades.
• Another common misconception is that these programmes do not add value to one’s life, whether career or personal.
• These misconceptions may not necessarily be groundless (from the perspective of parents), as it is axiomatic that for
cultural events the amount of time and effort invested is very high and that time could have been used for other
pursuits.
• However, these issues may be corrected with having a higher manpower to produce each cultural event which may be
achieved via an integrated network of Tamil student organizations.
• Moreover, the main issue that deters people from joining such organizations is that these organizations as seen as mere
cultural platforms and nothing else.
• Hence, the above-mentioned arguments that prevent people from joining these organizations seems to be very
persuasive. This is one of the reasons why this write-up argues that student community organizations need to have an
academic portion to their portfolio. The organizations need to break away from this image that they are just cultural
platforms. We need to include an academic platform as well.
Issue 4: Role of Student Tamil Societies
PAGE 25