One Stab Back
SINGAPORE: A final-year engineering student at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) jumped from a campus block after stabbing a professor on Monday morning.
The professor was in his office at the engineering faculty when the student stabbed him in the back with a knife, leaving him injured.
After stabbing the professor, the male student - who was in his 20s - slit his wrists and jumped off a five-storey building.
What a tragedy. As we were students once, many of us should be able to imagine what David Hartanto Wijaja was going through. He lost his scholarship and he was not going to graduate with flying colours. But did he have to stab a professor and then commit suicide? If not sure about slashing wrists and jumping off the building, but stabbing a #@%! professor is definitely not something too far from many students’ minds.
The latest “investigations” were quick to defend the system. David received 3 warning letters before his scholarship was withdrawn. Copies of those letters were sent to his parents. With the scholarship withdrawn, David would need to pay for tuition fees of about $3000. It was pointed out that his family could afford that.
Goodness. Do these folks believe that David should not feel pissed off enough to stab someone who might have wronged him just because of all those “mitigating factors”? Some folks speculated that David might have stabbed the prof by mistake as the latter had nothing to do with the termination of his scholarship. But the prof was his thesis supervisor and his thesis was not going well. Couldn’t he have stabbed his thesis supervisor because of problems with his thesis and the loss of his scholarship was just contributing factor to his violent action?
As a rebellious student always unhappy with the system, I didn’t have too many favourite lecturers. But I certainly had quite a few “least favourite lecturers” who were always waiting for a chance to put my name in the “infringement book”. Perhaps I’m just the non-violent type. I didn’t even throw a shoe at lecturers who had wronged me. I would normally just write a few poems to let off steam or a little more effectively, I would wait for staff assessment time to show off my talent in novel-writing. The only things I would sharpen were my pencils. But what if David were 24 years older and ended up as my classmate? I believe Prof CCC’s (not his real name) life might have been in danger.
If David were a dental student who knew his anatomy, this prof would have stood no chance of being discharged from hospital after a couple of days. With one of my sharpened pencils, David would have put Prof CCC (not his real name) in ICU for the rest of his life and more than a few meek characters in the faculty would have celebrated. Yes, there are profs from heaven and profs from hell. Many a student would have gladly put the profs from hell back where they came from if the consequences don’t matter anymore.
What would I do if I come across one of those profs from hell? I’ll probably present them with an armour. They may need it as more and more foreign students who have not been bludgeoned into submission since childhood come ashore.
Wait a minute. Isn’t that a female armour?
