OFFICIAL' PERCEPTIONS OF STUDENT ACTIVISM ON NANTAH AND SU CAMPUSES 1965-1974/5

Abstract

Student activism in post-independent Singapore has not been well documented. This study aims to throw some light on this part of Singapore's history by examining the 'official' perceptions of student activism in the period 1965 - 1974/5. Student activism on the Nanyang University and University of Singapore campuses during the mid-1960s was ‘officially’ perceived as separate and different in nature largely due to the legacy of 'official' experiences of the 1950s and early 1960s. However, the interactions between the student activists from the two campuses, the existence of issues that incited both groups of activists, and the problematic nature on which the ‘official’ perceptions were conceived, all contributed to highlight that the ‘official’ perceptions did not accurately reflect the true nature of the student agitations. In the 1970s, ‘official’ perceptions of student activism were shaped mainly by the concerns and preoccupations of the government at that time. The student activists' own perceptions of the nature of their activism differed greatly from the ‘official’ ones, and the linkages and parallels ‘officially’ perceived between the student unrests and the government's preoccupations of that time proved to be weak and contrived. As such, it can be said that the ‘official’ perceptions of student activism during the first decade of Singapore's independence were highly inaccurate in representing the true nature of the student unrests and did not reflect reality. However, a certain continuity of purpose could be established in the ‘official’ perceptions of student activism during the period under study. The ‘official’ perceptions may have served several aims: isolating and alienating the student activists from the general student body, containing the scale and expansion of the unrests, and 'externalising' the causes of the agitations.