All images courtesy of Claire Khoo.
I am, fingers crossed, graduating this year. Amidst all the sentimentality and the Law IV performances and muttered nostalgia for this campus, I think I can finally express my singular biggest gripe about this campus.
Future generations will never know of this specific grievance. I’m not sure my own batchmates know either, really. It seems that only I get this bothered about this specific problem:
It's weird that the curtains in BTC are always drawn. We have beautiful views and great architecture on campus. Running parallel to that is a student culture that insists on keeping the curtains perennially shut.
The curtains on campus are always closed, and I'm tired of pretending that that's OK.
"Why Does The Washroom Have The Best View In NUS?"
That was the working title of this article. I've since then realised the connotations of this line.
What I really mean to say is: The washrooms are the only place you can see outside Block B. Because every classroom and seminar room has its blinds tightly drawn.
Behold this marvellous view. Isn’t it lovely? Isn’t it wonderful? A glimpse of an old colonial building, in all its storied splendour.
Well, tough luck even glimpsing a hint of white brick during class. Be it a seminar room (SR) or classroom (CR), the fact of the matter is that you will never see an open curtain in the entire building.
It's absurd. We've accepted walking into rooms that overlook a hilltop view of trees and a historic quadrangle, only to shut it all out with immovable heavy curtains. Then, having cut ourselves off from the light of the world, we fill the room with artificial lights instead.
Seriously. The next time you go for class, note the infuriating tendency Law students have to shut the windows and turn on all the lights. It suspends the campus in a stagnant, liminal sort of ever-wakeness. It's uncanny.
Struggle as I might against this epidemic, I've received nothing but backlash from my classmates whenever I try to open the blinds. Tugging at the curtains usually earns me strange looks, or other students pulling them back shut soon after.
I am aware that we all sit with our backs to the windows, because we are all (presumably) good students keeping our eyes on the professors’ slides. Who cares about the view?
Me. I do. And anyone with a functional circadian rhythm should too.
See, it’s not just about the view. I’m not advocating that we all stare listlessly out of the window when class gets boring.
What I am saying is we all could do with a bit more sunlight for our sanity.
Allow me to demonstrate: Two random students, drenched in sweat from the walk from the MRT, look for a room to camp in.
We find a room overlooking the hill, the aircon surely on as always. Perfect! The door swings open, and we are plunged into darkness. It's 6PM, by the way. The sun is still very much out.
Look at this atrocity!
This SR commits an even graver sin of having both blinds and blackout curtains. Was it not bleak enough already?
Our naive attempts at drawing the curtains failed when we realised they were probably affixed in that position.
Maybe this is our penance for studying law.
This severance from nature is all the more apparent when you have classes in the morning. Trekking through the winding paths, the warming sun not quite burning the night’s chill away, the faintest suggestion of a breeze rustling the bamboo grove that flanks those uncomfortably wide steps, all in service of… What, this?
Behold this sickly yellow light. Beautiful glass panels that stretch from wall to wall, all obscured by these heavy blackout curtains. Is it night? Is it day? Where am I? Nothing exists but the broken thermostat and a poor professor struggling to fix the projector.
In this bubble, suspended in time, all you see is the screen of the computer the screen of the projector the eternal fluorescent overhead the hard lines of red time the white grey dull folding you in. A splash of pale wood to mimic the natural world.
One of the great boons of being in BTC is being able to touch some grass before you sit in a cold little room for hours. Yet, this same privilege just makes the absolute dearth of life inside the building indoors all the more apparent.
This is not to say, however, that all hope is lost. With enough luck, you’ve been assigned to a CR! These, at least, have translucent blinds that can be pulled up.
Though in my experience, no one really does that.
Sometimes I try to raise the blinds, let a little more light in. I soon realised that people arriving after me liked to pull them back down. I offer now a belated apology to those who had the misfortune of sharing a class with me.
Surely – though I have no way of proving this – being bombarded by fluorescent lights and freezing temperatures for hours at a time contributes to the ambient misery you sometimes smell around campus.
Why have we resigned ourselves to playing office worker simulator when we’re right in the middle of a UNESCO Heritage Site?
Oh but it’s so hot and humid outside and the charging ports are all inside and there’s insects outside and- None of that means we can't let sunlight in!
Minor Offences
Obviously, I won't criticise the auditorium or the Lecture Theatre for not having windows. It's not their fault.
But I was miserable that year that my cohort was locked in the auditorium for three back-to-back classes. I had to stand blankly beside a window, like a plant, during our brief toilet breaks just to regain what little remained of my sanity.
I also want to complain a little about the first floor of Block B. The combination of low ceiling, dim lighting, and windowless corridors makes it especially jarring to transition from the Big Au Naturel (大自然) of Botanic Gardens to the bleak little lift lobby. Admittedly, this does make it very atmospheric when the Halloween decorations are put up.
Outside of that brief period, however, it’s simply a fantastic demonstration of how architecture can negatively impact one’s mood.
Worse still, the club rooms are just windowless grey-white cells (with charging ports). I’m convinced the poor Djungelskog bear sags under the weight of its poor soft shoulders because it’s been locked in there for too long.
Perhaps the greatest offender is the Study Room. It is the closest you can get to recreating Severance without actually earning a salary.
Step inside and you are instantly hit with a wave of depression. Rows of tables partitioned into little cubicles paired with stiff plastic chairs that deny you even the little comfort of swivelling; the absolute dead silence that makes a criminal out of every new entrant just setting up their new hot desk.
The farce of painting things bright orange and lime green only highlights the artifice of this setting. A row of tiny windows along one wall offers a sliver of light from the outside world, a tether to an existence beyond this endlessly confined space of work-productive-work-alone-work, looks out to but another unlit corridor.
Little wonder you’ll stare at nothing but your own screen when you're in this room.
I suppose some people appreciate this. Not me, though. Never me. In my humble opinion, sitting under the shade of the Summit and feeling the passing breeze outside is a million times better.
This article has been four years in the making. I suppose it is apt that by the time this comes out, there will be no one to share these woes with.
This annoyance of mine, no matter how random, was a central tenet of my law school experience. I will never know an NUS Law that basked in daylight.
I hope my juniors will.
Let there be sunlight.
