Long story short:

A pleasant-looking fellow with legitimate queries, Teo Yu Sheng, has taken to the public domain to air his grievances over what he perceives to be an utter lack of transparency on the part of the National University of Singapore Students' Union, whose president cannot seem to provide a breakdown of how millions of dollars in income and expenditure was allocated in 2013.

This millions of dollars account for close to 90 percent of the annual Operating Income and Operating Expenditure in 2013.

This is Teo's Facebook post:

The original Facebook post has been taken down. This is a screenshot.

Here's what Teo wrote:

Intro:

I’ve always been a little curious about NUSSU’s (National University of Singapore Students’ Union) finances, especially those surrounding the annual Rag Day and Flag Day*.

After a few email correspondences with NUSSU’s 35th Vice President, Mr. Shermon Ong, here’s what I gathered:

(based on NUSSU’s 34th AGM Report)

NUSSU does not disclose the cost of organising Rag Day and Flag Day in its financial summaries (found in its AGM Reports);

But Mr. Shermon Ong claims that NUSSU is “very transparent as to the amount [of money] it takes to organise Rag and Flag Day.”

87% of NUSSU’s 2013 annual Operating Income (S$1.54million) is left unexplained (NUSSU 34th AGM Report); and

89% of NUSSU’s 2013 annual Operating Expenditure (S$1.29million) is left unexplained (NUSSU 34th AGM Report);

But NUSSU insists that its finances are transparent.

The contradictions are jarring. Painful, even.

Conclusion:

A recap of main points:

1: NUSSU can’t claim to be transparent in Rag finances if it doesn’t or can’t disclose how much was spent organising it.

2: NUSSU can’t claim to be transparent in its finances if 87% of all income and expenditure are left unexplained.

3: The lack of control over the presentation of finances is a separate issue from the transparency of the said finances. It explains the lack of transparency, but doesn’t diminish it.

So, what exactly is the point of this post?

Truth be told, I don’t have very strong opinions about the need for transparency in NUSSU’s finances. If NUSSU wants to be transparent, great. If it doesn’t, then I’m fine with that too.

In fact, judging from the apparent lack of protests from students, I believe that most of us couldn’t care less about it either. (Of course, it is entirely possible that the details of the finances will, once revealed, kickstart a whole new level of interest in the way money is managed; in that sense, the lack of interest could have been caused by the lack of transparency)

In any case, what irks me is this: that NUSSU continues to assert that its finances are transparent, when it evidently isn’t.

Does NUSSU find it so hard to be honest with the state of its finances? Or do they subscribe to an alternate, twisted idea of transparency?

Read the gist of the article as it was originally published on Medium

Related article:

NUS Students’ Union issues response to Mothership.sg on the lack of transparency of its funds

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