April 12, 2017, 04:43 PM 
An email sent out by Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) School of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) to its final-year students has been accused of being "elitist".
Joel Chong, a HSS final-year student put up a screenshot of the email from his school that asked for inspirational stories from its undergraduates to be featured as part of convocation in three months' time.
This is the post on April 5:
The line that got everyone's goat:
"A graduating VIP students from an important or well-known family, sons or daughters of politicians, professors, celebrities etc".
The purpose for aggregating the interesting stories was to gain coverage in campus media as well as mainstream media.
In response to the surround brouhaha, an NTU spokesman said Chong's Facebook post was unfair in singling out the particular line, according to The New Paper.
The result, according to the spokesman, was that it caused "the spirit and meaning of our open request for nominations" to be "misinterpreted and distorted".
The NTU spokesman said:
"We understand the concerns raised and it was never our intention to focus on only individuals of certain backgrounds."
"The highlighted line could have been better phrased."
"Convocation is a celebration of our students' achievements and knowledge, and as always, we will be as inclusive as possible and portray this by featuring stories of students from all walks of life."
Responses on the Facebook post showed that people were aware of the need for interesting stories, but were aghast by the tone-deaf nature of NTU's blatant request given Singapore's already lowkey classism:
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