In a heartfelt blog post published on Feb. 24, 2017, a National University of Singapore (NUS) student wrote about her everyday experiences on campus that can range from insensitive to borderline discrimination to plain racism.

The student, Chandralekha, 23, wrote at length about the types of difficulties she faces as an Indian minority after carefully contemplating if she should put her experiences down in words.

According to her, she was ominously warned before her first day in school by someone she assumed to be an Indian professor, who whispered to her in Tamil during orientation that she would have to work much harder than everyone else to succeed.

The professor apparently said to her: "We are the minority here. You have to work extra hard if you want to succeed here."

That interaction proved profoundly prescient.

For example, she was questioned outright why she could not speak Mandarin by a fellow school mate during orientation, who then proceeded to question if she was a Singaporean.

Worse, she was made to feel bad just because she did not understand Chinese.

In group settings among her peers, she routinely felt left out of conversations because they would converse in Mandarin.

Her experience only became better after she spoke up in class about what she faced.

The worst case of discrimination that bordered on racism occurred when she was questioned if she is a Business School student just because she was Indian.

In her own words:

To commemorate NUS Business School’s 50th Anniversary, there was a Special notebook giveaway at the BBA office. There were limited number of books and being the Kiasu Singaporean who loves freebies, I went to the NUS BBA office to collect it. While the people before me were allowed to just take it and leave, when it came to my turn, the staff told me that they were only for NUS BBA students. I said that I am one. He asked me to show my matriculation card but seeing that I was going to take it out, he said nevermind and giggled. I stared at him. In a vain attempt of lightening up the situation, he said that he’s a racist and giggled again. I just took the book and left immediately. I was disgusted by the entire event. That was just another reminder that I would have to forever be explaining and earning my rights. It would just never come easy.

Her blog post had also stated that apart from the visible lack of minorities in NUS Business School, which she came to accept as one facet of her university education, she said that she had hoped her experiences while growing up as a minority on the receiving end of taunts would change for the better in a tertiary institution, but instead, has been reinforced.

Reactions to her post have ranged from commiserating...:

I’m so sorry this happened to you, it sucks that people are so ignorant even in university. As a fellow Indian, I get it completely, and unfortunately the stupidity never really ends.

You build a thick skin eventually, but my best advice is to never stop speaking up. Don’t let anyone get away with their racist/discriminatory bullshit. People may call you overly sensitive and say you can’t take a joke (some things aren’t funny, period) but when you stand up for yourself and educate the ignorant about why they’re being offensive – you might judt start some positive change :)

Best of luck and hang in there!

... to those who told her to not take the negative experiences as racism or even to react positively to them:

Hi, thanks for sharing – took a lot of courage on your part :) Just wanted to share my two cents, having just recently graduated from NUS BAC too. The career office guy deserves a knock on the head, and that’s just downright unprofessional (maybe he was just some aloof kid? he should know better). But I don’t see how conversing in mandarin with each other is racist? I’m a Chinese and usually converse in english with my friends (really bad mandarin haha), so I can relate because I can’t converse normally in mandarin without being made fun of… but maybe you just need to be patient, and find the right group of english-speaking friends to hang out with (from my first-hand experience, they do exist in NUS! took me three semesters before finding this bunch of cool dudes haha). Enjoy yourself! And stop thinking that you’re being oppressed or anything because you might really just be thinking too much into this. I wish you all the best for your remaining time at NUS!

You can read her blog post here.

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