Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 21. August 28 1978

OSO on Apathy

OSO on Apathy

Dear Editor,

I am very concerned on reading the various letters written by Malaysians criticising Tiaw Ngee. Though I am not in total agreement with everything he said, I feel that the criticism hurled at him is not so much the content as the manner of his writing. For anyone to claim that the Malaysians in Wellington are not apathetic, (the main criticism of TN) is naive. Apathy is a bitter yet true fact regarding Malaysians here. Ask yourself this question, how many of you really feel something about the Movick case — even the Cutback issue itself?

How many of you actually care about what is going on at home? How many actually just accept things as they are, never bothering to look deeper into the matter? If anyone does, if he finds that our society has some ills, what do we call them? Commies! Yes indeed, it is a true and fair view to claim that the people are apathetic here.

It is not enough to just accept this and that's the be all and end all. We must do something to change such attitudes, (or apathy never serves any good. It seemed strange to me that many Malaysians had come to expect the association to work for them, not the other way round. The failure of the various functions are due to this. While we are not willing to contribute anything to the functions, we criticised it for being badly run, when the reason for it being badly run was simply that there was not enough manpower. If we wanted to see effective association, we must be prepared to help in whatever way we can. The elections of both associations are just around the corner. If those who think they can do much better than the committee members this year, let those, then, stand, otherwise shut up!

Finally, Fellow Malaysians, it is pointless to argue about apathy. Let us do something about a besides talking!

Yours, Vic,

OSO.