I have wanted to do this post for a very, very long while now, but it's taken me all this time to piece my thoughts and feelings together coherently (much less eloquently).
Let me start by saying I have honestly enjoyed my first year here in Tembusu; I like the academic program so far, and the profs are great. Most people I've met are friendly and enthusiastic about doing things, and I guess that's the point when things start to derail for me.
Sprouting from all this enthusiasm has been this great wave of student initiatives in Tembusu College. Just last semester we've seen so many things going on, and that's just the problem: there are too many things going on. I've talked to some friends who are actually quite pleased that there is a variety of events to cater to different interests. While I don't disagree that having a range of options gives Tembusu a lot more dimension, I find that the intended scale of these events is increasingly disproportionate to the range that students want to provide and attend. Let me try to elaborate how.
The big boys
There simply has been far too many large-scale events. By large scale I mean any event that requires a "committee" or small student body to plan and execute, usually taking more than a week to organise, and targets the Tembusu public for an audience larger than twenty. The kind of events that would obviously fall into this category would be Open House, Sport's Day, Culture Night, Orientation, but also the less obvious ones like the charity events, house suppers, major interest-group activities and post-event bashes.
The problem with having too many of these type of events is that a consistently good turn-out would be hard to expect. Even though most of the events I listed above were largely successful, it was only after many desperate pleas from the organizers that they barely had enough people to help out or attend their events (note: Open House). Meaning if individuals were left to their own devices, most people in Tembusu would not be interested or able to support these events. It has come to a point where the supply of these events has outstripped both its demands and resources, and I believe this will start to strain the college and its students.
Just what kind of strains will be expressed is explained in the following sections.
The players
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that the individuals organizing any one large event are probably involved in the planning of another. It just happens, perhaps by nature of these individual's personalities, that most of the big events are planned and organized by the same few people. Any other people who happen to organize anything would likely be in the same circle as these individuals anyway. Of course for the most part these individuals refer to the CSC, but there are also a bunch of other people who just happen to get involved in everything anyway. So anyway, point in, the same people are doing too many things.
The effect? Everything suffers.
1. Organizers don't have the time and resources to efficiently plan a kick-ass event. Event coordination becomes messy and sloppy. Event sucks (or will start to).
2. Too many people are too busy planning events to attend events. Little people show up, and if any do, a good number of them would be reluctant. Event sucks (or will start to).
3. People organizing events have less time to study and sleep properly. Often this leads to poorer personal performance. Organizers suck (or will start to)?
I know it is tempting to say that the core of this issue is that not enough people are stepping up, but the reality is people aren't. Unwilling or unable to, there seems to be insufficient people to pull off and attend the scale and quantity of activities that Tembusu's event-planning momentum is building up to.
The small fries
Another cost that I see being implied from having too many large events is having too few small-group activities. Small-group activities would be any gathering of less than twenty people that happens either spontaneously or through the organisation of one or two people. (I know these definitions are quite arbitrary, but it's there you give you an idea of what I mean.) I suppose some house suppers could fall under this category, but it also includes most interest group gatherings, random steamboat and picnic sessions that one sometimes hears about. Last year's language tables would also be a good example.
I think this level of interaction is particularly important for the growth of Tembusu as a college, because these small scale activities are important for building up camaraderie in the college. I've personally met some pretty amazing folks around Tembusu, but I only got to know them, as in personally, through hanging out and chatting at smaller scale events. The thing is, smaller events are usually more conducive for socializing. There's less of a program to stick to, people have more time to interact, probably over activities that they are more likely to have a common interest in. As such I am inclined to believe that this kind of interaction time is important, or at least more meaningful to the average individual compared to, say, Tembusu bash, and because of which ought to be given more focus in the overall scheme of school activities.
Additionally, the more-intimate friendships that might yield from close bonding activities would also produce a more cohesive and cooperative student body that would be more willing to support the larger events. In the grand scale of the great Tembusu calendar, I reckon there ought to be a lot more small group activities over big-ass events, but that seems hardly the case, especially over the last semester.
Everybody's starry-eyed
I suppose the biggest catch in this situation is that most of the people I know who run these college-wide/ big activities do it out of their own initiatives, and most of all, enjoy doing them. The last thing I want if for anyone to take this post as an attack at them; contrarily, I support their efforts. I just hope more (thorough) thought can be put through in the structuring of Tembusu's event calendar so as to maximize its potential benefits.
Currently, I feel that they have a tendency to get run away with their excitements and imaginations. Perhaps there is a tinge of megalomania that was entailed by Tembusu's novelty as a new college and the expansive budget granted to us in our first year; the general positivity of the college's collective attitude has also done a lot in encouraging this sense of empowerment. However, I think it's time that he college faces up to the reality that not everything has been "awesome", a word that has been too loosely thrown around recently. It's time we carefully review and reevaluate the values of all events big and small in Tembusu, and figure out the proportions that will allow every student to make the most of his or her experience here. I believe Tembusu has the potential to be an amazing college, but we've got to start doing things smarter and with a clearer sense of purpose. More on that next time.
Ciao.
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