Heyyy,

My chosen issue is the conflicts and stereotypes between the day-students and boarders. I’ve heard many prejudices in connection with our living area and we can see that there is a separation because of it. ‘Boarders are such a close community, it’s hard to be friends with them.’ – is the most common one or ‘Day students already have their own friendship groups and they’re not open to us.’ Because I can understand why and how this issue has evolved, in my opinion, the way that we should to prevent and solve it is pulling together our community. It’s quite obvious that boarders are closer to each other, because we’re living together. We have many activities and Boarding House outings thanks to the house parents, so we have many opportunity to form relationships and share memories.

I think this issue can’t be solved with a one-day long workshop or with discussions. As a UWC school we’re proud of our community, which I wouldn’t say it’s strong at the moment. In my view, creating challenges and opportunities to work together would be the right solution. Of course, we can’t move the whole school, but we can initiate Grade outings, weekends together. I’ve heard that even though many students have been living here for a long time, they don’t really explore Singapore. Next to that, it could be a long weekend away to go together to one of the near countries, for instance Malaysia. These can be at the beginning of some of the breaks (October/Chinese New Year), but of course, it’s crucial to send out surveys and questionnaires about the programs, ask about the students’ opinion and ideas about what, how and when to do.