By Faith Ho (22A01A), Mei Feifei (22A13A), and Sophie Goh (22S07B)

Dear RI Students’ Council, 

To be honest, your elections are a little strange.

Every April, Rafflesians’ Instagram feeds are suddenly flooded with red/green/blue/yellow/purple-themed accounts masquerading under tags—some combination of letters and numbers indecipherable to any non-Rafflesian. We start getting bombarded with buzzwords like “servant leadership”, “voice” and “change”, colourful canteen boards (which really deserve more attention), and the unspoken cry of VOTE ME. Online challenges and speeches blow past like a whirlwind, and before we know it, we’re about to witness the investiture of RI’s 41st Students’ Council.

So we come to the question: how effective exactly is Council campaigning? 

By Neo Xin Yuan (21A01D)

Trial Outcome: Unsuccessful. 

A year ago, I was staring at these words printed innocuously on the webpage, thinking it must be a mistake.

Both CCAs that I’d tried for had rejected me. Both of which I would’ve loved to get into as they aligned with two of my biggest passions: art and writing. I tried to smile it off in front of my friends, but inadvertently, I fell in a bad mood for the next few days that slipped by. 

A friend asked me which CCA she should choose between two that had accepted her. She had more than two CCAs to choose from. It’s hard not to feel anything less than jealous when both the CCAs I’d applied for had accepted her—the same CCAs that rejected me. Later, I was notified that I was accepted because of a vacancy, but the damage had been done—for a long time, I felt like I didn’t truly belong in my club as I had been a ‘second choice’.