By Lye Han Jun (13A01A)
If the striking pink posters around school have not managed to catch your eye, perhaps the cardboard picketers’ signs will have. The Humanities Initiative is back for the third year running with its annual charity concert, LIKE A R!OT, in support of their long-time beneficiary Toa Payoh Care Corner (TPCC), an organisation that supports the elderly living in the area. We stopped briefly by their rehearsal after school on Monday to bring you our pre-concert impressions.
By Sng Geng (13A01A), Chairperson of Chinese Orchestra
The beginning of Term 3 marks the dawn of a new era of leadership within the campus. The injecting of new blood into the lifeblood of the school seems almost a commonplace occurrence, with investitures, appointments, and elections being held amidst the hustle and bustle of college life that never seems to end.
At this point, many of us will be wondering—did I vote for the right leader in our CCAs? And for those who have stepped up to lead—will we be prepared to establish the robust front of competency and ethics necessary to deal with an environment in constant flux and inundated with dilemmas?
In short, will it be Leadership, or Leader-sheep? Will we glimpse the assembly of new pillars that unify the school? Or will it be a case of lambs to the slaughter? Perhaps, the recently concluded CCAL Camp will shed some light on the matter.
Continue reading “Leadership or Leader-Sheep? CCAL Camp 2012 in retrospect.”
By Claire Yip (13A01A)
Here is a brief history of the school song. Firstly, remember this: it is not any school song. It is an institution anthem. Prior to his tenure as RI Headmaster, Edward Wilson Jesudason decided to share his talents in song-writing and archaic apostrophising by bestowing a majestic institution anthem on the school. (We cannot feel smug about this. Jesudason did the same for Bartley Secondary School a few years later.) A Jesudason descendant is quoted as saying, rather incredulously: ‘RI went for more than a century without having a song to call its own…until Papa came along!’ Indeed, for nearly fifty years now, Rafflesians have been singing the selfsame melody and evading the vacant ‘v’ in ‘what’er’. The antiquated language is charmingly old-fashioned, and our athletes and schoolmates who have been for match support would attest to how heartwarming it is to sing the song, acapella, after a gruelling sports event, but arguably this is not to any melodic or lyrical credit of its own, and simply its status as the official institution anthem. A sizeable portion of the school population, however, does not care much for the song, perhaps due to its musical flaws and lyrical missteps. Nevertheless, it continues to be sung at the first assembly of every week—that is, Monday at the Year 1–4 side, and Tuesday for the Year 5s and 6s.
By Chua Jun Yan (13A01A)
The Year 5–6 stadium and track will be temporarily relocated next year to make way for the North-South Expressway (NSE).
According to Land Transport Authority (LTA) documents, the 21.5 km NSE will include a tunnel passing right under the RI campus. Further investigations have revealed that a ventilation building for the NSE will be built near the junction of Marymount Road and Braddell Road, at the field beside Marymount MRT Station.
Continue reading “Breaking News: School Stadium to Make Way for Expressway”
By Claire Yip (13A01A)
The Year 5s have just gone through their first round of Common Tests (the Year 6s must be seasoned old chaps by now), and results are filtering back slowly. The long process of returning papers is torturous for some, and strangely satisfying for others, but for all students, the most common question before and during lessons is: ‘Are we going to get our papers back today?’
And the second most common question: ‘How did everyone (by everyone, I really mean myself) do?’
Because this question is often evaded or answered unsatisfactorily by teachers, the Year 5s have had to resort to answering it themselves. We bring you some evaluations which have been floating along the RI corridors of late.
