Rejuvenating Yale-NUS College traditions

Tape Days Concert welcomed back a full-sized crowd on 13 April 2022, when restrictions began to ease. Image provided by Alcan Sng (Class of 2022).

Every school has its own traditions, and though young, Yale-NUS is no different. The Yale-NUS community has fostered cherished traditions that make up a part of its distinct College identity. For the past two years, COVID-19 restrictions have limited the scale of student activities and placed a pause on these treasured practices. Now that these restrictions have been eased, we take a look at five things that have returned in full scale, such as the re-opening of butteries and semester abroad trips.

1. The unique Yale-NUS classroom seating

Class sizes in Yale-NUS remain small, allowing for this special layout to be possible.

During the pandemic, classrooms in Yale-NUS adopted a conventional seating arrangement, with tables and chairs arranged in rows and columns to observe safe distancing measures. Today, Yale-NUS has returned to a distinctly different layout, with students sitting side-by-side in a rectangular format, “family dinner” style.  According to students, this arrangement encourages higher classroom participation as a more intimate space is nurtured, and helps to break down barriers quieter students may face while learning. It promotes a more accepting and livelier classroom environment that all can benefit from.

2. Visitors on Campus

Shakthi’s mum, Deepa, made sure to capture her day with photographs at college entrances and inside classrooms. Images provided by Shakthi.

With COVID-19 measures such as contact tracing currently a thing of the past, students are now welcome to invite their friends and family to visit the campus! Sundaram Mohan Shakthi (Class of 2024) recently gave her mum, Deepa, a long-awaited mini school tour. Not only did she visit Shakthi’s suite, she even got to see how the classrooms and dining halls are like. “I spend a majority of my time here, where I have made some of my fondest memories. It was important to me that my mum gets a glimpse of a space that means so much to me.” Shakthi shared.

The Yale-NUS community includes not just students, staff, faculty and alumni, but also families. The College regularly invites parents to get a glimpse of campus life, with a variety of events ranging from its annual Family Day event to the Lunar New Year Open House held at the beginning of this year.  During last year’s Family Day, parents got to take part in sample lectures, residential college tours and have lunch in the dining halls, giving them a taste of the Yale-NUS experience.

3. Large-scale Events

Student band, Mani Makers, performing for the Yale-NUS community. Image provided by Bernard Boey (Class of 2022).

One of the many large-scale events that are held in College, Tape Days is an annual music concert that features student bands playing 90s music in an iconic blast to the past. It is traditionally held on the last day of school as a means to celebrate the end of each academic year.  After two years, Tape Days returned in full on 13 April last year as soon as restrictions eased. The event saw a total of 25 performers who performed their hearts out to a full-house crowd. Lee Yun Ning (Class of 2023), part of the organising team, shared that Tape Days is and has always been about “bringing the community together to have fun, enjoy good music, and support their friends who are performing”.

4. Learning beyond Singapore

Sean pictured with his fellow programme mates while on a trip around Brazil. Images provided by Sean.

After two years of border closures, travel has returned for Yale-NUS students. Participation in study abroad opportunities again, such as exchange programmes and Learning Across Boundaries (LAB) programmes, has increased exponentially. This semester, a total of 112 students travelled across the world to experience learning outside of Singapore. Sean Low (Class of 2024), is an exchange student participating in the Institute for the International Education of Students (IES) Abroad’s Emerging Economies program, a multi-country curriculum which takes him to Buenos Aires, Argentina and Santiago, Chile. “This programme was suspended for 2 years during the pandemic. Now in South America, I am the only Asian in my class and I get to live with an Argentinian family – it teaches me to connect with people who have little in common with me,” shared Sean.

5. Re-opening of butteries

The Buttery team at The Nest, located in Cendana College. Image provided by Kelly Hui.

The three student-run butteries in each residential college dominate the nightly campus supper scene, regularly dishing up specials for the community every week. When they were forced to operate on a strict ‘takeaways only’ policy during the pandemic, the space, which was built for social interaction and community bonding, came to a standstill. With the re-opening of the butteries, buttery managers like Rachel Handoko (Class of 2025) felt a resurgence of community energy. When asked about the buttery’s role in the campus, she said, “I think food is a very intimate act of love – it becomes a medium through which students can form new connections.”

Traditions remain important to the student collective, as they help Yale-NUS students find their place in the larger network of the Yale-NUS community. Amidst the disruptions brought about by the pandemic, the Yale-NUS community forged on to shape a tight-knit collective they could always rely on and come home to.