NUS Professors Who Were Up To No Good
Naughty Professors - The Greatest Hits
It has been a long summer away from NUS, hasn’t it? Long enough to get ourselves out of any mischief we would have otherwise done while attempting study. Most of us have busied ourselves with soul-sucking internships, or have whisked away to far-flung exotic getaways to stockpile ‘gram-worthy snapshots (Johor Bahru counts, too). However, it seems that certain university faculty members couldn’t avoid tangling themselves in any controversy.
I Spy, With My Little Eye...
That signature James Bond stare.
In case you were unaware, Professor Huang Jing from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of NUS (LKYSPP, also, the unsexiest acronym ever), has been called out by the Ministry of Home Affairs as “an agent of influence of a foreign country” (aka: A Spy!). He allegedly dished out “privileged information” like it was a stack of singles in a strip club. Move aside, you Instagram micro-influencers. You know you’re the real influencer when you can endanger our nation’s security (quote HUANGJINGLKYSPP for a free cup of kopi with the Internal Security Department). Professor Huang Jing has since been suspended without pay, as we are left in suspense as to what will happen next.
How naughty is he?: 4/5 Cups of Kopi
Rest assured, the majority of the faculty members in NUS are wholesome and morally-upright members of society. For many of them, their biggest crime would be making you attend 8am lectures. Nevertheless, here at The Bullet, we would like to take the opportunity to reminisce on the not-so-recent misdemeanours (alleged or not) of some of our professors as we begin the new semester:
A Couple of Research Frauds…
As with any academic body, there is bound to be some dishonesty in publications. Come on, I bet that there is at least one Bullet reader (out of the 7 of you) who has gotten away with some minor plagiarism somewhere along the line before. As it turns out, our professors are not infallible either.
Immunology researcher Dr Alirio Melendez was found to have falsified his findings in two of his papers back in 2011. Guess he wasn’t immune to the probings from the international scientific community.
More recently in 2016, Dr Mridula Sharma, a former associate professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, along with two other NTU personnels, have been linked to scientific fraud (one of those rare moments when NTU outperforms NUS). Their research had supposedly led a breakthrough in the fight against obesity and diabetes. Had their breakthrough been true, the Prime Minister would have had one less issue to grapple with in his National Day Message. Pity.
Needless to say, all the papers suspected of research fraud have been retracted. Talk about a strong pull-out game.
How naughty are they?: 2/5 Retracted Journals (this grading is under review for possible fraudulent scoring)
...And One Resumé Fraud
In a more curious case, Mr Anoop Shankar, a one-time Assistant Professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, was found to have lied about his credentials while employed at West Virginia University in 2012. As it turned out, Mr Shankar did not have doctorate in epidemiology (the study of disease patterns and control, there’s Google now, people), nor did he graduate from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi as claimed in his resumé. Oh the deception!
I wonder how he got that far in NUS, considering the many times I unsuccessfully tried to convince the Office of Financial Services that I have paid my semester student bill. Guess he really earned that “genius visa” to enter the US.
Happens more often nowadays than one would expect.
How naughty is he?: 3/5 Doctorate Certificates
Touchy Touchy Remarks
A picture so well-taken, it's both LinkedIn- and Tinder- profile-worthy.
Earlier this year, Malay Studies Associate Professor Khairudin Aljunied was temporarily suspended and put under investigation for “his comments relating to an imam's controversial remarks about Christians and Jews”. Understandably, the mainstream media outlets have been cryptic about the actual comments, redacting it where ever possible. In his defense, Professor Khairudin said his comments were meant to be read from a “fictional account”.
So, when i get a D for my next essay, can I be excused from it because it was written by my fictitious persona? Nonetheless, he has since apologized, been given a letter of warning, and has resumed his duties in the university. As you were.
How naughty is he?: 3/5 Potential Racial Conflicts
The Long Arm of the Law
If the previous professors had minor brushes with the law, this one fondled it. Hard.
Most of us will remember this infamous sex-for-grades scandal involving the former law professor Tey Tsun Hang and his then-student Darinne Ko, who both took one-to-one consultations a little too far. As if sex wasn’t enough (it always is), Ko purchased multiple expensive gifts for Tey — an iPod worth $160 (iPod Touch here Touch there Touch everywhere), a Mont Blanc pen worth $740 (a $1 Pilot pen works fine for me) and two tailored shirts worth $236.20, and even a formal dinner he had with some of his former students, the bill of which came up to $1,278.60 (she didn’t even bother rounding the bill up). He had even impregnated her and forced her to undergo an abortion.
The infamous NUS Law Lecher-er. What a stud.
How could she have afforded all those gifts as a student though? I have to skip three meals to afford Waa-Cow at U-Town. Oddly enough, Tey was acquitted of his corruption charges after a High Court Appeal (CORS Appeal was never this kind to me). The 113-page judgement (the judge likes it thicc too) noted that Ko’s romantic exchanges with Tey proved that she was in love with him, and her actions were not to get better grades from Tey. Love works in mysterious ways, I guess.
Press Sex to Doubt.
How naughty is he?: 5/5 Mont Blanc Pens
So there you have it - NUS Professors who have been Very Bad and have made it to our Naughty List. Coupled with last years’ orientation camp incidents, we seem to be the Yishun of universities. Nevertheless, such deviant behaviours are few and far between. We have also noticed that we have only featured male Professors. Calm down, Social Justice Warriors. Females are capable of committing crimes, if they want, too. Perhaps female Professors are smart enough to escape any detection of their misdeeds.
The Bullet wishes you godspeed as you begin the new semester. Try not to look at your Professors skeptically during the first lecture though, they’ll probably be nice if you buy them a Mont Blanc pen.
Did we miss out anyone on our naughty list? Drop us a line at thebulletcampus@gmail.com!
