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Unsurprisingly some students here feel that the three-week extension pales in comparison with our peer institution at the National University of Singapore, which had in October last year allowed students to exercise their S/U option after the examination results are known.

The NUS policy—where less than stellar grades can be retroactively discounted from the computation of one’s GPA—is indeed more attractive than the one employed in NTU.

It is only natural then that students would call for a system similar to that of NUS to be adopted here in NTU.

It is however important to remind ourselves of the spirit in which the S/U option was introduced—to encourage academic exploration while providing a safeguard against any negative impact to students’ GPA as a result of these explorations.

The NTU administration has rejected calls to adopt the NUS system on two counts.

First, allowing students to exercise their S/U option retroactively would distort the students’ GPA, and may affect the credibility of the degrees issued by the University.

Second, top universities around the world also require students to exercise their S/U option or the equivalent before the examination results are known. In an earlier article, “Same principle leads to different S/U policies”, this newspaper explored similar systems implemented in the top universities around the world and found the NUS policy most liberal.

While Columbia University has something similar—where students can change a grade of “Pass” (the equivalent of “Satisfactory”) into a letter grade—students must still exercise their equivalent of the Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory option, called Pass/D/Fail, about 10 weeks into the semester.

The NTU administration has taken a cautious approach by following what most of the top universities have done—and with good reason.

Although the former NUS Students’ Union president who lobbied for the change said the retroactive S/U system would encourage students to work harder than they would if they had exercised the option before examinations, it can also cultivate a wait-and-see attitude among students, weakening their incentive to work hard.

After all students can always discount the grade if things do not turn out well.

But that is not to say that the current S/U system that NTU has adopted is ideal.

In addition to encouraging academic exploration, the university should also encourage students to do well in these unfamiliar territories.

The current S/U option is not the best way to do so, as it provides neither the incentive for students to give their best shot nor the penalty on their GPAs for those who do not even make the effort to pass these courses.

Because a grade of “C” is all it takes to secure a “Satisfactory” grade and gain the academic units for a course under the S/U option, students would rather go the extra mile for subjects that do get computed in their GPA.

If enough effort has been put in, there is little reason why a grade of “C” and above is not possible. Yet no penalty exists for students who do not bother to make the effort.

Since the university has looked at the systems adopted by other top universities before rejecting the retroactive S/U proposal, perhaps it can also take a leaf out of Dartmouth College’s book to encourage students to excel in their academic exploration.

The equivalent of the S/U option at Dartmouth is the non-recording option, where students select during the semester a minimum letter grade for a subject they want recorded in their transcript and factored into their GPA.

If a student scores the minimum grade or above, it is recorded as it is and computed in the GPA; if the score is lower than the minimum but at least a “C”, it is recorded as “Satisfactory” and not computed into the GPA. A student who scores lower than “C” has the grade recorded and computed in the GPA.

Such a system provides the incentive for students to work hard for an “A” instead of just having an “S” to look forward to. And just as importantly it will provide deterrence against those who may choose not to put in the effort to pass the course and are willing to settle for a “U”.

And so right from the outset, we shall answer the question that is no doubt on the minds of every reader of this website—why set up a third source of news when the student body is already served by the Nanyang Chronicle and NTU Tribune?

Newspapers should exist to serve their readers.

Such a simple notion is often lost in most news organisations today, where the existing mode of operation is fraught with complexities.

Journalists—whose job is quite simply to seek truth and to present them in a fair and comprehensive manner to readers—often find themselves encumbered by forces non-editorial in nature.

Advertisers, eager to sell their products to their target audience, find ways to disguise advertisements as editorials. In more extreme cases, they seek to influence editorial content that may otherwise put them in bad light.

But it is not merely advertisers whom journalists must appease. Their publishers, who in most cases own and pay for the papers, may take exception at certain stories and prevent their publication.

Still, such is the reality of the press today: newspaper publishing is a business, and an expensive one at that. It comes as little surprise that the people who are putting the pressure on journalists are those with the money.

The Nanyang Technological University has been gracious to fund not one, but two campus newspapers: the Nanyang Chronicle and the NTU Tribune.

In the Chronicle, students from the communication school gain invaluable experience by putting what they have learnt in classrooms into action.

Such a model where student journalists concentrate on doing journalism while the university picks up the tab has served the university well in the past 14 years.

But the recent saga where the university decided to pull two news stories on a visit by opposition party leader Chee Soon Juan made salient the influences that are not within the control of journalists.

Clearly the 15,000 copies of Chronicle printed once every three weeks come with its own set of strings attached.

While the university had until recently not interfered in the editorial functions of the Chronicle, the Chee incident has highlighted that it can and it will do so if it deems the content unacceptable.

A simple equation where readers should have been at the forefront has thus been upset.

In setting up the Enquirer, we hope to restore the imbalance where readers have become almost an afterthought in this equation by answering only to our readers—the most important stakeholders in journalism—and to ourselves.

We, however, harbour no unrealistic dream of replacing the Chronicle and Tribune as papers of record.

Far from it, we see this online newspaper in a complementary role to the mainstream university press; covering the stories that the Chronicle and Tribune do not and in angles which have not been looked at.

There is currently a void in the discussion of issues as the Chronicle and Tribune are vehicles for events coverage. We will fill that void with in-depth reporting on matters that impact the lives of NTU students.

True to our mission, we believe the student body of the university will be better off with one more outlet of news, and that is our reason of being.