MMU and colouring contests.

I walked out of the lecture hall today and there it was. A bunch of little kids sprawled all over the floor of the CLC, colouring their Merdeka pictures on exercise mats. It was a depressing sight.

Are we so desperate to organize events in this university that we need to resort to organizing colouring contests for primary school kids? Its not the first time it has happened. Last year's convocation pulled the same stunt, the only difference being that the children didn't represent their schools then. I think you can still check the article in neXus.

The question that I really must ask is, why? We are a university, not a kindergarden. Sure, you could look at it as some way of giving back to society, but really, a colouring contest? An essay writing contest would make more sense. Heck, even getting them to outdo one another by reciting corny merdeka poems would have made more sense.

And they had to make the event visible. Which is why it was held in the middle of the bloody CLC. The floor of the CLC is rough, so its impossible to work on that surface. Their solution? Exercise mats. Padded pieces of plastic that cannot possibly support the pressure that a sharpened pencil would apply onto paper. I really pity the kids. Not only do they have to colour on the floor, sitting cross-legged, they also have to take care so as to not poke a hole in their masterpiece. And some were using crayons. Which requires even more applied pressure to work.

And the turnout was horrible. There were less than 10 kids. From maybe 6 or so different schools. Admittedly, its really hard to come up with activities for national day. I personally can't think of anything that I wouldn't immediately write off as corny. But however desperate I am to do something to show everyone how patriotic I am, I wouldn't resort to taking kids out of school and making them colour pictures of Malays, Chinese and Indians dancing happily under a rainbow.

The kids probably enjoyed getting out of school for those few hours, but I'm not sure how much of a consolation that is.