A Lecturer's Side Job

I constantly wonder how low the standard of Malaysian education can go. What I'm about to tell you will make your jaw drop lower than UM's spot in the top 200 universities list.

This happened to my roommate a week ago while he was attending his Ethics and Philosophy course. A lecturer came in during the start of the lecture, stood in front of the hall, and *jeng jeng jeng* started promoting her new book to the class. Nothing peculiar? Read on.

After spending around 20 minutes selling her book like a professional saleswoman, she gave the class an ultimatum. If they buy the book, they will automatically get 10% for their finals, or else, they would have to take a mid-sem exam to earn those marks. And the beautiful thing is, they have to buy BRAND NEW books directly from her, that means NO second hand books from senior undergrads and DEFINITELY NO photocopies (sorry, fellow advocates of piracy). That's not all, even if they already had a copy of her book, they would still have to buy another because apparently, the ones she was promoting are 'new versions'. (with, ironically, the same contents).

I mean, WTF!? A lecturer using her authority to promote her book is bad enough, but to actually blackmail her students to do so is totally OUTRAGEOUS! Can you imagine, trading money for examination marks!? And she is not even the class' lecturer!!!

Then, some girl asked her if she could purchase the book from the university cooperation. And you know what she answered? "Suruh kooperasi bagi you 10 markah tu (ask the cooperation to give you the 10 marks)," causing girl to start crying. WTFH!!!!!

For a lecturer that specialises in ethics to do something that totally contradicted with what she preaches is TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE!

My roommate then actually asked the lecturer if he could buy 10 of her books, (good one man. RESPECT!) causing the whole class to cheer. How did she answer? "Turun, bagi I metrik nombor you (Come down and give me your metric number)." Huh?

Initially, the class started to protest (naturally). Seeing the turn of event, she resorted to her ultimate tactic; the power of TEARS. Yup, that's right. She started CRYING!!! And the best thing is, it actually worked! Everyone started to sympathize with her and went rushing down buying her books like they were manna from heaven. I'm speechless. Thankfully, my roommate and his friends had more sense than to fall for that trick.

Wait! The drama hasn't ended yet. The class' lecturer later found out about the whole thing and filed a report to the Dean (cue cheers) and the earlier arrangement was now off (cue more cheers). I was anticipating some sort of action, but somehow I didn't hold my breath.

True to my predictions, she got away scot-free. Nothing is being done to date. That is why, my roommate and I decided to take actions into our own hands. We called it:

Ops ETIKA

The operation is divided into 2 phases. I've just completed phase 1 this afternoon. The details of the operation including painstakingly writing a complain letter overnight (which has to be hypocritically polite) and sending it to the Dean of the college.

Phase 2 will commence if we still hear of no actions being taken to the aforementioned lecturer 1 week after the CNY break. If that happened, we would send another letter (this time, it would include no lack of juicy details) to a left wing political party (DAP comes to mind). Since the election season is around the corner, I'm sure they will put the letter to good use.

I'll update you guys on the flow of the operation. May the force be with us.