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NTU president apologises over English-only campus signage

SINGAPORE — A week after news broke of the controversy of businesses on campus being told to switch to English-only signage, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) president Bertil Andersson has apologised, blaming the wrong instructions on varsity staff who had acted without sanction.

NTU president Subra Suresh poses for a picture at the university's Hive Building.

NTU president Subra Suresh poses for a picture at the university's Hive Building.

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SINGAPORE — A week after news broke of the controversy of businesses on campus being told to switch to English-only signage, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) president Bertil Andersson has apologised, blaming the wrong instructions on varsity staff who had acted without sanction.

In a statement on Wednesday (June 28), he reiterated that the university would get to the bottom of how the incident arose and pledged to hold to account any staff found to have acted contrary to NTU policies and values.

A panel of five members will investigate the matter, which is expected to take six to eight weeks.

"We accept responsibility for this incident and for (our) initial responses to the media which, with the benefit of hindsight, did not address the lapse clearly. We offer no excuses for what has happened that has resulted in anguish and anxieties among members of the Chinese community," he said.

"I wish to put on public record and to reassure everyone that there is no policy at NTU that prohibits the use of Chinese language on signboards at food stalls or retail spaces. The initial findings show that the problems arose as a result of instructions given to food court operators to present their signs in English only. This action was not sanctioned through any NTU policy."

Chinese evening daily Lianhe Wanbao first reported last Wednesday that operators at a food court run by Select Group were told to switch to English-only signboards ahead of their contract renewal in August. The following day, Lianhe Zaobao

reported that the Prime supermarket in NTU had also been told it could not have displays in Chinese.

The news sparked many angry comments among netizens, some of whom noted NTU's origins as Nantah, once Singapore's only Chinese language post-secondary institution.

Professor Andersson's statement did not say how or when the instructions were communicated to two businesses, both located at the North Spine of the campus.

None of the operators at the food court have changed their signboards. Prof Andersson's statement also did not say how many staff were being

investigated, nor the range of disciplinary actions NTU has the power to impose.

But he reiterated that NTU does not have a policy prohibiting the use of Chinese language on signboards of businesses.

Chinese, Malay and/or Tamil can be used on signboards on campus, so long as the same information is available in English, he added. No business in NTU - there are 13 food courts in NTU and 37 other F&B establishments - has flouted this rule, making it unclear how the wrong instructions came about.

Select Group first won the four-year contract to run the food court in 2013. The firm has not made any comments publicly and could not be reached for comments on Wednesday.

Prof Andersson said Select Group and their stall holders in NTU have been "officially informed" that bilingual signs are allowed, provided one of the languages is English. NTU's associate provost of Student Life, Prof Kwok Kian Woon, also convened a meeting with the stall holders last Saturday to clarify NTU's position with them, he added.

Prof Andersson said NTU's senior management team understands the unhappiness "many" members of the public have expressed over this issue in the past few days. "We are sorry for the confusion and our lack of clarity on the issue," he said.

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