Are We Enemies Of Our Own Potential?

by Terence A. Anthony

SOURCE: UNIMAS DEBATING SOCIETY

Written in response to this.

Dear Erna Mahyuni, I respect your work at the Malay Mail. You may not remember me but I think you might remember scuffles you may have had with my friends at Greater Malaysia, during my stint there. I do agree there are horrible lecturers professing odd believes here and there without sources. I realized the accounts you quoted were IIUM accounts.

Just to clear the air and to add another perspective, there are IIUM students doing us proud this week too. This week alone, at the World University Debating Championship (often called the Olympics of Debating) in Amsterdam we had four IIUM students in the top 10 speaker list for the ESL category. (Mubarrat Wassey, Ameera Natasha Moore, Sara Abdul Rahim, Syarif Fakhri)

We had two Malaysian institutions in the ESL finals, namely Asia Pacific University and Universiti Malaya. (Led by Patrick Cheang, Vinodhan Kuppz, Eric Onuoha and Ayinde Sadiq)

This year, Malaysia also won the Alfred Tuna Snider award, given to the best debut by an institution. Taylors University (led by Felice Wong Jing-Yi, Amrit Agastia) in their glorious debut made it to the ESL Semi Finals. Impressive, considering the competition and their lack of experience at WUDC.

Lastly, we have UT MARA (UiTM) making it to the Semi Finals of the OPEN category of WUDC. The only reason why they didn't make it to the Grand Finals was because they lost ONE (and only ONE) vote from getting there. In the preliminary rounds, comprising of 9 rounds, they were ranked ONE speaker point away from being ranked first. For the SECOND time in a row, they were ranked SECOND in the world. They were only ONE SPEAKER POINT away from Oxford University. We were very close to crushing our opponents in a a very eurocentric exercise.

The two speakers referred to above were Jasmine Ho (Ranked 9th in Open Category and the ONLY female Malaysian so far to have been in the top 10 of the big 4 of debating tournaments - Australs, Asians, Asian British and Worlds) and Mifzal Mohammed (Ranked 4th in the world)

The reason why I'm addressing this to you is not because I think we should dilute the horrible things that happen in our academia. But the issue is that such events are too often highlighted at the expense of the amazing things our students have done. Worlds just ended and I believe that should be celebrated and given equal screen time too.

I believe it was Foucault (correct me if I am wrong) that said that the colonized don't access the corners of power not because they are denied access to it, but because they think people of their background or skin colour are convinced they can't do it or don't deserve it. Now, the colonizers have left but the prison guards are ourselves. We have convinced ourselves that we can't achieve greatness and repeat over and over again stories of niche corners of the web.

I believe Malaysia has an untapped potential. We are at the cusp of enlightenment. Yet, we are not talking about it, leaving them in the trivia section or the annals of history. Instead, we should stop neglecting and people like you and I should use the powers we have to talk about the great things our institution has done.

In fact, why don't you come over and watch one or two out rounds from our local debating intervarsities and see our level of discourse. I can show you around and I can point you to the right people to talk to.

This is our future. Let's own it and take some pride in it.

Again, this was another post originally written on facebook. But I got carried away and it became another full blown essay.