'This is ridiculous': Student claims professor insisted on having class despite Deepavali holiday

Attending a lecture isn't how one would want to spend their public holiday. 

Unfortunately, a group of university students from a local university had to do just that. 

One of them, Kalyani Hema Nair, took to TikTok on Monday (Oct 24) to air her grievances about having to attend an online lecture on Deepavali. 

In her video, Kalyani posted some screenshots of her professor's email and a snippet of herself attending the lecture on Monday morning. She also hashtagged NTU in the video's accompanying caption.

"When your prof keeps lessons on Deepavali because 'there's no other common time to meet to reschedule,'" she wrote in the video. 

She also alleged that this was because "there [were] only three Indian [students] in the module" which made rescheduling "unnecessary".  

A quick check done by AsiaOne shows that the professor in question hails from Nanyang Business School at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

[embed]https://www.tiktok.com/@lillkals/video/7157878034245192962?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1[/embed]

Kalyani's video surprised some netizens who felt that it was "definitely not okay" to have classes on a public holiday. 

"Deepavali is the most [overlooked] holiday in Singapore...please do not let him get away with this," urged one netizen.

Another mentioned that public holidays are announced "way in advance", which meant that the professor had "all the time" to plan ahead. 

That being said, other netizens pointed out that the professor did offer an alternative option for students unable to attend the class during Deepavali in his email, that he could schedule them to go for his Wednesday afternoon lecture instead.

In his email, he also said that "other classes may be available too". 

On NTU's academic calendar, it says that Oct 24 is a public holiday, and a note on the document stipulates that "classes will proceed normally on the immediate Monday following a public holiday on Saturday". 

And for a public holiday which falls on a Sunday, the next day, Monday will be a replacement holiday. 

AsiaOne has reached out to Kalyani, who declined to comment further. 

AsiaOne has also reached out to NTU for more information.

Back in April, a lecturer from the same university posed a question to her students about whether it was appropriate for students to "ask for consultation [during] wee hours at night on a weekend". 

One of her students, David Lee, cheekily responded saying: "No lah, I thought like you will love us cause you call us your kids mah, prof. Then you say you don't want to give us your weekend ah."  

The now-deleted video caused a kerfuffle among netizens who felt that the lecturer should be allowed to have her own personal time. 

Lee later clarified to AsiaOne that he was speaking to his lecturer in jest, adding that "student in our class (including myself) have requested for any such consultation over the weekend".

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claudiatan@asiaone.com

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