How Many More Deaths Before Ragging Is Finally Addressed?

The tragic news of the death of Malaysian National Defence University (UPNM) final year student, 21-year-old Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain, grows more horrific as more details emerge and come to light, leaving us utterly shell-shocked at the extent of his torture and the unexplained negligence of those involved and how they seemed to not have noticed, until it was too late.

The question has to be asked however, why is it shocking? Ragging - The culture that gives seniors (older students) power over their younger and newer counterparts, is still being practiced all over the country. The barbaric acts of pure stupidity are considered a rite of passage, something the seniors had to endure themselves when they first started and in their belief, somehow giving them 'permission' to do the same.

Horror stories surrounding ragging is not something we are unfamiliar with. In 1989, Universiti Pertanian Malaysia bore witness to a truly horrific display of ragging, as six seniors were accused by six juniors of slapping them, forcing them to strip and dance in the nude and finally tying the penis of each junior to a ceiling fan and making them run around the room when the fan was switched on. The cruel acts that were carried out, without even a modicum of thought, saw three seniors expelled, two more suspended for two semesters and one freed with a stern warning due to the fact he was found to only have ‘observed’.

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As a nation dealing with ragging, we do not have to travel too far back to be able to see the clues that would lead up to this unravelling. An article that appeared in The Star by Dina Murad from the year 2013, details interviews with 40 current (at the time) or former Malaysian boarding school students and their encounters and experiences with the nefarious trend. One boy detailed how a friend was beaten badly and had to be carried after because he could not walk. However, the victim lodged a police report and the culprits were soon suspended. Among 15 girls interviewed, six had witnessed or experienced ragging in their schools. Out of the 25 boys interviewed, a shocking 24 claimed to either having experienced or witnessed bullying in their schools, some even admitting to being the aggressors themselves.

Then, just last year, MyNewsHub wrote a report on the culture of bullying on their fanpage, which in turn, opened a can of worms, as hundreds confessed to their very own traumatic experiences in detail, ranging from the less severe ones where seniors instructed their juniors to obtain 200 autographs from them in 3 days having to do  A4 size name tags around their necks everywhere they went, to the outright, outrageously disgusting, such as a girl who claimed she was forced to masturbate in front of her seniors. Clearly, this has been an ongoing issue, but why does ragging still live on in this day and age? What continues to give it life?

Mentality

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Severity is the first issue to be discussed. Ragging is still ragging, whatever shape or form it may take. Whether some choose to indulge in forms of it that may not appear to put their victims under much duress and may even seem fun, these orchestrators are as guilty as those who meat out much harsher forms, of promoting and keeping the ragging culture alive. ‘I went through much worse when I was ragged. These students have it easy’ is the common excuse many say in their defence, feeling an unwarranted and undeserved right to rag new students merely because they were ragged themselves. It is this kind of thinking that needs to change before ragging can move to becoming just a shameful relic. The meter that gauges the severity of ragging should no longer exist and any form of ragging should be treated and dealt with in the same vein, ensuring all those responsible are given the appropriate punishments before something untoward happens, again.

Those In-Charge, Need to Take Charge

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How did no one notice what was happening inside the rooms of UPNM, the one that served as a makeshift torture chamber? How did no one else speak up when a boy was being beaten with a belt, burnt with a steam iron, acts of unimaginable cruelty, scarcely believable and more suited being put in a movie than real-life. Don’t dormitories have wardens? Why didn’t  the warden  do something? These are the haunting questions that linger in the minds of everyone who has come across this story. Many who attend public universities also stay at boarding schools and it is here that ragging is most rampant. That is not to say that private universities are immune to the culture, far from it. But most experiences and stories, always emerge from these boarding schools, as in the case of Zulfarhan Osman Zulkarnain. How did the warden not notice?

While it is remarkably easy to speculate and point fingers, when thought about logically, there seems to be only two possibilities. The first being that the warden was not vigil to what was happening in the slightest and in essence, not fulfilling their job. The second on the other hand, is that the warden was aware that his/her students were participating in ragging but chose to turn a blind eye to it, perhaps unaware of the severity at which it was being practiced. In both instances, fingers would be pointed firmly in the direction of the warden. Before jumping to conclusions though, which is what many have already done, we should look deeper into the problem to find it's root cause. Is there a chain of command the warden has to follow? If so, then perhaps he/she informed their immediate superior, who did nothing. Are the wardens given special training beforehand or put through a short course at the very least so they are competent to deal with the young adults who will be under their wing? Is there a uniform guide that all wardens are in possession of, one that details conduct that is and isn't allowed from the students? All these questions need to be answered without haste and prior to the start of any blame game, the winner of which always being no one.

The Big Boys Need To Take The Lead

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Finally, it is up to the government to set uniform guidelines and punishment for those caught ragging, regardless of severity. With universities having to deal with these issues internally in the past, the time is now for the government to step in and ensure that this menace is stomped out once and for all. Why is it the that the police are only involved when something as tragic as death has occurred? To curb and stomp out ragging for good, punishment that fits the crime, along with a seminar or lectures on the absurdity of ragging must be the bare minimum, no matter how ‘minor’ the form of ragging may seem. In an effort to eradicate a disease in medicine, you must treat those who are already infected, which is exactly the case in this instance.

The Conclusion

The culture of ragging can be summarised as one that was cultivated in stupidity and inoculated into the minds of those without a functioning conscious to help them tell right from wrong. While what has happened to our fellow Malaysian cannot be reversed, let those responsible be found and be meted punishments that fit the crime. This incident needs to be used as a catalyst to extract the outdated and moronic practice from our society once and for all. Ragging has been around for decades. It was alive in the 80s and still is even as you read this sentence. Let us ensure then, that it stops here and now, and this disease is cured once and for all.