Singapore university terminates sex blogger’s scholarship
November 13, 2012
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 13 ― The National University of Singapore
(NUS) has terminated the scholarship of sex blogger Alvin Tan, the
republic’s Straits Times newspaper reported today.
But the Malaysian student was not expelled from NUS.
Instead, he will have to pay full, unsubsidised fees as a foreign student if he wants to complete his final year of law school.
The newspaper said that the punishment meted out to the 24-year-old
had been a subject of much speculation since NUS announced last week
that it would not be revealing the details of the penalty because
disciplinary proceedings were private.
Yesterday, Singapore Education Minister Heng Swee Keat described the
behaviour of Tan, who is a scholarship student in the republic, as
“reprehensible and unbecoming of a scholar”.
Heng was responding in Singapore’s Parliament to MPs who demanded to
know what punishment had been meted out by the National University of
Singapore (NUS) to Tan.
Alvin was not expelled from NUS.
NUS
had drawn public ire for its refusal to disclose how it is punishing
the sex-blogging Malaysian scholar whom it found guilty of damaging its
reputation.
Tan, the 24-year-old Asean scholar studying law at NUS, is at the
centre of a controversy after he and his girlfriend posted in a joint
blog photographs and videos of themselves having sex. He had been hauled
up for disciplinary action last month.
Tan, a final-year law student, had apologised to NUS for “bringing
disrepute” to the school but has insisted that what he did was done in
his “own personal time as a private individual and not an NUS student”.
He also maintained that his action was a “victimless crime” and did not harm anyone.
The NUS student had said explicit photos and videos of himself and
his girlfriend, Vivian Lee, going viral were “exciting”, according to
Yahoo! Singapore.
On the site “Sumptuous Erotica”, Tan and Lee said they loved posting
details of their sex life on the web “for everyone to enjoy” and that
they uploaded only self-made content.
The blog has since been taken down.
Tan went to Singapore under an ASEAN scholarship in 2004 and attended
Xinmin Secondary School and Raffles Junior College before he went to
NUS.
He is based in Kuala Lumpur, where he has an online business. His
mother helps to run a family business, while his father works in sales.
The couple also faces the possibility of criminal prosecution and
jail time if convicted for exhibiting obscene material after they posted
photographs and videos of themselves having sex on their blog.
Malaysian Police Commercial Crimes chief Datuk Syed Ismail Syed
Azizan said recently that the authorities were considering taking action
against the duo for violation of obscenity laws.
Under Section 292 of the Penal Code, the couple could be prosecuted for exhibiting obscene material.
The punishment under the law is imprisonment for a term of up to three years or a fine
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