From the moment we moved onto our beautiful campus in 2015, it was clear that Cendana was different from Saga and Elm. The latter were almost a single unit, conjoined twins with a shared walkway bordering the courtyards of each. Cendana, though, stood alone and as far away as it was possible to be. It had the smallest courtyard of the three, the smallest buttery, and a Dining Hall that was dark and empty that first year. It was an outlier in every sense. Before long, we were known as Pulau Cendana.
The nickname was actually a bit more apt than most people realize. At some point in the years that followed, a cover was put over the walkway immediately outside the east gate of Cendana , making it possible to get only a little wet as we dog-legged around by the science labs and gym. Until that point, none of the routes from Cendana to the rest of campus were covered at all. When it rained, one literally had to go through water to get from Cendana to the rest of campus!
Soon, though, we were co-opting the word pulau, embracing it as a point of pride. Look around, I would say. Which RC is closest to the dance studio? the art studio? the gym? MPH? the Fab Lab, the Black Box, the music practice rooms? The bus stops on Dover and Clementi? If we’re an island, we’re an island like Manhattan. And what Manhattan is to New York, Cendana is to Yale-NUS.
By the end of 2017, the phrase Pulau Proud! had become a rallying cry for Cendana, a line that could be counted on to evoke a response. The end of semester dinner that semester was Hogwarts-themed. Channeling my inner Dumbledore, I rose to address the College.
‘Before we begin our banquet’, I intoned, ‘I would like to say a few words’.
‘And here they are: Kingfisher! Oculus! Pulau! Proud!’ [And the crowd went wild]
And it was true: I was proud of Cendana. Not because we won four of the first five Orientation Cups, and pretty much all the other inter-RC competitions that were run in those days. In fact, I was never more proud of Cendana than the one and only time, in my years as Rector, that we lost the Orientation Cup. Why? Because there were seventeen Orientation Group Leaders that year, but only five of them, in total, were from Elm or Saga. As a result, more than half the first-year students in Elm and Saga that year were led through Orientation by Cendana OGLs, cheering them on in their race around Singapore, giving them pointers, exhorting them to win. Elm won the Orientation Cup that year, but Cendana showed its spirit — and it was the spirit of Cendana that I was proud of.
I was more than just proud of Cendana. I loved it. I loved all the events and gatherings on campus and felt privileged just to be around such vitality. I loved the dark wood used in Cendana, and I loved our Dining Hall, surely the most beautiful on campus. I loved the Cendana College Council, its creativity, energy, leadership, and volunteer spirit, and I loved the start and end of semester dinners they produced. I loved the intimacy of the Nest. Sure, it would have been nice to have a patio like Elm’s, and I did try to get a renovation done, but maybe not having it helped make the Nest as cozy as it was. I loved the blackboard we painted onto a wall outside the Dining Hall. Before the mobile blackboards that it helped inspire became ubiquitous on campus, the Cendana blackboard was an important site for public art and free expression on campus, and it remained, until the end, the only such fixed site on campus. I loved the smaller scale of Cendana’s courtyard, and the way the Rector’s office looked out onto it, so unlike the other RCs. I loved the views from the top of Tower A. I loved everything about Cendana. I even loved the name: what it meant, the sound of it, its etymological path from Sanskrit to Malay. Most of all, I loved the students; I loved the staff I worked with; and I loved our community. As it was for hundreds of others, Cendana was more than a place I worked, or studied, or lived. It was home.
Neil Clarke
Residential Faculty (2015–16)
Rector (2016–19, 2022–23)
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