i'm tired of doing entries in blue and yellow just to show i love cp and julian equally. red and green have to come in for something. i mean, i was on the tarbet house track team for three years, and green is one of the school colours. so all you bayley / morrison people can go fly a papery trapezoid thing.

Auspicium Melioris Aevi

When Stamford Raffles held the torch
That cast Promethean Flame,
We faced the challenge of the day
To give our school a name.

The eagle eye and gryphon strength -
They led us to the fore
To reign supreme in ev'ry sphere
The sons of Singapore

Come heed the call Rafflesians all
And let our hearts be stirring.
We'll do our best whate'er the test
And keep our colours flying

Let comradeship and fervent hope
With one voice make us pray
Auspicium Melioris Aevi
With God to guide the way

the line in controversy is usually "the sons of singapore." harvard had the exact same problem a while back, and in 1998 the line "fair harvard, thy sons to thy jubilee throng" was officially changed to "fair harvard, we join in thy jubilee throng," whereas in the same year it was decided in a student referendum at rj to keep the 1962 wording after carmee lim raised the question of changing "sons" to "youth." i know a lot of people - including yen and addy - were in favour of the change - but i voted against it. in these enlightened days women receive education as well as men. this fact speaks for itself, and raffles in particular has produced so many brilliant women i hardly think we need quibble over a line that was plainly historical. and if someone had come up with a good way of changing the line i would have conceded that changing was no bad thing, but carmee lim's "youth" is plainly unacceptable. to be a youth of singapore connotes something entirely different from being a son or a daughter of singapore, and as one clearly can't fit in "sons and daughters" they had best leave well enough alone. what i've always wondered instead was why e.w. jesudason put in that last line? i mean unlike, say, ACS, we're emphatically a secular school. i'm perfectly happy for it to stay, and i haven't any objection to singing it - i just don't understand how he came to put it in - unlike the classical references in the rgs song, which, though curious, are explainable - the rgs song was not composed for the school, but taken from a preexisting, british songbook, and then the association with athena - the statue at the gate, the phony implication of the classical lineage of the school - was obviously deliberately constructed around it. i mean, ri has a bust of raffles, but rgs has a statue of athena. that's what i disliked most - not only the rejection of a real and meaningful history and tradition, which though regrettable would have been understandable, but the construction of a new fable of identity so artificial and so gratuitious.