Unreachable Messages in the Indonesian Student Orientations
One of the most challenging times for a newcomer in university life is student orientation. Back in the 1970s until the 1990s, orientation week in Indonesia was very coercive and fearful. The condition under the Indonesian New Order Era forced the university students to be mentally and physically tough. Those coercive and fearful orientations were mainly heard from the public university (Universitas Negeri), where the interference of the government was hugely seen. Universitas Indonesia was one of them and Fakultas Ilmu Pengetahuan Budaya (FIB) with its many study programs — where I am now studying — was its part. As time passes, university life in FIB changes into a better environment for a liberal academic life. Many coercive aspects from the past orientation were ruled out, but the physical violence transformed into mental violence. These ‘ancient parts with new face’ of orientations manifested in the case of “ospek jurusan” or study program’s orientation, which is seen as one of the worst nightmares for some students — including and especially for those who are psychologically sensitive against mental violence. Reflecting on that fact alone, we should reconsider the method of our study program’s orientation. The method should be improved in a better way and to suit the spirit or zeitgeist (spirit of the age) of the present world.
Indonesia, under President Soeharto’s regime, was much different than today. In those days, university life was indeed tougher than what we experience today. Days after the great fear of Malari Protest in 1974 were the days when the government showed their ultimate power to suppress university students who were involved in Malari Protest. At the moment, university life grew up with a tougher orientation to shape a stronger physical and mental condition of the students so they will be standing tall to confront the dictator’s government. As time passes, after the 1998 Reformation, the old orientation changed into a better new kind of orientation by eliminating physical violence. However, this new ‘face’ of orientation still contains mental violence, which is way much impactful in long-term psychological condition. This false interpretation of the way to introduce university life also alters the result of the orientation. In the 1970s until the 1990s, this orientation succeeded in building a common-hatred against dictatorship. However, today, it is growing a common-hatred toward the system and the seniors because the government has moved into a more democratic direction — even though we can still see its colonialist and repressive nature. More than that, if we consider a linguistic approach, the term “orientation” actually does not contain any representation of violence in every single way. It is meant to introduce the new environment of a system — in this case, academic life in the university. Starting from this point, we must also realize that an academic life does not contain any form of violence or oppression.
If we — as a new student — look more profound on the goals of orientation, we may get an answer from the seniors. Usually, the seniors will say that the orientation aims to strengthen the solidarity between the newcomers. Theoretically, it is true, but the realisation is often different. Almost always, a conflict between newcomers happened because of an orientation’s event, the event which is made by seniors and claimed to strengthen student’s solidarity. When some of the newcomers attend an orientation event, but some others are not attending the event because of a personal matter or other urgent reasons, the seniors will suppress those who are attending the event to seek the attendance of those who are not present without giving any toleration. I myself and my batch in Universitas Indonesia experienced this kind of oppression. When those people who are not attending are standing tall on their principle, the fire of pique between newcomers becomes the essence of their own conflict and tears down their unity. At this point, the seniors must introspect themselves that bound and solidarity between newcomers will only be maintained by peace and cheerful — sometimes liberal — environment of social dynamics, not by a coercive event. We must respect the personal autonomy of having the freedom and right to manage one’s own life.
We may also look into the other goals of orientation according to these seniors. The most classic purpose of orientation is to maintain newcomer’s respect toward senior. This purpose is indeed needed in the Asian customs and traditions, but we must also face the reality that this very important purpose must be delivered in the best way to avoid the purpose of being falsely interpreted. Those coercive actions — as stated before — do not create a better vision and respect toward seniors. On the contrary, the purpose of orientation often falsely manifest into hidden fear and hatred toward pushy senior — as we cannot control the thoughts and ideas of the suppressed newcomers. This classic purpose also faces an excellent refutation which comes from the discussion of university lecturers and professors in Universitas Indonesia itself. They produced a brilliant statement saying that,
[…] intellectual hierarchy is not bounded by seniority — it is entirely possible that a critical new student bears more intellectual knowledge than those coercive seniors, so there is no reason to give in to that classic seniority.
There is also another interesting topic to be discussed — which I myself witnessed — that those newcomers who were one step closer to the free academic world are prevented from asking the essential purpose of the orientation, which they are mainly obligated to be involved. From this fact, we can see that the lack of knowledge of this ‘purpose’ of orientation also may falsely manifest into hatred toward the system, which obligates them to act ‘in-order’ without the chance to ask about the essential purpose of such mandatory orientations. This kind of tendency is killing their critical thoughts and bringing back these new generations into the shadow of Soeharto’s New Order Era.
We can see that the present orientation in FIB UI is far from perfect and continuing the methods of the New Order Era with a ‘softer’ form but only a little difference. In that way, those good orientation purposes are becoming ‘unreachable messages’ to the majority of students. Reflecting from this, we need to build a new and better university life by reconsidering to change (i) the remaining mental violence into a completely non-violence orientation; (ii) the coercive actions and toxic seniority into a cheerful social dynamics and equality; and also (iii) bringing real respect towards every single member in our university life by respecting personal autonomy and fundamental rights of everyone — including the new students. We must also make the long-standing ‘unreachable messages’ of the orientation program becoming reachable to our new young generation. That way, we can restore to greatness this country — Indonesia — that we love.
*) I wrote this in December 2016 after experiencing around four months of student life coloured with student orientation in Universitas Indonesia. Another version of this essay (slightly different and was written in a quite poor Indonesian) was sent to the Harian Sejarah under the title of “Refleksi terhadap Orientasi Mahasiswa Baru” (Harian Sejarah, 13–02–2017).
