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Title:Thailand’s Boom and Bust. CHIANG MAI,Thailand: silkworm
Sources: SPRINGLERS
Credibility Evaluation: Group 1(Scholars Books and Articles)
Source Bias:  very low bias
Factual Reporting:  contains personal opinion (not neutral)

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Robert B. Albritton, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 61, No. 2 (May, 2002), pp. 787-790

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Title: Young Thais battle seniority culture to raise climate awareness
Sources: REUTERS
Credibility Evaluation: Group 1(Scholars Books and Articles)
Source Bias:  liberal bias
Factual Reporting:  contains personal opinion (not neutral)
Comment: Written by famous columnist : Nanchanok Wongsamuth

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BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Nanticha "Lynn" Ocharoenchai organized Thailand's first climate strike in March, more than half of the 50 people who showed up at the rally in Bangkok were students at international schools and expatriates.

The same day, Ralyn "Lilly" Satidtanasarn, then aged 11, and a group of fellow pupils submitted an open letter to the prime minister, calling for urgent action on climate change.

"The fact that Lilly and I can do this draws a lot from being in international schools," said 21-year-old Lynn.

There they received classes on the environment, whereas most Thai state schools do not teach the subject, Lynn noted in an interview a week after graduating from Chulalongkorn University.

The young pair are often said to be Thailand's version of Greta Thunberg, the teenage Swedish activist who has inspired other children worldwide to skip school and demonstrate in the streets about the need to halt global warming and its impacts.

Lynn's mission is to boost awareness among the Thai public about climate change in a country that is witnessing warmer temperatures, sea-level rise, floods and droughts.

Its capital Bangkok, built on the flood-plains of the Chao Phraya River, is expected to be among the urban areas hit hardest as the climate heats up.

Nearly 40% of Bangkok may be inundated each year as soon as 2030 due to more extreme rainfall, according to the World Bank.

But while many Thais are directly experiencing the growing effects of climate change, Lynn said some Asian social norms made it hard for her to achieve her aims.

"In Asia, we have a culture of seniority, and young people aren't supposed to speak up for themselves and are not supposed to speak against adults," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a Bangkok coffee shop.

LOCAL LINK LACKING

Lynn's interest in climate change was sparked through writing articles on the environment as a journalism intern.

In March, she read about Thunberg, which prompted her to create a Facebook event for a climate strike in Bangkok.

"I could truly relate to her frustration and depression, and just feelings of hopelessness," said Lynn.

"For years I cried in my bedroom, and I'm sad and I'm just like, no one's going to do anything about it. But I figured if Greta can do it... I can probably do something too," she said.

Since she set up the Facebook page "Climate Strike Thailand", it has attracted almost 5,000 followers.

"Initially I had no idea about Thai social media and how to deal with Thai culture and Thai people and changing their mindset, but since March I've learned so much," she said.

Tara Buakamsri, Thailand director for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said young people in provinces outside Bangkok have long campaigned on environmental issues affecting their home towns, such as opposing gold mines or coal-power plants.

But there has been no networking platform to link them with groups in the capital, and Climate Strike Thailand has yet to spread beyond middle-class and international school students, he added.

"While the recent climate strikes are connected to climate change issues (at) the international level, they have yet to connect on the local level," said Buakamsri.

'JUST THE BEGINNING'

Since the first March strike, Lynn has led two more in May and September.

For the third, about 200 young people marched to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, demanding that the government declare a climate emergency and shift to 100% renewable energy by 2040.

In 2015, Thailand signed the Paris climate agreement and pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20-25% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.

But new coal-fired power plants have since been promoted both in Thailand and neighboring countries, which activists say contradicts climate change goals.

"These climate strikes are by no means methods to solve the problem," Lynn said. "It's just the beginning where you acknowledge the problem."

Lilly, meanwhile, now 12, has been meeting with business and the government, urging them to care more about the environment.

Her persistence over the last two years has paid off, and she is widely credited for a pledge by more than 40 national retailers to ban plastic bags by next year.

"I see no progress made by the government," she told journalists recently. "I only see progress made by Lynn and me."

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Young Thais battle seniority culture to raise climate awareness

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BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When Nanticha "Lynn" Ocharoenchai organized Thailand's first climate strike in March, more than half of the 50 people who showed up at the rally in Bangkok were students at international schools and expatriates.

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Title: A Brave New SOTUS:
Seniority: Order: Tradition: Unity: Spirit.
Sources: CityLifeChiangmai
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias: slight to moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: high

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Hazing in Thailand is institutional. Most university students will face hazing of some sort or another, from the benign to the deadly. It is a time honoured tradition for freshies at university to undergo weeks, even months, of intense hazing from their seniors. While there have been reports of hazing deaths and torture, on the most part it is an uncomfortable, time consuming, often painful experience which many students go through in the name of bonding with their faculty class mates.

This name, when mentioned, can evoke either a warm smile as memories of youth past is evoked, or total trauma recall. Here in Chiang Mai University, which will be our case study this month, SOTUS is officially banned, though the practice continues. The Engineering and Agriculture faculties in particular are well known for their brutal hazing rituals. "It's no surprise, given that the first ever SOTUS event was at Kasetsart University, an agriculture based university, in the early sixties," said Associate Dean for Student Development Affairs for the Faculty of Business Administration at Chiang Mai University, Dr. Kemakorn Chaiprasit, who is an anti-SOTUS activist. "It was imported from the Philippines by some exchange students as a means to control first year students and prevent fights with local technical college." At the time the popular military schools of Thailand supported the idea, and within a few years SOTUS spread across every university and vocational college in the country, finally becoming institutionalised as one of the unique aspects of Thai university life, believed to be character building and ensuring the continuation of a traditional hierarchal society. Respect your seniors, follow orders, don't question...It calmed the masses.

Over the last decade, the previously secretive SOTUS has been dragged squarely into the public domain. And most voices are crying foul.

"The world has changed," said Dr. Kemakorn Chaiprasit. "In actual fact the Ministry of Education has already distanced itself from the tradition and is making efforts to end it, but unfortunately a SOTUS-free country is a long way off."

This year Chiang Mai University came under fire when first year girls were beaten by their seniors during a trip to a dam in Nan Province, all in the name seniority and order. Just last month, a first year student from a Bangkok university almost drowned as he was forced to swim across a university campus pond. He was unconscious for three days while his family waited anxiously by his side. When he woke up he told them he was only doing what his seniors told him to do because that is what you have to do as a freshman.

Other cases reported over the last few years include dripping candle wax onto bare skin, forcing both male and female students to partake in sexually provocative actions against their will and being made to lie in the sun for hours on end with no water or sun protection.

A quick search revealed that over the last few years, five deaths have occurred as a direct result of hazing rituals, though the actual number is probably higher.
S is for Seniority
There have been ever-growing murmurings and rumblings throughout Thailand about SOTUS change. The media has led the charge, publishing one damning story after another. Today's students have come a long way from those of the sixties and they are complaining at the abuse. That, coupled with progressive seniors, parents and teachers who are beginning to speak out, SOTUS is losing its grasp on the new generation.

Universities are beginning to take a stand and saying, "No more SOTUS" though many students say that while the name may have changed to 'new student ceremony', in many cases, the traditions are the same.

"Seniority is a part of Thailand and always will be," said Chirawath Phatsara, now a senior professor in the Agriculture Faculty of Chiang Mai University but once a SOTUS cheerleader with seven years' experience under his belt. "The world is changing and SOUTS is being criticised on all sides. People share videos on social media but forget about why we may be doing this to the students - it usually has a great lesson behind it."

Chirawath is a big supporter of SOTUS, believing that the hazing rituals build life experience. "I think back to my time as a freshie every time I reach a hurdle in my life, and realise that if I could endure that, I can endure anything and I fight on."

When asked about the changing opinion towards SOTUS by professors and students alike, he was surprised, but quickly accepted that hazing has to probably change to accommodate the newer generation of students, but disagreed with the growing campaigns to stop it entirely.
O is for Order
"We don't force the freshies to do anything they don't want to," said 22-year-old Kit Channarong, current fourth year Mechanical Engineering Student at CMU and the man in charge of all the SOTUS rituals in his faculty for the last two years. Chirawath agrees that students who don't participate in SOTUS can often be ostracised, but says that there are new systems in place to accommodate those who don't want to get involved with SOTUS activities.

"First year students will very rarely fight back," said Dr. Kemakorn on peer pressure. "Sure they may not 'force you' but you are told to follow orders. If you don't you will become the black sheep of the flock and have no friends."
Imagine a fresh young student filled with bright ideas, confidence and courage, suddenly subjected to such repression and pressure to conform in the first few months at university. Those great ideas soon escape them and they turn into another unquestioning drone.

"If you want new thoughts from the new generation, you can't be forcing them to conform," added Kornchit Phichai, the Student Affairs Officer in the Faculty of Business Administration who is working together with Dr. Kemakorn in this campaign to stop SOTUS.

Ironically, it is thanks to the tradition of seniority and hierarchy that Dr. Kemakorn has been able to pull the plug on SOTUS in her faculty once and for all. "As the associate dean of the faculty, I can pull rank and the senior students have to obey me too," she said as she went on to explain that she has cut the entire budget for SOTUS this year.

The university may say that they are anti-SOTUS, but this is the first faculty to actually stop the tradition in its tracks, rather than just change its name.

The Faculty of Business Administration has an annual budget of 150,000 baht for hazing alone, with money going towards materials and sustenance at waak events. Nightly waak events throughout the first term of university are the norm. These 'cheering' sessions where students are taught songs and accompanying claps and movements, are interspersed by seniors who will interrupt and waak (onomatopoeia for scream and shout) at those not in formation or failing to follow. These hours' long sessions can last for up to six hours, with seniors screaming at petrified freshies. This year, for the first time, the money has been put aside to fund what they are now describing as 'professional social activities' for first year students. This time it is not just a name change.

Quite simply, hazing rituals are strictly prohibited and seniors now have to come up with or get involved in socially conscious activities and projects, working together with the first years rather than assuming authority.

"This year we had to guide all the seniors as it is totally new territory for them," explained Kornchit. "Strangely enough, despite having gone through SOTUS themselves, the seniors were still keen to 'get their own back' by taking it out on the new students. We had to work really hard to convince them otherwise."

"We are a socially conscious faculty, and as a result our main project this year will be the cleaning of the Mae Kha Canal," Kornchit explained of the faculty's intention to turn the students' initiations into something constructive. This year they will clean a stretch of the filthy canal by clearing it banks, dredging rubbish, laying grass and creating a better environment for the many communities who rely on it. "Given the recent passing of His Majesty the King, we have decided to plant just white flowers this year in tribute to him," Kornchit added.

In addition to the canal clean-up project, the faculty is also using its budget to offer tiny loans to students to open small businesses - baking cookies, selling munchies and encouraging them to find innovative ways to advertise. Any profits made must be returned to the faculty and will be saved for the next year's activities. "Who knows, maybe one day our freshie activities could fund themselves - if that happens I bet the university management will be keen to force all other faculties to follow suit!"

Cutting back to the students and the benefit of working together, seniors and freshies, Kornchit added, "respect must be earned, and once you are respected then your orders will be followed. If you force the freshies to do things that are inappropriate, why should they respect you?" Dr. Kemakorn butts in by saying "...because its tradition."
T is for Tradition
"SOTUS is a great Thai tradition, we sing our faculty anthem together, we instil a sense of spirit and confidence into the first year students and we teach them how to suffer so that in the future they can cope with the real world," expressed Chirawath with a beaming smile, pausing a moment to reminisce of his time as a first year student. "Okay I can admit, SOTUS is not the best in its current form, but it's not the worst either." As a SOTUS leader turned professor, he is using his adult life experience along with his support of the system to try and reshape the SOTUS landscape to deal with what he describes as the 'hypersensitivity' of the younger generation.

"I have made sure that now, if any student is not happy with what is going on or becomes injured or sick because of SOTUS, their peers must look after them and make sure they are safe and happy. If someone is injured they are taken straight to the hospital, and if someone doesn't want to get involved then their peers work as therapists and help resolve the bad feelings."

"I grew up with SOTUS," said Dr. Kemakorn as she rolled her eyes at the idea that emotionally or physically affected students can have their problems fixed by the very same peers who caused the damage in the first place. "One of my best friends had a heart attack as a result of a hazing ritual, it was too late to help them." Kornchit added that one of his friends also died after he was forced to drink so much alcohol he went into shock.
U is for Unity
"Even though we are only a few month into this first new school year with no (official) SOTUS, a few other faculties at the university are expressing interest in following suit," Dr. Kemakorn happily. "I genuinely think it is only a matter of time before universities across Thailand will start doing similar things, but for now I think we are the first to dare make such a step."

"Personal development and encouragement to think big has been lost over the decades," she added. "At the very least I want to stop hazing and encourage seniors and freshies to work together, and treat each other as equals."

Assistant Professor Wasan Jompakdee of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and another anti-SOTUS activist poopoos the idea that SOTUS imbues unity amongst students.

"Crises have happened. There have been arguments and fights not just between years of students, but those from different faculties. Students are trained through hazing to put their class and faculty above all else. This separates; not joins. It promotes importance of faculty above all else."
S is for Spirit
"I have been a lecturer at the university for 40 years," continued Asst. Prof. Wasan. "If you have a soul of a teacher then your purpose in life is to give good advice to your students. I have experienced SOTUS from day one and even then, I worried that we were simply repeating our mistakes. You need to constantly analyse what you are doing as a teacher and re-evaluate yourself. I did that with SOTUS and came to the realisation many years ago that there is no logic, no thought, no understanding, no depth, no clarity. SOTUS is simply doing what has always been done without reason or conscious thought. It is also a system based on emotion rather than reason. I believe that we must try to work to find understanding amongst all involved, from the dean of each faculty to students, parents and even alumni."

It must not be forgotten that in Thailand adulthood officially begins at 20, so first year students at the tender age of 18 are often treated like children, taught to obey follow. SOTUS is the perfect mould for a society that doesn't question the rules. Of course it takes more than just SOTUS to stop critical thought, but SOTUS comes at a crucial time of life; just at the point when you dare to ask questions, just at the point you have a chance to have a voice in what should be a secure environment for expression. Individuality is ruthlessly suppressed in the name of unity.

"The process of change is not easy, and the blood of SOTUS runs through almost every teacher, senior and professor. It's just whether they choose to follow the masses or instigate change," Dr. Kemakorn concluded, quietly confident the paradigm has been shifted.

Perhaps a happy medium can be found. Keep the name but change the traditions - as opposed to changing the name but keeping the traditions. Asst. Prof. Wasan's suggests a simple modern interpretation that is upheld across the board and which could be it all it takes to redefine SOTUS and put an end to senseless hazing.

Seniority: In the Thai and Asian sense of respecting one another, especially those older and with more experience.

Order: To have discipline within one's own life, sage advice handed down by the Buddha.

Tradition: The respect of culture and tradition. But only those proven to be imbued with value and goodness, passed down through generations.

Unity: The ability to work alongside peers as well as with strangers, an important life skill.

Spirit: The development of one's own spirit can only lead to compassion, service and the spirit of communal good.

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A Brave New SOTUS: Seniority: Order: Tradition: Unity: Spirit.

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Hazing in Thailand is institutional. Most university students will face hazing of some sort or another, from the benign to the deadly. It is a time honoured tradition for freshies at university to undergo weeks, even months, of intense hazing from their seniors.

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Title: ‘RAP AGAINST DICTATORSHIP’ DROPS NEW SONG AGAINST STUDENT HAZIN
Sources: khaosodenglish
Credibility Evaluation: Group 1(Scholars Books and Articles)
Source Bias:  medium bias
Factual Reporting:  contains personal opinion (neutral)

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BANGKOK - The country's foremost creative dissent group released a new song on Friday - this time criticizing the rampant culture of hazing in the Thai education.

The Rap Against Dictatorship group released "Sotus" on Friday, a song lambasting the system of hazing commonly found in Thai universities and schools, which occasionally resulted in injuries and even deaths of students.

"Don't force me to do things. You're not my dad," the song goes. "I don't want Sotus, so what? You're only a few years older but you come here and tyrannize me in such a low class way."

Known as SOTUS - or Seniority, Order, Tradition, Unity, and Spirit - the creed often involves mentally, physically, and sexually abusive practices against freshmen students. Two teenagers died in July 2019 after being beaten to death during Sotus hazing.

Sotus has its roots in military initiation practices but has spread to universities and high schools nationwide. Some examples of Sotus activities include rolling around in to install a wooden pillar, Buddhist camps where students watch videos of gore, and stripping to one's undies and having classmates lick ketchup off one's .

"Sotus" is the latest work by the same the group behind "My Country's Got," a viral rap video against the various injustices in Thai society - including the then-military dictatorship and the tendency of the rich to walk away scot-free from crimes.

The song, a rare voice of dissent in Thai pop culture, was awarded the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent in May. The video currently has 77.5 million views, and counting.
Related stories: With 'My Country's Got,' Thai Rap Voices Rare Dissent Against Junta 16-Year-Old Beaten to Death in SOTUS Hazing: Activists Worlds Collide When Intl School Students Hazed at Thai Unis Meet the Unlikely Band Taking on University Tradition

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'Rap Against Dictatorship' Drops New Song Against Student Hazing

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BANGKOK - The country's foremost creative dissent group released a new song on Friday - this time criticizing the rampant culture of hazing in the Thai education. The Rap Against Dictatorship group released "Sotus" on Friday, a song lambasting the system of hazing commonly found in Thai universities and schools, which occasionally resulted in injuries and even deaths of students.

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Title: Civil Discourse and Civil Society: The dysfunctional culture of Thai academia
Sources: Kyoto Review
Source Bias:variable due to both references to actual events and personal interpretation of the motives of the participants
Comment: Reported events are factual but excessive use of emotional terms

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It is a strange irony that in Thailand a small group of people can take over the country at gun point, yet no one can turn round and tell them to f*ck off without somehow occupying the moral low ground.

Many times, after making 'strong' statements about the junta, or about social and political issues in general, I have been told by Thai colleagues, typically academics, that it is inappropriate for me, as an `educator', to use harsh language to express my opinions. Doesn't it set a bad example to my students? Shouldn't I, as an educator, `educate' people instead of always criticizing?

As an academic, speaking to other academics, I considered this a curious response - at first. In a single instance, encountering such knee jerk conservatism, not to mention fundamental lack of understanding of an academic's raison d'etre, could be easily dismissed. Only gradually, but with an increasing sense of disbelief and horror, did I begin to realize that such attitudes, far from being rare in a Thai university environment, are almost uniformly held by those responsible for `educating' the nation's youth.

But, before going any further, let me introduce myself. I am a physical scientist, working as a lecturer and researcher at a Thai university. I am not a political scientist, a specialist in educational theory, in Southeast Asian studies, Thai studies, or any other branch of the social sciences. In my daily working life I am concerned more with waves and particles, fields and forces, and the paradoxes of simultaneously dead-and-alive cats which plague modern quantum theory, than with the complex and infuriatingly nuanced interactions of human society. Yet I am a part of that society. I was born with both a heart and a brain. Through a combination of innate capacity and training I acquired the ability, and hence the responsibility, to think critically and to judge. Such, in my world, are the aims of education. I moved to Thailand about 18 months ago, and my world changed drastically.

Through my work, I was shocked to encounter foreign academics, familiar with the Thai university system, that all but refused to refer to Thai academics as qualified, preferring instead the term `credentialed'. In short, I was shocked to find that the possession of bachelor's, master's or even Ph.D. certificates from Thai institutions are not seen as guarantees of basic competence at an international level, comparable with their nominal equivalents elsewhere in the world (including other developing countries). This is true to a lesser degree in the physical vis-à-vis the social sciences but is still a widespread problem.

These impressions are born out by the Times Higher Education (THE) World Reputation Rankings Report for 2015, in which no Thai institution made the top 100 list (the rankings are based on a survey of 10,500 academics in 142 countries, conducted in 15 languages). Though I agree with UNESCO that emphasis on rankings alone is misleading and harmful, especially for developing countries, after 18 months, I am in no doubt that it is time to "get real about bad education" in Thailand.

The reasons for institutional failure are many and complex. While poor quality education isn't exactly breaking news, most media attention has focused on deficiencies at primary and secondary school levels. This undoubtedly produces a drag effect on achievement in higher education, but it is not these failures I wish to discuss. Rather, I would like to draw attention to the cases in which Thai education may be said to have "succeeded", at least by those who claim to be educated themselves.

I believe it is the culture of Thai academia that is most harmful to the country's higher education system. This view is necessarily based on personal, and therefore limited experience, but I do not think my experiences are unique. It also presupposes a certain loose definition of what `higher' education entails; its ideals, its value to individuals and its place in society.

Many grand philosophical works have been written on this subject, but allow me to summarize my position: The ultimate aim of education is the development of the individual's ability to think critically and independently. It is not synonymous with the acquisition of knowledge, but implies it, since otherwise the judgments of the `educated' remain baseless.

Education encourages respect for evidence and rational argument, as opposed to unthinking acceptance, blind devotion or susceptibility to herd pressure. It does not encourage a disinterested detachment from the world of human affairs, and places no a priori restrictions on what can and cannot be said. If forced to choose, personified Education values rational enquiry and intellectual and moral integrity over politeness. She exerts the right to offend in the name of progress.

Alas, this lofty vision seems not to be shared by Thai education officials. Bizarrely, Thai Ministry of Education (MoE) strategic plans are fond of espousing lofty `moral' principles, which are never clearly defined, while being simultaneously infused with narrow nationalist rhetoric. Their aims (apparently) include: "a five year strategic plan, based on a collective vision of Thai society as a "Green and Happy Society," where Thai people are endowed with morality-based knowledge and resilience against the adverse impacts of globalization" and "[promoting] studies in Thai language and history to instill a sense of Thainess". One wonders why, if `moral' principles are so clearly understood as to require no explanation, they need be so aggressively pursued as an `educational' goal in the national curriculum. Most tellingly in these documents, the word "history" seldom (if ever) appears, except in the context of "Thai history", a concept Streckfuss has linked to that of "Thai truth".

Of all the strategic plans and mission statements released by Thai education authorities (at least those that I have found ), not one lists the development of critical or independent thinking as goal of education. As a counterpoint, this may be compared with remarks of education officials elsewhere in the world, such as the U.K.'s education minster Michael Gove. Nevertheless, a shallow and unhelpful bureaucratic `vision' doesn't necessarily imply an unhealthy academic culture, if tensions between the two exist. Despite isolated exceptions, I see little evidence of a culture clash between Thai officialdom and the `educators' charged with implementing their policies on the ground.

That said, in what follows, I do not wish to imply that there are no gifted academics, inspiring teachers, or inspired students in Thai universities. Such a characterization would be as unfair as it is inaccurate. It is the system as a whole that concerns me and my view is based on the resistance I encountered to my own attempts to behave, in Thailand, as an `educated' person is expected to behave in a `democratic' country.

Though I don't usually approve of claims for Thai exceptionalism, I am not new to Asia, nor to living working and teaching outside my native country, the U.K., and only here have I found regressive and damaging views of education to be common among the `educated'. Only in Thailand have I repeatedly been told by peers that, rather than commenting critically on social and political issues - most notably the military, the coup, the monarchy, economic policies and electoral democracy (or lack thereof) - I ought instead to `educate' people.

I am not speaking of comments uttered in my capacity as a teacher. I teach under the watchful eye of the King, whose portrait has been gazing down on me from the wall of my classroom since shortly after the coup d'etat of May last year, when someone saw fit to demonstrate their loyalty by placing it there. As far as I am concerned, the classroom is not the place for either my personal political opinions, or for visible demonstrations of theirs, although the university administrators concur only with regard to the former.

In Thailand, it is the expression of critical opinions in public (or with a de facto audience via social media), which is considered somehow inappropriate - and morally suspect - for someone in my `position'. I accept that there should be limits on my personal freedom of expression in the classroom. But, if even academics cannot comment freely as individuals without bringing their `profession' into disrepute, what hope is there for free discussion in the classroom?

The basic implication (and unstated assumption) behind this criticism of criticism is that any comment deemed offensive to someone else cannot possibly be `educational'. It therefore cannot be valid, coming as it does from a supposed `educator', regardless of its contents. In reality, this means offensive to someone with power and status, or to some abstract concept like `Thailand', `the Thai people' or `Thai-ness'.

True to the stereotype of foreign expats I encountered in Europe, my experience suggests that at least male farang can say what they like about bar girls, lady-boys and farmers (or anyone with dark skin) and the much vaunted Thai `tolerance' will protect them from any serious repercussions. On the other hand, stating that many Thai women are driven to work as prostitutes by systemic economic inequality, or that many who do are the daughters of impoverished farmers, is considered an inappropriate statement for an educated person to make. Personal abuse of "what is low" is fine, criticism of "what is high" - presumably the entire `Thai nation' (i.e. Thailand, minus prostitutes and ethnic minorities) - is not : tolerance and education do not extend into the inappropriate realm of facts.

If, instead, we `good' (read `educated') farang stand with due deference when the national anthem is played in cinemas and show appropriate respect for the monarchy at 8pm every evening, we will be met with shrill cries of "Thank you! You understand Thai culture! You are not like these stupid farang! (who are always criticizing)" - at least by nauseatingly vacuous, supposedly `educated', self-appointed guardians of said `culture'. Conversely, expressing distaste for such enforced rituals is a sign of poor education and cultural insensitivity, regardless of how exploitative, or constructive, our other contributions to Thai society may be. "Guardians of Thai-ness" aren't difficult to find, since they will generally seek out foreigners to `educate' and, initially, they seem like the friendliest bunch of narrow-minded people you're ever likely to meet. They not infrequently reside within the upper echelons of the Thai university system.

On closer inspection, many not-so-secretly harbor quasi-fascist sympathies, strong opposition to representative government, and an abject contempt for `uneducated' poor people who (in their imaginations), live mainly in the countryside. More disturbingly, it would be naïve to assume that their presence does not help reinforce social divisions within the student body, or that new undergraduates from the lower rungs of the social scale are not reminded of their place via the ubiquitous SOTUS system, endorsed by university authorities.

What is perplexing from an academic perspective is not that such people exist, but their self-identification as an `educated' elite, in contradistinction to the `uneducated', whose views cannot be trusted on weighty issues due to their low level of intelligence and lack of understanding of important topics. What is amazing is that the Thai `elite' are the least elite `elite' imaginable. They must also be the only group of people of average intelligence and familiarity with Thailand who don't realize this basic fact.

The uneducated, sadly, do realize. They have " ta sawang" - opened their eyes. The universities, the seats of `learning', have yet to grasp the idea that fostering such mental and personal development is the very essence of their purpose. `Education' remains, in most cases, simply a tool for social advancement. The holder of a master's degree is superior to a bachelor's degree holder (and expects due deference). A Ph.D. graduate is concomitantly superior to both. At no point does anyone ask if he or she might as well have wiped his or her arse on his or her degree certificate instead of framing it and hanging it on the wall of mummy and daddy's shop, car dealership or government office - below the Buddha and the King, obviously. And this is the kind of criticism that lands me in hot water with my colleagues.

Yet it is not the student's fault: it is their teacher's. If they did not arrive at university believing that their magical absorption of "high-ness", by sitting in a classroom for four years and not doing anything, is all that is required to demand appropriate subservience from those who are "low", they sure as hell are likely to leave believing it - assuming that they perform all the right rituals and don't harbor any dirty subversive thoughts revealing their inner wickedness and stupidity.

So, having revealed my total lack of morality, and hence my unfitness to `educate' the youth of Thailand, let me speak plainly and try to summarize some of the major problems, as I see them, with the current Thai `education' system.

In Thailand, one cannot criticize strongly without revealing one's lack of moral authority to make a criticism. Bad words equal bad intentions, and bad intentions imply false statements. How can a bad person say something that is true? An `educator' would not say such things, since an educator must be `good', right?

As content is immaterial, any attempt to encourage open or rigorous discussion about anything of worth is usually over before it begins. What takes its place is pure theatre - the pretense of debate. What matters in the end are rank and the identity of the speaker, not the contents of the speech. With some valiant exceptions, what is generally true in wider society is especially true within Thai `academic' culture which, rather than being part of the solution, is in fact part of the problem. It comes as little surprise then, that few university departments in Thailand make any effort to engage in research internationally, submit work to international journals, or to otherwise expose the views of their `learned' Professors to outside scrutiny. Alas, ignorant farang don't realize how exalted and rarefied are the opinions of their Thai counterparts, and insist on arguing with them - even in front of their inferiors!

Streckfuss has linked this attitude to surviving "premodern" elements in Thai laws and institutions, most notably the influence of Theravada Buddhism :

Thus, although the outlook of the Thai elite retained many premodern elements, it was by the early twentieth century expressed in modern legal forms.
[In the Thai Theravada tradition] Ill intention may also be evident by the form of something said (e.g. coarse words automatically indicate bad intentions)
Criticism of the regime: allowed ideally, but in practice impossible, and merely a sign of [the] moral turpitude of [the] critic.

It is striking how what he describes as "defamation thinking" resonates with my own personal experience of the everyday life of an `academic' in 21 st century #AmazingThailand.

I have been told, by university professors, as starkly and as nakedly as this: "It doesn't matter how clever, or how funny what you say is, if it makes Thailand look bad, you shouldn't say it!" In other words, under no circumstances should an educated person belittle their (falsely) exalted status by bringing any degree of wit or intelligence to bear on questions of crucial importance. If it contradicts a set of predetermined assumptions, it is automatically both factually and morally wrong, though the question of a statement's veracity is actually never raised.

Such a warped perspective of `morality' necessarily places extremely stringent constraints upon what, elsewhere in the world, would be called the robustness of political (or indeed any form of intellectual) debate. It allows the holders of power to control not only events on the ground, but also the discourse concerning the validity (or morality) of their actions. It must be resisted at all costs, and the moral right to question and criticize, irrespective of `politeness', must be reasserted, especially by academics.

Thai academia promotes an `ideal' of education based on faux morality and a self-sustaining, essentially anti- intellectual culture. As a popular social media post, that received many `likes' among my Thai university colleagues says, "Many people are educated, but not totally mannered mannered". Well, here's my view: "Many people are `mannered', but by no means educated." As long as `polite' ignorance is preferred to passionate skepticism, genuine enquiry will be shouted down by false virtue, and demons will be allowed to lurk in the shadows, where best they thrive. Students, learning by example, whatever their innate capacities or potential, will become dull and (eventually) as ossified and pointless as their teachers - who taught them dullness in the first place.

In order to genuinely benefit their students, their country and themselves, Thai academics must recognize the difference between civil discourse and civil society, of which a healthy academic environment is an indispensable part. They must fulfill their responsibility to question the society they live in, instead of being content to feather their own social nests with the fruits of indefensible hierarchy. They must learn to give and to take criticism, to win their debates by force of argument, rather than using status and fake `morality' to silence awkward questions.

If they cannot, Thai `education' will remain an empty badge of undeserved privilege, rather than a guarantee of skill; let alone a force for social mobility or human progress. If they cannot, what will they `teach' their students, and with what authority can they call themselves educators at all?

A. Scientist
The author of this pieces writes under a pseudonym and currently works at a Thai university in a teaching capacity.

Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia (Issue 17), Young Academic's Voice, July 2015

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Civil Discourse and Civil Society: The dysfunctional culture of Thai academia

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It is a strange irony that in Thailand a small group of people can take over the country at gun point, yet no one can turn round and tell them to f*ck off without somehow occupying the moral low gr...

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Title: Thailand’s SOTUS problem
Sources: MyThai
Source Bias:variable due to both references to actual events and personal interpretation of the motives of the participants
Comment: Reported events are factual but excessive use of emotional terms and opinions

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Seniority Order Tradition Unity Spirit - that's what SOTUS stands for. Sounds good, kind of, at least in the beginning but when looking deeper into what that actually means for students joining Universities here in Thailand it becomes clear that SOTUS is all but a good and timely thing to have.

What is SOTUS exactly?

Each year when freshmen join University the SOTUS committee consisting of senior students will create hazing rituals for the newbies. They call it "SOTUS" because that sounds better than calling it what it is, being sadistic assholes for the sake of torturing others and satisfying oneself while being high on power. Obviously there are SOTUS events or rituals that don't take things too far and are just there because (made up) 'tradition' calls for it and students actually just do some fun activities together but lots of SOTUS events, in fact, end up being sadistic and humiliating(see one of the latest examples of July 2018).

What happens at SOTUS?

Each year we see reports popping up showing how senior students humiliate freshmen. A few of those reports included:

Students were forced to perform oral sex

Students were blindfolded and forced to masturbate each other

Students were forced to swim through muddy lakes (one student died)

Students were tied up and had to crawl through mud

All kinds of 'army like' activities

Students were beaten until they collapse (or worse)

Students being forced to be (half) naked doing all those things

.....

If this sounds terrible and inhumane to you, then you're a 'normal' human being, congratulations. The reason to why students have to undergo such hazing rituals is something I will never understand. The argument of 'it's to form uniformity and instill obedience to seniors' is something that is being thrown around quite a lot but as someone who did serve in the military I can say that even there there's a reason as to why you have to follow orders and not just 'because I say so' plus University IS NOT the military and, believe it or not, that's a good thing. University is there to make you think, to question the status quo, to make students 'smarter' not turn them into robots who just follow orders.Â

Why isn't SOTUS changing?

Before you think that's only a weird foreigner point of view, there's even a ThaiÂ Anti SOTUS Facebook page that gained quite some traction over the years. This shows that this problem is certainly well known and many people are speaking out against it. The question is just whether or not those protests will actually help to change the system as the change has to come from within but as long as SOTUS activities are a) allowed by Universities and b) held by power hungry seniors who want to do what has been done to them this might be a long way down the road.

SOTUS has been heavily discussed for a long time already as you can see from the short film below. However so far not much seems to have changed because, well, 'tradition!'. The film below highlights the argumentation rather well when one of the antagonist says 'If it would be wrong, it wouldn't have survived until today, would it?'

(cover picture via Anti SOTUS)
What are your thoughts on SOTUS activities? Are you on board with hazing as it's 'part of Uni life' or do you support the #endSOTUS movement?

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Seniority Order Tradition Unity Spirit - that's what SOTUS stands for. Sounds good, kind of, at least in the beginning but when looking deeper into what that actually means for students joining Universities here in Thailand it becomes clear that SOTUS is all but a...

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Title: Fight for human rights focuses on Thai university tradition
Sources: TITIPOL
Source Bias:has personal interpretation of the motives of the participants
Comment: Reported events are factual ,has little opinion

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As a new academic year begins for university students across Thailand, the ongoing problem of human rights violations on campus is once more being raised. For first-year students, this rite-of-passage should of course be their opportunity to feel welcomed and fully respected as adults within an institution of learning.

But it is a sad fact today that thousands of students are at this moment only too well aware of the very real possibility of being caught up in this year's euphemistically entitled university tradition of rub-nong ("welcoming the newcomer"). Those who continue to defend its practices - which borrow from the historical British public school system, the more contemporary US university fraternity system, and Thailand's military service - may see it as little more than high jinks, or as an opportunity for peer bonding.

However, with the passing of every academic year, the evidence for more extreme abuse mounts - and not only through photos and video but also through the claims of those who are increasingly inclined to speak out. It follows that what we are witnessing on Thai university campuses today could often be more accurately described as ritualised abuse, and violations of human rights.

These concerns are evidently well founded, as every year we observe serious physical injuries as a consequence of these university rituals. Regardless of the facade behind which they operate, or the pretext under which they are tacitly permitted, the suffering remains very real for the victims in this scenario. Allegations of abuse tend to indicate that it is psychological manifestations of abuse that are the most endemic. These typically involve menacing threats, intimidation and a lot of shouting.

Although many have accordingly argued that these practices should have been stamped out years ago, it is essentially the case that little has fundamentally changed, despite some recent attempts to tinker around the edges of this entrenched problem. Today, its advocates typically attempt justifications by arguing that rub-nong, through incorporating the so-called SOTUS (Seniority, Order, Tradition, Unity, Spirit) system, promotes a respect for seniority, discipline and unity.

So what then, do recent graduates of the Thai university educational system make of all this?

Krisanapong Jobsanjohn, an alumni of Ubon Ratchathani University, argues: "In Thailand, we are taught to believe in seniority, and so the SOTUS system fits with the Thai culture."

More critical is Kobchat Vichieansri, a graduate of Chulalongkorn University: "The SOTUS system is not at all relevant to university education. Also, it supports the existing patronage system within Thai society. This is why I think it should stop."

Just recently, as reported across a number of media outlets (and especially through online social media that students typically follow), a serious complaint was submitted to the Office of the Higher Education Commission. Furthermore, the complainants are seemingly prepared to take their case to the United Nations representatives in Thailand if necessary.

Should this development mark the beginning of a trend whereby individual students take on the responsibility of asserting both their basic human rights and constitutional rights, then this may be a form of progress. Nevertheless, the culture of hazing raises further questions as to whether institutions and the state truly recognise their responsibilities to act against this serious abuse.

There is now the very real potential for a spike in the number of incidents, as those students who increasingly resent the SOTUS system attempt to exercise their freedoms in the face of those who are determined to exert their status and role as rub-nong ringleaders and retain their stranglehold on campus.

For its part, the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand (NHRC) has begun making tentative steps towards a fuller recognition that a problem exists. It has published on its website a news report about allegations of abuse taking place within the higher educational system, and has begun working with four universities in the north of Thailand on the broader question of human rights. Thus we now have an important opportunity to observe whether the NHRC is prepared to take serious action on this matter. In previous years, it has typically remained rather quiet.

When attempting to demonstrate they recognise the problem, the Ministry of Education and university executives have tended towards standardised, token statements over the past few years. These announcements have informed existing students that they have no right to force new students into the SOTUS system, and that within the SOTUS system, violence is not acceptable. Nevertheless, this limited approach to the problem has now proven ineffectual. Without further steps, this approach will increasingly appear to be serving the purpose of providing legal cover for those in positions of power, rather than being a genuine attempt to resolve this issue.

In order to air their concerns, a group of university students in 2012 formed the Anti-SOTUS Group, which now has 10,000 Facebook members. But this is probably just the tip of the iceberg - there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that students are reluctant to speak out about institutionalised bullying.

The quality of higher education within Thailand can only suffer when an issue such as this remains as an unnecessary distraction and preoccupation for thousands of its students. Considering the relative status of Thailand's higher education system on the world stage, the quality of its university education cannot at all be taken for granted.

The Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings 2013, released in April, saw Thailand claim only three places within the top 100. The latest equivalent figure for the world rankings was published for the year 2012-2013, and no Thai university was placed within the top 350 (King Mongkut's University of Technology, Thonburi was ranked within the top 400).

It follows therefore, that it would be a dereliction of duty on the part of any Thai government to remain in denial when it comes to recognising how the SOTUS system contributes towards undermining both educational attainment and human rights within the country. But the question remains as to whether Thailand's politicians and policymakers have either the will or motive to enact effective reforms for the sake of this latest generation.

Titipol Phakdeewanich is a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick, in the United Kingdom. He is based at Ubon Ratchathani University.

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Fight for human rights focuses on Thai university tradition

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But it is a sad fact today that thousands of students are at this moment only too well aware of the very real possibility of being caught up in this year's euphemistically entitled university tradition of rub-nong ("welcoming the newcomer").

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Title:  MILITARY BOOTCAMP
Thailand’s humiliating hazing rituals
Sources: southeastasiaglobe
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias: moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: high

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College freshman Pokai Saengrojrat went to tranquil Sai Noi beach, 200km south of Bangkok, for a night of revelry with 40 fellow students from Pathum Thani Technical College. It was the evening of August 29, 2014, and the 16-year-old was only just beginning to recover after a leukaemia diagnosis a few years earlier. But ready to enjoy his first year at college, he and his peers were preparing to undergo a series of initiation rituals - known locally as rab nong - that have become ingrained in Thailand's educational institutions.

Irony: students who carried out a hazing ritual were sent to a military bootcamp as punishment. Photo: Sakchai Lalit/AP

The following morning, Saengrojrat's parents arrived at a nearby hospital to identify their son's body. A group of students had arrived with his corpse in the early hours, told the doctors he had drowned and then quickly fled. It soon emerged, as reported by the Bangkok Post, that as part of the hazing ceremony Saengrojrat and his first-year peers were made to drink copious amounts of alcohol by senior students, who then pressed his face down in the sand as the tide washed over it.

Initiation ceremonies have been taking place in Thailand's universities and technical colleges for decades. Organised by more senior students, often with the tacit approval of college authorities, they are intended to integrate first-year pupils and to foster the ethos of what is known as Sotus: Seniority, Order, Tradition, Unity, and Spirit.

The rites differ from college to college, and often see freshmen being made to sing songs, take part in embarrassing dances or conform to peculiar rules, such as only dressing in black or not being able to leave campus without the permission of senior students. It is believed that such initiation rites were adopted after World War Two, when Thai students filtered through US military cadet schools and brought the practice back home. Nowadays, many undergraduates see such ceremonies as harmless fun - endured and then forgotten.

But in recent years, a darker side of the tradition has emerged at some of the country's higher education institutions that can best be described as hazing - the physical or mental abuse of a newcomer to a group.

In 2012, four senior students from Bangkok's Thaivichitsilp Art School were convicted over a hazing incident in which three freshmen suffered burns after being made to roll on fire embers. In September, more than 50 students from a Bangkok university were ordered to undergo a three-day military bootcamp as punishment for their involvement in a hazing incident. And then, last month, Thailand's education ministry launched an investigation into what it called "indecent hazing activities" at the country's colleges. This came after a one-minute video clip went viral on social media showing first-year students engaged in a 'mouth-to-mouth' feeding ceremony. Photos of a student's buttocks being engulfed in a ball of fire were also circulated online in recent months.

Although most technical colleges and universities have banned hazing, and the country's education ministry outlawed drinking and smoking at freshmen initiations, the practice remains widespread. Often it takes place off campus, and has become more dangerous, according to members of Anti-Sotus, a group of activists opposed to the hazing culture.

Keerati Panmanee, 25, a graduate of Bangkok's Kasetsart University, became a member of the student activities board in his first year of study. The committees are often the ones that decide on the initiation rituals.

By his second year at university, Panmanee began to question the purpose of initiating freshmen. He hated seeing senior students shouting at and berating the younger students, both of which are common forms of punishment and humiliation. And there were certain incidents that concerned him, such as when a third-year student took a particular dislike to a female freshman.

She had her hair dyed, and one senior considered her as a whore and gave her a feeling that other people didn't like her too.
Keerati Panmanee

By his third year, he had left the activities board and joined Anti-Sotus, founded via Facebook in 2010 by a student of Chiang Mai's Maejo University, which has become notorious for hazing.

Kollawach Doklumjiak, 22, had a harrowing experience at his Bangkok vocational college. Violence is generally worse at vocational colleges than at universities, with Bangkok's said to be the worst. He describes students being severely beaten, forced to eat lit cigarettes and having firecrackers inserted into their rectums during initiation ceremonies. He says one of his friends even had his penis burnt with a candle and, now, cannot have sex.

"Vocational schools are like gangs," Doklumjiak says, adding that there is intense rivalry between the different colleges that often descends into all-out turf war on the city's streets. In 2012, there were 1,222 cases of student violence in Bangkok alone, Manit Wongsomboon, deputy commissioner of the city police, told Al Jazeera. Included in this number were 20 deaths or serious injuries, and the primary offenders were students of vocational colleges.

Doklumjiak speaks candidly about what he saw. Fellow students carried guns, assaulted other students, and he once saw pupils from his college hijack another college's bus. He admits taking part in the violence, but only in self-defence.

He believes that hazing and initiation rites serve the same purpose, to create 'in-groups' and 'outsiders'; a sense of us versus them.

It's all about power.
Kollawach Doklumjiak

Anthropologists and psychologists have been fascinated by initiation ceremonies - or rites of passage - for centuries because almost every community around the world engages in them. Young male members of the Chambri tribe, in Papua New Guinea, are initiated through scarification; elders cut their backs, chests and buttocks to form elaborate patterns similar to the scales of crocodiles. On occasion, the practice has proved fatal.

Control: hazing is often about cementing power structures

Many initiation rituals, such as pledging oaths of allegiance or the symbolic act of baptism in Christianity, are benign. However, other rites of passage often involve inflicting abuse including physical assault, sleep deprivation and overconsumption of alcohol on the newcomer. In US colleges, hazing has become a national concern, banned in 44 states. Since 1970, there has been at least one hazing-related death per year - 82% caused by alcohol consumption - according to researchers from the University of Maryland.

In a 1959 study, Stanford University psychologist Elliot Aronson posited that hazing causes the victim to suffer cognitive dissonance - the discomfort of holding two contradictory beliefs at one time, allowing them to justify the suffered abuse by increasing their affection for the hazing group. Five decades on, psychologists from Colgate University, also in the US, added that not only does hazing increase affection for 'in-groups', it also forges dependence on senior group members.

As Doklumjiak says, hazing and initiation rites are essentially about power. And this is what gravely concerns Anti-Sotus.

Panmanee says that when the ethos of Sotus was first being formed in Thai universities, it was moderate, led by good people and about participating in fun activities. However, it eventually turned sour. "Hazing is all about a culture of authority," he says. "Some senior students want the respect of junior students, so they force them into a system of control. It is a system of authoritarianism, of obedience."

Chawis Vorasunt, 23, a bespectacled and softly spoken graduate of Burapha University, in Chonburi, says this power structure can be seen across Thai society. He says that Thais are told at school and university, then in wider society, what to be and how to think. "Hazing makes the individual weaker; you cannot be what you want to be. You have to conform," he says.

Yukti Mukdawijitra, an assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at Thammasat University in Bangkok, says it makes people reliant on hierarchy and personal networks, which creates patronage systems later in life. Furthermore, Mukdawijitra argues, hazing in colleges is also a political issue.

The hazing system means people cannot speak freely, they have to listen to the seniority. That means the whole Thai society becomes like a hierarchy and like the military system.
Yukti Mukdawijitra

Vorasunt says that if a college student denounces the Sotus ethos or refuses to participate they are seen as "evil". He likens the fate of those who question authority to "a black sheep in a large pack of wolves".

Early last year, Lalita Hangwong, a professor at Mahasarakham University, spoke out against hazing activities on Facebook and subsequently received death and rape threats online. According to the Bangkok Post, the university administration was unconcerned. "The university's acting rector defended the students' [hazing] and dismissed the issue as a personal one," the newspaper reported.

Patricio Abinales, a professor at the University of Hawaii and expert on hazing in the Philippines, thinks Thais should take note of what is happening in the Philippines, where 24 students are believed to have been killed during hazing ceremonies since the turn of the century.

"From a social standpoint, it creates the impression that violence is a necessary condition when dealing with one's rivals or enemies, and it has made it easier for most Filipinos to accept violence as a 'way of life'," he warns.

Hazing in Thailand's colleges ensures that conformity is king and those who rebel against the norm face ostracism or threats of violence. The question of whether this is a result of a wider culture of obedience and hierarchy or if hazing fuels that culture is something of a chicken-and-egg situation.

As for the future of hazing and initiation in Thai colleges, Anti-Sotus wants to create something new: activities that are not compulsory for every student and that allow pupils to form new groups centred around what they want to do. In essence, as Vorasunt puts it: "I want society to respect the privacy and autonomy of the people."

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Thailand's humiliating hazing rituals - Southeast Asia Globe

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College freshman Pokai Saengrojrat went to tranquil Sai Noi beach, 200km south of Bangkok, for a night of revelry with 40 fellow students from Pathum Thani Technical College. It was the evening of August 29, 2014, and the 16-year-old was only just beginning to recover after a leukaemia diagnosis a few years earlier.

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Title: 15 year old Thai student dies following attack in SOTUS hazing tradition
Source Bias:variable due to both references to actual events and personal interpretation of the motives of the participants
Comment: Reported events are factual but excessive use of emotional terms and opinions

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Khaosod English is reporting that a high-school student, who was in a coma following ritual hazing at a Nakhon Pathom school, has died today.

Pisit Kumniw, a 15 year old student at the Phra Pahtom Wittayalai School, in Nakhon Pathom north-east of Bangkok, allegedly died from injuries sustained from hazing by senior students in a class three years higher than Pisit.

An anti-hazing activist Panuwat Songsawatchai (above) reports that on June 28 Pisit was assaulted in a hazing tradition called 'SOTUS', and was to receive a special bracelet after getting kicked three times.

SOTUS stands for Seniority Order Tradition Unity Spirit. SOTUS hazing often involves mental and physical abuse that occasionally results in critical injuries and fatalities in the past. 'SOTUS: The Series' has also been made into a TV show produced by GMM TV in Bangkok.

One of his three attackers was charged over the incident on July 10. Panuwat speculates that the death may be another case of the well-connected people "getting off the hook".

"Two of the alleged attackers are sons of policemen and have not been charged at all."

"Police only interviewed around 10 witnesses," Panuwat told Khaosod English.

In July 2018, three senior classmen were charged with grievous bodily harm for kicking a Bangkok university freshman until his spleen burst. In 2014 a 16 year old student died from hazing activities that involved being kicked at the beach.

SOURCE: KhaosodEnglish

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15 year old Thai student dies following attack in SOTUS hazing tradition | The Thaiger

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PHOTO: Anti-hazing activist Panuwat Songsawatchai/Facebook Khaosod English is reporting that a high-school student, who was in a coma following ritual hazing at a Nakhon Pathom school, has died today. Pisit Kumniw, a 15 year old student at the Phra Pahtom Wittayalai School, in Nakhon Pathom north-east of Bangkok, allegedly died from injuries sustained from hazing by senior ...

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Title: WORLDS COLLIDE WHEN INTL SCHOOL STUDENTS HAZED AT THAI UNIS
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias:  moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: medium

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Projected at force, a hot tan vomit of soup, cocoa, wasabi and stomach acid shoots out of a student's mouth onto the back of the classmate seated in front of him. Muttering apologies, the freshman is ushered to the outer rings of a spiral of 80 or so peers sitting cross-legged. Vomit slides over everyone as they move along the tarp.

"You're worthless unless you help your friends drink it up!" yelled stern upperclassmen staring down at the initiates in a camp in Saraburi. The sophomores dragged in meter-and-a-half high vats filled with what then-freshman Sansern "Praise" Prapa-apirat called "fake puke."

"Cocoa, rice krispies, tea, kaeng jeud soup, taro fish snacks, wasabi. They boiled random stuff together into 15 vats," Praise recalls with audible stress. "There was just so much. That was the worst part. They didn't tell us how many vats there were. They just kept coming."
Read: Parties Stake Out Positions on 'SOTUS' Hazing
Seven years later, Praise still remembers the camp clearly. He had just graduated at 18 from the international school he had attended 13 years, where approachable foreign teachers taught all classes in English and extracurricular activities such as drama and sports were optional. Not the kind of place where you were screamed at or covered in vomit.

Yet there he was, after enrolling in a Thai university's international program, subjected to the kind of hazing abuses defended under the creed of "Seniority, Order, Tradition, Unity and Spirit," or SOTUS, that marked his re-entry to mainstream Thai education.

For many international school kids - called dek inter - who opt to attend Thai universities, their first brush with Thai education culture is SOTUS hazing. The students wrestle with degrading activities they weren't taught to tolerate in their Western-style upbringing, but the feeling of obligation to assimilate and reconnect with their parent culture adds pressure. In response, rather than blow the whistle on abusive traditions, a new generation is making its own welcoming activities that bring together the best of both worlds: the Thai-style collective and the respectful and inclusive ways they are familiar with.

Many international school graduates try to avoid SOTUS rituals when attending state universities due to unpleasant experiences they had with them, American educator Robin Montgomery noted in a doctoral thesis examining the integration of dek inter at state universities.

Seven of the 10 students she spoke to - all "educated by people who had a different worldview than their parents or than teachers at a Thai school" - used words such as "a very strange culture," "extreme behavior," "orientation slash hazing," "second years yelling at first years who jump and dance" and "dumb" things that "we weren't raised to do" to describe SOTUS.

"Over and over these students told me they did not understand how suffering by voluntarily doing stupid things that were ordered by older students would enhance their friendships," she said.

At the Saraburi camp, Praise was also "encouraged" to go on a five-hour night trek which included a pit stop in a tent where freshmen had to pull their pants down to expose "half a butt" and be branded with a fake iron as Chula students.

"Some people were drunk and mean, but some weren't. Of course, they were bluffing that the iron was hot. But I heard of a case where one upperclassman was really drunk, so it made a real wound," Praise said. A professor ordered the activities toned down after someone was hospitalized with a head injury.

SOTUS is found in Thai universities nationwide, but the degree of hazing varies even between faculties within the same university, or different programs within the same faculty - architecture and technical faculties, for example, have a reputation for having extra-harsh initiations. The worst abuses of the tradition hit the headlines, with students hospitalized - or even dying.

Praise, 25, remembers yet another orientation event, a hot day full of yelling at his Faculty of Architecture at Chulalongkorn University.

Freshmen were corralled into different locales from 8am to 3pm, their phones confiscated sometimes under blindfolds. At one spot, freshmen had to take turns standing on a chair in a quiet room to yell a pledge to their faculty at the top of their voice.

"After you said three words, they would interrupt you and make you start over. I had to yell at the top of my lungs and scream the loudest and as aggressively as I could," Praise said. "If they didn't let you finish, then you couldn't get off the chair."
Read: Abusive 'Buddhist Camp' One of Top 10 Worst SOTUS Incidents of 2018
It took hours for everyone to finish take turns being verbally heckled on the chair.

"I was wearing the wrong pants," Praise said. "So when I came to my turn, some of them were really angry at me. And if you looked back at their face, they would ask, 'What the fuck are you looking at?'"

Chelita Dhanarajata attended Harrow International School, where students didn't have to wai their British teachers. So after enrolling at Chula, the then-16-year-old joined her faculty's cheerleading team - feeling that connecting with Thais and Thai culture was necessary.

"The fact that a period of your life revolves around whatever a senior student says was really weird and new for me. But on the other hand, this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience," Chelita said.

But for months, from 9am to late at night, upperclassmen forced her to run endless laps around her university buildings, wave her arms in cheerleading gestures and sprint somewhere to sing her lungs out. Her arms tired; her hands shook.

"I thought, what the hell is this? Why am I being punished so much? There should be a science behind it. Physical training shouldn't be this harsh," she said. "Even my parents or my teachers never did this to me. So why did we let someone else do this to us?"

In the space of the three weeks before an annual freshmen sporting event known as Freshy Games, Chelita ended up hospitalized three times with inflamed arm muscles from the toll. Five days before the games, she threw up her cheerleading arms and quit.

"I felt like they cared more about the performance than my health. I would be living in my body for the rest of my life, but the game happens once," the 23-year-old said.

Montgomery, who spent a decade teaching in Thailand at an international school, found in her study that students going from international high schools to Thai universities often attempted to readjust to their home culture under the pressure that they must do so.

"A person expects to feel out-of-place in a foreign country, especially if they are surrounded by people who look differently than they do. But when they return to their home culture, they expect the transition to be easy - after all, it's a return home," she said. "But things change when you are away from home. And even more than things change - people change."

"I'll never think like them and there are certain things I'll never agree on, like how procedural and time-consuming the seniority and Thai system was, but I wanted to understand," Chelita said of her reason to voluntarily join the spirit squad.

Dek inter's adjustment "back" into Thai culture in university isn't the same for everyone. Depending on the individual, it can range from lighthearted social gaffes with new friends to the extreme end of running up against a depressing inability to connect.

Montgomery documented students who were embarrassed when more "culturally Thai" peers didn't understand their Western-style humor, as well as ones who entirely withdrew, eating lunch alone and chasing scholarships to take them overseas.

One can guess what harsh SOTUS traditions can tip the scale toward a positive or negative transition experience - and it doesn't help that, coupled with the pressure to "become Thai again," failure means being branded as "not being Thai enough."

But those who see value in the practice often criticize SOTUS critics as iconoclasts disrespectful of tradition.
Read: Meet the Unlikely Band Taking on University Tradition
Bandhukavi "Keng" Palakawong na Ayudhya, is an anti-hazing activist and part of an online group called Anti Sotus. He's the only one to study in an international university program. He said SOTUS upperclassmen often view dek inter who don't participate as being disrespectful - but that perhaps it's the traditions that need to change.

"Traditions need to be flexible to adapt to the modern era. If we don't adapt these traditions, then people, not just dek inter, will equate Thainess with backwardness," he said.

Chelita, the former cheerleader, also faced the "Thainess" dilemma. By going to the hospital three times due to physical practice for a university event, was she being Thai enough?

"Do you define Thainess by obedience? It's not about being Thai or not, it's about having ownership of my own identity," she said.

Dek inter are enculturated with different values and principles than they would have acquired from Thai schools. Both Montgomery, the educator, and Keng agree that growing this way gives them the cultural framework to object to more notorious SOTUS practices.

"Dek inter are able to refuse this silly brainlessness. Back at their schools, they had no one to wark them," Keng said, referring to the practice of loud yelling endured by freshmen. "In Thai schools they don't really train you to develop critical thinking. I'm just gonna come out and say it, if they came from a public school, they're gonna submit."

But avoiding hazing episodes is an easier way out than openly opposing it. In the past seven years that the Anti Sotus group has been active, members said none of the many reports they receive have come from dek inter.

Keng says that most dek inter try to avoid SOTUS activities, while others are roped in, not knowing that the initiation activities are not academically mandatory or succumbing to peer pressure to participate. The more adamant may refuse to pay SOTUS fees collected by upperclassmen by literally running away from approaching seniors or quickly paying them off to end the nagging.

Katherine Rachada Vanishprasertporn, an alumna of both RIS school and Thammasat University, said that although dek inter might raise eyebrows at some SOTUS activities, not making a social fuss is more important.

"We sort of doubt what they're doing when we see it," she said. "But the majority don't question, we just go along with it. A lot of us want to assimilate and not cause drama."

Montgomery agrees, saying that the zero number of reports by dek inter is due to having participated in such events, or an attempt to assimilate.

"They don't want to get their peers in trouble over a tradition with a very long history. It's hard to be a whistleblower. I can also imagine that at the time, some students might do things they are later ashamed of," she said.

Praise recalls some of his peers became inculcated into the SOTUS culture, even socially banning each other for not going to SOTUS activities for years.

"They'll be toxic until they grow up and realize it's bullshit," he said. "But it takes years for some people to grow up."
Read: Parties Stake Out Positions on 'SOTUS' Hazing
Sending tips to a Facebook page isn't the only avenue to have a say. In the run-up to general elections in which 7.4 million first-time voters are in play, political parties have been taking public positions on regulating or evening banning freshmen hazing outright.

Katherine, 28, was 11 when she moved back from the United States to Thailand and enrolled at the Ruamrudee International School. But it was when she matriculated to Thammasat University that her parents, who had read about SOTUS in the news, started to worry. The upperclassman assigned to act as her senior mentor, a role called p rahud, had to call her mother and convince her to let Katherine attend a three-day beach trip for orientation.

Like Praise, she had to drink some unsavory liquids, in her case, seawater. "It was strange and unclean," she said. "I had to pretend to drink it."

Katherine also recalls an activity called saphan dao ("Star Bridge") in which upperclassmen laid their arms on the floor and had the freshmen walk over them.

"I didn't want to walk all over their arms, but they told me to. So I did it but I kept apologizing while walking," the soft-spoken woman said. "I guess they wanted us to feel like they do a lot for us."

From her discomfort with that experience, Katherine decided things had to change when she became a senior at school.

"The point of having welcoming activities is good, but things have to be changed up to be safer. I canceled strange things such as drinking saltwater and saphan dao," Katherine said. "I think I did break the cycle."

Katherine says adapting the welcoming activities to be more friendly and less "strange" helped her and younger classmates to socialize and befriend others, a process called kao sangkhom. Other students interviewed said they also wanted activities reformed rather than abolished.

Indeed, many students found that the upside of SOTUS was gaining friends and participating in an authentic tradition. Chelita, for example, recalls the bai sri ceremony where seniors tied strings on the wrists of freshmen in a symbolic gesture of torch-passing. Bai sri is a folk ritual celebrated to welcome new developments in life or to welcome guests, and is often part of freshmen welcoming events.

"There was the brotherhood and sisterhood, not just seniority. That's not really found in international communities," she said. "At the bai sri ceremony, you could feel one generation being passed onto another. It felt warm. Before, no upperclassmen tied stuff to my wrists and said they would help me. It felt sacred, too."

Kor Vitoonwithlukck, 24, a Chula graduate who attended Bangkok Patana School, said he initially "didn't get the dancing and singing songs around a drum" activities at all, but actively participated and enjoyed getting to know the upperclassmen and alumni.

"One of my favorite memories was when all the graduates gathered, including the alumni. Some of them were over 50," he said.

To incoming dek inter entering Thai universities, fake puke-survivor Praise suggested compromise by embracing the best of both worlds.

"Keep an open mind. Don't stay in your own little bubble and think you're the best in the world," he said. "But if you experience something like I did, you've got critical thinking skills to judge if it's over the line or not."

Montgomery said students who were "able to get past SOTUS activities," whether they participated or not, were able to make friends if they tried.

"Students who went in to university realizing that they needed to learn more colloquial Thai or who were ready to seek out clubs with like-minded people did quite well. They were able to form friendships," Montgomery said. "Others who expected friendships to form easily faced challenges."
Related stories: Abusive 'Buddhist Camp' One of Top 10 Worst SOTUS Incidents of 2018 Parties Stake Out Positions on 'SOTUS' Hazing Meet the Unlikely Band Taking on University Tradition Parties Eye Millions of Young Thais Who've Never Voted
"Don't close yourself off and be ignorant. Be informed about what's going on around you, whether it's good or not," former cheer team member Chelita said. "Don't be obliged to participate if you don't want to. Just do what's right for you. If the activity is where I wanna go, then yeah, maybe I'll join. If not, then what's the point of going?"

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Worlds Collide When Intl School Students Hazed at Thai Unis

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Projected at force, a hot tan vomit of soup, cocoa, wasabi and stomach acid shoots out of a student's mouth onto the back of the classmate seated in front of him. Muttering apologies, the freshman is ushered to the outer rings of a spiral of 80 or so peers sitting cross-legged.

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Title: School life in Thailand: abuse, torture, hazing, deadly gang wars are rife
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias: slight to moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: medium

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'It's like Alien vs Predator'. Thai school gang wars and hazing

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Thai student gangs fight with handguns, machetes, knives and even home-made grenades, often in broad daylight. Degrading and sometimes violent hazing is another widespread problem in Thai schools.

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Title: The Hazing Scandals in Thailand Reflect Deeper Problems in
Social Relations1
Sources: Perspective
Credibility Evaluation: Group 1(Scholars Books and Articles)
Source Bias:  very low bias
Factual Reporting:  contains personal opinion (neutral)

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Title: PRAYUT’S LITTLE TOY SOLDIERS IN THAI UNIVERSITIES
Date: OCTOBER 4, 2015
Sources: uglytruththailand
Source Bias:Very ANTI- jUNTA ,variable due to both references to actual events and personal interpretation of the motives of the participants
Comment: Reported events are factual but excessive use of emotional terms and

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Title: Submissive Obedience to Thuggish University Sadism (aka SOTUS)
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias:  moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: medium
Comment: base on a very important news in Thailand

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Thai universities have just started their delayed academic year, but bang on cue, the articles pour in about what happens to new students at institutes of higher education.

In the English reports, the preferred term is normally 'hazing', but take a moment to look at the Thai term - ' rab nong ' - which carries none of the connotations of a potentially dangerous or embarrassing rite of passage.

In fact, it's kind of cosy and cuddly. ' Rab' means 'receive', and when the thing being received is a person, it suggests treating them with respect, goodwill, even honour. The 'best room' in a house (the one with the most impressive and uncomfortable furniture which no one ever uses) is called the ' hong rab khaek ' or 'room for receiving guests'.

What is important to note here is that the person who does the ' rab-ing' is the agent and the person being ' rab-ed' is passive and doesn't have to take any initiative. My own experience as a first year university student (yes, there were universities all those years ago, stop sniggering there) was called 'orientation' which is more something you do to yourself and definitely requires initiative.

And then ' nong' is the word for younger sibling. In the Thai fiction that we can all consider ourselves members of the one family, the implication here is that the ' nong ', the new students, should be treated as younger members of the family.

Now before you start thinking in terms of being nice to each other and generally taking care of the welfare of your younger relatives, think of the tyranny of age relations in Thailand. Being a younger sibling doesn't just mean that your elders are supposed to take care of you. It means you have to obey your elders and what they say goes. It's one strand of the all-pervasive patron-client system.

So there you have a picture of first year students at a Thai university. Passive subjects of whatever their elders decree is good for them, with no right to object, or even to speak their mind.

What lessons do their elders decide are good for them? Now we delve into a seamy streak in Thai social relations, which are often held together not by mutual respect or empathetic compassion, but by brute force and contempt. And that's the lesson that is often taught in ' rab nong ' programmes.

The new students must be ordered around, bullied, and humiliated so that they will learn where the power lies. On the numerous occasions when, as an erstwhile academic, I made myself extremely unpopular by trying to intercede in these exercises of mass abuse, I was normally told, often heatedly, that the crawling through the mud, or screaming into people's ears, or removal of clothing was necessary to instil 'discipline'.

OMG. Now indiscipline is supposedly a growing problem in Thai schools, but by and large Thai students must be among the most compliant in the world. They need to be taught discipline?

This is the discipline of the authoritarian who demands unquestioning obedience and whose favourite deterrent involves things like smashing mobile phones, questioning the nationality of any Thai who asks awkward questions and, after inviting comments, marching off to the police station a secondary student who has different ideas about ethics from the Prime Minister.

This is the discipline of dictatorship.

So while one news article reports a seminar denouncing hazing rituals as 'embedding autocracy', the article directly below deals with a university where last year they were caught dripping candle wax on their ' nong ' and this year performing simulated sex. So does the deputy rector think that enough is enough? Of course not.

Despite 'clear guidelines' about crossing the 'boundaries of appropriateness', they will simply devise 'more detailed instructions' (and the best of luck to the teachers with the job of predicting what form the next obscenity will take) and carry on with the indoctrination.

Meanwhile the students involved will lose points from their grades (huh?) and will be sent to a military camp, paid for by 3 university administrators, for 'attitude adjustment'.

See, this ' rab nong ' stuff. It's just what the military does, only in different uniforms.
About author: Bangkokians with long memories may remember his irreverent c olumn in The Nation in the 1980's. During his period of enforced silence since then, he was variously reported as participating in a 999-day meditation retreat in a hill-top monastery in Mae Hong Son (he gave up after 998 days), as the Special Rapporteur for Satire of the UN High Commission for Human Rights, and as understudy for the male lead in the long-running 'Pussies -not the Musical' at the Neasden International Palladium (formerly Park Lane Empire).

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Submissive Obedience to Thuggish University Sadism (aka SOTUS)

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Thai universities have just started their delayed academic year, but bang on cue, the articles pour in about what happens to new students at institutes of higher education.

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Title: Hazing Problem in Thai Universities Reflects the Larger Trouble in Thai Social Institutions
Sources: Prachatai
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias: moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: high but also contain personal opinion (not neutral)

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- Hazing in Thai universities, known as SOTUS, every year leads to scandalous actions and even fatalities. Calls to end it are met by its strong supporters, including academics and university administrations.

- SOTUS flourishes in Thailand because it fits and serves Thai conditions very well as the crystallization and reproduction of "Thainess", i.e. the hierarchical relations and the person-based social institutions.

- The rise of SOTUS is part of the stronger conservative trends in the past few decades as reaction to globalization and the perceived threat from the west, and as the consequence of the growing hyper-royalism. In universities, invented rituals to promote Thainess are proliferating.

- Hierarchical relations and person-based social institutions are, however, the roots of serious problems in Thai social institutions since they trump laws, rules, professionalism and principles which are needed for social institutions in a complex society.

Hazing in Thai universities is known as SOTUS. In recent years, SOTUS has frequently made headlines for its notorious consequences, from scandalous actions to the fatality of a few freshmen every year. Calls to end the practice recur every time a scandal breaks out. Defenders of hazing include not only students and prominent alumni, but professors and administrators of universities as well.

The English acronym stands for Seniority Order Tradition Unity Spirit. It is said to be an import from the "West" some time ago. But I cannot find evidence from what institution (a university, a military school, or a boarding school), when, and by whom. Some suggest it was from the US during the 1950s, others say Thai royals who were educated in the UK started it in the early 20th c.

While initiation rites still exist in many US and UK institutions, hazing is now prohibited in most schools, including military ones. A softer version may still be practiced in some particular institutions such as in military and fraternity societies. Other than those, hazing is illegal in higher education.

Interestingly, if one searches on the internet, SOTUS is found to refer to initiation rites only in Thailand, despite its English name. Regardless of its origin, it survives and thrives only in Thailand. Why does hazing - SOTUS - thrive only in Thai universities? Moreover, at a time when Thai higher education is preoccupied with international reputations and ranking, trying to become world class institutions, why do college administrators and many scholars staunchly support the practice instead of getting rid of it to improve their rankings? Is SOTUS merely teen play? Or does it reflect a deeper condition and more serious problem in Thai society?

I would argue that SOTUS thrives because Thai society is fertile soil for hazing. Regardless of its origin, it has been localized. Reborn on Thai soil, it fits and serves Thai conditions productively. SOTUS is Thai. Some suggest that it has flourished even more in the past decade or so. If true, it could mean that it fits and serves Thai conditions in the past decade even better than earlier.

What are the conditions that make Thailand fertile for SOTUS?

I would argue that SOTUS represents and reproduces the two primary modes of social relations in Thai society, namely, hierarchy and the person-based social institutions.

Thailand is a strongly hierarchical society. "Thainess" is first and foremost the attentiveness to hierarchical relations among individuals based on their social positions which can be seniority, class, rank, wealth, gender, or power depending on the particular social relations. Hierarchical relations inform social institutions, i.e. the institutionalized social relations such as in education, law enforcement, the military, the justice system, business, journalism, and so on, making them very "personal" or person-based rather than "impersonal".

"Personal vs. impersonal" here are two contrasting types of social relations in institutions.

The "personal" means a social institution whose culture and power structure are based on a person's social position as an essential factor in interactions with others, in decision making and judgements, and in power relations. The personal type includes, though not exclusively, personal relationships, such as nepotism, or patron-client relations. We may call this person-based social relations. This type of social relation is the basis of the patrimonial state.

The "impersonal" means a social institution whose culture and power structure are based on criteria or rules that are independent from personal or person-based relations. There are different forms and levels of criteria or rules in various social institutions, namely, laws, regulations, standards, professional codes, and principles.

In reality, both types of social relations exist in every society and institution on earth. No society can survive by only one type. The differences among societies are in the extent and relationship between the two types in society. In other words, what type of social relations is the primary or basic one that informs social institutions in a society, and what is the secondary or supplemental one?

Generally speaking, in a smaller-scale and less complex society, social relations tend to be primarily person-based or personal. Rules and laws can often be flexible or selectively enforced according to the persons involved. Patrimonialism is the mode of power relations. In a larger-scale and more complex society with intricate differences and conflicting interests, social institutions need to be primarily impersonal, adhering to laws, rules, regulations, standards, professional codes, and principles.

Thai society is definitely a complex one. But social institutions remain overly personal and patrimonial. The "who" factor is regularly taken into consideration in applying a rule. Often, it matters more than laws, regulations, professional codes, or principles - the impersonal relations. Professionalism in some institutions, such as journalism and academia, is not adequately developed yet.

In the justice system, for example, what is seen as rampant "double standards" in fact is one standard, i.e. one that depends on one's social position. No standard at all. Historically, laws and rules in ancient Siam were applied according to the feudal rank of a person. It seems that, despite modernity, the archaic culture persists. The most important principle and professional code are attentiveness to the "who" factor in social hierarchy.

These personal social relations, nevertheless, are also the basis for the charm and attractiveness of Thai society to many foreigners. They love this dimension that is lacking in their societies. Some call these charming social relations as "more human" as opposed to the impersonal institutions which are "less human". They love Thailand ... as long as they are not in trouble with the police or justice system and not caught up in the messy Thai-style democracy.

The entire education system, including higher education, is an infrastructure responsible for the reproduction and sustenance of these person-based, hierarchical relations over generations. The supporters of SOTUS always argue that it is a preparation for the real world. They are probably right. SOTUS creates patronage networks that could last for some people's entire career. Socially, SOTUS moulds the next generation of members of Thainess. SOTUS crystalizes all major values in real social relations in Thai society into child's play, namely the importance of seniority or hierarchy, the obedience to power or order, the uncritical acceptance of tradition, the ultimate goal of social relations in unity or harmony, and the spirit or pride in the unique Thainess. SOTUS is a preparation, a practice, and reproduction of established social relations.

As an initiation, SOTUS may seem thoughtless, low, violent, and possibly dangerous. But as an institutional practice to mould teenagers for an authoritarian, hierarchical society, it is a reasonable, caring, and benignly violent training ground. It is an authoritarian playground. Thai universities serve their mission well. Those administrators and academics who staunchly support SOTUS do their jobs very well according to the KPI (key performance index) as required for a university (see below).

Why has SOTUS come back strongly?

Actually SOTUS was in decline since the mid-1970s especially after the 1973 democratic uprising when students rose up to challenge every tradition and institution. A prime target of revolt was SOTUS. In recent years, however, Thai society has turned more conservative. Thainess is heavily promoted both by the state and in civil society. This is partly a reaction to the perceived threats from the West in the form of globalization and reckless capitalism that hurt the country, for instance in the 1997 economic crisis. Another reason for the promotion of Thainess is the increasingly conservative politics and the rise of hyper-royalism in the past 30 years or so.

People become overly conscious about proper behaviour according to one's position in relation to others. Several public rituals, customs and practices that inform, reproduce, and strengthen hierarchical social relations are invented, revived, promoted and amplified. Many have become extravagant and incredibly more elaborate than ever. Excessive sensitivity to proper behaviours and rituals of hierarchy becomes a norm. This trend of excessive performance of hierarchy in the past few decades is palpable in educational institutions. The following examples are mere segment of the theatrical society.

- Student uniforms are back in universities across the country. Considered a sign of authoritarianism, the requirement for uniforms was abolished in most campuses after 1973. Now uniforms are mandatory again in regular classrooms and definitely in exam rooms in most universities.

- Since the early 2000s, new students at Chulalongkorn University have had to perform the ritual of ถวายตัว [thawai tua], literally offering oneself, to King Rama V and VI. It is an oath-taking ceremony to become loyal servants of the monarchy, said to be a revival of an old ritual that Chula students had to perform when Chula was founded as the school for civil servants under King Rama VI (r. 1910-1926) during the absolute monarchy period. (Watch here http://news.voicetv.co.th/thailand/237000.html ).

- New faculty at Chulalongkorn too have to perform the recently invented ritual, "พิธีถวายตัวถวายใจ", [phithi thawai tua thawai jai], literally offering oneself and one's mind (to the monarchy). (Here is the announcement by the university of the event http://w3.chula.ac.th/cuthnews/curel/CU_P005592.html ). Some new students and faculty resent this but are obligated to do it, I was told, while most of them are delighted and proud to join the ceremonies.

- A similar ritual regarding King Naresuan, a national hero of the 16th c., was invented a few years ago at Naresuan University in Phitsanulok. http://www.enn.co.th/news_detail.php?nid=3243 . It is now a sacred ritual. Many other Thai universities follow similar fervours, inventing sacred and extravagant rituals such as this one http://www.oknation.net/blog/ruendorkrak/2012/06/22/entry-1 More can easily be found on the internet. High-school students in Phitsanulok offer themselves to King Naresuan too. http://iiquare.com/post.php?post_id=939 Similarly, students at a middle school in Bangkok take an oath to King Rama III who built the temple whose name and premises are shared by the school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dkLS3BdKI4

- One of the old customs in every Thai school, from kindergarten to university, is the ritual of deference for teachers (ไหว้ครู - wai khru). Perhaps due to the wealthier Thai middle class, the ritual has become incredibly extravagant everywhere. Even at Thammasat University, once an icon for commoners, equality and freedom, the ritual is now majestic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWAei5W9jqo

- Needless to say, a graduation ceremony has always been an extravagant rite of passage of the educated Thai middle class. It is even more so today than in the past. http://www.bangkokpost.com/learning/learning-from-news/355144/graduation-season-has-arrived-big-business.

- The conservative cultural trend of higher education in Thailand is being institutionalized as a key performance index (KPI) of a university. A curriculum, for instance, is required to "preserve Thainess amidst globalization". To get a good score on this KPI, a unit is expected to report its observance to Thainess, although I have yet to find out what activities or actions would meet such demand.

The list goes on. In this environment, SOTUS is also back strongly. In the past month alone (August-September 2015), two incidents tell how strong SOTUS and the authoritarian culture are in Thai education. In the first one, a school teacher hit a student at his head for the latter's protest against the school fee for the SMS messages the school sends to students. After the video went viral, the teacher made a clear pubic statement that he admitted his fault for hitting the kid but would not apologize for doing his duty according to his conscience of a teacher. He meant that a teacher's duty and conscience is to groom a student who is obedient to teacher, to school and to power. Hence the justified punishment, though excessive.

In the second incident a professor criticized SOTUS at her campus. Then quite a number of students, alumni and professors at her school and beyond reacted vehemently to her criticism, including threats of sexual assault and violence. As if the matter was not ugly enough, the next day a top university administrator refused to protect her, saying that it was a personal matter unrelated to the university. Instead, he implicitly defended the students' behaviour. These cases are the extreme symptoms but they are not exceptions.

Perpetuating social malaise

The problem is that the hierarchical and authoritarian social relations and the personal or person-based social institutions that SOTUS helps reproduce is a serious cause of the malaise and social ills that permeate every major social institution in Thai society. The ugliness of SOTUS and the damage it regularly causes are also a microcosm of the larger society.

Take Thai academia as example. It too has been corroded by Thainess and person-based social institutions. It is well-known that academic promotion depends not only on academic merit but also on political or personal relations between the junior and the senior. A top-level promotion is usually highly politicized and personal, i.e. depending on connections, favours and acquaintances, or the opposite. The rule of thumb for scholarly criticism is to recognize the social position of the person whose work one is commenting on, hence the Thai-style culture of criticism. Respect may not be enough as reverence is often required. Even the academic cardinal sin - plagiarism - can be protected or sheltered for years if the wrongdoer has good connections or is senior. In addition to this everyday culture in the academy, the explicitly anti-democratic politics of most university administrators in the past decade and the conservative trend discussed above make life in Thai academia altogether precarious for critical scholars. No guarantee for academic freedom and denials of promotions are known. Even expulsion for political views has taken place.

In a society where personal social relations are excessive, good academia and good media are hard to achieve since merit is overlooked, and professionalism is trumped. Indeed any social institution can be strong only in a non-authoritarian condition, in horizontal social relations, and under impersonal relations. In Thailand today, the malaise as described is at epidemic levels in the military, police, bureaucracy, and probably every public institution including, sadly, the justice system. Inefficiency permeates these institutions from top to bottom because their personnel are, by and large, recruited, socialized, promoted, and moulded not by professional standards, but by nepotism, connections, and favouritism. And the culture of personal and hierarchical relations has been in place for generations. It is not capable of handling complex and sophisticated business.

The inefficiency has recently borne serious results. The infamous ones include the downgrade of the Thai aviation industry by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) due to its failure to meet safety standards, the punishment by the US and EU for Thailand's failure to attend to the problem of human trafficking, and the EU's warning to the Thai fishing industry plus the growing sanctions by businesses in the US and EU markets against fishery products from Thailand due to the chronic problem of slave labour on Thailand's fishing fleets. In every case, it appears that the relevant Thai authority is aware of the problems but has been negligent for years. The Thai police are notorious in their unprofessional handling even of major cases under the world's focus, let alone smaller domestic cases in everyday life. Corruption, too, is the result of this social culture. By taking politicians as the sinners for corruption but ignoring the real problem in every social institution, especially the military and the government bureaucracy, Thais are fooling themselves again.

The saddest consequence of a social institution that relies on allegedly good people is the Thai political system. Thai patrimonialism depends heavily on one charismatic monarch as the pinnacle of legitimacy. With his deteriorating health, the future of the whole country is in the clouds since the super-human king is unlikely to be replicated, hence the crumbling political system. For decades, the king has been considered the pillar of stability in Thai politics. It seems that Thais have yet to learn the lesson that a mortal person cannot be the basis of a stable political institution.

Conclusion

The problem of hazing or SOTUS in Thailand is therefore the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger and more fundamental problem, a microcosm or small scale model of widespread troubles, or a symptom of chronic structural deficiency. Stopping it means confronting the malaise of hierarchical and authoritarian social relations, and modernizing social institutions, especially public ones, by making them more impersonal, adhering to laws, rules, professional codes and principles. In the meantime, if the rankings of Thai universities go further south, the evaluation is justified according to impersonal criteria.

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Hazing Problem in Thai Universities Reflects the Larger Trouble in

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Hazing in Thai universities, known as SOTUS, every year leads to scandalous actions and even fatalities. Calls to end it are met by its strong supporters, including academics and university administrations. - SOTUS flourishes in Thailand because it fits and serves Thai conditions very well as the crystallization and reproduction of "Thainess", i.e.

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Title: Freshman students forced to strip and touch other’s genitals
Sources: Prachatai
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias: moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: high but also contain personal opinion (not neutral)

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Submitted on Tue, 19 Sep 2017 - 04:53 PM

Silpakorn University (SU) has initiated an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment during freshman orientation activities, where students were allegedly forced to strip and shower together.

The allegations emerged on 16 September 2017 when Anti-SOTUS, a network that campaigns against human rights violations in universities, posted on its Facebook page reports it had received from SU Fine Arts students.

According to Anti-SOTUS, senior students woke freshmen up in middle of the night and ordered them to take their clothes off. The seniors then asked them to close their eyes and line up for a group shower. Some of them were ordered to lie down and put their faces against the buttocks of other students, or to give handjobs to other students.

The next day, a second year Fine Arts student "Best" (pseudonym) told the media about the initiation activities he underwent last year. Best said that one senior took his hand and placed it on the senior's genitals. When Best pulled his hand back, the seniors laughed.

"When I was sleeping, they [the seniors] woke me up and started yelling. Then they ordered all the men to take all their clothes off. At that time, there were friends of mine there who are third gender. They had to do it too," Best told Amarin TV. "I was just too afraid to be embarrassed, because everyone else had to take everything off."

On 18 September, the Fine Arts Faculty held a press conference to clarify the allegations. A fourth year SU student admitted to ordering the group to shower naked, but only as an icebreaking activity without any intention to bully new students.

The senior added that the activity saved showering time and maintained that there was no sexual harassment.

Yanawit Kunchaethong, Dean of the Fine Arts Faculty, argued further that all students attended the activities on a voluntary basis, and claimed that coverage of the allegations contained bias and misinformation.

"We can't make everyone happy. There will probably be someone who disagrees. Sometimes, there's no violence but they will disagree anyway," Yanawit stated.

It is a 'tradition' that SU Fine Arts freshmen can only have a skinhead haircut (Photo from PPTV)

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Freshman students forced to strip and touch other's genitals

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Silpakorn University (SU) has initiated an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment during freshman orientation activities, where students were allegedly forced to strip and shower together.

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Title: Education in Thailand: An Old Elephant in Search of a New Mahou
Sources: SPRINGLERS
Credibility Evaluation: Group 1(Scholars Books and Articles)
Source Bias:  very low bias
Factual Reporting:  contains personal opinion (not neutral)

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This interdisciplinary book offers a critical analysis of Thai education and its evolution, providing diverse perspectives and theoretical frameworks. In the past five decades Thailand has seen impressive economic success and it is now a middle-income country that provides development assistance to poorer countries.

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Title: Hazing in Thailand university's authority: Anti Social club group
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias: slight to moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: medium

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A youth group opposing hazing rituals commonly practised in Thai universities is urging students to confront hazers with reasons, pointing out that the rituals breed authoritarianism in Thai society.

A youth group called 'ANTI-SOTUS' on Saturday, 4 June 2016, organised a public discussion at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, about the SOTUS system in Thailand.

The SOTUS system (Seniority, Order, Tradition, Unity, and Spirit) is a common set of values among many of Thailand's tertiary education institutions, where junior students are expected to respect older students and are subjected to harassment by their seniors, especially during university hazing rituals.

At the forum, Parit Chiwarak, Secretary-General of Education for Liberation of Siam, a group comprising mostly high school students campaigning for progressive education reform, pointed out that supporters of hazing in universities who like to claim seniority, tradition and unity to justify the rituals, prolong the SOTUS system which promotes authoritarianism in Thai society.

The young education reformist urged youth to confront senior hazers in the universities with reasons to let them reconsider the SOTUS culture and why they support it.

Sirawit Serithiwat, an embattled anti-junta activist, who also participated in the forum, pointed out that the SOTUS culture in the country is prevalent not only within universities, but it is practiced since childhood in families and schools where children are taught to get used to obeying rules and orders. Therefore, once adolescents enter universities, it is not surprising that most of them choose to obey arbitrary orders from their seniors.

After freshmen undergo the hazing rituals within the university, the SOTUS culture is further reinforced in workplaces where those who bow down to senior colleagues and their superiors get promoted. Therefore, it is not only about universities, but society in general, Sirawit concluded.

Panuwat Songsawatchai, Deputy Secretary-General of ANTI-SOTUS, said at the forum that in recent years, hazing rituals in many universities have been adapted to suit current trends; for example, good looking seniors are usually tasked to call upon university freshmen to participate. However, arbitrary violence and intimidation are common throughout the rituals.

In 2015, there was a headline news story about freshman studying in the northern province of Nan where a female student's body was covered with bruises after undergoing the hazing rituals. The ANTI-SOTUS group assisted the girl in filing a complaint to the police. However, the police told her that she might find it difficult to continue to live in Nan if she filed the complaint, so at the end she chose not to do so, said Phanuwat.

Another panellist at the event, Wannasingh Prasertkul, a writer and TV programme host, told the audience that everybody needs to feel that they are accepted and respected, which is related to one's self-esteem and ego. Therefore, despite the fact that the SOTUS culture suppresses people, it gives university seniors who perform the hazing rituals, a sense of identity and the feeling of being accepted.

Urging people to question the SOTUS culture, Wannasingh said "one's identity and the feeling of being accepted do not need to come from suppressing others."

At the end of the event, Chawit Worasan, Acting Secretary of the ANTI-SOTUS group, said that the group will continue to campaign against the SOTUS culture in Thai universities and society at large and will try to reach out to public and private agencies alike in getting rid of the SOTUS culture.

Parit Chiwarak , Secretary-General of Education for Liberation of Siam , talks about SOTUS culture at a public forum at Chulalongkorn University on 4 June 2016

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Hazing in Thai universities breeds authoritarianism: Anti-SOTUS group

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A youth group opposing hazing rituals commonly practised in Thai universities is urging students to confront hazers with reasons, pointing out that the rituals breed authoritarianism in Thai society. A youth group called 'ANTI-SOTUS' on Saturday, 4 June 2016, organised a public discussion at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, about the SOTUS system in Thailand.

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Title: Class really does matter in Thailand
Sources: Ugly Truth Thailand
Credibility Evaluation: Group 9(Blog Article)
Source Bias:variable due to both references to actual events and personal interpretation of the motives of the participants
Comment: Reported events are factual but excessive use of emotional and derogatory terms makes it unsuitable for academic references

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Title: Time to end hazing culture in universities
Sources: Nation Thailand
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias: moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: high but also contain personal opinion (not neutral)

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Students' human rights being violated by execs turning a blind eye to the excesses

This year is just another year in which we witness a compromise on the infamous Thai university culture of hazing, referred to at Thai universities as "rub-nong". Although the severity of hazing has gradually scaled down with each annual intake, concerns remain over the violation of human rights and the humiliation of human dignity on campuses, as well as criticism about whether this culture of hazing benefits the students' ability to learn at all.

This culture is criticised for violating human rights because of a mechanism called the "SOTUS system" (seniority, order, tradition, unity, spirit). This does not simply translate as respect for senior students in order to maintain a hierarchy on campus, but insinuates a form of social suppression for first year students, and treats them as inferior.

Despite rules and regulations to promote and protect human rights at Thai universities developed by the Office of the Higher Education Commission (OHEC) and the Ministry of Education (MOE), there are violations every year, and in some cases there are even fatalities. Will Thai universities continue to compromise on their infamous rub-nong, and allow it to pass on to another generation, even whilst there are increasing numbers of student voices in opposition to it?

All Thai universities claim to strictly implement the rules and regulations of the OHEC and the MOE, and maintain that they actively protect first-year students' human rights. However, university executives across the country have typically turned a blind eye to such violations on university campuses.

First-year students, especially in universities outside Bangkok, are often forced to behave in a certain way, and are sometimes ordered by their seniors to humiliate themselves and trained as if they were serving in a military.

Eradication of this Thai university culture is not inevitable in the foreseeable future, because it has been both openly and secretly supported by many Thai academics in universities and schools, and also by Thai authorities who believe that this culture helps to reinforce Thailand's hierarchical structure.

Therefore, the promotion and protection of human rights and human dignity are compromised and sacrificed for perceived campus unity as students conform to SOTUS and remain obedient to their seniors. Thai universities work as machines to reproduce and clone an obedient population for the country instead of equipping younger generations with the knowledge to empower themselves and improve the country.

Supporters of this SOTUS culture, including students, university lecturers and the general public, are deluded by the romantic idea of the Thai concept of "family", regarded as a core Thai value, especially the concept of "brothers and sisters". This fantasy ignores the fact that the SOTUS culture involves many elements of human rights violations.

In Thailand, this concept does not simply mean love, affection and kindness between family members, supporting each other in difficult times, but also includes obedience. Under the SOTUS culture, a "family" carries a strong connotation of "obedience" and "submission" towards senior members, while "inferior" members should be looked after by their seniors. Consequently, this university culture acts as a catalyst for the establishment and reinforcement of a Thai patronage system via a romantic delusion.

The concept of professionalism and meritocracy in the Thai labour market and the Thai bureaucracy, in which knowledge, skills and devotion are crucial in getting a job or a promotion, is undermined by the SOTUS culture which directly and indirectly perpetuates the patronage system. This is ironic because a vast majority of students are opposed to the Thai patronage system, while simultaneously hoping to benefit from it in one way or another. This allows the SOTUS culture to maintain its momentum on campus.

Indeed, the persistence of this university culture and its human rights violations demonstrates how Thai academia tolerates and ignores universal concepts of human rights, while embracing instead a Thai definition of human rights, which is far lower.

The second periodic report of Thailand in 2017 by the United Nations Human Rights Committee raised concerns about "the severe and arbitrary restrictions imposed on the right to freedom of opinion and expression". It therefore recommended Thailand "take all measures necessary to guarantee the enjoyment of freedom of opinion and expression in all their forms"

A call for the eradication of this culture has been growing among younger generations and human rights defenders. For example, the Anti-SOTUS Facebook page has garnered almost 300,000 "likes" and "followers". However, a social media campaign is ineffective under the current political circumstances in which the country is controlled by the military.

Indeed, allowing SOTUS to continue works for, not against, the military government because many students opposed to the 2014 coup d'etat accept the SOTUS culture. Insofar as the military is concerned, the SOTUS system serves to reinforce subservience and obedience in wider society.

Thai universities can no longer afford to allow the SOTUS culture to persist and reproduce obedient graduates, because the ability to question and challenge seniority or authority is important, and is necessary for Thailand's future development.

After the introduction of the first National Economic and Social Development Plan in 1961, it took Thailand at least another 35 years to realise that an active population is crucial for development. Consequently, in 1997 the country emphasised human development in its eighth plan. It aimed at substantive educational reforms, specifically in relation to both learning and teaching processes in order to generate active learners. But, after two decades of this ambition, university students remain mostly unchanged.

The persistence of SOTUS will only delay this process and constrain the ability of university students to learn and question.

It is now time for Thai universities to take real action against it, or otherwise let this decay continue to erode the future of the country and its students.

TITIPOL PHAKDEEWANICH is dean of the Faculty of Political Science at Ubon Ratchathani University, and a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick in England.

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Time to end hazing culture in universities

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Students' human rights being violated by execs turning a blind eye to the excesses This year is just another year in which we witness a compromise on the infamous Thai university culture of hazing, referred to at Thai universities as "rub-nong".

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Title: CULTURES…STILL CRASHED!
Sources: FULBRIGHT EXPERIENCE
Credibility Evaluation: Group 6(News and Tropical Stories from Quality Sources)
Source Bias: slight to moderate liberal bias
Factual Reporting: high

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Thailand - United States Educational Foundation (TUSEF/Fulbright Thailand)

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Published Date : Dec 27, 2017

Associate Professor Benjawan Ubonsri
Chotima Chaitiamwong
Thailand-United States Educational Foundation
(TUSEF/Fulbright Thailand)
Commented by Porntip Kanajananiyot Despite years of studies and promotion of cross-cultural understanding, cross culture remains one of the most challenging issues of the 21st century and even become much more complicated than before. Back in 1946, a year after the end of the World War II, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) was founded in the U.S. Department of States to provide staff training on language skills in response to the need of U.S. diplomatic corps, who were to be stationed abroad. The training subsequently integrated cultural understanding in the language instruction, thus introducing the new field of intercultural communication. Therefore, it could be said that earlier studies of cross culture focused on differences between nations. As time goes by, our world has developed to the stage where traditional boundaries (e.g. states, public-private sectors, business industries, professionals, communities) are blurred by the mobility of people and cross-border activities, adding cobweb layers of cultural differences into human relations. If we look at the very micro level - an individual person, each of us is the manifestation of different cultures of our family, gender, ethnicity, religion, generation, social class, education institutions, professionals, nations, and many more. With increased and widened opportunities for individuals to interact, different cultures have more chances to crash. Consequently, cross-cultural competency is not only necessary for success in career but also for healthy survival in the today's multicultural world. Education institutions then take it as one of their core missions to cultivate cross-cultural competency among graduates. Exchange programs are particularly promoted as they provide the most effective cross-cultural learning. Still, there are number of issues undermining cross-cultural learning and, in the worst case, turning exchanges to nightmares of all those concerned. Revisiting our decades of administering exchange programs, we find some factors that make different cultures still crash. What You See Is Not What You See
What is culture? American anthropologists gave more than 164 definitions of culture and, until early 1990s, no consensus was made on its nature. Generally speaking, culture is something we have been consciously and unconsciously absorbed all our lives from families, schools, communities, offices, religions, nations, and other societal units. Culture has been developed so gradually that we tend to overlook its existence and impacts on our lives. Such ignorance could lead to serious conflicts particularly when we are challenged by culture opposites which have oftentimes demonstrated through nonverbal messages.

The ice-berg model effectively explains why cross culture matters and why it could become serious. Truly, what we can see is merely a tiny tip of one culture. There are much more hidden cultural elements that we should know and need to figure out. There are also unknown cultural elements that we may or may never discover. In fact, those we can detect might not be what we think of. For cross-cultural understanding, we have to bear in mind that something seen could be illusive and something unseen could exist.
When East Meets West: Accept the Differences!
Picture the real situations when there are many more ice-bergs in different shapes and sizes in the ocean. Similarly, every culture has its own form of ice-berg and it is far too challenging for everyone to detect whether there could be some possible explosion underneath and how serious it could be.

We can, however, safeguard ourselves from the impacts. A good start is to accept that there are always cultural differences and we cannot convert others' ways to match ours and vice versa. On the other end, we should appreciate the fact that, amid differences, there are some similarities. Thus, efforts to understand the reasons behind cultures so as to better think and select our approaches is also challengingly fun learning.

In regard of cultural differences, Thais and Americans could be good case studies as they are representatives of opposite cultures - the East and the West. Based on Fulbright Thailand's experiences, we found that there are several extreme cultural contrasts underlining East-West cultural conflicts. Here, we highlight two of them as they are the most influential ones with real-life situations as examples when applicable.

On the contrary, individualism of the West focuses on self. Individual well-being ensures group's success. In fact, being a member of any societal groups for individualists is a choice. Self-reliance/sufficiency, self-interest, and self-achievement are the main focus while self-independence is highly valued. As we have observed, collectivist tends to use collective words such as we or our idea rather than I and my idea as frequently used by individualist.

Collectivist and individualist world views bring about the issue of, among many others, respect and assertiveness. Thais prefer not to argue with their seniors in public and quietly try to solve problems. Americans feel it is their responsibility to raise the concern for attention. Although each has sincere intention, Thais are complained for being far too submissive and Americans being aggressive and, oftentimes, rude. The attention is then on the message delivery rather than the message itself, which make the problem unsolved and the situation dramatized.

Another serious crash is about plagiarism. The concept could be based on individualist sense of self-achievement and the right to protect one's entitlement. A good number of Thais still do not understand the term plagiarism. In fact, before this word was translated in Thai, we did not even have it in our language. Citing or copying people's works without giving credits to the person is unfortunately quite common in Thai schools and universities. This is because in our culture, copying homework has long been regarded as sharing and helping. Americans have been struggling to introduce anti-plagiarism concept to Thai students and even Thai teachers. It is also equally challenging for them to also teach students the correct way of quoting.

Different views of polychromic and monochronic societies lead to one of the most notorious cultural crashes between Thais and Americans. The number one frustration for Americans working in Thailand is that they have to struggle blindly without any clues of what is expected of them, what they can expect, what to do next, etc. Many of them were lucky enough to receive their schedules at the very last minutes. Many of them came to light afterwards. Thais are not serious with planning and scheduling. We adopt no rush attitude and see no reason to be far too detailed.

The ideas towards changes are equally problematic. Americans also felt uneasy with changes, which seem to be unreasonably normal for Thai colleagues. The situation was even worse when changes occurred without notice. Several American teachers waited for their students for more than 20 minutes to find out that the classes were canceled. For Thai schools, changes happen recurrently and everyone seems to accept them naturally.

Also relevant to the concept of time is the issue of lateness. Americans value punctuality as they tend to live by schedule. More time could be a plus point while less time means a loss. Lateness is considered a waste of somebody's time as well as a bad manner. Americans then feel very upset when students come to classes late (for any reasons) and cannot understand why Thais find it acceptable to wait or to make people wait.
National Heritage!
It might sound strange but one of the main obstacles for our cross-cultural awareness and understanding is our own culture. Fulbright Thailand do not advocate for the uproot change but wish to revisit some aspects of our Thai-ness which could be adjusted for the better. We are also well aware that Thais can be resistant to changes when it comes to culture. Our pride (and prejudice) could result in the feeling that every aspects of Thai culture are good. It is time that we honestly assess ourselves.

Face and Face Saving
We, as Thais, have been groomed in the culture in which face and face saving are given an exaggerate importance. These could be a flip side of our values on seniority/ hierarchy and result in the development of egotism and strong self-importance. As a consequence, we are prone not to admit that we lack knowledge, we misunderstand, or we make mistakes. We are then blocked from new information, knowledge, and learning. It is, therefore, very hard for many of us just to listen and open our minds for differences. Worse yet, these face and face saving concepts have influences on young generations as well.

Egotism and Self-deprecation
Relevant to face and face saving are egotism and self-deprecation. An overdose of both could blind us from neutral analysis on cross-cultural issues. Egotism exaggerates a sense of self-importance and, therefore, makes us endorse our culture as standard culture. Those different from ours are wrong. On the opposite side, many Thais have strong self-deprecation and tend to undervalue our own culture in comparing with others particularly the western one. This could result in parrot-like copying of culture that might not fit in our context.

Măn-sài (หมั่นไส้) and Kreng-jai (เกรงใจ)
Equally problematic are our peculiar feeling of măn-sài and kreng-jai which do not exist in English. In Thai, the two words carry both positive and negative feelings depending on the contexts and the speakers. Positively, măn sài is a loving way of teasing someone because the person does something different in a adorable way or exaggeratedly say something good about oneself. Negatively, the word carries senses of jealousy, dislike, annoyance, or irritation on someone because the person behaves ostentatiously or ridiculously or is better at something.

Kreng-jai, in a positive way, makes us do or say something against our true feeling because we care for the other's feeling or think of all the trouble someone might have to go through for us. In a negative sense, we also go or say against our own will simply because the person is at the upper hierarchical level, or we do not want to look bad in others' eyes, or we are trapped by emotional blackmail. All in all, both măn-sài and kreng-jai, in their negative aspects, limit our learning experiences, mislead our cross-cultural interpretations, handicap our critical thinking skills, and hinder our own genuine thinking/expressions.
Universal Sins
Despite the increasing number of people with international experiences (e.g. study abroad, exchanges, employment, and travel), many in the whole wide world has not yet had direct contacts with foreigners, let alone living in different cultures. Even for those with international experiences, they might not have enough opportunities to really learn and understand cross culture. For these reasons, most of us know people of other countries through second hand sources. Such sources can have powerful influences on our perceptions, pride, and prejudice.

Furthermore, foreign movies also have strong influences on our perceptions of the particular countries. For example, most of us know Americans from Hollywood movies and have already been framed that they are Caucasians (white skin with blue eyes and blond hair), super smart, superior, rich, and have casual sexual relations. Movies, however, reflect only a glimpse of the country and mostly provide dramatized /exaggerated stories and romanticized mentality. We need to be critical when consuming foreign movies in order to avoid stereotyping and cross-cultural misunderstanding.

Language and Slangs
Our language and slangs also have negative forces. Some proverbs, jokes, and slangs contain a sense of discrimination and we have been absorbed them throughout our lives. Since our school days, we have developed a stereotype mind by linking names of countries and some dialects to inferiority. Indeed, the discrimination can be on nation, race, accent, religious, belief, gender, diet, practices... you name it. Frequent use of such language and slangs can subconsciously shape our minds towards discrimination and distorted conception.

All in all, by letting these negative forces develop, we risk ourselves to snap judgments and ethnocentrism - a sign of cross-cultural deficit.
Survival Check-list
Having dealt with cross-cultural crashes for more than decades, we could reconfirm that the crashes can never be completely cured but can be softened or even turned positively. Every single crash gives us a cross-cultural lesson though sometimes in a hard way. We just have to accept that it is not unusual to have cross-cultural pains. Americans who have been spending more than half of their lives in Thailand are still confused/ irritated with some of our Thai cultures. Likewise, a number of Thais living in the U.S. find it a challenge to adjust themselves to some of American cultures. This also includes our own selves who get confused/ irritated with some cultural traditions in our own countries.

In fact, we think a small degree of cross-cultural crashes bring about healthy relations but on conditions that those involved learn more about others as well as themselves. Our experiences also confirm that to healthily survive cross-cultural crashes, we need to cultivate three positive characteristics, namely attitude, adaptability, and a sense of humor, all of which have been emphasized among our Fulbright grantees as well as our hosts in every occasion possible.

Adaptability also means going out of our ways for a new experience/habit. Americans who are used to having solid advance plans and active schedules must learn to live and, in fact, enjoy a slower pace of life here. At the same time, Thais should learn to plan in advance, particularly for professional improvements. Remember, effective learning occurs when both sides are ready to make adjustments.

A Sense of Humor
Positive attitude and adaptability work well when backed up with a sense of humor. In recent years, we have encountered more and more cases of depression and nervous breakdown. Some cases were so serious that we had to terminate the grants. From the observations, most of the cases happened with grantees who took life very seriously and had less sense of humor than their fellow grantees. A sense of humor, though might be a gift from birth, could be nurtured. It also became one of the success factors personally and professionally in business. Particularly for cross-cultural learning, a sense of humor helps grantees see the brighter side of difficult situations, easing them of stress and keeping them sane.
Let Them Crashed, Let Us Learn!
Like ice-bergs that could move along to different ecosystems, cross-cultural learning is life-long as people are always changing and the world is always moving. New factors, new actors, and new issues keep emerging. In the recent years, for example, we have been discussed about diversity particularly gender difference and generation gaps as it has great impacts on cross-cultural understanding. The issue itself became complicated. LGBT, for example, became LGBTQ, later LGBTQQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual), and maybe LGBTQQIA...XYZ as sexual orientation vary.

In managing education exchanges, it is important that every stakeholder learn something. While constantly keeping up with the world's trends, we should also explore inside ourselves in order to be more sensitive, critical, and practical in cross-cultural management. An effective way towards being cross-cultural competent is through knowledge and experience sharing. Successes could be shared for good practices while negative experiences and failures have to be discussed with a view to preventing similar stories. Repeated cases reflect accumulated challenges that need serious attention. Although we cannot make any abrupt change, we can always adjust ourselves, making mistakes while gaining more examples, and learning through sharing.

Crash or not, we do learn and we should turn the learning into fun as well!
References
Paper presented at the forth Fulbright Internationalization Forum (FIF) on August 20, 2015 at Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University co-organized by Sasin Center for Sustainability Management (SCSM)

Rogers, Everett M., Heart, Billiam B., and Mike Yoshitaka. 'Edward T. Hall and The History of Intercultural Communication: The United States and Japan'. Keio Communication Review No. 24, 2012 available at http://estudioespanol.eu/Interkulturelles/Edward%20T%20Hall.pdf

Spencer-Oatey, H 'What is Culture? A Compilation of Quotations' Global PAD Core Concepts at Global PAD Open House. Available at hppt://go.wawick.ac.uk/globalpadintercultural

Cho, Yong Hwan (2015) Samsung Man ( Pattira Jitkasem, Trans.) Amarin How-to, Bangkok

Ibid

Station Information System (SIS), University of Southern California. 'What to Know Before You Go!!' Available at http://www2.pacific.edu/sis/culture/

Based on Fulbright Thailand's presentation series in various occasions

Smith, Jacquelyn. '10 Reasons Why Humor Is A Key To Success At Work' Available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/05/03/10-reasons-why-humor-is-a-key-to-success-at-work

Kanjananiyot, Porntip and Chaitiamwong, Chotima. 'Gen Gappers in Communication: Getting Wilder and Wilder' presented at the Second International Conference on Language and Communication on, 'Dynamism of Language and Culture in Society', organized by the National Institute of Development Administration, August 5, 2010. Available at http://www.fulbrightthai.org/ArticlesDetails.asp?id=572&type=articles

Kanjananiyot, Porntip and Chaitiamwong, Chotima. 'Managing M Exchange' paper presented at the First Fulbright Internationalization Forum (FIF), November 15, 2012 at Pullman Hotel, Bangkok. Available at http://www.fulbrightthai.org/ArticlesDetails.asp?id=775&type=articles

UCDavid LGBTQIA Resource Center Glossary. Available at http://lgbtqia.ucdavis.edu/lgbt-education/lgbtqia-glossary

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Cultures...Still Crashed! | Thailand - United States Educational Foundation (TUSEF/Fulbright Thailand)

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Published Date : Dec 27, 2017 Associate Professor Benjawan Ubonsri Chotima Chaitiamwong Thailand-United States Educational Foundation (TUSEF/Fulbright Thailand) Commented by Porntip Kanajananiyot Despite years of studies and promotion of cross-cultural understanding, cross culture remains one of the most challenging issues of the 21st century and even become much more complicated than before.