They caught another one. This one is smart. Young as he is, he is 26. Bright as he is, he is a student in the graduating class of 2020. He was student council President from 2017 to 2018. The accolades go on.
He is the “first batch of 20 Singapore Sports School student-athletes on the through-train Republic Polytechnic-Singapore Sports School Diploma in Sports and Leisure Management programme.”
Mind you, he “represented Singapore at the 2009 Asian Youth Games held here and won a silver and a bronze in bowling events.”
Brandon Lee has not only the academic grades, but he is also a great sportsman representing our little red dot. And let’s not forget too that he’s someone’s son, just to add a minor detail to the list of achievement any parent would be proud of.
Well, he is featured today because he will be returning on Oct 22 to court to answer to multiple charges in respect of taking upskirt videos of women and filming them showering on campus.
Yale-NUS spokesman Prof Joanne Roberts said: “Brandon Lee..., a student at Yale-NUS College, has been charged in court with insulting the modesty of a fellow student. He was suspended the day after the college was notified about the incident in March 2019.”
It reports that “Lee allegedly used a smartphone between August 2017 and March 3 this year to film at least four women, and faces 24 counts of intruding into a woman’s privacy to insult her modesty.”
“Lee is alleged to have used his iPhone to film women showering in the dormitory by placing the phone above the cubicle doors. The upskirt offences took place in classrooms.”
Lesson? Just two.
My first lesson is about smarts.
Brandon is smart, even atheletic and I guess charismatic to be able to secure the student council President ticket for two years.
And with the recent media frenzy over a NUS student being sentenced to probation for similar offences with one consideration being his potential to excel academically, a lot of people out there are given this impression that if you have good grades, academically inclined, you will get lighter sentences.
Although the AGC had appealed against the sentence, it is one appeal that our law minister personally agreed with in a FB post.
So, what smarts has to do with it? Is this some sort of elitist discrimination?
Just like if someone is the CEO of a major corporation or a colonel in the Army, should he get a pass on misdemeanor committed because of his proven track record in the past and his bright career prospect in the future while, say, cleaners or hawkers, for example, because they are less educated and some are barely making ends meet, have to bear the full brunt of the law?
Well, let’s just say that we should give our justice system more credit.
If you bother to read the reams of judgment on each case adjudicated, though not perfect, they are essentially facts- and principles-centered justifications by most judges who conscientiously comb through the evidence and facts submitted.
The sentencing principles are well established and they involve balancing these four considerations: retribution, deterrence, prevention and rehabilitation.
But I will not go further than that. You can read it up, and you can google that seminal drink-driving case named “Major Stansilas Fabian Kester” @ para 94 onwards to understand more.
My point however is about smarts. Or, putting it another way, it is about natural stupidity, that is, smart people doing the most stupid thing.
Now, why do we even think that the smarter the person is the less prone he is to committing crime as compared to less smart or less distinguished people in society?
It is a troubling correlation (between smarts and honesty or being crime-free) that has stuck in our mind because of how they tend to get all the attention while common folks get almost none of it.
And with a little twist of the advice Peter Parker got from his uncle, I would say that, with more attention comes more responsibility, or better still, more expectation. That is how uncritical the society can get when the rule of thumb logic is this, if you are up there, with smarts, wealth and status, you ought to be much more exemplary, leading in morals, and showing the way for all to follow. That is the default-setting expectation, very much unthinking.
Well, of all the fairy tales we read to our children, that is one fairy tale that we love to believe, but real life can’t be more further from it.
After all said, we should be an idealist or an realist when the time calls for it. And on smarts, on expectation, and on the fairy tales we hold on to, we should be a realist.
The common denominator for all of us, whether smart or not, is our vulnerability to mistakes, to fall and stumbles. In fact, the higher up there you are, whether by merit or luck, the more vulnerable you are to temptations.
And you would be no smarter than the common folk, even much dumber, if you think for a moment that by being up there, you are immune to temptations and deception. Come to think of it, there is a saying that for people who think that way, they can’t be deceived by others, because they themselves do a better job at it.
For my second lesson, it is about Brandon being someone’s son. I know I may be accused of being insensitive to the victim since she too is someone’s daughter. But let me say that my sympathies are not with what he had done. He has to face it, and if found guilty, pays it.
My sympathies are however with how collective disapproval and/or social condemnation can get out of hand and risk compounding the effect of punishment very much equivalent to what is known as double jeopardy, that is, serving time in prison and serving it out of prison. The latter is normally more punishing than the former to the extent that a life willing to reform has to struggle with much social deformation and pressure that can push him or her to cross the mortality line.
Sometimes, our hate is over-brewed, and it spills over into the extreme, without considering that at times, given the same circumstances, we ourselves may be equally vulnerable and fallible.
Every society will do well to always balance mercy and justice, humanity and penalty, forgiveness and accountability, and rehabilitation and prevention. Such is a society that is mature and compassionate. Alas, such is a society that is hopeful, fair and truly balanced, and such balance is the ideal we should always strive for.
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