Thank God for our mahasiswa!

Last night after dinner and right before heading off to watch a midnight film with my wife (David Fincher's “Gone Girl” is pretty good!), I decided to drive over to Universiti Malaya.

As most would know, there is a group of students who have decided to “Occupy UM” by setting up tents in the small field by the front entrance in protest of the actions taken against the UM8.

The UM8 are student leaders who were recently fined and suspended by the university for trying to go ahead with a talk they had organised with Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.

The talk was initially approved but the approval was withdrawn at the last minute. Anwar came anyway, and the students pushed their way into the university grounds.

I went for two reasons. The first: given the fact that I am a journalist, I wanted to go the ground and witness myself the happenings going on there.

The second reason is because I feel like I have a certain solidarity with students who are determined and confident enough to stand up for what they believe in.

It is not because I was a student activist back in university. Far from it. I was actually quite apathetic about politics, economy and social issues.

My undergraduate days were in the late 1990s and I was just interested in my girlfriend(s?), watching movies, listening to music and just always trying to have a good time with friends.

In 1998, when the big riots happened in Kuala Lumpur over Anwar's sacking and arrest, I was in the heart of it but I couldn't care less about it at that time.

I was in the heart of it because I had just sent my then-girlfriend to the Puduraya bus station to catch her bus back to her hometown and suddenly I was stuck in a massive traffic jam.

I was in my car at the traffic light near Dataran Merdeka and people were running all around me and suddenly there were rubbish bins being set on fire.

I grumbled to myself that these people were creating problems for me to drive in the city. I was just living in a little bubble of a life. I was relieved that I wasn't stuck there for very long.

It wasn't until a few years later that I realised, after deciding to pursue a career as a journalist, that so many things could affect me, my countrymen and my future generations.

So back to my visit to the site of “Occupy UM”. I spoke to some students who were sitting next to several collapsed tents and told them that exact story about my younger apathetic days.

I told them that it was good for students to be aware of what is going on around them, of the importance of thinking critically and most importantly, about giving a damn.

They smiled appreciatively (or wondering when this stuck-in-the-grunge-era fool is going to stop blabbering!) and told me how city council officers demolished their tents.

But the message here it not about whether I agree or disagree with their beliefs and what they are standing up for. What matters is that they actually give a damn.

And that evening, I left the front gate of Universiti Malaya, our country’s oldest university, with pride and hope that maybe the next generation of Malaysians will be okay after all. – December 12, 2014.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.