NUS book-dumping incident: Students also told to destroy DVDs of classic films

New Paper

28-05-2025

Student associates working at the Yale-NUS College Library were told by staff to destroy more than 100 DVDs in April, weeks leading up to the college's closure.
One student associate who requested anonymity said she "felt very pained and sad" when she was asked to destroy the DVDs on April 24 and 25. She told The Straits Times she was given verbal instructions to use a penknife to make four deep cuts on every disc to ensure they could not be read.
Most of the DVDs she was tasked to destroy were films, including DVDs from The Criterion Collection, an American company that restores and distributes important classic and contemporary films. Criterion issues are coveted and collected by film buffs because they are usually packaged with extra materials such as director interviews and critical essays.
She said: "A lot of them were still in good condition and they could have definitely found a new home. I wasn't very comfortable with the scratching task too."
Another student associate said she was given a cart of at least a hundred DVDs in early April and was tasked to scratch them with a penknife. She said: "I was a bit fed up about the whole thing, to be honest, and was very reluctant to contribute my time to these efforts."
Associate Professor Natalie Pang, university librarian, National University of Singapore (NUS), told ST: "The rehoming of audiovisual collections is subject to different considerations from that of books. Audiovisual materials are governed by licensing and copyright regulations, which restrict redistribution. We have integrated the DVDs we need into our collection. The DVDs which we were unable to rehome were those which could not be redistributed."
She did not comment on how many DVDs were destroyed.
A student associate who worked at the Yale-NUS College Library shared a photograph she took of the scratches she was instructed to make on DVDs with a penknife. PHOTO: ST READER
Associate Professor Andrew Hui, founding faculty member at Yale-NUS College, told ST it was "gut-wrenching" to hear about the order to scratch the DVDs. In 2012, the literature professor had personally requested films in the Criterion Collection to be made available in the library as academic resources.
He said: "As streaming platforms are notoriously unstable, licensing rights shift and digital catalogues are curated by commercial algorithms rather than scholarly values, physical media ensures long-term access to film that shape our collective memory."
Prof Hui, who was also head of studies for literature at Yale-NUS, called the move "a slow-motion act of cultural amnesia". "In a century where the past can vanish with a click, to destroy them - and to order undergraduates to do so (when they should be watching and learning from them) - is, for a humanist like me, a tiny but terrible act against art."
A former Yale-NUS librarian, who spoke to ST on condition of anonymity, estimated that the library had a collection of around 1,600 to 2,000 DVDs.
This revelation comes after NUS apologised on May 21 for an "operational lapse" which led to the destruction of 500 physical books.
NUS had originally planned to dispose of 9,000 books, but halted the process for the remaining 8,500 books after photos and videos of employees from a recycling company loading books onto a truck circulated online on May 20. It drew sharp criticism from alumni and members of the public who called the disposal wasteful and distressing.
Photos and videos of a recycling company loading the books onto a truck on May 20 were shared on social media, drawing criticism from alumni who called the disposal wasteful and distressing. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MS LEE JIAYING
NUS will now be organising a giveaway on campus for the remaining 8,500 books from May 28 to June 9.
Speaking to the media on May 21, Prof Pang said the university will introduce a new process for excess books. Under the new process, NUS will reach out "more extensively" to faculty and other academic libraries, and will hold book adoption fairs for its students and alumni, as well as the public.
The incident comes after the final weeks of Yale-NUS College's existence, as its last cohort graduated on May 14. The liberal arts institution, founded in 2011 through a partnership between Yale University and NUS, is being closed following an announcement in 2021 of its merger with NUS' University Scholars Programme.