RGS brouhaha: Comment on ‘ordinary Singaporean’ was off-the-record, not made by official spokesperson, school says

SINGAPORE — Raffles Girls’ School (RGS) has sought to clear the air over a recent comment made by one of its staff members about the school’s relocation, which has since drawn widespread criticism online.

On Tuesday (Oct 22), The New Paper published a report about the school completing the relocation of its campus from its old premises on Anderson Road, to a bigger location at 2 Braddell Rise.

The school completed the move on Monday, and it is now connected to Raffles Institution by an overhead pedestrian bridge.

In its report, The New Paper quoted “an RGS spokesman” as saying that the move “away from the luxurious condominiums in Orchard Road will allow our girls to reach out more to the ordinary Singaporean".

However, in response to queries from TODAY, the school’s director of communications and partnership said that the staff member quoted was not the school’s spokesperson.

“We would like to clarify that The New Paper’s report had referenced an informal conversation with a staff member who was not the school’s spokesperson,” Ms Lee Su Yin said on Friday.

She added that the staff member had never “identified himself as such to the reporter”.

“In his off-the-record comments to the reporter, he had intended to convey that the move would allow students to engage more deeply with the local community, given the school’s proximity to the Braddell area,” she said.

The New Paper has disputed this.

In response to TODAY's queries, the paper's editor Lim Han Ming said: "Our reporter spoke to the RGS staff, who confirmed the quote and asked for it to be attributed to an RGS spokesman."

The quote in The New Paper's report has drawn ire online since it was published, with many saying that the choice of words smacked of elitism.