Generations of students absorbed this lesson so thoroughly that most never tested it. The ones who did learned what the penalty looked like. I was one of them.
In April 2010, I was a second-year political science student at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Three coursemates and I travelled to Hulu Selangor for the by-election to observe campaign activities.
It was the kind of field exercise that would have been encouraged in any university system that valued independent inquiry.
Instead, it earned the four of us, the...