If only my campus is as pretty as this.

I often wonder why Malaysia does not practice university town like Oxford. After all, the ministries chose places far from town to build them, until the city around UM and IIUM were developed – excluding. But UKM is still far from everything, and I do mean everything, therefore, a perfect choice for university town development, no?

Students especially one from the countryside will have the experience living an urban lifestyle without troubling themselves of the safety trespassing the big cities outside. Thus, lessen the crime rate of being burglarize, raped, murdered, and what not.

Our local students and graduates can start the business premises. We do have all those successful graduates working all over the world, why not contribute to our own country? Our own university? -- those landscape designers, architects, engineers, IT professionals, and what not. Universities can be catalysts for new growth areas. That was how Oxford town were founded.

But of course, we should not compare ourselves apple to apple with those Europeans. Imagine walking inside the campus itself with worry-free thoughts, waking up to a friendly neighborhood with no monkey invasion, even the library is inviting, and the whole university is learning conducive. Our situation is far from intellectually stable to allow good mixing like in Europe.

For example, what happened if we casually let anybody cross our high security at university gates? The moment you open up, the ice cream peddler will go in singing “mat kool ... mat kool”, which to my defence is one of the many good things, but other things like the girls running away to Bangladesh with their ‘jejaka idaman’ contractor workers in no time. Well, you get the rough idea.

Give another100 years or so when Malaysian students’ mindset has matured then maybe we can have our dream university town.