SOME Republic Polytechnic (RP) second- and third-year students signed an online petition last week asking for the same treatment as the first-year students.

About 4,500 mainly first-year students were asked to stay home from 25 Jun to yesterday after one among their cohort came down with the Influenza A(H1N1) virus. They were given lessons online.

RP said it did not get the petition, signed by about 2,000 students, though it is aware of it. The school said there are no plans to make any changes.

The first-year students return to school today .

Third-year student Leow Wai Kiat, who started the petition, wrote on the website: 'We should not be going to classes just because we have lesser chance of being in contact with the Year 1 infected students. We share an equally high risk of contracting the virus, since it could be anywhere in our campus.'

Another student, who calls himself NiCoL, shared similar sentiments. He wrote in a blog entry last Wednesday : 'The problem is that RP is such an open campus that anyone could have had contact with the students ... (not) just the Year 1s.'

In an e-mail reply to The New Paper, Wai Kiat, 19, said he e-mailed the petition to RP's director of student affairs last Thursday

But RP's director of corporate communications Khng Eu Meng said the school did not receive it.

On Tuesday, RP's principal, Mr Yeo Li Pheow, sent an e-mail to staff, students and parents to explain the school's measures to fight the outbreak. He wrote that RP has been 'besieged by the media and several calls to close down RP completely'.

'We have been criticised on online forums, petitioned by some students and vilified in blogs, some accusing us that we have not acted in your best interest,' he added.

Mr Yeo said calls to shut down RP is not the answer as it begs the question: 'How long should we close down?

'The questions we have to ask are: 'Does that mean everyone has to stay home and not go out?'

'And will closing down RP for a week or two ensure that our students and staff stay at home and not go out and get infected by others elsewhere?'

Mr Yeo also said that RP's measures were in line with the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Education guidelines, and that most of the recently infected students did not catch the virus in school.

According to the MOH website, there is a total of 86 cases at RP as of yesterday.

The petition stated that RP should have followed Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP), which extended the school break by a week. School was supposed to start on Monday, but will now resume on 6 Jul.

In an e-mail reply to The New Paper's queries, NYP's spokesman said: 'This exercise is to test our preparedness to ensure that the polytechnic continues to function in the event of a deteriorating H1N1 situation in Singapore.'

The spokesman revealed that it has one case of H1N1 as of last Friday. The patient is a first-year student who got the virus from her friend, an employee at the Butter Factory club at One Fullerton.

Benita Aw Yeong & Nurul Asyikin Mohd Nasir, newsroom interns

This article was first published in The New Paper.