Commenting on Professor Tommy Koh's strongly-worded comments that Singapore is a First World country with Third World people, SMU Dean of Students and Professor of Sociology (Practice) Paulin Straughan said, "We can't really have a First World country with Third World behaviour. It's the community that defines the country." Prof Straughan explained how bad behaviour in certain situations could be explained by unclear social norms, and noted that problems of bad behaviour were also common in other densely populated cities, where the people around one another tend to turn into "faceless entities".