This year, a single candidate, <All-together>, boldly stepped up for the Student Union election. The school was already in a dire need for a student union that would work assiduously to improve the students’ lives on campus. The seat for the Student Union has been absent for quite some time, as last year exceptionally lacked a student union candidate that would voice the student’s needs. However, students still had questions of how capable this year’s candidate would be in performing the role as Student Union. The students voiced some of their concerns during the Election Debate that was held in March 21st at Songdo International Campus and during the Sinchon Campus Election Debate in March 24th.
54th Student Union Candidate, <All-together>
- Presidential candidate: Kang Ki-baek (Senior, Dept. of Social Welfare)
- Vice presidential candidate: Yang Hye-seon (Junior, Dept. of Psychology)
<All-together>’s pledges focuses on demanding and restoring students’ education, living, dwelling, and cultural rights. The student union candidate also asserted that they would ensure the rights for minorities at Yonsei University and improve the quality of the RC education provided in Songdo.
Education Rights
To restore education rights for Yonsei University students, <All-together> asserted that they would alleviate the repeated course limitation, demand absolute grading for common curriculum courses, improve the mileage course registration system, and ensure course withdrawal for seasonal sessions. They also emphasized the importance in working with the Tuition Review Committee for the reduction of the costly tuition fee that many students struggle to pay. Here are some of the other pledges that fell under the category of ensuring education rights:
- Requesting for University self-evaluation results report
- Improving course evaluation
- Providing e-learning for students during their military services
Living Rights
To improve students’ lives on campus, some of the pledges <All-together> has come up with are:
- To prevent coop reduction
- To secure space on campus for student use
- To install a cooperative purchase system for self-boarding students, that allows students to purchase food at a cheaper price
- To provide a campus map
Dwelling Rights
The limited space availability in dormitories, as well as their high prices, has always been an issue for students. <All-together> has promised to address these issues mainly by:
- Revealing and lowering the cost standard for private dormitories
- Expanding the scope of dormitory scholarships to include more students in need
- Upgrading the dwelling support servince, “Jib-bosaem,”
Cultural Rights
Some of the pledges that <All-together> has come up with hopes to improve our community by:
- Showing transparency in finance from autonomous student organization including the Student Union
- Forming Daedongjae into an event that everyone could enjoy
- Delivering students’ opinions through office hours with the President of Yonsei
- Clarifying smoking areas
RC Education
<All together> hopes to improve the residential college education through:
- Activating the international campus student representative committee
- Improving use bylaws and penalty criteria for Songdo Dormitories
- Normalizing international campus bus operation
Mentioned above are only some of the pledges that this candidate has mentioned. <All-together> also emphasized the importance of addressing the needs of minorities and thus asserted that they would install policies to support the low-income students on campus, ensure the safety and convenience of disabled students, provide vegetarian meals in the cafeteria for vegetarians/ vegans, and welcome foreign students as part of the Yonsei community. However, their policies for minorities were very controversial during the election debate, as their policies did not include women or the members of the LGBTQ community. In response to this controversy, the president of <All-together> replied that they did not mean to exclude any student members, but tried to differentiate their roles with those of the Female Student’s Union. <All-together> expressed that they fully intend to collaborate with the Female Student’s Union to address the issues that women and sexual minorities face. The Election Debate remained heated as some questioned the possibility of some of their pledges becoming realized. However, <All-together> stated their opinion that even though some pledges may be difficult to be actualized in the near future, it is important to consistently voice the students’ needs until it is heard by school.
Kim Yeon-seung, editor-in-chief
Yeonseungkim@yonsei.ac.kr
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