President Kim speaking up in the Student Representative Meeting. Photographed by Lee Che Yeon

By Lee Che Yeon (c903901@korea.ac.kr)
 

On September 2, a Temporary Student Representative Meeting was held at the 4.18 Memorial Hall, with the single agenda of “the collective action of student representatives regarding the democratic election of the school president.” The Yiman-Chongchong Task Force (TF) team has spent five months to change the previous system yet faced unhelpful attitude of the school. As a result, a number of joint actions have been suggested and approved with 48 for, zero against and five abstaining.

Kim Tae Gu (’12, Business Administration), the President of Korea University Student Union (KUSU), stated that the tuition paid by the students take up considerable portion of the total budget in KU and therefore they have the right to be seen as an autonomous body, rather than a passive society that only takes actions accordingly to the decisions of the school. Kim emphasized, “Students, as one of the members of KU community, have their rights to ask the school for what they want.”

KUSU and the Yiman-Chongchong TF team prepared three claims including “participation of students in the Committee for Revising Regulations of Presidential Elections in KU.” Kim explained that this inclusion will be the starting point for all the changes that should be made in the election process. For the future strategies, Kim said that he is planning to start a hunger strike in the main gate of KU to effectively insist on the democratic election process of KU’s president. Other methods of collective action have been discussed as well, and the meeting ended at 7:40 P.M.