In July, the Student Government Association (SGA) coordinated Inside Ewha, a consultative group to concretize students’ demands for the school that had been announced at the student general assembly.
Inside Ewha has a fivepoint agenda, focusing on improvements to Ewha’s governance and finance, living environment, public image, course registration, and human rights. The group consists of five teams, with each team dedicated to one of the five points. The teams collect evidence for the demands by holding meetings, arranging surveys of Ewha students, and researching other universities’ cases.
“The consultative body is independent of the school’s departments, enabling us to practically fulfill the demands,” SGA wrote on its official Facebook.
Starting from July, Inside Ewha has been busy preparing for the consultative meetings with the school’s departments. The government and finance improvement team is trying to make amends with the policies regarding the president, tuition committee and the university board of trustees. In order to do so, establishing a midevaluation system for the school president is included in their demands. In addition, the team is focusing on university policies to increase the student ratio on the tuition committee and university board of trustees, expand the scholarship quota, and lower tuition costs.
The living environment team is working hard to make a safer campus and expand student space. The team is trying to push the school to purchase or rent spy camera inspectors and improve the security system as there is no database on the current status of the school’s security.
The public image team, which also manages employment examination issues, aims to improve the public image of the school and increase support for students who are preparing for exams. Enforcing stricter punishments for malicious online comments and offering additional assistance for students taking national exams have also been requested.
To improve the chapel and course registration process, the course registration team is working to create a system in which students can take courses based on their interest. In order to do so, the team is urging the school to be more reflective of the course evaluation results and improve the professor evaluation system.
The human rights team will be focusing on the rights for all the students in Ewha including those with disabilities. It suggests providing a barrierfree studying environment, which includes more facilities for students with disabilities. Increasing the student ratio in the newly established Center for Human Rights committee was also included in their demands.
Each Inside Ewha team met with the school department starting from Aug. 31. Although each team’s first consultative meetings ended, as observers were not permitted and for further discussion, Inside Ewha is arranging its second consultative meeting.