Division of International Studies

Freyah Sumin KimDivision of International Studies.
Freyah Sumin KimDivision of International Studies.

 

EWHA Womens University has been well known for its exterior looks and its beautiful view, and I was glad to be able to enjoy this campus during my university life. However, this merit that has given my eyes a blissful time, was also in some manner a demerit when considering the factor that it also attracted innumerable number of tourists. At first, I was proud to know that the school that I attend to had gathered a lot of interest from foreigners. But this thought changed over the course of incidents that I went through, and created a reason for me to go against the idea of too many tourists allowed on EWHA campus. 

The reasons why I am against it are firstly, the noises and crowdedness creating uneducational surroundings, disruption to the environment, and the tourists’ inviting themselves to the restricted areas creating uneasy sentiments to the EWHA students.

To begin with, the tourists that are roaming around the campus sometimes create too much noise than that is to be tolerated. I even noticed that some tourists frequently come in groups by renting a whole bus and there were also teenage students who have come to visit the campus. This would not have been a problem if only they acted like civilized beings touring a place where we call our “School.” School should be a place that offers educational opportunities and knowledge, however, after attending the few months after getting into EWHA, I felt that the noise created in the ECC’s exterior can also be bothersome for the students who want to focus on their class. 

For example, when I was listening to the College English lecture held in the B2 of ECC, I heard a group of tourists go by right to us in the exterior of the building, and it was yet too loud despite the fact that there is a whole wall that stands between us. To add to that, I was not even sitting by the window, where the noise would have been the most disturbing, but rather on the furthest seat from the source of the noise, so this must have been really distracting to other students as well. 

Next, the litter that the tourists trashes on streets and roads disrupts EWHA campus’s environment. It is of course not only the fault of the tourists who bear responsibility to the litters on the grounds of the campus, however it is a fact that they are creating unnecessary trashes, and they are also frequently and randomly discarding litters on the street despite the fact that there are trash bins inside the building. But to think this on the behalf of the tourists, the school did not install sufficient amount of trash bins on the outside of the building on campus. It would be better for all students studying on EWHA for the school to install more trash bins and manage them neatly.

Finally, tourists are not keeping the notification made by the school about restraining themselves from entering the restricted areas. The reason why the school designates a few places as restricted areas for tourists is because it can invade students’ rights to be protected from having their rights to be educated infringed. The restricted places are the sections of buildings that students study in and also the dormitories are strictly refraining the tourists’ entering. 

However, these restrictions are not being well kept. For example, I am currently living in EHOUSE, and I often see tourists who hiked all the way up to the dormitories, and most of those tourists read the sign saying that the dormitories does not allow tourists from entering, they simply ignore the sign and ride the elevator to the dormitory section. Furthermore, I have seen group of tourists walking around the restricted sections of ECC, and their camera shutter sounds and talking sound is really disturbing because for us, that place is an ordinary place that we study in. Therefore, it is crucial for the school to seek ways to more efficiently find ways to prevent these frequent invasions of the tourists.

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