Questions began to surface when the SGA revealed that it had published a new version of pamphlets, in addition to the original one that was distributed during the festival. The new pamphlets were not delivered to students, but instead were kept in the SGA"s office. A notable difference in the new version of the pamphlet is the inclusion of different advertisements that did not appear in the original one. Students concluded that the reprinting was done by the SGA in an attempt to obtain more financial support from sponsors.
The SGA was also blamed for not keeping track of received funds and for being sluggish in dealing with the companies that broke their contracts. In particular, one of the sponsors refused to offer support for the festival due to its financial difficulties, but the SGA has still not shown any response. Also, exact numbers for commodities provided by the sponsors have not been identified clearly to date.
As the students" fury began to mount, SGA did issue an apology through its homepage, as well as on posters throughout campus. Their formal response to the accusations explained that the reason for publishing an additional pamphlet was to reduce the publishing expenses. It also argued that it was virtually impossible to include all ads in one pamphlet, but admitted its fault for not being transparent. The SGA admitted that it failed to recheck the contracts. However, it also added that since majority of sponsors were facing financial crisis, it was impossible to receive funds from them. In a nutshell, the SGA stressed its regret over their mismanagement of the budget and promised to fully disclose their budget to Ewhaians from now on in order to reduce future misconceptions.
quicksilve@ewha.ac.kr