Two and a half years have passed after the establishment of the Scranton Honors Program (SHP) of the Scranton College. However, the students of the SHP still do not have an official student council to represent them.
The SHP is where students major in incorporated studies, which mean all students in SHP take on double majors. The SHP is also an open major division which accepts 40 freshmen students in March and 100 additional sophomore students in April through intense interviews.
Such systems clash with the school policy, which restricts double majoring students from voting for more than one student council, and different election schedules.
The election term assigned by the Student Government Association is held in November every year, but SHP’s position is that it has to tie-up the election until the sophomore admission in order to make a fair election.
For the first year of its establishment, the SHP started off without a student council. However, as it entered its second year and accepted additional sophomores in April 2009, the SHP found that it needed a student body.
With the selected representatives, the SHP conducted many events to strengthen team spirit among the double-majoring students. However, without an official student council, SHP has faced many restrictions in planning school activities. For example, only student body members can apply for rooms through the Ewha homepage. “After requesting for a room, we have to call additionally and prove ourselves that we are members of the student council,” said Hong Yea-bin, the representative of SHP.
Another problem is that the student council of SHP cannot collect student fee from students at the beginning of the year. “We do plan our activities and events with student’s private expense and help by the administrative office of the Scranton College,” said Hong.
SHP demands that because SHP is the only college that registers double-majoring students as its official members, there need to be exceptional regulations to solve the unique problems that arise in SHP.
In response to such demands, the Student Government Association has pointed out a misunderstanding between the two representatives, and has replied to go over the unique case of SHP. The Student Government Association has again said that it is open to all requests made by SHP, and will try to come up with realistic solutions to the problems before the next election in November.