From Sep. 24 to 27, the Ewha Student Government Association (SGA) and student councils from each colleges and student committees held “I Wish” week as a collective action. The main theme of the events of this year’s action was mainly on the claims for school’s response to the last semester’s demands: Tutition cuts, student welfare improvement, and course registration. The SGA always seems to have faithfully worked as student representatives in taking the lead to keep their election promises. Nevertheless most resolutions fail to pass, and most of the time the SGA is normally busy being denounced by public outcries.
Considering the importance of the requirements, the student body is doing a good job on constantly voicing the students’ demands. However, it seems that every year as the members of the SGA refresh, it is hard to expect cumulative effects although the issue has been going on for a long time. For students it may seem that the SGAs are talking about the same subject repetitively, thus it creates fatigue and discredit. For example, the tutition cut demand has been a hot issue for a while, and SGAs still consecutively put the same campaign pledge year after year. In result, the typical pattern that SGAs follow has become like this: Raise demands in the first semester, and then in the latter take action with other student bodies for not providing instant alternatives, claiming that “this is the time to speak against the school,” and then retire.
Concerning that the SGA’s term lasts for only two semesters, and business or demands with such scale takes up a long time, breaking down the authority into divisions may be a smart move in terms of improving efficiency and consistency in communcation. The SGA can arrange and support each business or claims to a certain student body and concentrate on prominent and more appropriate matters like establishing state or student authority. This way the business and demanding can continue on even after the current SGA term is over without repeating the cycle over again.
As an extention lead, the decision-making processes need improvement as well. Every year, the members of the SGA change and along with this everything starting from strategy, communicators, and system goes through a big alteration. So when a new party is elected and the entire member is replaced, the same topics that are brought up every year, like campus master plans, make little headway and start again from scratch.
Having committees or organizations seperately focusing on a business or demand is important, but in order to break the repetitive and inefficient cycle, restructuring the fundamental opinion-collecting or implementing structure to have a more constant and long-term system is also crucial to create a smooth transition between the SGAs and thus make a progress.
As the role of SGAs on campus is becoming more important, it is time for them to suggest a radical departure from what they have been doing. SGAs should choose an area of concentration and lead the student body into a more pragmatic and productive direction.
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