Recently, there has been negative public opinion among students about the Student Council’s performance of preparing the Membership Training (MT) and the school jacket. While the students are greatly interested to see how the Student Council will handle these affairs, the issues of the Student Council’s responsibility, operating skills, and its internal communication is emerging to the student body.
The Student Council is an organization that represents the student body. Their role is to increase the quality of student life, run student activities, and advocate their voices for the school. Therefore, it is essential that the Student Council carefully listens to the students’ opinions to understand what the students need and want. As a result, under the wise governance of the President and Vice President, there should be continuous communication with the students and sufficient responsibility as being part of the Student Council.
The 2018 Spring Membership Training (MT) that was proceeded and hosted by the Student Council from March 16 to 17 has been stirring trouble due to the Student Council’s unresponsive attitude toward publicizing the budget breakdown. Undoubtedly, the Student Council is responsible for transparently bringing the budget breakdown to the student body because the Membership Training (MT) itself is funded publicly by the student body. Even though several voices in the student body has been requesting for a budget resolution, the President of the Student Council has not taken any visible action. Due to the President's instructions, which were to not put any focus on the receipt management, receipts were not properly managed, leading to an unclear total cost of use and ambiguous budget details. This situation only amplifies the student body’s suspicion.
The selection of the school jacket has also been a subject of controversy since March 31. Since George Mason University Korea consists of a small student body, if there are not enough student demands for the school jacket, producing it is impossible. For this reason, the Student Council needs active participation from the student body, and certainly, increasing the demand to the fullest to produce the school jackets is the Student Council’s role. However, in this semester’s process of selecting the school jacket, the Student Council dogmatically decided to follow the school’s color, green. Upon this decision, although many Freshman students suggested a public vote for the color selection, the opinions were neglected. Afterwards, the Student Council initiated a student demand survey, giving students several design layouts. Students, who expressed their opinions and did not receive any immediate measures to reflect their needs, indicated their discontent as of holding off their purchase, leading to a noticeably less demand than last semester. Hereafter, the Student Council changed the design and the color to match the students’ wants and proceeded a re-vote.
Of course, the Membership Training (MT) ended in a success, and there are positive points to how the Student Council was making an effort to listen to the students’ needs. Nonetheless, at this point, students carry doubt of the Student Council’s responsibility which entails concern and passion for student affairs. Furthermore, there are constant problems being brought up to the surface of the communication that was supposed to be initiated and supervised by the President and Vice President to be able to carry out student demands.
The Student Council is an organization that should identify what are the needs of the students and listen to those needs to meet them as much as possible. If a critical voice about the Student Council’s performance has emerged, it is the President’s responsibility to put on an attitude that shows his desire to fix the situation and gain support and trust from the student body, not ignoring it. At the same time, the student body should recognize the Student Council as a representing organization for students and actively bring their attention and opinions to Student Council activities. At this point in time, the Public Student Council meeting is an appropriate and positive starting point for the Student Council and the student body to actively interact. By building a foundation of increasing student participation and attention, The Voice wishes to see the Student Council change its ways of carrying out its works and become a more responsible student organization in its approaches to communication with the student body.
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