In November 2019, the vote for the student president of University of Seoul (UOS) was canceled because there were no candidates. Therefore, an acting president was elected at that time. Also, the formal Student Council of UOS and of each department were newly launched through by-elections held from May 6 to 8, 2020 online. The five units ran for the by-elections; the Student Council, the college of public affairs and economics, the college of business administration, the college of engineering, and the college of natural science. As a result of the election, all single candidates in five units won the votes. Looking back at the election progress, However, the situation turned out unusually as it was decided that the non-face-to-face classes will be carried out for the first semester of 2020 due to COVID-19, hampering the Student Council from carrying out its works. The UOS Times interviewed the president of the Student Council (Palette), Kim Sung-joong (Dept. of Urban Sociology, ’18), to check if any changes were made to the Student Council's commitments due to COVID-19 and to get information about the perceived problems of the online election.
Q. What were the commitments of the Student Council Palette?
A. There were four main commitments of Palette: education, welfare, safety, and school image enhancement.
First is education. The educational rights of students have been greatly infringed because of COVID-19. Therefore, we selected a commitment to promote the educational rights of the students. Second is welfare. As non-face-to-face classes are running, students cannot enjoy their campus life. Thus, if face-to-face classes are held in the second semester, we will pursue various welfare projects to invigorate the campus during the semester. The third is safety. The areas where students live, outside the campus, are quite dangerous. Since we cannot arbitrarily control the areas outside the campus, we are trying to make it safe in connection with Dongdaemun Police Station and Dongdaemun-gu Office. Lastly, we are focusing to improve the image of UOS. We want the applicants who apply for UOS to have a sense of pride in our school. Being proud of their school will lead to a basic mindset for the school’s development with sustainable competitiveness.
Q. Are there any changes in the Student Council's commitments or matters that are subject to change?
A. Many welfare commitments are difficult to carry out if face-to-face classes do not proceed. We could not open the "Si-dokkaebi Night Market" or Halloween Events. Also, there will be difficulties in the second semester's Autumn Festival, which lots of students are expecting the most. In this case, the festival and its performances will likely take place online or through giveaway events.
Q. Are there any scheduled activities of the Student Council?
A. We will strive to promote the educational rights of students.
Also, we are working to officially introduce online lectures by 2021. The lack of infrastructure was revealed as a problem while conducting non-face-to-face classes due to COVID-19. However, UOS didn’t submit its online lecture plan for the next semester to the Ministry of Education. Therefore, the Student Council will make it a requirement to introduce the “blended” classes of face-to-face and non-face-to-face classes in the second semester. Also, we will make efforts to institute online classes that students want for next year.
Additionally, if face-to-face classes are held in the second semester, we will make the campus life more meaningful through events like “Si-dokkaebi Night Market”, Autumn Festivals, Halloween Events, and Campus-Week Snack.
Q. Are there any changes to scheduled activities?
A. As we were elected through the by-election, we organized the activities’ plan by predicting the influence of COVID-19. We will likely conduct scheduled activities after confirming whether face-to-face contact becomes possible in the second semester.
Q. What were the difficulties of the election campaigns?
A. With the current situation, there were no special campaign rules. The candidates couldn’t campaign on their own social media account. We had to campaign through an election-only account. The students commented that they felt sorry they couldn’t see much of the commitments of the Council for the election. Since the election-only account was newly formed, it was difficult to expose it frequently. To solve the problem, a method of sending text messages to all undergraduates was proposed as a way to promote the election, but unfortunately, the candidates couldn’t do that.
Q. What do you think are the difficulties that voters would have felt?
A. First of all, the by-election has not been promoted enough. During the semester when face-to-face classes are held, voters could see the election going on as they see the candidates’ campaign and placards hanging on campus. However, it was impossible to play a promotional video clip during online classes, and the candidates could not text students individually. Secondly, there would be a matter of the election system. Voters were texted a link to cast ballots for the online election. However, many voters are dissatisfied with texting for election to students worrying that would leak their personal information. We are sure that it will not be leaked. Nevertheless, many students didn’t like the texting.
As he pointed out, according to the comments from our voter interviewees, one mentioned the poor promotion of candidates' commitments was a problem.
The president said, "Undergraduates and freshmen have experienced many inconveniences due to non-face-to-face classes. I am sure that the UOS students could endure these difficult times. The Student Council will do our best to deal with every situation that could happen in the second semester.”
Inevitable circumstances could arise, and we might have to hold online elections again in the future. By using this online election experience as a key to resolving problems, such as insufficient publicity and concerns of personal information leakage, the next online election will be more promising.
Hwang Yun-seon