From March 11 to 15, the Student Council collected student fees in front of the Student Hall. Many students may wonder: on what purposes are student fees being used? To put it simply, student fees are not for others, but for you. The money is spent on things such as supporting expenses for various events, clubs and students’ welfare. A lot of other things we all take for granted come through the Student Council’s hands.

The Student Council is steadily making efforts to encourage students to pay student fees by addressing student population in various meetings beginning in January. However, this year, less than 40 percent of students in our university paid student fees according to the Student Council, Chungchoon Story. Compared with other schools like the Yonsei University and the Korea University, where the payment rate soars up to over 80 percent, this figure shows that the level of UOS student participation in paying student fees is very low.

Facing this problem, the President of the Student Council, Ko Woo-suk believes that students’ great distrust in the Student Council has caused such low participation rate. According to the survey results presented by the Student Council, many students have doubts whether their money is properly used. Even when they pay student fees for good purposes, they do not know how their money is being used. Some students are even worried, lest student fees are secretly being used for the personal needs of the Student Council members.

To solve this problem, the Student Council has suggested some alternatives. First, the Student Council is to get thoroughly inspected and spell out the budget. To make this possible, an audit committee has recently been created to report the auditing results and the members of the Student Council will compare the receipts against the account books. Second, the Student Council has shown their work outside the office in April. President Ko said, “We, the Student Council members, want to communicate with students by working outside the office. We will show everything we do to recover and strengthen the students’ belief in us.”

Since there is no set period for paying student fees, you can pay them to the Student Council in person at your convenience. A little help and attention from students can snowball and make big changes to your campus life.