New Undergraduate System to Settle Down
New Undergraduate System to Settle Down
  • Reporter Kim Su-min
  • 승인 2018.03.28 13:01
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▲Office of Mueunjae Undergraduate Studies
▲Office of Mueunjae Undergraduate Studies

This year, every freshman entered POSTECH without a major. Therefore, department activities became downsized and class activities are having bigger and bigger role. All freshmen are not allowed to attend general meetings and the MTs of each department. Some departments cancelled MT because of low participation and general meetings of all departments progressed on a lower scale than usual. On the other hand, the number of students participating in class activities is the same or more compared with other years. Under these circumstances, students have begun to question about the necessity of the Class Representative Association (CRA) and why the Office of the Mueunjae Undergraduate Studies decided to prevent freshmen from attending department activities.
The Postech Times interviewed Hwang Byoeng-suk (Director, Office of Mueunjae Undergraduate Studies).

 

Q. Why all freshmen are not allowed to attend general meetings and MTs? Is it a different situation from that of the previous Undeclared Students?
Our purpose was to remove department meetings and encourage freshmen to meet various friends in their class. Accordingly, attending those department activities would be a burden for freshmen and it would be hard for them to consider and explore other departments. This idea is based on the experiences of previous Undeclared Students. Student presidents, administrators and professors of whole departments agreed with this idea. The reasoning is; if a freshman attends those kind of activities, they have to pass up an opportunity to go to other departments and my team does not want that kind of situation. We would recommend freshmen to attend other department activities such as briefing sessions. For those activities, freshmen can easily attend.

 

Q. Freshmen from this year do not belong to any student council. How can they voice their opinions? Have you thought about the need of the CRA?
The Undergraduate Association (UA) would organize tentatively named Mueunjae Student Association (MSA). The MSA would be under the influence of the UA. Though it is the idea of the UA, we would support the organizing of and MSA’s activities. In my personal opinion, I think the president of the MSA would have a similar status with the student presidents of the various departments. Since freshmen without a major can voice their opinions through the MSA, we have not considered the need for a CRA.

 

Q. While department activities get financial support from each department, classes manage their activities only on their own. Do you have any plan to support classes?
The stance of my team is that pre-existing classes are unofficial organizations. Besides, students in the upper grades are out of our team, so we do not have any right to control them nor a duty to support them. I think there can be financial support for some activities in which many students belonging to Mueunjae Undergraduate Studies participate in. However, there is a budget problem. While departments have remaining research funds from professors in addition to the budget from the university, we only have the latter. The budget for our team is only enough for supporting activities in MUSU101 and MUSU102.

This is the first year of a rapid change. Of course, there can be problems since we are in the initial phase. Nevertheless, there should not be any students suffering losses. The university will make a strong effort to settle this new system and attempt to balance financial support for students.