The third undergraduate conference of the board of representatives was held on Sep. 2 in POSTECH Information Research Laboratory 122. This conference was held for the first time this semester. The stated purpose of the conference is collecting more public opinion through 66 undergraduate representatives, including the president and the vice-president of the Student Association,  ten department representatives, ten sophomore departmental undergraduate representatives, ten representatives of dormitory, 15 representatives of the class, and so on. The conference was held twice last semester. In this third conference, each representative reported a statement of accounts for the second-quarter and a deliberation on the budget for third-quarter. In addition, they discussed compulsory collection of the student association fee, issue of deduction for medical expenses, and enforcement of general rules. A preparatory committee for the 11th KAIST-POSTECH Science War gave a progress report of the work. Great, but how was the conference? Did it progress satisfactorily in terms of the original object?
The conference was delayed due to lack of a quorum, which means that less than half of the representatives attended on time. Additionally, only 43 out of 66 represen-tatives took a vote on the last agenda item, enactment of general rules. Considering the importance of the conference, the representatives were obligated to take part in conference because this conference was the second legislative organ’s conference to the students’ general meeting, as is prescribed in the rules of the Student Association. The representatives need to ponder the meaning of representation.
To make matters worse, many representa-tives who attended the conference did not represent in a matter worthy of praise. Some did notconcentrate on the meeting agenda, some watched a baseball game without concern, and some seemed to be addicted to online chatting. Only a small minority of representatives took charge at the conference. This behavior defeats the original purpose of the conference, gathering the opinion of each group.
It might be too neat a solution to put all of the blame on representatives. Have you ever paid attention throughout an entire conference? Undergraduates pity their representatives who sufferend through the all-night meeting, but pity is not all they feel.