Since Jun. 15, the tennis courts have been under renovation to add artificial turf, install lightenings, and replace fences. One tennis court has changed into a futsal court. The General Affairs and Safety Team (GAST) reported sta- tistically that the demand for the futsal court was much higher than that for tennis courts; thus, it enacted a project to build a futsal court on top of a pre-existing tennis court for the benefits of the students. Although the motive of the GAST is ideal, the process in which the transition took place did not properly reflect the students’ opinions.
For example, the tennis club PASSING mentioned how the team acted as if it would incorporate the club’s opinion, which was to preserve its main court A where the big matches were held, through several meetings. However, for safety reasons, its request was discarded.
The problems that might occur due to the renovations are noise and maintenance of the lights. As the tennis courts are placed near the girls’dormitory, there was concern for the noise during the night. GAST proposed operating the newly positioned tennis courts D-E, near the girls’ dorm, until 22:00 and courts A-C until 24:00. The main conflict between the users of futsal, tennis courts, and the (under)graduate student body came with the issue of whether or not students should have to pay to use the courts. In the meeting held on May 16, the team stated that this issue would be up for further discussion. However, in the briefing session held on Aug. 3, it seemed determined to charge the users to prevent users from monopolizing the courts and to use the fees for maintenance support in the future. The price for using lightenings is to be differentiated for members and nonmembers of POSTECH. For Postechians, the sports field costs 20000 KRW/1hr, the futsal courts cost 10000 KRW/1hr, and the tennis courts cost 6000 KRW/1hr. For nonmembers, the sports field costs 120000 KRW/1hr, the futsal courts cost 50000 KRW/1hr, and the tennis courts cost 20000 KRW/1hr. The Undergraduate Student Association President, Nam Hanjae (MSE 11), pointed out the fact that this issue was not discussed with the student body itself was a flaw in the process. Additionally, the date of this briefing session was not the best choice, as most Postechians were off campus. Furthermore, the Graduate Students Association President, Nam Woo Yi (ME M.S.-Ph.D. integrated course), claimed that regardless of what the fees may be the fact that the school is demanding the students to pay in order to play sports is unreasonable, especially since the only time most students can use the facilities is after 6 P.M. To incorporate these issues, GAST held another briefing session on Sep. 2-3, but only a few students participated due to either busy class schedules or lack of communication. Though the construction is complete, the issue of charged fees still needs to be resolved.