▲ A placard on the Student Union Building urging active participation and voices of ordinary students to regain student autonomy. Photographed by Suh Jaehee.

In November 2014, the trust within students of Korea University (KU) fell into an abyss of misery with the discovery of a fraudulent election. Now that the new Korea University Student Association (KUSA) has begun to gather back the students' trust of its executive group, the university itself is putting students in danger–it thinks that it is right to take away the students’ autonomy. So students decided to get back what is rightfully theirs through what is known as the Student Autonomy Special Committee (SASC).

Many people may not even be aware of what a special committee is. A special committee is a subsidiary organization of the Central Management Committee of KUSA. According to the constitution of the Anam Campus KUSA, a special committee can be organized under the condition that the Central Management Committee agrees that its existence is needed for efficient examination of matters that are considered necessary. Therefore the SASC is an organization that, as assumable from its name, deals with issues regarding the autonomy of students within KU.
 
History behind the establishment of this committee goes back to the unfortunate news regarding the fraudulent elections of Godaegonggamdae that damaged trust among students to the ground. Therefore, at the third regular meeting of the Central Management Committee, which took place on January 4, the issue of trust within the student society was discussed. Soon after, at the fourth regular meeting on January 11, a question regarding the creation of a special committee aimed to solve various problems related to student autonomy was brought in. Then on January 18 at the fifth meeting, with 15 committee members approving, two abstaining, and one being absent, the creation of the special committee was finally and officially decided.
 
The main goal of this special committee is to reconstruct trust within the KU student society. To prevent future rigged elections, the committee's first job is to amend the election operation rule, which is the fundamental and structural cause of fraudulent elections. Through a more fair election process, the legitimacy of selected representatives will be improved and the reliability of student society will be enhanced. The committee states that it believes problems such as fraudulent elections are not accidental incidents that exist independently. They are contradictions within the student society accumulating and finally bursting out. Therefore, this committee, along with KUSA is revising its overall structure and ways of processing work.
 
Until now, KUSA focused more on efficient ways of project planning through consensus within only the executive branch, rather than active discussions with various independent student bodies. Therefore, concentration of execution power to the KUSA executive branch disabled such powers of other student bodies, which resulted in a loss of dynamic student autonomy. The invisible division between ordinary students and members of the executive branch led general students to think that being part of the executive team is the only way to show their interest towards student-related issues. Thus, many mistakenly believe that only through such actions can one receive the right to discuss student issues in KU.
 
Realizing such problems, the SASC is finding ways to enhance student autonomy by helping the more basic units of student society such as student councils of various majors and colleges to organize projects along with KUSA's executive branch. It has also separated the Sports Bureau as a specialized agency, and is creating structural devices to guarantee its status. Furthermore, the committee plans to establish specialized groups such as the Board of Estimate Deliberation to minimize the time spent at the General Student Representative Conference. However, in order to reach overall and long-term success in these plans, ordinary KU students should also realize the importance of having proper student autonomy.
 
Ko Jun Woo ('14, Sociology), president of the SASC, states that the level of interest towards student autonomy among KU students varies greatly but the general level of attention is decreasing as time goes by. He dearly asks ordinary students to be more interested in issues related to their own autonomy. "The university does not solve our problems for us. The only way to seize our own rights is through students' discussions, democratic decision-making, and actions held together as a big unity. The special committee firmly believes that during active discussions students as a group would be able to discover and exercise their fullest capacity," says Ko, believing that changed mindsets of general students would ultimately bring changes to student autonomy.
 
This special committee is also planning to set up a structural device to protect student autonomy, which may be constantly threatened by various forces and situations. The sudden reconstruction plan of the College of Liberal Arts Auditorium, the incident of tearing down cafeterias at the College of Law, and the decrease of reading room areas of the Haesong Law Library are all examples of the university threatening student autonomy. The SASC believes that changing facilities on campus may be helpful, but allocating those areas to consumer cooperatives or student bodies that lack independent rooms would have been a better choice, respecting student autonomy.
 
Toward efforts to reach such high aims, the special committee has held regular meetings every week since the first meeting that took place on February 6. Also, when necessary, it holds separate meetings with independent student bodies to discuss various issues. Its major activities include evaluation of the failed Godaegonggamdae, revision of the election operation rule, studies to enhance the status of various independent student bodies, and research to find ways of improving the General Student Representative Conference. The committee constantly and actively discusses the obligations and roles of KUSA in order to allow the whole student society of KU to head to a more self-improving way.
 
Of course, there still are limitations to the power of the SASC since it has been managed for only about a semester. However, the committee rings a bell to make general KU students more aware of the importance of having student autonomy. Students having autonomy is equivalent to having a loud and clear voice within the university. For the student society to be healthily maintained and to become better at voicing the rightful demands of students, constant attention of KU students is necessary. Ko kindly requests greater concern of students' autonomy by KU students themselves, as KU would have a hopeful future as long as students are satisfied with their ability to have their voice heard.
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