In April, at the regular Student Representatives Meeting, legislation regarding human rights infringements on campus was passed. The first article of the regulation states that its aim is to “stipulate the specific correspondence and enforcement matters on the human rights violations cases that occur within the KU Student Association (KUSA),” and further “contribute to the realization of human dignity, value, freedom, and rights by protecting the universal and inviolable rights of its members.”

 

Thus, the student society will follow the prescribed procedures in cases of human rights infringement. Once a victimized student reports to the Central Steering Committee, a Countermeasure Committee can be formed to investigate the complaint and call for disciplinary measures. The Student Representatives Meeting can decide the level of punishment, which would be one of the following four options: a warning, publication of an anonymously written apology, disenfranchisement, or expulsion from the association. Victim protection rules have been annexed to protect the rights of victims and to prevent secondary damage.

 

The process of establishing the rules was not easy. Since July 2016, the Special Committee on Self-Governing Issues has been working to have them approved in the meeting. However, any action was delayed due to the lack of quorum until the hidden camera scandal aroused attention in February. Kang Minhyeon (’14, Architecture), the head of the Special Committee, revealed that continuous failure was despairing at that time, but the long delay “was a meaningful opportunity to strengthen the weaknesses of the regulation.”

 

During the April meeting, there was a lengthy discussion on the scope of the rules’ application, as they could only be applied when both the victim and the perpetrator are KUSA members. Some claimed that the student society should not sit and watch an assailant who remains undisturbed on campus while committing crimes offcampus. Lee Seungjun(’11, Psychology), the president of KUSA, settled the debate by promising to make sincere commitments in situations where only one of the persons concerned is a member of the association.

 

In addition, the Minority Human Rights Committee’s opposition to the articles related to false accusations and witnesses aroused more controversy. It claimed that the existence of such articles could severely limit the rights of the victims. They compromised with a modified article that if the human rights infringement case and false accusation case occur simultaneously, the committee will deal with the former case first.

 

It is true that the correspondence rules are still quite limited. The KUSA is not a judicial court with legal force, and the worst punishment it can give is to exclude the assailant from the student society. Yet, Kang said that he believed the entire legislation process should be taken as “a proclamation against human rights violations.” As the first autonomous regulation on students’ punishment created in the university campus, the correspondence rule proves healthiness of the KU student society’s autonomy, and indicates a significant progress toward establishing a better KU campus.