What would be the social role of university students?

The former university students were the symbol of intellect. Unlike these days' circumstances in which most students automatically go to university after graduation from high school, only a few chosen ones could attend university. However, their acts beyond school were very affective, compared to the present.

The efforts and concerns toward society that university students have shown came hand-in-hand with our nation's 20th century history that suffered with endless struggles dying for democracy. In the '4.19 Revolution,' students took the lead to make unfair elections right, more than 4,000 students of Korea University stood up and stated the 4.19 declaration and marched to the National Assembly Hall. Also, in the 80's, students raised their critical voices through various ways such as hand-written posters, announcement for current state of affairs and force struggle in many cities including Gwangju. Although these are only one part in fragmentary history, it is obvious how independent and active those previous university students were and that they had appropriate independent thoughts. Of course, as time passed over years and years, the atmosphere of society has changed very much from those days. Still, it is right that the standards of social awareness should be changed. But, in society, there are many elements that should be revised and challenged by people.

These days, university students follow the current flows without any conscious thinking about whether their dissatisfaction is even right or not. Also, they are not curious if the means in which they express their dissatisfaction are appropriate or not. For example, in the case of the half-price tuition campaign that occurred recently, many students were not even questioning why the half-price tuition campaign became the conversation topic, whether or not it has realizability, what we should do to reduce tuition fee efficiently and what problems would occur when it comes true.

Instead, they are only interested that certain assemblyman of a certain party said what kind of shocking statement or misspoke blindly instead of having constructive discussion. Sometimes they pass judgment depending mostly on romanticized or overemphasized materials. The demonstration against FTA focusing on problems with imported beef can be also one example. University students definitely existed among the people who clicked the article explaining the problem of imported US beef or the Korea-US FTA, and they wrote comments or spread rumors online. Did they know exactly and think thoroughly why imported beef was dangerous and how Korea would be benefited by the FTA.

When Mi-Hyun Han (freshman, Dept. of Korean Language and Literature) surfs on the Internet, she clicks popular search words first. When she reads Internet news, she reads only entertainment news about stars and TV shows. She does not prefer to read politics or society news because those give her a headache. Myung-Hee Son (freshman, Dept. of Spanish) also said that reading entertainment news is natural and familiar because she has seen that since childhood. Most of university students’ concerns are mainly about entertainers, leisure, beauty treatment, gossip, etc. Even though they answer about politics or the economy when asked. In talking about politics, they tend to follow trends without their own judgment, believing that it is safe and right. If people swear about politicians they do the same, and if people commend them they do the same.

The situation is not very different in voting, which can represent a great power. When some unpleasant happening occurs, people tend to blame it on others without voting for the one whom they support. Even more, some people just treat the voting day as an extra holiday. What would you do if you are giving up one of your biggest rights?

Of course, there should be some portion of people who were highly affected by the trends of others among the university students of the past. Also, someone might think that I do not have to be the one who does everything when others do not even care. However, it is definitely a pitiful thing that university students as the intellectuals of the world are now nothing more than just students in their twenties. Even though it is almost the first step to joining society, there is no doubt that we are university students. We, as intellects, as independent personalities, should be responsible for ourselves and react appropriately. Now, everything is up to you, whether to be a picky kid or to grow up.