How Much Can We Know about Our School?

Sun-Hee Lee, Ji-Hyun Kwonl½ÂÀÎ2011.11.01l¼öÁ¤2015.05.11 10:45l310È£ 2¸é

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¡ã The proceedings of the Council Meeting had posted on Dankookie and DKU homepage.

In comic strips on an Internet portal site, high school students complained about their school. They believed that the owner of their school was the students, but the principal said, “The owner of this school is me and not you.” High school students were too panicked and embarrassed. While this example simply depicts a situation in a webtoon, readers likely felt some degree of discomfort arising from the fact that a ridiculous cartoon resembles our reality. Indeed, Dankook University
plan for Coordination of Academics is similar to that cartoon. In Dankookie, an online community for dankookians, official information has already been posted. Yet the school posted official information on the plan much later on the university homepage. So, is it true that dankookians’ access to information is inferior to other universities’ students? The DKH has taken a look into two problems. First, problems existing in the communication system of the school, and, second, the late dissemination of information on the school homepage.

Lack of opening to the public

There is a point in common between the case of moving the campus to Jukjeon in 2007, and the case of Coordination of Academics. That is, the information came from a source other than school authorities. This kind of information sharing
is effectively hearsay, which often starts as a rumor, passes the stages of suspicion and assumption, and finally is proved as a fact via one-way reports from university administration. For the case of Coordination of Academics, the rumors have been spread for years, but the authorities denied the rumors until the time right before the facts were announced. However, the rumors became more and more solid and scattered among the students by SMS and SNS communications.
At the same time, school authorities never revealed any announcements until they
finally held an open seminar stressing the necessity of Coordination of Academics. Not until after many students had posted articles and opinions on Coordination of Academics on numerous portal sites and students of other departments began to notice them, our university’s president finally issued an official statement about this plan on the university homepage. Students were not able to notice what the authorities were doing even though it was related to them, and it was far too difficult to get enough information to satisfy their personal needs even after they became aware of the plan.

Lack of the concern of dankookians

For a while, a number of postings regarding the proceedings of the Council Meeting have been floating around the Web, including information suggesting that the university has approved establishment of an International Hall, enlarging of the ROTC building, and relocation of the bus depot to the main entrance. Those construction projects will all need a great deal of financial support, which will likely be covered by our tuition. This information, therefore, should be announced to students as tuition constitutes a huge percent of the school budget. Then, how many students actually know about these decisions? DKH randomly chose 50 students and asked if they have heard about this news. Among students interviewed, very a few of them replied that they had heard of these projects, but they were not able to give any details. Most students interviewed were not aware of the projects. Jeong (Freshman, Dept. of Japanese Language and Literature) said, “I feel cheated since they have planned all this big construction without informing the students, even though it is done with our tuition fees.” Also, Cho (Freshman, Dept. of Architecture) insisted, “The school authorities should secure the right to know by opening information to the public, not just displaying great, happy news.”

Then, is it true that we should just sit quietly and obey without having any way to know what school authorities plan? Absolutely not. As DKH researched, anyone can read the proceedings of the Council Meetings on the school website without
logging in. However, despite these simple steps, hits on the page displaying planning meeting proceedings on the website remain below 200. It is definitely a poor record considering the population of DKU students. We are making excuses saying that school authorities did not tell us their decisions, yet we could have noticed what was happening in just a few clicks.

Lack of student concern also showed in “Vision 2017.” Vision 2017 is a university plan that includes raising scholarships for tuition to 11 percent and constructing dormitories to accommodate all freshman. In other words, this plan has a much stronger direct relation to students’ school life. Moreover, this plan can be accessed easily from the school homepage in just one click. However, students are generally not interested in school plans. For example, one professor in the College
of Economics and Commerce at Cheonan Campus said, “Raise your hands if you know Vision 2017.” Only two of 60 students raised their hands, and those two students said, “I just saw the plan on the homepage, but I did not read it in detail.” Professor Park pointed out the lack of student concern, saying, “It is a very serious problem that students do not know the vision of our school. This problem stems not only from the communication system, but also from the lack of students’ interest in internal information of the school. If this situation continues, this organization will not be able to operate well.”

So, let’s consider the first question. Is it true that dankookian’s accessibility of school information is too limited? The answer is ‘No.’ It is not the lack of accessibility of information but lack of student concern. It is not totally true that information posted on Dankookie is faster than the school homepage. At the same time, many cases existed in which the school did not release information to
students even though students requested it. On the other hand, most of the school’s plans are open to students. There are a number of means by which students can access the information. For example, students can find information on board meetings on the DKU homepage or ask school administrators directly. We should try to get information about our school actively. If not, we may become an uninformed crowd when we decide on something. In the poem “Flower” by Chun-Su Kim, the following phrase is written: ‘When I called his name, he came to me and he became a flower.’ This shows us that no matter how good a school plan is, it is nothing if students are not interested in it. There is a well known proverb, ‘The most fearful thing is indifference.’ Like this, students should show concern about the current situation at school and be proactive about participating in school decisions. We should think, ‘How do we want to know our school,’ not ‘How much can we know about our school?’


Sun-Hee Lee, Ji-Hyun Kwon  dkherald@hotmail.com
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