Pusan National University (PNU) student voting rights, which were reduced during the election for the 22nd PNU president, are showing signs of improvement. It has been about three months since the election occurred.

On May 10th, PNU’s General Students’ Association (GSA) announced that they delivered a “request to revise the Regulations for the Nomination of the PNU President” to the Faculty Council (FC) to solve the problem of falling student voting rights right after the Academic Committee ended on May 3rd. The student community’s rage arose when the students right to vote was drastically reduced in the election held on February 6th. Since then, the GSA and the FC, which oversee the Presidential Appointment Recommendation Committee (PARC) have announced that they will try to improve this problem. However, discussions on measures for practical improvement lost their way due to totally clueless communication (reported by “Channel PNU” on March 29th, 2024). 

According to the GSA and the FC, they have decided to push for a revision of the regulations for the employment of the PNU President within the year to improve student voting rights. The revision was decided after the FC accepted the GSA’s request. Initially, the FC planned to put the discussion of the composition of the student electoral college, which was an issue in this presidential election, into the next election white paper to be discussed in the next presidential election (reported by “Channel PNU” on March 29th, 2024). However, they changed their opinion because the GSA agreed that they should quickly resolve the student voting rights problem.

The revision was agreed to be submitted at the FC’s regular meeting. The meeting is held every December, and it is attended by all FC members consisting of full-time professors at PNU. It has the authority to revise the “Regulations on Selection of Candidates for the President of PNU.” Revision can be passed with the participation of a majority of the members and the consent of a majority of the participating members. Kim Jung-Gu, the chairman of the FC, said “Professors will share their opinions until the regular meeting, but I don’t think there will be a big problem in passing a revision of the Regulations for the Nomination of the PNU President.”

However, it seems that opinions are still divided on how to change the regulations for the nomination of the president. The FC’s stance is to propose a revision specifying the scope of the student electoral college, which was a problem in this election, to the students who consented to provide personal information. On the other hand, the GSA are considering delegating the composition of the student electoral college to the GSA. Lee Chang-Jun (Dept. of Geological Sciences, 22), the GSA president, said “We don’t know what kind of problems will occur forming an electoral college for the PNU presidential election every time. It would be desirable to allow the GSA to form a students’ electoral college that reflects the opinions of students.”

 The PARC altered the scope of student voters right before the election held on February 6th, decreasing the student voting rate from the initially anticipated 7% range to 0.64% (reported by “Channel PNU” on March 8th, 2024).

Reporter You Seung-Hyun

Translated by Park Cho-Hae