This November, the elections for the student councils took place and many Donggukians exercised their rights to vote. There had been only one candidate in each section except the College of Police Administration. It seems that this issue is a certain problem and I regard such phenomenon as undesirable.
Regarding this matter, I think, single candidate elections disappoint students since the students’ liberty of choice would be necessarily limited. When there is only one candidate, who is not satisfactory to the students, students have no choice but to throw dissenting votes to the party or give up their rights to vote. In fact, during this election period, I could witness several students showing their concern between the two choices in university online communities.
In case of Dongguk University, as looking at the figures, half of the students’ votes are necessary not to make the election foundered. Among the half, the sole candidate needs only a quarter of favorable votes at least from the electorates to win. In this logic, although the number of students who are not favorable to the candidate is larger than the opposite, the candidate can be elected as a representative of each unit. Considering another case that the majority of students abandoning ballot, the election would be flawed. Then, the position of the student council would be vacant and it can affect students’ poor welfare.
Moving back to the recent election for the student councils, several sole candidates were elected with low favorable votes and some others failed because of the low voting rate. In the case of the election for the General Student Council (GSC), “Turing Point” party barely gained a majority vote and finally elected as the next term GSC. However, there are still skeptical sights against the party. In the public hearing, the party showed little disappointing figure with their lacking preparation for the pledges. Therefore, the student representatives elected without any competition should try harder to satisfy the majority of Donggukians.