Despite the controversy ON&ON had over the election, they became the new General Student Assocoation(GSA), but the real question is, “How will they regain the students’ trust?” After ON&ON won the election last December, the CBT wanted to see how much they have been preparing for the spring semester.
  Over the months, ON&ON opened multiple meetings to discuss how they will fulfill their pledges for the first half-year. According to ON&ON, they will enact 23 out of 27 pledges, which were shown on the pamphlet that they handed out during the election, into practice starting this semester. Of those 23 pledges, ON&ON has picked the most representative pledges from each of the 4 categories, which are Culture, Welfare, Communication and Employment.

  For Culture, ON&ON picked ‘World Cup with All of Us’ as the representative pledge. The idea of this pledge is to cheer during the World Cup with all of the students together while watching the games on a big screen outside. They have contacted City Hall but found out it might be hard for them to cooperate with them on this project. However, with or without help, ON&ON assured that they will make it happen no matter what. Also, ON&ON has faced another problem: the times of the games. Due to the time differences between Brazil and Korea, the games will start at dawn or early in the morning. Since the times of the games are vague, ON&ON has discussed that they will need to think more about how they will make it happen. Aside from the time problem, they said that even though they won’t get any assistance from City Hall, money won’t be much of a problem for them.
  As the representative pledge for Welfare, ON&ON has chosen ‘Electronic Equipment Rental Services’ which will begin in the first semester. ON&ON is now consulting with the Living Cooperative Association about the place where the equipment will be stored. For further information and specific plans, they will be disclosed after they meet with the Yonsei University’s Living Cooperative Association and Korea Rental Company in Yonsei University in Seoul, where the rental service is working successfully.
  For Communication, ‘Everybody’s Kakaotalk’ has been selected as the representative pledge. The purpose of this pledge is to make every student feel more comfortable to ask about the school events and everyday school life. They are going to make their own ON&ON Kakaotalk ID by buying a cellphone under the name of GSA, and they plan to upload the Kakaotalk ID on to their official Facebook page to let everybody know. The members of ON&ON will then take turns and keep the cellphone for one day at a time to respond to all of the messages that the students have sent.
  Finally, ‘Extracurricular Activity Expo’ was chosen to be the representative pledge for Employment. According to ON&ON, ‘Extracurricular Activity Expo’ will be the most important highlight of the first semester this year. They have already secured the budget and talked with all the corporations that will be joining the expo festival.
  Since there was a complaint from the students about the pledges being very poor and insufficient, ON&ON had said they will add some more if it’s needed. They said, “It’s better to ask the students what they want and make that happen instead of us coming up with random and useless pledges. After gathering up the opinions that students gave to us, we will look over every single one of them, and, if a great number of students want the same thing and it’s reasonable, we will then add them to our pledges.”
  Besides the pledges, during the winter vacation, ON&ON has spent most of their time investigating how they will manage to rake in the money since the student union fee is not enough to fulfill all the things they have mentioned. Therefore, the first thing ON&ON tried to do during this past vacation was to look for other new affiliated companies to support them. For now, they have succeeded in contacting a company that is famous for the civil service examination, and they are planning to contact Arte Cafe and Hyundai Department Store.
  Even though ON&ON is working hard to get everything up and ready for the new school year, the students of Chungbuk National University weren’t thrilled about the new GSA based on the survey that the CBT had gathered from 407 students on campus. The survey has covered whether the students of CBNU are excited about ON&ON. 50% of the students answered ‘I’m not excited’. Followed by that answer, 30% said ‘I’m excited’ and 20% of the students answered ‘I do not care’. The main reason the students chose ‘I’m not excited’ was due to the scandal ON&ON had during the election. The students who chose ‘I’m excited’ also seemed indifferent about the student body since 51% chose ‘Just because’ as the reason.
  ON&ON has worked hard to get ready for the first semester and to start fresh, but it will be quite a challenge to turn the students’ hearts around. Since the last GSA, Respond3057, satisfied a lot of the students last year, most of the students simply hoped that ON&ON would perform as well as Respond3057 did.
 

By Heo Jae-rin
jr34@cbnu.ac.kr