A central audit committee was formed in SSU to audit the 53rd student council and unions. The committee was established in November, and it was the first of its kind in SSU’s history. The committee consisted of one member from each college, and their duty was to examine how the student union fee was used, and whether or not the student councils and unions turned in all the evidential materials for such.
The committee audited 12 groups in all. They were the head student union, the women’s student union, the union of each college, and the school club alliance. Among the 12, only four passed the audit. Most of the problems that the committee found had to do with the personal usage of the union fee and the lack of receipts. Other problems were accumulating personal points from shopping and mixing the union fee with personal banking accounts. Six college student unions got one or two warnings. The head and women’s unions’ cases were worse, and they went over the warning limit. The committee said that the head union’s accounting omitted about 24,000,000 won, and the women’s union’s accounting omitted about 700,000 won.
The Soongsilians showed great disappointment with regard to this matter. Some students demanded for clarification of the truth by putting up their own group online to demand for such. Using SSU’s student website (yourssu.com), the members chatted about pressing charges and demanding for the imposition of disciplinary sanctions. They wanted to receive feedback from the concerned student unions. The student representative of the head union soon replied on the website. On behalf of the head union, he agreed that the omission in the account was the union’s fault, and said that they would send the details of the fee usage via e-mail to all the Soongsilians via Usaint.
The procedure, however, isn’t proceeding smoothly. The head student union ultimately denied the committee’s request to show the omitted usage. Unless a criminal suit is filed for this case, the committee cannot look into the union’s account. Also, the promised e-mail with the details of the fee usage hasn’t arrived yet.
The disciplinary sanctions to be imposed aren’t very clear either. The committee asked for SSU’s advice and cooperation. The committee head, Lee Hui-duk(Computer Science, ’09), said on yourssu that SSU is holding back on strong confrontation. Student Service Team instead suggested taking prevention measures, such asrequiring greater transparency. On the anonymous board of yourssu, a few students argued that such punishment seems to be too light.
The committee’s term has ended, and the 54th student union is starting. Questions nevertheless remain about how our student union fee was used.
