By Tan Teck Joo
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| Exclusive: After Oh appointed as a SRC chairman for eight months, he decides to have an interview with Onlinews. |
KAMPAR - Flashback at the past, Student Representative Committee (SRC) in almost all the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) students’ perception was negative and served as a student body which unwillingly to fight for the students’ welfare at which they also deemed that SRC is the puppet of UTAR.
When SRC is in such a critical situation, a nobody guy named Oh Chin Eng, 22, a Journalism student is willing to bear this challenge to lead the SRC in order to prove the value of the existence among the students.
During the election period, Oh’s team “Empower” was facing several troubles such as receiving warning letter by the UTAR President, blaming by rival team, manifesto got rejected by the management and nearly disqualified to contest in the campus election.
Conversely, Empower won the majority of votes although there are 3.82 percent lower voting rate by students.
SRC must be unite, delicate and passionate
Q: What is your reason to contest in SRC election?
A: First of all, I want to have some changes since a lot of students are not satisfied with the current system.
Secondly, I have a confidence in myself that “Empower” team can represent students to voice up their problems.
Thirdly, I wish to create awareness among students that if you want to change something, we need to be united and stand together in order to be strong, then only we has the ability to make a change.
Q: What kind of the action or event that has been done by SRC so far?
A: As what my lecturer Miss Por said to me, if we want to change something, we need time to prove it. For example, democratization doesn’t happen in one day, we need to persevere and continue in our struggle.
I just got appointed for one month plus. We are still in the process of coming up with activities to cater all the students and to improve their university’s lives here.
We have organised a dialogue session with the students for the first time ever in the history of SRC UTAR Kampar but this event got less participation by students. Secondly, SRC provides email and Facebook page to let student to voice up their opinions and problems.
Thirdly, in the coming day, SRC will organize a Majlis Berbuka Puasa with the purpose of taking care and appreciate the small community which in the Muslims in UTAR, to foster unity and create better understanding among races.
And when all the mistakes are pointed to SRC, meanwhile Oh has his own said.
Q: What do you think that students claim that SRC is a failed organization?
A: In my opinion, SRC is a student representative body which legitimize by UTAR and student? Therefore, without students support, SRC cannot stand a strong view to fight for them.
We found that some students are ignorant and they refused to participate in any events that organized by the university, SRC or the clubs and societies.
However, students tend to complain via Facebook and other indirect instruments rather than to look SRC officially to solve the problem. So if the students feel that we are a failed organization, it will always be because students never show their support to us.
Q: Do you think that SRC in self can work well together?
A: Honestly, although SRC has 13 members, we are not strong enough because we are a coalition from different parties and some 6 of us actually didn’t go through the election but appointed by the Deans.
Thus, I emphasized that SRC must be unite, delicate and passionate to fulfill their promises to the students. I considered this term as a crucial one; we have a big responsibility to get the trust and support from students. We need to do some rebranding and some image cleansing. Frankly speaking, the name of SRC is stinks.
So I hope we can and the students can change their perception and acceptance towards us. At the same time, I hope that students can give us their feedback so that we can improve.
Q:Do you able to manage to arrange your time as both the SRC chairman and a Journalism student?
A: So far, I have spent quite lot of time in SRC and other external activities. So I was struggling to balance up my time. Yes, academic results can drop. Hence, I as a leader, I must arrange my time properly, so that I can work well in SRC and score well in academic.
Q: Do you feel regret that after you be in SRC?
A: After I become the SRC chairman, my life has changed, from nobody to somebody and I am now a public figure in my university. People know me. Whatever I do or wherever I go, people notice me. Thus, I have to really take care of what I do, what I say, what I wear and my image to avoid any bad perception to SRC.
So far, I have not felt regret yet, because I haven’t achieve what I wanted to achieve in my one year term yet. I will give all I have to serve the students.
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