SRCUTP – Government; students – Opposition?

A good friend of mine recently wrote an article “MPPUTP in Perspective” which I found to be a good read. It covers the issues and problems that students often have regarding the most important student body in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, known as the Majlis Perwakilan Pelajar Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (MPPUTP), or also known as the Student Representative Council of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (SRCUTP).

I, too, had my own share of bittersweet moments – more bitter than sweet, unfortunately – and it has come to a point where the SRCUTP is no more than a façade to me, and that I have entirely lost trust in the administration of the SRCUTP. I have, in my past almost four years of academic pursuit in UTP, been given empty promises made by candidates of the SRCUTP, and all the top five members of the SRCUTP have, more often than not, disappointed me ridiculously.

No doubt they are good in their communication, they behave in a somewhat professional manner, and they project a powerful image in the eyes of UTP students (especially the new students who have just joined the university). It is as if they are the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and Ministers of the students in UTP, fighting for the students and ensuring that the students get what they deserve from the university.

One of my best experience with the SRCUTP was when my friends and I had a big problem regarding our Concrete Technology laboratory sessions about a year ago. Laboratory sessions were supposed to be capped at two hours per session but our demonstrator insisted on setting the duration of each session at four hours, citing that a longer period of time is necessary. This created clashes between our Concrete Technology lab and our Geotechnical Engineering lecture. The demonstrator, however, refused to give in to our protests and insisted that we had to do something about it.

I managed to contact the Academic EXCO of the then SRCUTP board, Viknesh Kumar (through Jared Ee), who promptly made an appointment with me and I had the opportunity to pour out all my anger and frustration, which he thankfully comprehended. He promised to meet my programme head the following week, and he did! Soon after that, our problems were resolved and the instruction was that lab sessions must not exceed the stipulated two hours.

While the EXCO board of the SRCUTP may be doing its job well, my communication with the top five members of the SRCUTP have been anything but fruitful. I had, in the past, sent e-mails to the high committee (HICOM for short) members, through their MPPUTP e-mail addresses, but have received no response whatsoever. Clearly disappointed, I took matters into my own hands and decided to communicate with the Manager, the Senior Manager or even the CEO directly. In some ways, this was viewed as going against certain basic communication protocols. But if the people at the bottom part of the administration would not respond or that their e-mail addresses were there just for the sake of beautifying their personal images, then I will act on my own. But when I do act, it will not be at the best interest of the SRCUTP.

I am indeed appalled by the fact that the SRCUTP was formed to provide a check-and-balance between the students and the administrators, and yet I find the SRCUTP to be very weak and its voice is no louder than those who are not in the SRCUTP. They dare not challenge the administrators (which perhaps they view as being disrespectful) unlike the student representative councils in other universities such as MMU and IMU. Therefore, they best give the impression of a “yes-man”.

More shameful was the fact that they actually spent quite a considerable amount of money making banners thanking the university administrators for upgrading the Internet services, which till today is giving some problems every now and then. I remember the fact that my friends and I actually attended a meeting with the ITMS staff in Lecture Hall 1 to discuss on this issue and how 8 MB/s for the whole residential college at 75% efficiency will only provide at most 2.0 KB/s of Internet connection to every student in UTP! The ITMS provided numbers which my friends and I were not impressed at all; these numbers and figures were also produced by the SRCUTP sometime back before the upgrade was done and we were shocked to see that they gave in to the explanation by the ITMS without further dissecting the situation or analysing it properly.

We emphasised on the fact that when we came into UTP in January 2006, the Internet, though slow, was accessible even without any form of network block or firewall to MSN Messenger, Youtube, etc. In July 2006 when the firewall (or Network Box) was imposed, the Internet started to deteriorate until the network collapsed entirely somewhere around early January 2009 semester. Although they found that it was the GoogleTalk application that took up so much of the connection (as it is run on HTTPS protocol, not HTTP), they failed to understand that they have only themselves to blame for blocking the MSN Messenger application. Students need to communicate among themselves easily, so the only other option was to use GoogleTalk.

It was after such a long time before the administrators finally agreed to upgrade the Internet to 150 MB/s, which should be sufficient. And I don’t see how the SRCUTP found it fit to produce banners publicly thanking the administrators for upgrading the Internet facilities, on our behalf, considering the fact that the Internet is such an important tool today.

(Please, do not give me the excuse that “Hey, I never had the Internet during my student days, so be grateful that we’re providing you with it.” Yes, that’s true, but do not expect me to go back to your student days. Your era and my era are entirely two different worlds. People go forward, not backwards. These are harsh words, but true.)

The SRCUTP believed that it is of paramount importance that they maintain a diplomatic and tactful relationship with the administrators. While I see nothing wrong in that, it also brood weakness in their part. A good leader can be diplomatic and tactful while being firm also. The SRCUTP represents the students of the university, and it is important to note that while the administrators might view the SRCUTP negatively, it is more important to have the support of the students. If students back you up strongly, then you have nothing fear while fighting for us. But if you do not have the students’ support, then you are definitely easily bullied and looked down upon by not just the administrators, but the student community as well.

Had the SRCUTP got the full support from the students, then they can definitely voice up for help from the students, summoning petitions and have the students to show the administrators in their way that the SRCUTP is not to be trifled with, because the administrators cannot do whatever they like without being answerable to the SRCUTP, and eventually to the students.

It has come to a point where a shadow cabinet might be necessary to ensure that the SRCUTP is really doing their part of the job scope. This shadow cabinet may oppose or support what the SRCUTP proposes, and the shadow cabinet could be necessary to ensure that the SRCUTP maintains its confidence among the students without being virtual slaves to the administrators of the university. However, it is most unfortunate that a shadow cabinet is not recognised as part of an official organisation and as such students have no opportunity to entirely oppose any proposal which they find utterly preposterous.

What the SRCUTP proposes is not necessarily at the best interest of the students, and sometimes we truly need another strong voice to tell them to stop their fallacy in their mindset and thinking.

However, most importantly, if the SRCUTP wants to function well as a reputable organisation with authoritative powers which it deserves, it must have a strong support from all the students of the university. In order to the attain that amount of trust and to obtain that amount of power, the SRCUTP must improve its image and truly fight for the students in our best appropriate interests.

The SRCUTP must also remember this: students in a university are customers to the university – administrators, even the Vice Chancellor, are but staff working to ensure that our welfare and academic interests are protected. They are paid to do the job, and they must perform excellently. The SRCUTP is there to assure exactly that. Staff who under-perform deserve to be given the boot out of the university. In fact, they do not deserve to work anywhere for their sheer lack of understanding and lack of commitment if found to be truly so.

So, to the SRCUTP HICOM of the 2009/2010 term, do you actually know what to do when you are in power? Are you there just to just beautify your résumé? If you are, you’d better step down and let someone else more sincerely committed to do the job.

Edited 29th of October 2009