Mr Student Council Man! Kyumin Kim, the Grand Poobah-in-Chief of TOIS/ISO Student Council, speaks! What is student council doing for us, and why should we care about student council? Our main goal is to represent the voice of the student body. In order to do that, all the class representatives of both TOIS and ISO gather in the library every two weeks to have a council meeting. Students should definitely care about us because we make decisions for them during these meetings. Every meeting, we identify existing or potential problems in the school and come up with possible solutions. It is vital that the students are aware of us and also actively participate, as their individual voices, which have the potential to change many things, can be introduced to the meetings by their class representatives. You said that student council wants to bridge the communication gap between teachers and students. Why do you think there is such a gap, and how do you think you could build that bridge? Ooh, this is a tough question. Unfortunately, a communication gap between teachers and students is extremely common in every school. Most students are often too ignorant or scared to make their ideas regarding the school heard. This is a critical loss for everyone--the students lose their opportunity to improve their environment, and the teachers end up making decisions which are still student-friendly but not exactly what the students wanted. And I believe that this is our role--to be the bridge between the students and the teachers. I have been working hard for the past two years to establish an effective bridge which allows bidirectional communication to happen. And in my opinion, the bridge has already been fully constructed thanks to the repeated, responsible council meetings last year and the help from the school management. The bridge is still successfully functioning this year! What makes student council under your leadership different from past student councils? I think that a difference can be found in our sense of duty and responsibility. When looking back to the past student councils, I noticed that both the members and the president were somewhat less responsible, which resulted in decreased productivity. So for the past two years, as the president of the student council, I have constantly tried to increase the sense of duty among the members while trying to be a responsible leader myself. What does a successful student council look like to you? A successful student council in my mind is a productive group of dedicated and active students, with excellent teamwork. I am positive that we are slowly, yet constantly, turning into a successful student council. Assuming you graduate next year, how do you plan to have established enough of a viability with student council that the next president will have something strong to work with and be motivated to carry on your vision and mission? This has actually been a topic of concern for me for the past few months. I think that the system itself is firmly established by now - for the past year and a half, I have emphasized the need for regular and organized meetings, and therefore as a result, we now work with an orderly system which is hard to modify (because it is so efficient!). Therefore, when this is passed on to the next student councils, I believe that they definitely will have a good starting point to work with. And the next president will have a better idea of how an ideal student council works and should work.