The first semester of the 2011-2012 academic year will soon be at an end. To allow students to voice their thoughts and thus make things better for the next semester, the Office of Student Affairs’ Guidance Section and Extracurricular Activities Guidance Section recently held two activities at the Chueh Sheng International Conference Hall: a Forum for Class Representatives and a Forum for Leaders of Student Clubs. Both forums were hosted by the President of Tamkang University, Dr. Flora, Chia-I Chang, and attended by TKU Vice presidents and other senior faculty and staff. The forums gave students the rare opportunity to directly communicate their thoughts to the university president.

The Forum for Class Representatives was attended by students who have achieved excellent results both in academic fields and extracurricular activities. Class representatives raised questions regarding TKU’s non-smoking policy, library resources and teachers. However the most talked-about topic among class representatives was wireless internet, or Wi-Fi. Second year PhD candidate, Chiu Chung-Yu, said that the Wi-Fi connection in certain areas of the university is very poor and frequently disconnects, which makes it difficult to search for information. To this, the TKU Chief Information Officer, Hwang Ming-dar, responded: “We have already purchased several dozen wireless base stations, which we will soon install in order to improve the quality of wireless internet. I’d also like to ask students to provide the Office of Information Services with feedback when experiencing poor internet connection. We will send someone to fix the problem immediately.”

Meanwhile, the main focus of the Forum for Leaders of Student Clubs was how to accommodate for student clubs given the massive increase in demand for space and facilities after student clubs became compulsory for all new students.

At the end of the Forum for Leaders of Student Clubs a student representative gave President Chang a Christmas card on behalf of all student club leaders. President Chang, however, had prepared a surprise of her own. She presented club leaders with a car-full of candy to the exhilaration of all attending students.