Why should the Student Union downsize to improve efficiency?
In this reform, the Executive Committee of the Student Union has reduced the original nine departments to six. Now it consists of the Office of the Student Union, Department of Conscious Media, Department of Rights and Welfare, Department of Public Relations, Department of Academic and Cultural Promotion, and the Comprehensive Quality Development Center for Students.
The Student Union Chairman YU Suyuan participated in the formulation and implementation of the reform plan. After communicating with all departments, Chairman YU and several cadres of the Student Union proposed to merge some departments to focus on the Education Center and serve the needs of students’ growth with higher quality, thus turning them into a “Comprehensive Quality Development Center for Students.” “The original Departments of Culture and Art, Sports, and International Affairs are all activity oriented and often cooperate in activities. Sometimes activities with the same theme overlapped with each other. It is difficult to concentrate on activities with much influence if their strengths are dispersed,” he said. “To tell the truth, the Student Union seems to have many departments and members. When it comes to specific activities, there are also many students who are slacking off.”
Streamlining and selecting members of the Student Union is a part of the Organizational Reform Plan of the Student Union of All-China Students Federation. CHEN Zixuan, a sophomore at the College of Civil Engineering, has been working in the Student Union. She has encountered situations where a lack of manpower had caused great difficulties in activities. “Many students have plenty of time in their freshman and sophomore years. In their junior and senior years, they are busy preparing their postgraduate entrance examinations and qualification certificate examinations. Besides, the members and activities should be selected through some measures,” CHEN said.
After the reform, the Department of Academic and Cultural Promotion held a major activity before the final examination. The WeChat Official Accounts Youth Tongji received 120,000 hits--the most in a single year. This “Appraisal for Straight-A Student” calls on students to nominate themselves and their peers, upload their photos, explain their recommendation reasons, and forward the activity to WeChat Moments for voting.
Chairman YU said he thought the activities of the Department of Academic Development and Cultural Promotion were not easy to hold. But, if the activity focused on students’ interests, it would be very popular. He said the annual activities of the Department of Academic and Cultural Promotion and the Comprehensive Quality Development Center for Students will focus on 4 to 5 “trump card” activities, and will also try to strengthen cooperation with the Student Union at college or school in the future.
Scientific selection allows more students to improve themselves
During interviews for the student cadre of the Student Union, Deputy Secretary of the Youth League Committee and instructor of the Student Union TANG Zhiyu saw some new candidates. They were either self-nominated or recommended by faculty for the competition.
At the competition session, each candidate was asked to demonstrate his or her abilities in front of all attendees in a variety of areas, including theoretical studies, GPA, departmental planning, and overall quality, and to propose which position he or she wanted to pursue. A student cadre with many years of experience in the Student Union at their college or school was recommended to the University Student Union to compete for the head of the Comprehensive Quality Development Center for Students. Another student with the top results at college or school was recommended to serve as the head of the Department of Academic and Cultural Promotion.
Secretary of the Youth League Committee CHEN Cheng said such changes in personnel reflect the effectiveness of the reform. “The reform of selection system is also an important part of the Student Union reform which, not only puts forward higher requirements for students’ GPA and daily performance, but also opens the Student Union door to a wider range of students,” CHEN added.
Chairman YU also said the Student Union was also openly selected for all students in the past. However, due to the lack of an effective mechanism that would guarantee self-recommendations, other recommendations, and college or school recommendations, the elections for various departments of the Student Union was subjective. For example, if a department wants to select a head, it only needs to go through the department’s internal recommendation, a qualification examination, college or school approval, a comprehensive interview, examination, and filing process. On one hand this limits the movement of cadres between departments, while on the other hand, it prevents more talented students from entering the league organization, said Chairman YU.This time, the 19 newly elected department heads come from 10 colleges and schools of Tongji University, and one-third of them have experience serving in their college or school Student Union. At present, the monthly regular presidium meeting of the Student Union is attended jointly by members of the Students’ Union at the university, school, and college levels. At the same time, members of the University Student Union are also invited to attend the regular meetings at school and college level to strengthen communication.
“This is just the first step in a new round of reforms. In the next step, we will carry out a project-based operation and, in the third step, we will conduct a quality-oriented assessment for students’ ‘representative outcomes.’ It's not the number of activities held that counts, but rather which activity will be the ‘trump card’ activity in the students’ minds,” TANG Zhiyu said.
The “project team working mechanism” offers students more choices
Recently, the “project team working mechanism” has been carried out initially in the University Student Union. The mechanism is a common way to reform the Communist Youth League of China in recent years. That is, the traditional activity with “department” as the main leader has changed from the “project team” as the main leader. And besides, the staff of the “project team” come from different departments and even most are volunteers from outside the University Student Union.
Take the “Top Ten Singers,”the University Student Union’s “trump card” activity, as one example. This activity used to be organized by the Department of Culture and Art and was co-sponsored by other departments. HU Qianqian, Head of the Department of Rights and Welfare and a Junior in the School of Physics Science and Engineering, has participated three times in the preparation of the “Top Ten Singers.” She said the Department of Rights and Welfare used to be in charge of logistics. Now, she has become a member of the project team and finally got the opportunity to choose her project. She and her classmates designed, printed, and divided the anti-counterfeit tickets, and spent a week putting them in order. The 1,200 tickets produced by the ticketing team were snapped up by students online in less than half a minute. “It does feel rewarding,” HU said. It is noteworthy the “project team working mechanism” allows not only for internal mobility within the Student Union, but also allows for more students to experience the life in the Student Union.
At the 41st Student Congress of Tongji University held in May, a volunteer recruitment drive for the wider university was launched openly by the University Student Union. TANG Zhiyu said: “On one hand, the recruitment of volunteers for all students is to implement the reform requirements and enhance the mobility of students participating in activities held by the Student Union, while on the other hand, it is also a good way to strengthen the political leading function of Youth League Committee” and “About 45 volunteers are needed, but the number of applicants is close to 100.” TANG added: “The purpose of the Student Congress is to let more students see how student representatives speak for their peers. Only when the fan base of the Student Union is large can the outstanding student cadres be selected more objectively.”
Source: https://xwapp.moe.gov.cn/h5/sharePage/articleDetail.html?id=40774
