On the Impossibility of Organising HKU Events As an Individual Student Union Member II:
I am aware that the length of this article exceeds what most people will likely be willing to read. If you don’t have time to read the whole article, Section 5 & 6 is a must read and Section 1 is recommended.
Below is the response from Centre of Development and Resources for Students (CEDARS) to my article “On the Impossibility of Organising HKU Events As an Individual Student Union Member”:
http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1002513#comment-1004313
Below is my response:
1. I wish to begin by clarifying a few points in regards to the alleged short notice I gave in attempting to organise the event on 10th March, 2009 (Tuesday):
1.1. As mentioned in my previous article, the event I was trying to organise included a speaker from outside of Hong Kong. She flew in only around a week before 10th March. Due to her hectic schedule, she did not manage to discuss the specifics of what event we might organise together until 4th March (Wednesday), and I began getting in touch with various bodies in school on the next day (5th March (Thursday)).
1.2. I contacted the Student Union (SU) and attempted to contact the Global Lounge (GL) but with no success on 5th March (Thursday), which is 3 working days (5 days) in advance to the day I wish to hold the event on. According to a current HKU student, 3 working days is the notice the SU requires for processing requests regarding venue booking. I did not contact CEDARS’ Chong Chan-yau until 2 days later but this was because I had no intention to book facilities managed by CEDARS in the beginning since I regarded the GL (managed by GL) and the Happy Garden (managed by SU) as better locations for holding a forum due to the openness of the venues. Nonetheless, I ended up seeking help from CEDARS (and specifically Mr. Chong) on 6th March (Friday) because on the same day I was told by the manager of GL, Ung Lee Ling, that the only way I could hold the event would be to get Mr. Chong to collaborate with me. In fact, I went to see him as soon as Ms. Ung suggested this to me.
1.3. Although I did approach Mr. Chong a little after 5:00pm on 6th March, which makes it less than half an hour short of the 2 working days required by CEDARS as stated by Mr. Chong in his reply posted above (though he did not inform me of this specific time limit in our meeting on Friday), the main point of my previous article was not that I personally could not organise one particular event, but that the policies of the SU as well as HKU as a whole renders it impossible for any individual SU member or HKU student to ever book any suitable venue for a forum or a documentary screening, regardless of how early they start organising an event.
CEDARS
2. The above re-posted response from Mr. Chong Chan-yau (Director of Student Development) is written on behalf of CEDARS and presumably does not provide an explanation regarding the policy of the SU and the GL which render it impossible for individual students to use any of their facilities. In this section, I shall discuss the issue solely in regards to the part CEDARS plays.
2.1. In our meeting on 6th March, Mr. Chong declined to collaborate with me in hosting the event, as suggested by the GL’s Ms. Ung. I respect his decision as he had every right to make it.
2.2 However, Mr. Chong informed me that as an individual student, I could book a room administered by CEDARS for 30 minutes. I said that this was enough time for us to hold a forum and a documentary screening.
2.3. Mr. Chong then informed me that I could book a room for an hour if I could find 4 other students who would agree to let me use their HKU ID numbers to book a room as a group. As a first-year MPhil student, most of my friends graduated from HKU at the end of last year and I have not met many new students since. I therefore imagined that it would be difficult to find 4 other supportive students to collaborate with me on such a controversial event. Nonetheless, I initially agreed to attempt to find 4 other students, until I found out that the room I would be able to book (even as a group of 5 students) would have no video facilities. Therefore, it would be unsuitable for a documentary screening and a closed-door room would also be less appropriate for a forum on the topic due to difficulties in advertising the event mentioned in my last article.
2.4. Last year, I had been to a screening (with a discussion after the screening) of a documentary titled “Black Gold” which Mr. Chong also attended and even spoke at. It was held in a seminar room with video facilities. Since it was located in (or next to) the Ming Wah Complex, I assumed it to be administered by CEDARS. I asked Mr. Chong how I could book a room like that. His reply was that although he did not remember the specifics of that event, “doing something like that requires a student association [as opposed to simply an individual student or a group of individual students] doing the booking”. He suggested that I get in touch with a student association and ask them to host it under their name.
2.5. I find it hard to accept that an individual tuition-paying student of HKU, or even a group of 5 individual students, would be unable to book any rooms with video facilities; and that the only way to organise an activity requiring these facilities is to seek assistance from a student association registered under the SU. Even Mr. Chong himself admitted in our meeting that although student associations should not be afraid of touching on controversial issues such as the Tibetan one, it does not mean they will not be so. This makes organising an event almost a mission impossible for individual students if the event is related to a controversial topic.
2.6. Perhaps it could be argued that starting/joining one’s own student association would be a way to resolve the above problem. My reply to this is as follows:
2.6.1. As mentioned in my previous article, most of us at HKU are aware that to be a core-member of a student association involves much politics which not everyone is willing to deal with. Frankly speaking, I do not see why a student should have to play the game in order to speak up or take action about a political issue in the University.
2.6.2. As HKU student TSUI Kit Sang (徐傑生) mentioned in his article “巧遇巧文．世界失語．官僚制度—記一場於中聯辦門口的燭光集會” and his additional comments on the article, starting a student association especially for the purpose of holding one event each year seems “unsuitable” due to the bureaucratic and administrative procedures in starting and maintaining a student association under the SU. Though of course more than one event could be organised once the association is established, it seems to be redundant to establish a whole new association when the original intention is simply to hold one single event.
2.7. For the various reasons stated above, I am afraid that I cannot agree with Mr. Chong’s comment in his reply: “[CEDARS] believe that our current booking policy provides enough flexibility for students to organize activities”. What he said in our meeting indicates the impossibility for an individual students or group of individual students belonging to no HKU SU student association to organise any event requiring video facilities.
2.8. One last point about CEDARS’ involvement in this affair is that Dr. Albert Chau (Dean of Student Affairs) telephoned me on 11th March to inform me once again that I could have booked a CEDARS room for an hour if I could find 4 other supportive students. I reiterated the point about the lack of video facilities in these rooms available to groups of 5 students. He replied that they could have lent me video facilities to put into those rooms if I had called him personally. My views on this are as follows:
2.8.1. Before I made my experience in this affair public, I was never informed by CEDARS that additional facilities could be lent on request. In fact, when I asked Mr. Chong how I could resolve the problem of the lack of video facilities, the reply was that I could not.
2.8.2. I do not think it is fair that other students would not be able to book rooms with video facilities if they do not have Dr. Chau’s personal contact information. I suggest that it should be made clear on the booking website that anybody, be they Christina Hau Man Chan or not, can requests for additional facilities. After all, I doubt that many HKU students have Dr. Chau’s name card.
2.8.3. I would like to know how a seminar room which already comes with video facilities – such as the one the screening for the documentary “Black Gold” was held in – could be booked by an individual student. If this is not possible, I believe it reflects CEDARS’ unfair policy which favours students who have closer connections to the SU.
The Global Lounge
3. The GL has made no reply to me regarding the issue mentioned in my article. In addition to what was said in my previous article, I wish to make the following remark regarding their role in this affair:
3.1. I found it strange that different reasons were given each time I requested to book the GL for the event to be held on 10th March.
3.1.1. In my first conversation with Ms. Ung (GL’s manager), I was told that the GL might not be the best location for a documentary screening and a forum as students who come into the GL to visit the coffee shop but not to participate in this event might make noise.
3.1.1.1. Events involving the screening of one particular film out loud as well as speakers talking to students in the GL with a microphone have been regularly held in the GL since the opening of the GL in 2005. Why has the place suddenly become unsuitable for such events?
3.1.1.2. I imagine it should be well known for anyone working at HKU, such as Ms. Ung herself, that forums are regularly held in Happy Garden –a place even more open than the GL. Students pass by the area to visit the other coffee shop in campus as well as the Main Library. In fact, that was one of the places she suggested I consider after saying the GL was “unsuitable” for this kind of event. Why, then, was the potential noise factor a reason she used to ask me to try places other than the GL?
3.1.2. I was sent away to look for other options and returned for a second conversation with Ms. Ung after having no success seeking help from the SU. In my first conversation with Ms. Ung, I had already made it clear that I was organising this as an individual HKU student in collaboration with an international student organisation. She did not mention any problem with this. The only reason she stated for the GL being “an unsuitable place for this kind of event” was the noise factor. She even agreed that she could look over the booking schedule of the GL with me should I decide the GL was where I wanted to hold the event after looking into other options. However, in our second conversation, she suddenly informed me that as an individual student, I cannot book the GL and that only HKU student associations could use the facility. She nonetheless suggested that I talk to CEDARS’ Mr. Chong and assured me that if he was willing to collaborate with me and book the GL under his name, there would be no problem for the event to be held there. The obvious questions to ask Ms. Ung are:
3.1.2.1. Is Mr. Chong himself equal to a student association? And if so, why is that? Was it because he was a staff? Would getting help from any other staff not have done the trick? If so, why did she suggest Mr. Chong specifically? Why does a staff have privilege in booking events over students? Or does it have to be an administrative staff and not a teaching one? Would she not have allowed the event to be held there if an administrative staff other than Mr. Chong was collaborating with me? Or did she suggest this simply because she was his “friend”, as he suggested to me in our meeting on 6th March?
3.1.2.2. If the answers to all the above closed-ended questions are negative and that the only reason she suggested collaborating with Mr. Chong was that she thought he was “very sympathetic to student movements”, as she said in our second conversation, when in fact anyone else would have sufficed, then why did she not ask me to simply find an additional student?
3.1.3. In the end, after Mr. Chong declined to collaborate with me and suggested that I find a student association to host the event under their name, I managed to get in touch with the China Study Society (CSS) of the SU and both the person from the CSS and myself wrote an email to Ms. Ung asking to book the GL on 10th March. However, my contact from the CSS told me on 9th March that Ms. Ung still had not replied to him. I have had no word from him since. I, on the other hand, received an email from Ms. Ung saying “I already have an event for GL on 10 March” on the same day. My questions regarding this are as follows:
3.1.3.1. Did Ms. Ung receive an email from the CSS? If so, why did she not reply? If not, why did she not get back to me? (I asked her in my email to inform me if she does not get the email from CSS.)
3.1.3.2. What events and by whom was the GL booked for on the 10th March? Was the GL booked for the whole day? If not, why was our request declined? (Although I had expressed my preference to hold the event at lunch time, I did not insist that it was the only time we would opt for. In fact, I’d never made it definite to have a specific timeslot.)
3.1.3.3. When were the bookings for the day made? If they were made after the CSS’ request, why was the request declined? If they were made beforehand, why did Ms. Ung not inform us from the beginning that the place was completely booked for the whole day?
The Student Union
4.1.1. First, there is a clarification regarding my relationship with the SU that needs to be made. I had made a terrible mistake in believing that I was still paying the membership fee for the SU. In fact, though I was a fee-paying member of the SU for the last 3 years as an undergraduate student, I am not longer a member now that I doing my MPhil.
4.1.2. Nevertheless, this fact is irrelevant in terms of the point I wish to make as what I am trying to illustrate is that it is impossible for an individual fee-paying SU member and a tuition-paying HKU student to organise an event in the University. This is evident in the fact that nobody I spoke to from the SU seemed to know that I was no longer a member (and if they did, they for some reason did not state that as a reason in not being able to assist me, nor did they point me to the way of the Postgraduate Students Association (PGSA)).
4.1.3. Although I had already stated clearly in the beginning of the email in the help-seeking email I sent out to more than 10 HKU student associations, PGSA being one of them, the PGSA to this day has not replied to me in any shape of form, nor have they offered me any assistance in organising this event.
4.2. The following is an account of the SU’s involvement in this affair:
4.2.1. I telephoned the SU on 5th March, 2009 (Thursday) requesting to book the Happy Garden for a forum. SU’s Administrative Secretary, Arthur Cheung, informed me that the Happy Garden was fully booked for March but when asked what other options there were, he promised to call me back after looking into the matter.
4.2.2. Mr. Cheung did not return my call so I went to the SU Office at the Union Building in the hope of speaking to him in person. The staff at the desk said I did not need to speak to anyone since all the open areas in HKU had been fully booked. I accept that, of course, but I only wish the SU had gotten back to me earlier so I could rule it out as an option and start looking for another place (it only took the staff at the desk a few seconds to flip through the folding marked with bookings and see that everything was full).
4.2.3. Upon further enquiry, the staff at the desk told me that I could not have booked anything with the SU anyway, since I was an individual student who did not represent any student associations under the SU. Though I told her clearly that I was a fee-paying member of the SU, she insisted that only SU student associations are entitled to book venues with the SU.
4.2.4. When I asked what options I had left, the staff at the desk told me to go up one floor in the Union Building to ask the office on that floor as they allow bookings from individual students. However, that office told me they only lent out small rooms for purposes such as revision and these rooms have no video facilities.
4.2.5. After I posted my last article on the Democracy Wall, Ayo Chan (SU’s President) telephoned me and suggested that I could try and book the GL with his name as an individual student (albeit a powerful one!), though he made it clear that I could not use the name of the actual SU would in proceeding with the booking. This would have been of no use to me since it was required that an association, not an individual student, does the booking.
4.2.7. Since I had already made it clear that what I needed was not for them to do any actual organising work for the event but to simply lend me the SU’s name for the booking, the limited amount of time left before 10th March should not have posed a problem for them in assisting me in this particular way. What, then, was the actual reason for SU’s to reject my request for help?
On the Right of Booking Venues and Throwing Events (Or the Lack Thereof)
5. From what I have been told by CEDARS, the SU and the GL, individual HKU students/ SU members do not have the right to book venues suitable for throwing events such as forums and documentary screenings. Student associations, however, are allowed to do so. It seems that individual HKU staff (or at least CEDARS’ Mr. Chan) also share this privilege that individual HKU students/ SU members do not have.
5.1. If the reason for this rule being made and maintained is merely to reduce the queue of booking requests and indeed out of concern of the “space constraints of the University”, as stated in CEDARS’ reply, then my only response is that it is an inadequate reason: Even if the queue for booking venues in the University is long (and I do believe that it is), everybody should still have a right to queue up, just as the bathroom queue being long should not be a reason to prohibit children (or any other less powerful individuals) from entering the queue.
5.1.2. This choice to exclude a certain group of HKU members (namely individual HKU students/ SU members but not individual staff and student associations under the SU as well as the SU itself) seems to be either arbitrary or at least a product of the powerful setting rules to further limit the power of the already powerless. If the reason is indeed that the queue is too long, why not exclude even more people and perhaps only allow bookings made by the SU and staff, or even just staff? This would greatly reduce the booking queue even more and the “space constraints of the University” would seem less problematic. Why not exclude anyone who does not have blonde hair? This would actually be even more effective, though (at least to me) it seems silly. What I am trying to illustrate is that the choice of who to include and exclude seems to have more to do with how much power certain individuals or groups have. At the bottom of the University hierarchy, individual students and SU members have the least power and they are exactly the ones who are excluded.
5.2.2. Another question I would like to put to CEDARS, the SU and the GL is: How many requests to book venues for hosting events do they actually get from individual students? I would imagine there are not many. In that case, I do not see why accepting the occasional requests from individual students/SU members to book venues would make the queue much longer than it already is. If there are many, I would like to know the exact number.
5.3. If there is a reason unknown to me which is non-arbitrary and legitimate (I do not believe that individual students/SU members being the most powerless in the University hierarchy is a legitimate reason) for giving privilege to individual staff, the SU and student associations under the SU, I still do not see why student associations (and individual staff) cannot just have more priority than individual students/SU members in booking venues while individual students/SU members are still allowed to at least join the queue.
6. Once again, I do not believe that by writing this, an individual student like myself could possibly change the rules made by a power structure that has existed since a time before I was born. I also am not prepared to play the game and deal with the politics involved with joining certain University groups which have enough power to change the rules. I am merely writing to share with you my experience in trying to speak up and take action by organising an event as an individual student in HKU, and my failure in doing so.
2005656531
16th March, 2009 (Foundation day)
Footnotes:
(1) Posted on the HKU Democracy Wall as well as on InMedia under the same title at http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1002513
(2) This response was emailed to me by CEDARS’ Chong Chan Yau as well as posted on InMedia under the title of Response to Christina Chan at http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1002513#comment-1004313
(3) This can be found at http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1002529#comment-1004310 in 邪離子’s response titled “@李智良” to his own article “巧遇巧文．世界失語．官僚制度—記一場於中聯辦門口的燭光集會”, which was posted on the HKU Democracy wall as well as on InMedia at http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1002529
(4) A detailed account of the GL’s role in this affair can be found in Section 3 of this article.
(5) Posted on the HKU Democracy wall as well as on InMedia at http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1002529
(6) Dr. Chau has given me his name card with his contact details before as he approached me last year to discuss the issue of our posters on the topic of Tibet getting ripped down on campus after I had expressed my frustration to Hong Kong and international press.
(7) See a more detailed discussion of this policy in Section 5.
(8) Refer to footnote (10) for an additional question put to Ms. Ung.
(9)Though I was mistaken in this claim, she did not know that and therefore, she did believe she was dealing with a member of the SU.
(10)Nonetheless, after the telephone call Mr. Chan made to me on Sunday night, I did plan on trying to use Mr. Chan’s name to make another booking attempt on Monday but before I had a chance to, I already received an email from Ms. Ung saying the GL was booked. I would actually be interested in finding out whether Ms. Ung would have allowed the booking (providing the GL was not full) if it had been from a more powerful, though still individual, student like Mr. Chan.
(11) CEDARS_HKU, Response to Christina Chan. InMedia, http://www.inmediahk.net/node/1002513#comment-1004313; also found in the beginning of this article