By Danial Yusof
GOMBAK, 3 April 2016: Students Representative Council 15/16 (SRC) finally succeeded in conducting the first ever IIUM Student Leaders Assembly (ISLA) 2016 which started this morning.
The assembly was attended by the Rector of IIUM, Prof. Dato Dr. Zaleha Kamaruddin, accompanied by the Deputy Rector (Student Affairs), Prof. Datuk Dr. Mizan Hitam. It took place at the Senate Hall and was attended by 146 members representing all student bodies including 24 elected members of SRC.
The assembly began with the recitation of doa’ by the Deputy Speaker, Abdul Muiz. This was followed by the  Rector’s keynote address. In her speech she expressed her happiness for IIUM to handle the first student leaders assembly among all bodies in IIUM.
œIt should be part of our constitution since 33 years ago, she added.
IIUM is the fourth public university to establish the assembly after Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Malaysia Sabah. The Rector was, however, quite upset to hear that because as a leader, “we should be leading others and not following instead.”
The idea of this assembly was proposed earlier in 2010 by Iqbal Ab Wahab, former President SRC 11/12 and the Rector was satisfied because finally it came into reality.
There were other key points mentioned by the Rector. She said that a leader must have both forms and substance. It must come together where the form is the attire or appearance of the person and directly she suggested that the assembly should be properly attired not only for the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker but also for all delegates in the assembly.
The second part that was told by the Rector was about substance. “Our university is unique as compared to others because in the 80s, most of public universities were using Bahasa Malaysia as their medium of communication in the university but not IIUM where we used English and Arabic languages as our first and second language in the university. The point is that all delegates in the assembly need to be different from the others to make them aware of our existence,” she said.
The Rector expressed her wish that this would not be the first and the last assembly among student leaders in IIUM.
“This must be a continuous event and the SRC needs to discuss on how many assemblies that were needed to be organised among student leaders and this practice will expose delegates to the real environment in Parliament,” she added.***