By Siti Zulaikha Zukefli
GOMBAK, 26 May 2022: Nazifah Ibrahim expressed her concerns to tackle the issues of sexual harassment in campus which she claimed is on the rise and needs proper attention of the student union.
A third year Sociology and Anthropology student from AbdulHamid AbuSulayman Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences (AHAS IRKHS) is contesting the Secretary seat in the IIUMSU 2022 student union election.
Believing that there is a security system provided in campus, she however, said that it is important to cater to the root cause of the issue, that is by creating awareness among students themselves.
She hoped the campaign on safe campus awareness should be spread out among IIUM students for the sake of their safety.
Nazifah said the students should know how to react when they encounter an unpleasant situation.
She therefore proposed three mechanisms for the safe campus campaign, which is to conduct the social movement on a larger scale. For example, collecting the team voices from students and organising sharing sessions with students who had the experiences in the issue.
Other mechanisms to deal with the issue are to distribute self-defence kits, such as pepper spray to IIUM female students, and to provide students with martial arts training.Â
Other than that, in accordance with her position as secretary, her second manifesto is to develop a balance and create more leaders among IIUM community through the empowerment of IIUMSU.
Nazifah shared that she always dream of seeing IIUM students being exposed to secretarial skills because she believed that these skills are much needed nowadays.
Hence, to realise her dream, she is using this opportunity to bring the secretarial training through IIUM secretarial platform to improve the IIUM students’ competency in secretarial skills.
Asked how she managed to balance her study with her secretarial job, she said she believed that her passion and personality have led her to succeed in both.
She showed her high passion for the secretarial position when she was the former secretary of IRKHSSS. Having a very detail-oriented personality, she used this as an advantage to pursue a secretarial position even though the workload is heavy.
Nazifah expressed the hope for IIUM students to participate in the election as voters to show their democratic spirit. She also hoped that the new tenure of the student union will bring changes to the democratic spirit and students’ readiness to have more candidates in future election. ***