By Athira ABD Latiff
GOMBAK, 13 November 2022: Eight student council representatives from the University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) visited IIUM last month (27th October) in hopes to achieve ideas on how to establish UMS’ own student union.
According to the student council president, Eliezar Nevall, with many issues raised within campus grounds, the student representatives are responsible to address students’ concerns.
Eliezar explained that among students’ common concerns were budget allocation, limited capacity of residential colleges, and the reduction of tuition fees for scholarship students.
Apart from visiting IIUM, UMS student council representatives also visited four other universities within the central region, Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), and Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM).
“During our visits, we observed how all five universities facilitate the needs and concerns of students and combined all inputs into one for UMS’ student union establishment,” he added.
He also noted that there were differences in the student representative conduct in which IIUM Student Union (IIUMSU) differs in administering independently without any connections with official departments as compared to other universities.
“Such inputs assist in developing our own university constitution and student conduct in facilitating the concerns and needs of UMS students to the greatest priority,” Eliezar emphasised.
He highlighted UMS needs to establish the universities constitution for the forthcoming batch of UMS student council in instituting a student union as a continuous effort in accommodating the concerns of students.
“We believe our observations from the five universities enhance our ability in generating documents for our memorandum to be presented and acted by our new vice-chancellor,” he added.
Eliezar hoped that these visits will allow a continuous relationship between other student representatives so that when one falls, all the other universities will offer a hand. ***