Date:2013-08-01
Report on the first “School Wide Autonomous Student Organization Competition” held by Youth Development Administration in 2013.
To encourage and assist the development of school wide autonomous student organizations in colleges and universities, “School Wide Autonomous Student Organization Development Competition and Observation Program” was held at Hung Kuang University on April 27 and 28. Instead of “evaluation”, a more serious form that has been adopted in the past, the program was conducted in a more lively approach of “competition”, including activities such as speeches, experience sharing and world cafe discussion to provide the youths with diverse learning opportunities.
108 public and private colleges and universities took part in this competition, among whom, 83 participated in the School Wide Autonomous Student Organization Development Competition. The competition is divided into the college division and vocational school division. 10 student organizations, including Mingdao University and Jinwen University of Science and Technology won the Award of Excellence, showing that winning student organizations are robust and devoted to passing down their experiences. This is a major step toward public participation for the students.
The awards for the competition are categorized into Award of Excellence, Outstanding Award, Finalist Award, and Gold Award. The Outstanding Awards were awarded to 10 student organizations, including Feng Chia University and Chang Gung University of Science and Technology. National Chengchi University and Yu Da University and student organizations from 18 other educational institutions received the Finalist Awards. In addition, to encourage the student organizations to implement data maintenance and management, Youth Development Administration also designated 10 Gold Awards for the student organizations to vote for and select the student organizations with the best file management system. Student organizations from National Chengchi University and 9 other educational institutions received the awards.
In addition to the competition, Youth Development Administration also arranged activities such as speeches, world cafe discussions, and youth leadership night for students from different student organizations to share their experiences and learn from each other. They also provided many valuable suggestions for the position and future directions of autonomous student organizations as well as how the competition can be conducted in the future, fully exemplifying the characteristics of autonomous organizations.
Deputy Director-General of Youth Development Administration, Shi Jian-Chu stated that this is the first time the competition was held by Youth Development Administration after the re-organization. The Administration will re-evaluate how the competition should be conducted in the future to provide opportunities for mutual learning and interaction for schools as well as establishing Progress Award to encourage the student organizations that make the most progress. The effort is to make it a competition that meets the youths’ expectations. In addition, the judges also encourage the student organizations to develop the organization in a democratic way, recognize the differences, learn to compromise and value law and order. They also hope that more schools will be able to participate next year.