The tripartisan Undergraduate Student Council elections on November 23 have proven very close, with a difference of only 43 votes between the winner, All in One, and Tomorrow, the runner-up. Although the 53.15% turnout was similar to last year’s 52.88%, the interest shown by students towards the elections is nonetheless commendable. Although the vox populi that has thundered from the electoral polls gives anyone – whether he agrees with the results or not – some measure of pride, at least for this reporter there was also an observable tendency within KAIST student politics to marginalize points of conflict while upping the Obama-esque “language of hope.”

This was clear from the attitudes of the parties towards addressing the causes behind the tragedies last semester: the current president-elect Dohan Kim, for instance, stated in one of the debates that “although policy reformations are important, the general character of the university community in itself must be changed” to enable “KAIST students to take greater pride in their school.” Dugeun² also stated that “school policy must be changed to enable students to follow their dreams.” The extreme harmlessness and the “niceness” of the phrases notwithstanding, one may notice that not a single realistic policy was offered within the context to address the problem. Ironically this problem has been noted by all the candidacies, as each accused the other of “empty rhetoric” while - in the words of Tomorrow’s vice-presidential candidate and Dugeun²’s presidential candidate - “offering no viable and effective solutions.”

That most or all of the candidates who participated in the elections had no policies or solutions whatsoever would be outright wrong. Then what is the cause of this lethargic political environment? The issue lies not with the candidates but with the worrying amount of anti-political sentiment at KAIST. One only has to breeze through ARA to find that KAIST students do not appreciate political agitation, a broad-brushed term liberally applied to any value judgment on an issue that the particular (so very uncompromisingly rational) person does not agree with. They also seem to take unnatural amounts of pride in their perceived apoliticism and lack of opinions. This was most apparent during last semester, when it was generally agreed among most if not all students and staff that KAIST desperately needed fundamental changes. Yet, any expression of criticism made towards the system itself, and any attempts at mass action – even the Emergency Student Assembly - were attacked by many students as being “criticism for the sake of criticism” and “irrational agitation.”

Time and time again, this culture has cried foul at such expressions of opinion. And time and time again it has been proved that such high-minded whistleblowers are the ones least likely to initiate any sort of change, as seen from the polemics of some keyboard commentators during last semester’s crisis against the current student representatives’ “extreme” activities (which nonetheless brought about many changes for the students.) While it is true that nobody has the right to harness the opinions of others, maligning each and every challenge towards the status quo simply as troublemaking not only disparages such viewpoints, but also bars any constructive discussion. The “empty rhetoric” that was so rife in the debates stems from precisely this: a stale atmosphere in which clear-cut value judgments are shunned in favor of feigned indifference and empty “niceness.”

KAIST is perhaps one of the largest concentrations of great scientific minds in Korea. Thus it is expected that the university culture will tend to value rationalism and factual clarity. Yet students must also realize that in a democratic society, apathy behind a façade of impartiality and unadventurous rhetoric - fueled by one’s own ignorance and insecurity - is not necessarily better than having a flawed opinion.