For a considerable amount of time and also durig the 2013 Spring Festival, complaints have been made about the advertising methods of certain school clubs. The KAIST Herald delves deeper into the issue at hand.

Pro: Excessive Advertising vs. Student Priorities

In the time spent moving about on campus, students frequently encounter attention-grabbing advertising by members of student clubs, who are often promoting their upcoming performances as well as groups unaffiliated with KAIST seeking service volunteers. These affairs are usually pleasant enough – some groups choose to sing, often accompanied by guitar melodies, while others shout out messages in a chorus (there is an additional comical value to be found when one member in such group fails to be in sync, resulting in the distortion of their message into loud, unintelligible noises). However, on-campus advertising can sometimes get out of hand. The hip-hop club Ghuttos, whose advertising campaigns resulted in complaint posts on ARA, the school’s online forum, serves as a good example of the conflict that can arise between the interests of the clubs and that of the general student body. The loud volume and suggestive lyrics of the music that they play, for example, have been outright unpleasant to passers-by. Advertising in a public or academic zone such as our university’s campus should automatically place a responsibility on the advertisers to display discretion – it should be done in a way that is as inoffensive as possible - but this obligation has been blatantly ignored.

First and foremost, members of all student clubs need to respect the freedom and claim to happiness of their fellow students. KAIST students enroll at the university primarily to pursue advanced scientific studies, and the university accordingly functions as a place to enhance and encourage student learning and research. Campus life is structured to give these students no further stress than that resulting from a competitive academic environment, and unpleasant advertising has no place in this setup. The fact that the campus serves as a home away from home for the vast majority of students is yet another reason why offensive promotions should be avoided – just as all people expect to find privacy and comfort at home, the campus, as the students’ “homes,” should be a place where their relative privacy is respected.

Another issue to consider is the preservation of image of both student clubs and KAIST. Frequent displays of aggressive advertising by any of the clubs will earn them a negative image and bring them to disrepute – the criticism of Ghuttos’ promotions, for example, was not based on a single instance. Their advertising routine in front of the undergraduate cafeteria was clearly ill-received by those students who dislike the loud music and the gesturing made by Ghuttos’ members. The influence of such advertising can extend from affecting the image of the student clubs to that of the university as a whole – given the numerous visitors the campus receives throughout the year, any advertising raucous enough to draw their attention and sufficiently deviant from the expectations the public have of KAIST can easily leave a lasting impression.

In the case of external organizations, their presence alone can disturb the campus atmosphere, while potentially exposing students to elements completely unrelated to the university as well. External organizations pursue an agenda of their own and with notable examples, such as religious groups, some of these agenda will not reflect the university’s beliefs. The possibility of external organizations taking advantage of their access to university grounds is reason enough to restrict their activities, and perhaps prohibit them completely.

For all the issues concerning on-campus advertising, the school administration may see the positives in such activities, which perhaps explains why they are condoned. The vast majority of clubs and external organizations have thus far advertised with good intentions and usually have done so in harmless fashion. However, any infringements of the KAIST community’s unspoken rights must be avoided, and to that effect, restrictions on club or other promotions may be unavoidable.

Con: Not an Issue of Regulation but Discretion

With the hubbub of the festival season, many KAIST clubs have also found the opportunity to step up their advertising a notch, either for events of the festival or to make their presence better known. In the middle of this commotion, it was perhaps no surprise that some clubs went maybe “too far” in their endeavors. The most-read post on ARA for several days was a complaint about a campaign by the KAIST hip-hop club Ghuttos, which apparently involved covering posters of other clubs with stickers to advertise their own. Many people also took offense to Ghuttos members playing music at full volume in front of the cafeteria during mealtimes, as well as other organizations causing a racket at night while practicing music.

Any observer who has been here for some time will note that this controversy surrounding club activities that inconvenience others is nothing new. Different clubs at different times have often been accused of such things, and for good reason too. Given that KAIST students are perpetually occupied with their own academic and personal matters, the complaints leveled at such disregardful actions (especially near those places where clubs most frequently meet to engage in oftentimes raucous activities) are entirely understandable.

Such clubs have often argued – sometimes stridently – that they have every right to do these things. On the other hand, students who are most vocal in their complaints have clamored for increased and more stringent regulation regarding club activities, including advertising. Yet one must still stress that while it is true that negative outcomes that arise from club activities must be duly addressed as they come, more stringent restrictions against them may actually interfere with the very purpose of student organizations; clubs are here for students to do what they enjoy doing, and to give joy to others in the process. KAIST rarely has many entertainment events for students to attend. This is what keeps student musical groups alive despite the numerous complaints over the years; they can help students – not just club members - “loosen up” and enjoy, enriching their scholastic experience at the same time.

The pitfall in letting regulations and university restrictions govern what students do to influence the student population lies in the fact that it hands the school administration the power to rule over student organizations. This brings to mind past attempts by the president, faculty, and others to influence student organizations: most notably, interventions by the previous administration during the student election to install a student body representative more favorable to their own terms some five years ago and outlawing events of a political nature (such as the cancelled Naggomsu talk concert on school grounds last year). A unifying aspect of these instances of central control over student activities was that authorities relied on regulations to drive their point, and exercised enforcement in such a way as to satisfy their own needs.

This is in no way stating that regulations such as “all advertising must be in good taste, appropriate for its intended purpose and must not create litter or disruption” (a regulation on campus advertising from Virginia Tech) will be used by the university to tie down student freedoms. Yet even the best-worded laws can be applied very vaguely, for example, by subjectively defining what is considered “disruption” or “good taste.” However, it is also true that what is done for, by, and of the students can also be regulated for, by, and of the students; the Student Clubs Union is in charge of addressing precisely such complaints (in fact the offending club in the aforementioned example, Ghuttos, has already been reprimanded and penalized a number of times over the years for various transgressions of Clubs Union regulations). In other words, relegating the responsibility of policing student actions to authorities will only be admitting that students – most of whom are full adults by law - are not able to manage and be responsible for their own activities.

Lastly, the most important point to make is that inasmuch as clubs are responsible for their own activities, it is also their duty to exercise discretion so that others are not inconvenienced or offended by their actions. The fact that this comment is being leveled at music clubs – whose members should be entertaining and giving joy to other students – is quite shameful.