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| THE KAIST TIMES http://kaisttimes.com | |||||||
If you are KAIST students, you definitely have heard this story: "Do you go to KAIST? You must be a genius." Although I used to think that KAIST students were unique and talented compared to other Universities students, I have changed my mind. I no think that KAIST is actually just a small version of conventional student society.
Recently, a certain case confirmed this belief.
Whenever we go to undergraduate student restaurant, we always complain, "Why are my school's restaurants so terrible? It's outrageous! We switched catering companies, but there is no change at all!" If we change some words in this sentence, from my school to my country, from restaurant to politics, from catering company to political party, it might sound familiar with you.
During this final exam period, people complained loudly and bitterly about the student restaurant on ara/food corner. The food quality improved as a result. However, I am pretty skeptical how long this will last because it was achieved by voluntary sacrifice on the part of the catering company.
Also, this isn't just a problem of undergraduate student restaurants.
Since the new catering company started managing the restaurants, we polled twice. The West Undergraduate Student Restaurant got under 3.0, which is a warning grade, twice. The East Undergraduate Student Restaurant got also very low degree, 3.1 at polls. It means that changing the company didn't fix the problem.
The diagnoses and solutions for this terrible food situation are as numerous as the tragic food choices. However, none of them is based on reality.
"Three restaurants are enough, considering the size of KAIST." "The problem is not the company but the unchanged cook." These are just guesswork. It's now time to stop these unhelpful and boring debates based on "guesswork." We have to analyze the problem through research into actual conditions of restaurants inside and outside KAIST, as well as the restaurant management of other Universities. We then have to use this analysis to examine and change basic things, such as the number and location of restaurants, one by one.
The KAIST administration is not interested in student welfare, and so will not do anything about it. Also, leaving the food quality improvement to the company is like having the fox guard the henhouse.
Therefore, we have to do it.
Of course, we can't promote as well as professionals could. Even if our research turns up new restaurant management, we can't guarantee that it could be better than the present one. But things would obviously go in a better direction than they do now - ineffective solutions based on uncertain guesswork.
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