-JOHN KIM, FOUNDER OF APU TIMES
APU Times members (partial)
As mundane as it may sound, APU is known for its multicultural environment. As of May 1, 2019, there are students from 91 different countries, which is a fact supported by numbers. What is not supported by numbers is the indication of interactions held between students from different backgrounds in this unique setting. Perhaps, intercultural interaction may be difficult to measure in numbers, but it is something that we should not neglect to notice.
From the experiences, surveys, and observations, I couldn’t help but realize that most of the students are unhappy with their current situation. Exchanging different opinions and interacting at a deeper level than just saying hi and bye was what people are eager to have yet missing. The high hopes of making new friends and the ambition to exploit the unique environment from the freshman year diminish away as people encounter various adversities. Talking to many professors and staffs, I realized that this is a prolonged issue started as early as at the beginning of the school in 2000. However, regardless of the difficulty of the issue, I wanted to put my hand on it because there is no meaning of enrolling APU if we continue this tradition.
Realizing that people need more shared information in an organized form and need better means of sharing opinions from the previous activities under the name Mixing APU, a student media, APU Times, was founded. The fundamental issue of the current situation in APU lies in not having anything that has audiences and organized information. The situation is real when the Facebook page called Mini-share is the largest community that APU has so far. Sometimes the page is misused and that is because we don’t have a media.
One more problem is that collecting and sharing of information is too hard. People struggle searching through different websites and going through posters. It is simply hard to reach people for the organization as well. This happens because every organization produces information and shares it. When every organization does that, it becomes chaotic; hard to receive or spread information for everyone. One of the functions of the APU Times is to resolve this problem by transforming how we share our information. This way students can easily see what is available and what is interesting to them, naturally increasing the interactions in the school as a result. Another function of the APU Times is to inform APUans. From current problems in the school and hardship that APUans face to interesting issues and breaking news, APU Times will provide news and videos through Facebook and newspapers. Our goal to let APUans know what is going on, creating an atmosphere and opportunities to exchange thoughts over the news and issues.
The last function is to help students. Some students seem to be lost and demotivated, being helpless. However, we want to motivate them or help them out by interviewing Seniors and get advice from them and interviewing motivated people. By showing what is possible and setting a role model, we want to achieve our goal.
This is the idea behind founding APU Times and the functions of it. I hope APUans support this idea since it is beneficial to all of us. If you want to support us by helping us out, please contact us. Stay tuned for more of our activities.
