First-year political science students at Chulalongkorn University have voted to drop the traditional contests among them in a referendum.
For years, the contests are held by students at some universities at the faculty level. Although the purpose is to find a faculty’s representatives, the winners are almost always the best-looking freshmen.
The three contests are Dao (Star) for female students, Duen (Moon) for male students and Dao Tiam (Satellite) for LGBT students. Some places also have “Din” (Soi) for the funniest first-years.
A rethink of such contests was recently brought up by Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, a third-year student at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science, who questioned whether the tradition should continue. He views it as a form of discrimination and a waste of money since they use the budget of the students’ association.
Opinions split on the issue at the faculty, except on scrapping the Dao Tiam contest on which both sides agreed.
Those in favour of the competitions said they aimed to find the representatives of the students at activities and they could be improved instead of being scrapped. Besides, care and consideration have always been taken to avoid discrimination and embarrassment when the contests are being held, they claimed.
Those against such activities said they focused only on looks rather than inner values.
The faculty’s student association decided to put the issue to a referendum on Friday.
Some 260 freshmen voted, representing 90.1% of all first-year students.
Mr Netiwit wrote on Facebook on Friday the unofficial results showed 54.6%, or 142, voted to scrap the contests while 43.5%, or 113, wanted to keep the tradition. There were five bad ballots.
The official results will be announced Friday evening, he added.
Mr Netiwit also champions changes in other controversial social issues such as military draft and prostration.
A closeup of the results. (Photo from Facebook@Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal)