Pedagogical bodies & technological spaces

A second theme running along the new campus development is the notion of sustainability which is largely concerned with environmental issues.  Recently, I attended a workshop that facilitated the discussion on such issues.  The workshop was also open to the entire university community and this time it was a much bigger scale, and the venue is a much bigger space and is situated in the Graduate School quarters.  I don’t want to go into details about what was covered in the workshop because what seems more important to me was the observation I had with the kinds of people who did or did not come to this workshop.

In comparison to the earlier classroom design workshops, a few more faculty members turned up, external consultants and architects of the project were there because of their obvious involvement,  and that may also explained the presence of a few administrative staff, among them , two in charge of student affairs and developments, and the Vice Chancellor also showed up towards the end.  In a nutshell, all the important figures were present, so in a sense, the event was already a sort of mandated practice which I suppose belonged to the category of ‘important publicity events’ of the university.  Yet extremely limited number of student participants turned up.  There was virtually no undergraduate students there, and among the four postgraduate students who were present, two came because they were some what involved with the project not because they had a genuine concern for the issue as one confessed to me after the event.  Another was an overseas ‘White’ student who was clearly interested in the subject. Among the three, only one was a local student.   I was the 2^nd local PGS there because of my research interest.   The reason I’m putting forth these details is because I believe it says a lot about the existing culture of the place and the sort of values people embody in such a space.  One would think that issues like this sort will appeal to a larger audience in comparison with earlier workshops which focuses more on teaching and learning specific matters.  And consultative workshops like this one which tries to engage the whole community to voice out their concerns is historically rare in this particular institute, as well as other tertiary institutes in the region.   In fact, in the past, the student organizations will have to fight for a chance to have their voice included in any major decision making events of the university.  So on one level I was surprised that none of the student organizations sent their representatives over which makes one wonder what students were up to these days apart from their busy study and social lives.  On second thought, I wasn’t so surprised because the low student participation rate reflects the kinds of issues students are concerned with these days, and the campus development seems to fall short of their top priority things.  I remembered I was reading a report dated a few years back, and it shows that local students and teachers regarded the maintenance of law and order to be the most important issues, and others such as social equality, tolerance for diversity and environment were on the bottom.  I think this sort of value doesn’t get changed much even as these students advance to tertiary education or enter the work force.  Now that reminds me that I don’t really know what sort of value this university embrace or represent.  In fact, do we have any values that this university upholds as a whole?  It would be interesting to find out by conducting a similar survey among the HKU students and staff. It would be a very interesting study.