Tainan First Senior High School on Wednesday is to inaugurate its first political party, the TNFSH Full-Sugarism Party, to help support students’ democratic literacy.
Freshman Tsai Wei-po (蔡偉柏), a founding member of the new group, said the party was created to bring attention to student self-governance, and to supervise the administration and student association.
“One voice is easy to ignore,” Tsai was quoted as saying by the Chinese-language United Daily News on Friday. “A group has more influence.”
Photo: Liu Wan-chun, Taipei Times
The party has 33 members, but with more than 70 applications pending, out of a student population of 2,101, organizers said, adding that a chairperson and other officials would be appointed during Wednesday’s ceremony.
School principal Liao Tsai-ku (廖財固) on Saturday said the school respects students’ pursuit of democratic literacy and would provide positive guidance.
The TNFSH Full-Sugarism Party charter has seven main objectives, which range from serious to silly.
The party said it would seek to improve the welfare of the entire student body, construct a philosophy of equality within the school and advance students’ civic literacy.
It also intends to use memes to promote student self-governance, as well as the concept of “full sugarism.”
Referring to a well-known joke that Kaohsiung Senior High School (KSHS) governs southern Taiwan under the “Great KSHS Kingdom,” the TNFSH Full-Sugarism Party vowed to resist annexation by the school.
Lastly, the party promised to connect the all-boys school to Tainan Girls’ Senior High School through an underground tunnel.
The Senior High School Education Act (高級中等教育法) stipulates that schools must “guide students to organize self-governing organizations,” which means that students can establish self-governance organizations, but not many students know about this right, Tsai said.
The party founders decided that some humorous goals would help draw attention to the party and inspire other schools to create their own parties, Tsai added.
“Some people might think that we are just ‘kids playing at politics’ or that this has nothing to do with academics, but politics is a part of life,” the freshman said.
Students creating political parties should not be looked upon too seriously or negatively, he said.
Discussing such issues can help “implant democratic literacy in students,” Tsai added.
Although some people have joked that the new party would make the school a “one-party state,” Tsai said he backed the formation of other parties.
“It would give us a chance to analyze all kinds of issues,” he told the newspaper.
The Full-Sugarism Party is not the first student party in Taiwan.
The Taichung First Senior High School student council last year became the first in the nation to pass a “student political party act.”
Three parties were established, although one is at risk of dissolution after it failed to nominate any candidates for party office.
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