Representative of R. C. Lee Hall Students' Association 利銘澤堂宿生會代表 Leung Kai Tung 梁啟東

These years, after the release of results of local students' admission to the university, on the

newspaper there are always complaints from not admitted students such as ' HKU admits

more and more mainland students and ignore local students' need'. In the first place this may

look a bit irrational but the fact is the number of non-local students is rising and these blames

truly affect HKU reputation from normal local parents' perspectives. So should the intake be

reduced? As a hall representative, my answer is no but the direction of admission should be

changed so that larger proportion of overseas students should be admitted.



From the figures provided we can see that in fact the number of admitted local students does

not change much and it is even increasing this year. It shows that HKU did not deprive the

local right of applying for HKU. After the admission of non-local students especially mainland

students, the number has decreased for a few hundreds since 2000. However, in terms of

cultural interaction and international outlook of HKU, it seems that this drop does worth it.

The problem is whether the above two aims are achieved or not.



As for cultural interaction, what i can see in my hall is that there is mere cultural

communication between local and non-local students. As everyone knows, halls in HKU have

their own traditions which mainly are built up and carried on by local students. These

traditions in fact are doing a satisfactory influence on constructing bonding among those

participants. But then the problem appears. How can the non-local join these activities and

merge into the society? First, these traditions are quite 'local' and others especially those who

cannot speak Chinese find it difficult to enjoy the activities. Second, the strong bonding

among the local refrains the others from stepping into their social circle. Apart from the

tradition, sometimes even if local students actively approach non-local students via different

activities like non-local gathering, room visit and team practice, the feedback is not satisfying.

Majority of the non-local students (mainly mainland students) fully devote in their studies to

an extent that they are not willing to communicate with local students, leading to no cultural

interactions.



About the international outlook of HKU, it is not the first time to hear the complaints of non-
local students about their life in halls, which to a certain extent affect HKU international

reputation as well. It is mainly because once you cannot enjoy the activities in hall, they

become a big noise to your hall life. From my observation, I have to say that overseas

students are much more eager to enjoy their hall life than mainland students.



The university maintains quite a good balance between the number of local and non-local

students right now. However to modify the situation, larger proportion of overseas students

should be admitted.