The new semester started 2 months ago. Several student councils got settled and showed many programs to students. The alliance store program is an easy and convenient program for students. The student body council and each college’s student councils aligned with many stores. CBNU students can use this program with a student ID card.
  The College of Humanities’ student council has the largest number of alliance stores, which is 20, and the College of Engineering’s student council has the next largest number, 19 stores. Most of the alliance stores are restaurants or bars, whereas there are private educational institutes, photo studio, hospitals and cafes as well. While most of these stores are located at the Sa-chang intersection, there are some alliance stores on Sung-an street as well.
  Even though a lot of students already know what the alliance program is, there are many students who don’t know how the alliances are formed. An anonymous member of the student council of his college said, “First of all, we select some good stores where most students prefer to go and enjoy. We carry out a survey to hear students’ opinions. After selecting some stores, our members of the student council go to the stores and meet the bosses and negotiate with them for some good benefits, like a discount or nice services that students can use. However, one of the difficult things is that while we negotiated a contract, some bosses expected difficult things from us such as promoting their stores every day or always going to their stores.”
  Some stores have kept many alliances with not only one student council but also with other student councils over a few years. Why do those stores accept the students’ alliance requests? Currently, The Korea Foreign Language Institution at Sa-chang intersection said that they made an alliance with the CBNU student council, so they give CBNU students a 5% discount for taking language classes. They give a different discount rate depending on what college a student belongs to. For example, students who go to the College of Humanities or the College of Social Sciences, which has the Dept. of Public Administration, usually take TOEIC exams a lot. Therefore, the academy gives those students a 10% discount, and they also give students of the Dept. of Nursing Science a 20% discount because those students have to take a TOEIC exam. A person who works in the academy said, “Contracting an alliance can be advantageous for both students and us because students might not have enough money to take language classes so we can reduce the students’ burdens. We also can expect our sales to increase. We only make an alliance with CBNU because lots of CBNU students come to our academy to take classes and we also want to help them. That’s why we make an alliance only with the CBNU student council.”
  However, some students said there are weak points in the alliance program. They pointed out that it is hard to know which stores are alliance stores, and they also said that alliance stores are changing every year as the student councils change and usually promote alliance stores through CBNU diaries or Facebook, which are not used by all students. The prior College of Humanities’ student council got a good evaluation from students because they marked alliance stores on pictorial maps for better recognition.
Though some weak points exist, many students are satisfied with the alliance store program. Discount or service offers are beneficial and useful to students. Since alliance stores also receive benefits, the alliance store program is advantageous to both students and stores. If these weak points are fixed, the merits would be maximized.

By Shin So-hyeon
sh36@cbnu.ac.kr
By Oh Byung-hyun
bh37@cbnu.ac.kr