Unesa.ac.id, SURABAYA-The pandemic is not a barrier for UNESA students to make achievements on the national level. Sociology students class 2018, Faculty of Social and Law; Akbar Mawlana and Naufalul Ihya' Ulumuddin brought home the 1st place trophy in the Volunteer Essay competition with the theme 'Volunteership Practice in Indonesia' organized by the Institute for Volunteering Studies (IVOS).
In the competition, there were 169 participants and 153 essays, with the provision that it was allowed to be individually and in groups of up to 2 people in 1 group. The contestants are not only from East Java, but from various provinces in Indonesia such as Aceh, Bali, Jakarta, West Java, NTT, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and so on.
The two students wrote an essay with the title 'Virtual Volunteers: Picking Up Abandoned Votes' about alternative ways of volunteering. In short, social media can be constructed as a medium of awareness of social tragedies that exist in society. For example, the Berdikari account uses Instagram to produce knowledge that breaks down problems in society.
The idea emerged from the lack of use of young people in using social media as a positive thing. Most young people are still stuck in the void of social media. A simple example is that there are still young people who reproduce gender biased narratives and knowledge on social media. This happens because of the lack of knowledge of young people to use social media. To complete the essay it took a total of 7 days, with 5 days looking for references and data and 2 days to write.
Constraints experienced when writing essays include finding literature on virtual sociology, because the study of virtual sociology is just developing. Moreover, in Indonesia the study of virtual sociology is very new.
Akbar said that conveying ideas through writing can be a bow that can break the black reality in society. Therefore, students as agents of change should not forget to write down their concerns through writing. Movement without ideas is like vegetables without salt; any idea without movement would just be nonsense.
“The campus will experience an education epidemic, if it cannot accommodate the potential of its students freely. For this reason, the presence of a writing competition is a medium of resistance to the death of education,” he said.
Not only in this competition, the two students also often take part in other competitions, such as the UKIM UNESA LKTIN being the best paper, FIS UM LKTIN being the finalist, and the International article competition by I-Win Library winning 3rd place. (Aida)
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