LESS concerts and more student-oriented projects–the Central Student Councils (CSC) has vowed for this school year.
“Concerts are just icing on the cake,” CSC president Reyner Villaseñor said. “We opt to give the students not what they want but really what they need.”
Saying he would leave concerts to the Student Organization’s Coordinating Council, Villaseñor said the CSC administration seeks to restore its image as a student government through its projected seven-point agenda : as student rights, campus safety and security, financial transparency, student facilities and services, information dissemination, Thomasian pride, and recreational and community development.
Villaseñor said that the CSC has formed a committee to help address student grievances.
“An effective grievance network called the student’s rights welfare board will also be created to provide students with an avenue to express their grievances and complaints to the authorities,” the student leader said. “We are still calling for the critical mind of the Thomasians to complain small irregularities that they will observe in the future.”
Villaseñor invites Thomasians to bravely raise anything that they find wrong so that the CSC can politely address the matter.
In partnership with TOMCAT, CSC also plan to hold assemblies where student leaders could voice out problems in their respective schools which would be streamed in all television screens.
“No professor or official will be invited since their presence may intimidate the student leaders,” Villaseñor said.
“CSC is redefined in a sense that it is no longer six people or more who will be working to check on the facilities and services that the University provides,” he said. “Rather we encourage local councils to support us in our endeavors.”
The committee will consist of both the CSC executive board and the local councils. It will regularly check the facilities of every college, faculty or institute in the University. Findings will be referred to the student council and the dean’s office.
Campus safety
Because of widespread incidents of crime on and off the campus, the CSC head urge swiping stations to be installed in all gates. “It might be expensive but it is all worthy when you have the campus security at stake,” he said.
He added that uniforms and even IDs are not assurance that we know who we are dealing with here in the campus.
“You could even find as much fake IDs in Recto and the like,” Villasenor said.
He also added that uniforms and ID should be properly worn at all times.
Villasenor said the CSC vows to be transparent.
“Although liquidation reports are supposed to be confidential we agreed to disclose them to the public and post them on our bulletin boards,” said Villaseñor. “We also aim to regularly post the monthly financial statement of the council so that the students will know where their money is going.”
Meanwhile, CSC public relations officer Jules Benedict Lim proposed an SMS campaign in coordination with the Office of the Secretary General. The campaign encourages all Thomasian to subscribe to the messaging system and receive important advisory regarding University events and emergencies.
“Through this, Thomasians will be free from the hassle of going to school only to find out that classes have been suspended due to the heavy rains and flooded streets,” Villaseñor said.
The council also wants an independent website under a separate domain to ensure that the CSC could still feed the students with the right information even if the campus server is down.
“For the meantime, CSC already has its Friendster, Multiply and Yahoo to keep the students posted,” he said.
Villaseñor also plans to revive, the CSC Gazette newsletter, which will publish not only the council’s project as will as pressing student concerns.
Other projects for the cause are the formation of the Council of Public Relations Officers that will gather all class PROs to ensure campus-wide information dissemination and setting up of more bulletin boards.
Beyond the four corners
CSC also eyes outreach programs and alternative classes so as to afford students to lessons that “no textbook could offer.”
“Not everyone is interested to join organizations and what they don’t know is that they are missing a lot,” Villaseñor said. “This is why we are providing them with alternative classes in the form of basketball clinics and the like.”
The proposed outreach program, said Villaseñor, espouses a “rehabilitative approach” that caters not only to the material needs of the organization’s partner communities but also to their spiritual, intellectual and emotional developments. With reports from Kirstie Mel A. Villaver
