ON-SITE classes and work in UST will be limited from Feb. 4 to 5 as the Sampaloc campus will be used for the 2020/21 Bar Examinations.
The Office of the Secretary General (OSG) announced on Wednesday that all limited face-to-face (F2F) classes scheduled for Feb. 4 and 5 would be held online instead, except for the College of Nursing’s scheduled on-site classes on Feb. 5.
The Faculty of Medicine and Surgery’s “Basic Life Support Training” for health practitioners will also proceed on-campus as scheduled. Participants were advised to go through the UST Hospital to access the San Martin de Porres Building for the training.
Only offices “directly involved” in the bar examinations will have on-site work. All other offices will shift to work-from-home arrangements on the bar exam dates.
The UST Hospital and the Santisimo Rosario Parish will continue their operations, but access to these facilities will be limited to the Lacson gate and P. Noval gate, respectively.
The 2020/2021 bar examinations were originally set for Jan. 23 and 25, but the Supreme Court (SC) adjusted the testing schedule to Feb. 4 and 6 after several examinees were affected by Covid-19.
The SC has also shortened and reduced the coverage of the examinations, taking note of the situation of the 2020/21 bar examinees, who have been reviewing “for longer than all the other batches.”
The 2020/21 examinations will be composed of four sets: (1) The Law Pertaining to the State and Its Relationship with Its Citizens (formerly Political Law, Labor Law, and Taxation Law); (2) Criminal Law; (3) The Law Pertaining to Private Personal and Commercial Relations (formerly Civil Law and Commercial Law); and (4) Procedure and Professional Ethics (formerly Remedial Law, Legal Ethics, and Practical Exercises).
Civil Law Dean Nilo Divina urged Thomasian bar takers to stay focused.
“While there are difficulties, their state of preparedness coupled with prayers will enable them to pull through with flying colors,” Divina told the Varsitarian.
No easy bar exams
Thomasian bar taker Gio Louis Semeniano said the reduction of the exam coverage was a welcome development but pointed out that the topics for this year’s exams became “too broad.”
“Main topics under the old syllabus had specific subtopics you can focus on. Now it’s just the main topic itself. So you don’t really know what to zero in on,” Semeniano told the Varsitarian.
He added that the fear and anxiety surrounding the exams had increased because of the “uncertainty” examinees faced due to the shortened exam dates.
“We never imagined a two-day bar exam could happen simply because of the extreme difficulty and gravity of the exam itself,” he said.
For Nathan Agustin, the president of the Civil Law Student Council, the reduction of test coverage would not make the examinations easier as the subjects “took years in law school to finish.”
“It’s still a big adjustment to make in light of all the other considerations that the bar takers have to take, such as how they will stay in good health in spite of the Covid-19 surge,” Agustin told the Varsitarian.
The Philippines has produced no new lawyers since the pandemic began. with reports from Charm Ryanne C. Magpali
