The Central Student Council (CSC) is pursuing the inclusion of incoming college sophomores and juniors in this year’s Welcome Walk, which will be held in-person for the first time since 2019.
The Office of the Secretary General (OSG) earlier this week released a circular stating that the traditional Welcome Walk, Welcome Mass and ROARientation would be held onsite on Aug. 9 but only for incoming for college freshmen.
In a Facebook post, CSC President Nathan Agustin lamented how the council received little communication from the administration regarding the arrangement of the activities despite inquiring about them for weeks.
“For weeks, we have been inquiring about how the freshmen week will be executed. However, we received little response until we just saw that everything was already planned out through these articles. We were not properly consulted as a student body,” Agustin said in a post on Thursday, July 14.
Agustin was referring to a July 13 Varsitarian article about the OSG’s announcement, which also quoted UST Secretary General Fr. Louie Coronel, O.P. as saying that only incoming freshmen would participate in the Welcome Walk, and that there would be no separate Welcome Walk for incoming second-year and third-year students.
“We were expecting that our views and perspectives [would] be heard before the freshmen week was planned so we would have been able to raise concerns… but because we did not have an immediate opportunity, we were all caught off-guard,” Agustin added to the Varsitarian.
Agustin said he sought better communication from the administration as members of the CSC, the Student Organizations Coordinating Council and local student councils, as well as student volunteers had to be briefed regarding the logistics of the event.
The CSC was already in contact with administrators, specifically the Office for Student Affairs, as of Friday evening, Agustin said.
The CSC president said that aside from the inclusion of two more batches in this year’s Welcome Walk, he was also planning to propose a streamlined communication channel among student leaders, organizations and University administrators .
“I believe it’s time for us to revive the practice of involving us student representatives in the early stages of planning. We are very much willing to help in making these events as inclusive and successful as they can be,” he said.
