Tag: April 30, 2003

I HAD a change of heart. I ate my words in my previous column where I said gratitude was so hard in this University.

When I prepared my Address of Thanks for our graduation last March 28, I didn’t have a hard time thinking of who to thank and what to be thankful for. My problem was how to condense my immense gratitude to those people who have touched my heart and who have changed me for the past four years. The result was a more than 10-minute speech of honest and sincere salute to God, my alma mater, teachers, family and friends.

HERE’S something you don’t see everyday.

It was around 9:30 one night and I was hurrying to the Varsitarian office to put this issue to bed when I saw two people before a closed Santisimo Rosario parish entrance. One, a woman, was hanging onto the grills, her face buried in the back of her hands. And the other, a man, stood beside her. My first reaction was a quiet, awed though simple “What faith!”

Then the man suddenly and literally fell to his knees and started sobbing loudly.

“They’re in great pain, “ a friend said.

IF Dante Alighieri were alive today, he probably would find the whole Iraqi nation in his Purgatorio.

IN A WORLD where life is treated as if it were a commodity that money can buy and that power and technology can control, does advocacy for life have a chance? If it does, how is it promoted, and what is the role of educational institutions—especially Catholic schools in its promotion?

Noon Po Sa Amin

KUNG ngayon ay laganap ang balita tungkol sa kinakatakutang Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), anim na taon ang nakalipas nang nagimbal ang UST sa biglaang pagsugod ng maraming estudyante sa emergency room ng noo’y Santo Tomas University Hospital at sinasabing may Hepatitis A.

SOMETHING is brewing inside the UST Central Library.

Last April 4, the UST Central Library in collaboration with the College of Education (CE) Hotel and Restaurant Management (HRM) department launched The Readers’ Café at the UST Central Library ground floor.

According to Prof. Andrew Paderes, CE-HRM department instructor and café manager, the coffee shop does not only service students who visit the library, but will also serve as a training ground for HRM students.

HISTORY shows that the blinding speed in the development and evolution of technology does not only improve the quality of living but also improves the ways of maiming and killing people. This is again evident in the US-led campaign against Iraq.

The war in Iraq, which has caused deaths and damage, for example, involved the use of the most advanced and deadliest weapons employing the latest computer software.

AFTER the draining final examinations of graduating students, the best and the brightest surface. For those who survived the dreaded academic thesis, the world is their stage now. The Varsitarian toasts two recipients of the best thesis award from the College of Science and the Faculty of Pharmacy.

Webcampus

THE FUTURE may practically have everybody wearing surgical masks. People will wear those not only to safeguard themselves from the heavily polluted air but also from unseen killer viruses it carries.

But in Hongkong and in some other Asian countries, this is already the scenario. Surgical and industrial masks have become fashionable in these places because of the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a still unknown disease.

AN INCOMING freshman risked suspension even before the start of the school year after allegedly verbally abusing two security guards last April 3.

The incoming freshman, a minor, had reportedly been driving his car through Leon Ma. Guerrero Drive in front of the Main Bldg. Guards told him that he should park in the pay parking area because only vehicles with the University conduction stickers and those headed for the Santissimo Rosario Parish are allowed to pass through the street.