Tag: December 1, 2013

THE UNIVERSITY has officially cancelled Velada Tomasina as part of the University Week celebration in January to channel the resources for the victims of super typhoon Yolanda.

“This decision was made to allow the University to appropriately channel resources and efforts toward operations that will support the rehabilitation of communities that were devastated by recent calamities, especially in the Visayas region,” Secretary General Fr. Winston Cabading, O.P. said in a memorandum last Nov. 13.

UST Faculty Union (USTFU) officials have appointed new negotiators to collective bargaining agreement (CBA) talks with the University administration, sacking a veteran member in an attempt to break a stalemate and finally hike salaries that have been frozen for two years.

In a unanimous decision by the USTFU board of directors, Faculty of Arts and Letters professor Reynaldo Reyes, USTFU vice president for grievance and complaints, was replaced by Shirley Ireneo, a certified public accountant. Ireneo will be joined by Engineering professor Patrick Ellis Go. They were formally appointed last Nov. 19.

THOMASIANS topped the recent licensure examinations for civil engineers and high school teachers, capping the latest wave of board results that saw improvements in some professional disciplines.

Paul Marion Demapelis, who scored 96.90 percent, led 179 successful Thomasian civil engineer examinees, while Dale Aldrinn Pradel led this year’s batch of secondary level teachers with a score of 93 percent.

UST remained as the second top-performing school in the civil engineering board exams after posting a 91.79-percent passing rate. This was better than last year’s 87.74 percent, equivalent to 136 passers out of 155 examinees.

Perfect score

THE UNIVERSITY’s two high schools reigned supreme over other Manila-based schools after placing first in their respective clusters in the National Achievement Test (NAT) given to senior students last March.

UST Education High School (EHS) outranked 17 other schools in cluster four or schools with 55 to 99 examinees, after recording an average score of 65.96 percent. This was slightly higher than last year’s 63.65 percent, which was good for second place behind Malayan High School of Science.

UST’s laboratory high school, which fielded 98 graduating students, topped four out of six subjects in the exams except Mathematics and Science, where it registered dismal average scores of 55.37 percent and 49.80 percent, respectively.

FOLLOWING changes in plans, the opening of the Thomasian Alumni Center has been moved to next school year.

“The target is for the building to be completed by September or December [2014],” said Architecture Dean John Joseph Fernandez, project head, in an interview.

The Thomasian Alumni Center will be officially called Buenaventura Garcia Paredes, O.P. Building in honor of the former UST professor and Dominican Master General martyred in 1936 during the religious persecution in Spain. The building is expected to be the biggest of its kind among alumni centers in the country.

Fides Ma. Lourdes Carlos, acting director of the Office for Alumni Relations (OAR), said the building would be a “home away from home” for Thomasian alumni.

CITY HALL’S plan to turn Manila into a “WiFi city” is off to a “slow” start.

Excitement turned to disappointment for some after the installation of free WiFi (wireless fidelity) Internet access in selected waiting sheds, due to sluggish connections.

Skeptics also claimed that the “ERAP-ISKO WiFi” project was a only publicity exercise for Mayor Joseph “Erap” Estrada and Vice Mayor Isko Moreno, that could also make it easier for snatchers to run away with commuters’ electronic gadgets.

A city official however explained that the free WiFi service is actually part of the long-term program Linking Enterprise and People (LEAP) 2025, under which Vice Mayor Moreno aims to transform the Philippine capital into the first WiFi city in the country.

RESULTS of academic research should be aimed at helping the people, especially those living in far-flung areas, top Filipino researchers said during the opening of the University’s Research Week last Nov. 18 at the Thomas Aquinas Research Complex.

Experts presented programs and projects conducted in rural areas, which have proven to be beneficial to the local communities.

UST alumnus Oscar Picazo, an economist from the state think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies, bared several health market innovations that sought to alleviate “health inequity” being experienced in the country. Innovations included franchises of stores selling affordable medicines and the establishment of birthing centers in places such as Leyte.

Thousands of Filipinos perished in super typhoon “Yolanda,” internationally known as “Haiyan,” according to the latest media reports. Worth of damage was estimated to be in the tens of billions, as the wreckage of houses, buildings spread across towns and cities in the Visayas. In fact, we're being conservative here: Yolanda wiped out whole towns and cities.

But what was even more disastrous was the disaster response of the Aquino government. Bodies were left to rot in the streets as the operation to retrieve them was too slow. The injured and the sick were left unattended for days, some of them dying eventually from the neglect. And the survivors were left to starve and thirst for days without any trace of hope that they would be relieved by government aid.

LAST October, my grandfather was rushed to the hospital due to multiple lung complications. He was a heavy smoker in his early years and has a history of mild tuberculosis. His condition was unstable for a month.

The private hospital charged more than P200,000 and we had to seek government assistance. Despite the assistance of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office and the discounts given as a result of my grandfather's PhilHealth, membership and senior citizen's card, there was still a balance that we had to pay.

Thousands of lives were lost and many people went missing because of "Yolanda" last month. But the tragedy was aggravated by the callous pettiness of some Netizens who chose to quarrel over supposed incidents that they did not bother to check or confirm in the first place.

This was the case when a rumor arose that the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) in Iloilo City reportedly refused to shelter typhoon victims who were not their “kapatid kay Cristo.” As expected, it drew outrage from the Internet community and became viral.

A certain Mai Militante blogged about the issue, drawing comparison between the INC officials and the Bethlehem innkeepers who refused to shelter Mary and Joseph during the birth of Jesus Christ.