Tag: No. 12

A FACULTY of Arts and Letters senior received this year's St. Thomas Aquinas Award, the University's highest and most prestigious recognition for a student.

For bagging two other individual awards aside from the Rector's Academic Award during her stay in UST, Legal Management major Ma. Ninna Roem Bonsol was conferred the Aquinas award during the Student Awards Day at the Quadricentennial Pavilion last March 14.

The Aquinas award is given to students "who received the Rector’s Academic Award and any two other personal awards,” which include the Quezon Leadership Award, the Benavides Award, and the Pope Leo XIII Community Service Award, “either during the same year or within the duration of their program.”

THE DEPARTMENT of Education (DepEd) has expanded the learning areas for students under the K to 12 program in a bid to ensure a “seamless curriculum” from kindergarten to college.

Physical Education and Health was added to Language, Humanities, Communication, Mathematics, Philosophy, Natural Science, and Social Science as learning areas in the new senior high school core curriculum.

Aside from academic and technical-vocational livelihood specializations, Sports and Arts, previously taken as one track, was split into two: Sports, and Arts and Design.

THE PRESIDENCY of the College of Education Student Council remains vacant, after student representatives chose not to elect a president in a special poll last March 8 after most Education students abstained in the college-wide elections.

Of 25 class presidents who participated in the special elections conducted by the Education Commission on Elections, 16 opted to abstain rather than vote for lone candidate Krishma Kishore, a sophomore majoring in Food Technology.

The special election for the council presidency was called by the Education Comelec after Juan Carlo de la Paz of Aklas-Sakto party, who ran unopposed in the college-wide polls, lost to the overwhelming number of abstentions. De la Paz obtained 528 votes while 727 abstained.

THE UNIVERSITY improved its rankings in the recent “off-season” board exams for teachers and electronics engineers, with a Thomasian landing in the top 10 list of each test.

All three Thomasian examinees passed the licensure examinations for teachers (LET) in the elementary level this year, compared with last year’s 90 percent or nine out of 10. No school entered the roster of top-performing schools in LET-elementary since the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) requires a minimum of 50 examinees and at least an 80 percent passing rate to be declared a top-performing school.

Meanwhile, UST recorded an 89.29-percent passing rate—equivalent to 50 out of 56 examinees—in the LET for the secondary level, which was lower than last year's 92.16 percent.

The court battle by the local governments of Makati and Taguig over the question which has jurisdiction the huge Fort Bonifacio estate that has become the new Wall Street is but the opening salvo to what may be a vicious fight for the presidency in 2016.

Two years away from the national elections and two politicians—Vice Pres. Jejomar Binay from Makati and Sen. Allan Peter Cayetano from Taguig—have both made known their plans to run for president in 2016. Predictably the two are already engaged in mudslinging.Cayetano said that the Philippine economy would fall if Binay were elected president. He also accused the Vice President of downplaying the testimonies of whistle-blowers against his allies—Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Jinggoy Estrada. Binay has been reserved, however, perhaps refusing to be drawn into a word war with Cayetano. Yet the former Makati mayor called the Taguig politician "madaldal."

PRESIDENT Aquino urged the 2014 Philippine Military Academy (PMA) graduates to assert the institution’s “Honor Code” outside of school in his speech during the 2014 graduation ceremony.

“[T]his is the challenge to all of us: If our task is to enforce the Honor Code inside this institution, let us uphold the code outside the PMA,” he said.

PMA’s Honor Code states that cadets “do not lie, cheat, steal nor tolerate those who do.”

The President’s remarks were small comfort for PMA cadet Jeff Aldren Cudia. Set to graduate salutatorian, he was dismissed for allegedly lying when asked why he was two minutes late for class.

FACTS should never be compromised over ratings.

Much have been said about ABS-CBN’s blunder over the so-called “mysterious flesh-eating disease” which was allegedly spreading from Pangasinan as reported by late-night show Bandila, which shocked, scared, and later on irked the Philippines.

In a February 24 episode of Bandila, reporter Jasmin Romero, in complete scrubs costume, caused alarm over an alleged mysterious flesh-eating disease in Pangasinan. The report connected the incident to a viral YouTube video of a so-called prophet, Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj, who predicted in April 2013 that a typhoon would hit Samar and Leyte and that an incurable flesh-eating disease would spread from Pangasinan to the whole world.

FREEDOM is a word not to be taken lightly.

One has to ask whether people born in this era have the capacity to understand what freedom truly means, especially to those who've experienced its absence.

Recently, the nation was rocked over the comments of a few young people who took to Twitter to express their reverence for the deceased president Ferdinand Marcos during the 28th anniversary of the historic EDSA Revolution. Many of them glorified the former dictator, claiming he was the best president the Philippines has ever had and that the nation would not be so corrupt and undisciplined if it had someone like him as leader. Some even went far as to say that Filipinos were better off under Martial Law.

CALLS for the decriminalization of libel were made following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold most of the controversial Cybercrime Law’s key provisions including online libel.

Sec. 4 of the Cybercrime Law punishes acts of libel as defined under Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code committed through a computer system. Libel, under the country’s penal code, means any malicious imputation tending to cause dishonor upon a person’s reputation.

The Philippine Press Institute (PPI) was among those groups who expressed disappointment over the Supreme Court decision, citing infringement of Free Expression protected by the Constitution.

INNOVATION is wealth.

The need to protect the innovative and profitable research output of Thomasian inventors prompted the University to establish its own Intellectual Property (IP) unit.

Michael Jorge Peralta, executive assistant for Intellectual Property and Research, said UST generates numerous IPs because of the level of maturity and productivity the University reached in the field of research.

“Many of us are not aware that these IPs need to be protected to prevent others from copying and imitating the same work and claim it their own,” he said. “Thus, there was a need to create an IP policy to guide University stakeholders.”