Tag: No. 6

PROBLEM-FREE? Not exactly.

If people think a tolerable working environment is enough to uphold the tenets of competent and responsible campus journalism, many college publications in the University will say otherwise.

Amid a dispute between the staff of Hiraya and the College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD) administration over finances, The Flame of the Faculty of Arts and Letters has begun questioning why it takes long for the dean’s office to report on how much money the publication has.

“To request for (a report on) our finances, a formal letter addressed to the dean and the breakdown of our expenses is required,” The Flame editor in chief John Lorenze Poquiz said. “We asked the treasurer’s office about our budget but they did not respond.”

Artlets Dean Armando de Jesus however, said that if Flame staffers wanted to know their financial standing, they just have to ask him.

THE CAMPUS Journalism Act (CJA) is supposed to protect campus press freedom in the country. But violations appear to have been committed in schools nationwide since the law was enacted in 1991.

UST, despite having a vibrant campus press tradition, is no exception. Recently Hiraya, the student publication of the College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD) found itself financially paralyzed because of the refusal of the Dean’s Office to release the college journal fund.

“Hiraya has never released an issue because the dean never returned our proposed articles for publication,” Masajo told the Varsitarian. “The office also has not given us the actual amount of our relatively unspent publications budget which has accumulated for two years now.”

FOR THE thrifty student, buying a costly book for a research requirement is unlikely. Instead, he or she would rather go to the nearest copier and have the entire material at a fraction of cost.

With photocopying prevalent in the campus, laws protecting intellectual property are subsequently rendered irrelevant, if not obscure, according to an official of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

“When using literary, artistic and scientific works as reference materials for research, the copyright often becomes an issue,” said lawyer Ireneo Galicia, deputy director-general of the IPO, who discussed intellectual property laws and the process of securing patents for inventions during the opening of the month-long celebration of the 45th anniversary of the Research Center for Natural Sciences at the Thomas Aquinas Research Complex auditorium last November 13.

ROBBERS took P6.2 million from a teller of the Security Bank branch inside the campus in a daring heist last December 10 that has again rung the alarm bells on the level of security in the University. This early, police are looking at an inside job, and are wondering why blue guards around campus were oblivious to the major security breach.

According to the police report, bank teller Ma. Khristine Ajero and security escort Roger Anguilan were on their way to the bank after collecting P4.5 million in cash and P1.7 million in checks from UST Hospital when two men wielding high-powered guns blocked their way.

One of the robbers grabbed the money bags and then escaped along with his partner, riding separately in motorcycles toward Dapitan Street. The head of the UST security office, Clemente Dingayan, said four men carried out the heist, based on initial findings.

MARLON (not his real name), an irregular junior student recently experienced shabby treatment from a professor, who allegedly kept on “ignoring” his appeal to change his “incomplete” grade after submitting all the requirements in the subject.

“TODAY we may be free of military abuse but government remains abusive and so inefficient that suffering predominates among the poor and the future looks bleak and worrisome.”

These were the words of veteran Thomasian journalist Eugenia “Eggie” Duran Apostol which received a loud applause from the crowd at the 21st anniversary of the Bantayog ng mga Bayani Foundation held at the Bantayog Memorial Center in Diliman, Quezon City last November 30.

FILIPINOS tend to endure body pains for various reasons.

This was the observation made by Thomasian anesthesiologist Dr. Jocelyn Que, the first Filipino overseas-trained expert in Pain Management.

“Some Filipinos endure pain because they believe it is a sort of atonement for their sins, while unfortunately some bear the pain because they avoid costly medication,” Que told the Varsitarian. “Pain is commonly experienced by the vulnerable population which includes the children, women, and the elderly.”

But now that the relatively new field of pain management is slowly making some headway in the country, Filipinos need not to endure pain for long.

Pain management, according to Que, aims to reduce the pain to comfortable levels so that the patient can function normally.

Pain is generally untreated worldwide and most of the time, its treatment is only secondary to the sickness of a patient, she said.

ONLY 2,916 cases of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) cases were filed in the Philippines, failing to meet the 10,000 number of cases projected by international experts in 1984.

Pro-life demographers said the relative low number of HIV cases should indicate that the Church has been right all along to insist on self-restraint and sexual responsibility in the midst of the campaign by birth-control and safe-sex proponents for increased condom use.

According to the report presented by the National Epidemiology Center (NEC) of the DOH, out of the 2,916 HIV cases, 770 or 20 per cent developed to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

The report also stated that more than 58 per cent of the cases were acquired by 25-to 39-year old Filipinos, and that 1,908 of these cases were males.

THREE years after Nick Joaquin donated his personal library to the University, his memory and legacy endure as Esquinita de Quijano de Manila, a reading corner at the Miguel de Benavides Library dedicated to the late National Artist for Literature, was inaugurated last November 13.

Named after the writer’s famous nom de plume, the Esquinita was a brainchild of Joselito Zulueta, Varsitarian’s publication adviser. It alludes to Joaquin’s legendary peregrinations, literally and literarily, along the streets of the “Ever Loyal and Noble City of Manila.” The Esquinita can be found at the Humanities section on the fifth floor of the Miguel de Benavides Library.

“It was a long process,” Fr. Angel Aparicio, Prefect of Libraries, told the Varsitarian about putting up the reading corner. “Cataloguing 3,000 books is not an easy task.”

HOPES are up as the University prepares to welcome a new rector and leave behind the bitter hospital dispute that has marred the otherwise smoothly paved road toward UST’s quadricentennial in 2011.

Fr. Rolando V. de la Rosa, O.P., who was to serve only as UST caretaker following a high-level leadership shakeup ordered by Rome last September but has now been tasked by fellow Dominican friars to stay on as Rector Magnificus, has much work to do to keep the University’s status as the foremost Catholic educational institution in the region.

But UST officials believe the former head of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and two-time University rector is still up to the job, despite his much-known reluctance to return to his old post.