Tag: September 18, 2013

ARE FILIPINOS overseas exploited because of too much pakikisama?

Rob Walsh, communication professor at Valley City State University in North Dakota, encouraged Filipinos not to set aside their cultural values just because they want to remain in good terms with people of other races.

In his lecture at the Thomas Aquinas Research Complex last July 26 as part of the 75th anniversary of the Graduate School, Walsh described pakikisama as like the Filipino saying, “Please, let’s get along” in a disagreement with an American.

DESPITE a high 95.19-percent passing rate, UST’s ranking slipped in the recent licensure examinations for medical technologists.

With 277 passers out of 291 examinees, the University emerged as this year’s eighth top-performing school. Last year, UST ranked second after posting a 95.36-percent passing rate, with 267 out 280 Thomasian examinees making the cut.

Leading the new crop of Thomasian medical technologists is Kim Abbegail Aldecoa, who ranked second in the top 10 list of passers with a score of 91.30 percent. Jan Bendric Borbe (89.70%) ranked eighth.

UST dominated last year’s exams after five Thomasians made it to the top 10 list.

THE FACULTY of Civil Law will now be offering Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) classes yearly to help its graduates comply with Supreme Court requirements.

“Every year, we produce 70 to 120 lawyers and the Supreme Court requires all lawyers to undergo continuing legal education every three years. So we have to provide a venue for our own graduates to attend their MCLE,” said Nilo Divina, dean of the Faculty of Civil Law. “It will also establish a sort of a reunion among UST graduates.”

NEW OFFICIALS have been appointed to the Department of Information and Computer Studies (ICS) as it prepares to break away from the Faculty of Engineering next academic year.

ICS now has three departments and is a separate branch under Engineering, said Alex Santos, newly-appointed assistant dean in-charge of the department, in an interview last Aug. 1.

“[We] have a common dean but there are two separate branches, Engineering [and] ICS. And we now have three department chairs for each program. Before, we had the ICS department catering to all programs,” said Santos.

The department will become a separate college in the first semester of Academic Year 2014-2015, said Santos.

IT STARTED as a rant on Facebook, but ended up voicing public outrage against pork barrel corruption.

The open letter “Dear Janet,” written by essayist and Faculty of Engineering professor Joselito de los Reyes, became a hit on social media last Aug. 19. Written at the height of the controversy over the systematic siphoning of P10 billion in Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) or “pork barrel,” De los Reyes’s satirical letter to alleged scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles had more than 25,000 likes and 35,000 shares in Facebook as of Sept. 9.

IN RESPONSE to the Church’s worldwide call for evangelization, the Institute of Religion (IR) continues to promulgate the Catholic faith in remote places through its Certificate on Religious Education Distance-learning Online (CREDO) and the Certificate in Religious Education (CReEd).

Instituted in 2008 by then Assistant to the Rector for Administration Pilar Romero, the 21-unit online program, CREDO, aims to give training to Theology instructors on Catholic doctrines, but only through the use of UST's eLearning Access Program (eLEAP).

CREDO was implemented during the Quadricentennial celebration in 2011. Its first beneficiaries were from Aklan.

THE UST SECURITY Office suggested for the closure of the campus to the public as an anti-criminal measure. The suggestion was made in the aftermath of two killings that followed one after the other on the same week last July: the bodies of the victims were found on Lacson and P. Florentino Sreets. To be sure, the call has been made informally: it hasn’t been formally submitted to the UST administration. We urge caution, however. And prudence.

ONE PECULIARITY of the Philippines is how it glorifies the mundane—or at least what should be such. For example, it’s not surprising to see headlines about taxi drivers who return wallets containing huge sums of money to their owners. In turn, the media and the government would make heroes out of these people.

Perhaps our standards for heroic acts may be in need of check.

It is true that returning lost items to their owners is a noble act. But it is also true that returning what is not one’s own is the perfectly natural thing to do. But as if that wouldn’t be expected of people, Philippine law mandates it. A provision of the Civil Code prohibits “unjust enrichment,” or the act of acquirring possession of something at the expense of another.

“WHAT is the opposite of love?”

Such question is usually the first item provided in the University of Santo Tomas Entrance Test (Ustet), which for some is a humorous way to affirm their beliefs that the exam is easy.

A careless examinee would be quick to answer “hate” but I recently learned of another and possibly more correct alternative—“apathy.” Of course at first glance the obvious answer to the question is “hate,” but then it’s also important to take note of the nature of the words “love,” “hate” and “apathy.” Love and hate are two words associated with burning feeling, as opposed to apathy which is reasonably associated with coldness.

Therefore, it is possible that the opposite of “love” is actually “apathy” and not “hate.”

THAT THE Philippine media usually fail to bridge the gap between fantasy and reality in science fiction (sci-fi) tells so much of the country’s appreciation of the sciences.

The genre of science fiction is a hit among people who are fond of stories dealing with futuristic technology, DNA mutation, cloning, virus infection and zombie apocalypse as revolving themes. It is true that such story arcs, coupled with advanced cinematography and state of the art ensemble of visual and sound effects (in the case of cinema), really are attention grabbers.