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[Original title, “My personal views regarding issues surrounding the Adamson Chronicle and some bedtime stories from 1998 to 2002,” has been redacted to prevent it from cracking up the blog’s layout - Adamsonian]
Despite my bickering, I still welcome the new generation of Chroniclers. I agree that they do deserve to show what they got and what they can offer to their publisher – the students. If I could only be there at this very moment, I would definitely have tons of stories to tell them.
But there are still unsettled issues here and I want to reiterate it again in this article before we start to move forward. If we will just neglect such issues, history itself will happen again right before our very eyes. My wrath is not for the new Chroniclers. It is for the blood-sucking imps.
I have also empathy for the new batch. If I am in their shoes, I will also defend the new TAC from attacks. They cannot defend the students if they cannot even defend themselves.
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To the new editorial board, maybe you would also understand my reactions and sentiments about the tragedy of the old TAC. Its closure was the biggest headline that has slapped my face. Damn! It felt like a 20-kg acme anvil fell over my skull! My beloved institution is in ruins and with just a glimpse of it really rips my heart out. If I was so radical about the plight of the students’ rights before, what more will you expect from me if I saw that the pub itself was shattered into pieces. Like you, I also have my own responsibility to TAC. As an alumnus I have to say something about its demise. I really ought to.
I don’t expect your term to do something about my sentiments because you are all still new and you were given a very important task to fulfill. Your main task is the rebuilding of the new cornerstones of ‘our’ TAC. You need all the assistance and luck to accomplish such gargantuan task of rebuilding and all of you deserve all the best wishes in the world. Running also a student pub has never been a simple task – it is a ‘life-changing’ experience.
Anyway, would you care to send me a copy of your maiden issue? I shall give you my mailing address in Jeddah if you say yes. Don’t worry; I will be in my silent mode for your first issues. But please forgive me for this very small remark. I thought you said that you will release it this December? Just a simple advice, be conscious about such delay especially if your issue is time-dependent. If your December issue contains Christmas articles, then distributing it in January or in February would be quite odd to read.
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The first time I learned that TAC actually had their first meeting; I felt a very big relief and gladness. That once again the same sanctuary that both nurtured and tortured us before is now here again and is currently breastfeeding the newbies, hopefully with the same black milk that gave us sleepless nights before.
But please do pardon me if I say that I don’t like the phrase “forgive and forget.” Some might say: Hey Aldrin, TAC is back on its knees again, why are you still complaining? Can you just join the party and stop being a killjoy?
Do you want to tell me to shut up and just move on and start a new beginning? Do you want to tell me to just forget the mournful funeral of the old pub and celebrate with roaring laughs and lots of hurrahs the rebirth of it while making ‘beso-beso’ with the same force which was also the main cause of its death?
I still stand firm to my belief that the closure of student publication for two years was wrong. Worse, the Admin only spared the name of the pub and everything else was changed. With all of these mutations, it is clear that there was a sinister plot for the closure of TAC. If the Admin’s real reason was to help the student pub to have a better direction, their fatal action for its closure was way too far. Why did the Admin have to change almost everything if they were only asking about the financial statement?
They should have talked with the last editorial board if they believed that there were things that needed some adjustments and changes. Instead, the Admin had showed its brute force again and fired its might and directed it to the Penthouse. They dropped the bomb and instantly made a ‘racial holocaust’ of the old TAC. After the bombing, the SV Penthouse was turned into a ground zero like Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The last editorial board was obliterated. Our old issues were disposed. The archives were probably carelessly and unofficially handled to a carpenter. And the Penthouse was left shattered into smithereens and disemboweled it from anything that would describe something about its past. Can the Admin do again such demolition job to any organization every time they want change? I say yes.
The next time I visit our old office, I shall bring a Geiger counter to check if even its radiation was also washed away by the Admin.
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Two years after the explosion, the Admin themselves ALONE did new landscaping works on the exact burial ground of the old pub. They planted different varieties of garden mums, orchids, and roses inside the Penthouse so the birds and the bees will be seen flying again. There are no more cockroaches left, I guess.
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As what I have seen in the latest videos of the SV Penthouse by Invaderzim, I really fear that the archives of the old TAC was thrown in the abyss and that the old issues were burned or were turned into papier maches – leaving the new TAC with no trace of its history. No matter how bad their history was, they should still keep it. I also fear that the new TAC would feel ‘shameful’ about the previous terms which, according to some beliefs, only did rampage instead of running a publication with decency. I hope not.
I ask the new batch of Chroniclers to please redeem those old issues and ‘memorabilias’. Those old issues were not only the remnants of our period but most of it came from our predecessors. Let us never forget that the new Chronicle has a long history of struggle for students’ rights and we should keep that history for us to learn from it.
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Actually, I did belong to a big portion of the ‘notorious’ era of TAC but I am not ashamed about it. In my four-year stint in the pub, I could still say that we did the things what we believed were right. I am always telling that we did our best because we actually did it. Until now, there is no reversal of principle and there will be no ‘erratum’ of what I did and wrote before. My stand before as a Chronicler has remained unchanged. I am not stubborn and I am not a close-minded man. It only happens that my convictions before was so strong that until now I still have the courage to rekindle my past with pride and dignity.
I cannot deny that we made a hell of mistakes before. I fully accept each one of it but never did I felt shame for it because we were not god and everyone makes mistakes. God knows that we were still vulnerable from internal problems. Before, I usually tell my fellow editors the difficulty of our role. I ask them why we could clearly see the mistakes of the Admin and its cahoots but we were too blind to see the shortcomings of our very small 4×4 office and the stinking foul smell of our system. That we were too brave to shout the mistakes of the Admin but we were too shy to expose our own dirt. Yes, we had our own dirt in our face. But there was a constant struggle to clean it by ourselves and perhaps it is time to give a short view of how we battled and survived our own nasty problems during our “running wildly in the dark” reign.
I just want to say something about the loose phrase “running wildly in the dark” by JB. Maybe he was referring to the last terms from 2005 and back. I cannot defend the succeeding terms after my graduation in 2002 because I was not there, but when it comes to our period, such phrase is quite unacceptable to describe what we did.
I have served four good EICs and I can still remember how each one of them performed. I saw their weaknesses and strengths. I just hope that my contemporaries will forgive me for sharing their little secrets. These are just my personal accounts and views. And the people I will be mentioning hereafter are free to correct my reviews.
Again, these are only according to my own viewpoint.
Alvin F. Julian’s Term (1998 – 1999)
I came to TAC as an artist in 1998 and not as a writer. I didn’t know how to write and I didn’t read books. I could only draw and I was surrounded by a bunch of writers who were talking incomprehensible things that I considered Aramaic for a normal student like me. I often asked myself what I was doing in that place. The office was a haven conducive only for freaks, nerds, atheists, Communists, and bookworms. I can still remember the first instance I saw SV Penthouse. At first, I didn’t know the place. The guard only told me to just follow the stairs up until a small office block my way. I submitted my bio-data and sample artworks to Mr. Joebert Lazarte. He was actually the first Chronicler who I personally met. It was also still clear to me that it was Ms. Rosemarie Villaflor who I asked for the results of the artist examination. And it was Mr. Ronnie Biando who conducted our exam. He was also the EIC prior to AFJ. The moment I learned that I got the position was hours after they had their oath taking. They just told me, “Bakit ngayon ka lang? Kanina pa ang oath taking natin. Kumain ka na ba?”
So I was baptized in the term of the ‘perfectionist’ Mr. Alvin F. Julian. I can say that his term was an easy one because everyone was cooperating and all of the new writers were so enthusiastic to lick the night with Cheese Wiz. I cannot really make a good and valid description of his term for I was the only inactive member of that term. I did not actually saw how they have shaped their term. I only attended presswork after they have given me verbal warning that they could kick me out. I knew that AFJ pampered us with food during presswork. There were no hungry nights in SV Penthouse and in the printing press. If they will say that feeding the hungry staffs were extravagant, I say no. We needed to eat and our given to us by our parents were not enough for our obligations to the pub.
AFJ’s term only produced about four issues. I know that he valued quality over quantity. We also published an issue of San Marcelino literary folio. I forgot the title of that black booklet.
Despite of his being an atheist that gave some shade to the motif of his term, an issue of TAC could still be read as an amalgamation of other writers’ points of view who had their own political and religious beliefs – not only AFJ’s criticized atheism. They say before that Chroniclers were writing atheism stuffs. Yup, it was true but not all. Our EIC is an atheist but not all of us. Some where agnostics, skeptics, devout Christians, and simple day dream believers. I myself believe in God but I don’t believe in religion.
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There was a deep sense of respect to everyone’s beliefs in TAC, not only in AFJ’s term. Our beautiful features editor was always writing articles for the glory of God and yet you could see her and AFJ often playing boggles. And she often leave the defeated AFJ amazed and wondering. Alvin didn’t know that she had challenged a girl with a pair of chameleon eyes.
For the record, AFJ managed to submit his term’s financial statement to the Admin after being properly audited by a certified accountant - just to clear the allegations that we only did parties and other hedonistic activities. We did not go to Boracay to do our presswork.
Ms. Ma. Celia E. Clave (1999 – 2000)
Next, it was the ‘tyrant’ Ms. Ma. Celia E. Clave’s turn. I feared the year 2000 was the end of the world and still I was wasting my remaining days in the printing press with people who had forgotten to bring extra under wears for an anticipated extended presswork.
The start of her ‘dictatorship’ made tremor to the pampered staff of AFJ. She was the only EIC who didn’t stay in TAC office during her term. She was always going to the printing press after her class instead. Her column ‘Sistema’ in the previous term made an impact to me especially when she wrote ‘5.0’ exposing her harsh comments on the grading system of Adamson. I asked her if she was really the one who wrote that ‘coz I was so moved by it. She just laughed and said to me that it was nothing. I admired her because I didn’t know that there was actually someone like her in my university who had the courage to fight the all-powerful Admin. In my high school years, there was no one like her and a radical institution like TAC.
I just hope that Ms. Clave still has the same convictions.
Atheism almost disappeared during her term and radical writing was the new game plan. She was not an atheist but a social activist.
Also in her term, I saw that TAC was reconnected to the studentry. We published what the students wanted to read.
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The term of Celia showed me the real meaning of being a Chronicler and the true essence of the student pub. Celia was the one who forced me to transform my sketches into words. I started to write officially as a staffwriter. In Celia’s stormy term, the annoying multi-page portion of ‘Mga Expose ni Kurimao’ was conceived.
Some of my collegues showed disapproval to the continuity of publishing Kurimao for various reasons. Some said that Kurimao was a loose cannon of TAC and it abused the boundaries of press freedom. Some of my editors also answered that the students were only reading Kurimao and the other articles were just space fillers. There was even a call by the editorial board itself to restrain Kurimao.
If Kurimao’s existence was detrimental or beneficial to TAC, it is up for the tombraiders to answer it.
Anyway, that frog is already a part of TAC’s history.
Kokak! (”,)
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I believe that Apathy is the main reason how TFI and campus abuses are still happening because we don’t give a damn to our surroundings. We were too busy for our academics. We were to busy for our studies. We were to busy to be ‘educated’. I believe that spreading campus awareness was the primary role of TAC, by telling what were really happening beneath the air-conditioned rooms and newly-painted hallways.
Adamsonians should take role in defending their rights. AUSG and TAC cannot do it alone. That is why we have to awaken them for they alone can fully change the unstoppable system. Their unity can give sufficient blow to Admin’s follies.
TAC and AUSG can only tickle the giant’s belly but THEY can awaken the consciousness of the BIGGER GIANT - THE STUDENTRY!
Sounds idyllic?
The almost legendary AUSG president Rolando dela Cruz has proven that the students can be awaken.
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Miss Clave’s term produced about seven issues with two magazines and a literary folio entitled ‘Kataga’. Finally, quantity and frequency were also given importance. We did not only run wildly in the dark – we also wrote. Miss Clave, with her leadership skills, has re-awakened the pub from its serene existence. (Actually, I am not sure with the figures that I am giving but as far as I can remember, the actual number is close to what my memory bank is telling me.)
In my opinion, the term of Ms. Clave was almost ideal when it comes to her published issues. But I can also say that her term was the most gruesome when it comes to internal politics. Her strict leadership caused the pub to be divided into factions. Each faction wanted to overthrow her and I know each one of them. When I remember those wicked days, I can’t stop myself from cursing those Chroniclers who had almost caused the pub to crumble. I said to myself before that my loyalty will always be for the EIC. It was important to support the EIC because her downfall will affect the entire publication. And I strongly believed that Ms. Clave was doing the right thing. If you could only have some issues of her term, you can see the pale color of those days. We even published those internal dilemmas in some of our issues. We did not hide it because it was damn too serious.
After her term, some of those who made the failed plot disappeared and some only made a very good camouflaged. It was a very long and tiresome term but her term made a very good sharpener for our pens.
Ms. Maureen T. Tiamsic (2000 - 2001)
She is one of the best writers that I had worked with in TAC - perhaps even the best EIC when it comes to writing. Her term was able to publish about twelve regular issues even though the publication fee was permanently glued to Php 20 for so many years. The students saw the frequency of TAC. They could expect that every month we were on the gates busy distributing their copies. We did that with a very small budget. And with that, how can one say that we did nothing? Every term, we strived to give better services to the students than before.
But tragedy came knocking on the same door again. The same problem of Ms. Clave when it comes to the factions that divided her term brought aftershocks to the term of Ms. Tiamsic. Some editors did not support her for they themselves expected that they would be the next EIC after Ms. Clave. There was no cooperation in the editorial board but Ms. Tiamsic still managed to survive her term with appreciable results. I still pity her term for we had already all the good writers and editors that we needed but because of their personal ambitions, their skills were not used by the publication.
One of the most remarkable things in TAC’s history that I only saw in Ms. Tiamsic’s term was the ‘unification of beliefs’ and the ‘blood compact’ of the two main vanguards of students’ rights: The Adamson Chronicle and the Student Government led by Ms. Melona R. Daclan. During Maui’s term, there was actually a ‘tag team’ made to combat campus repression. I give Maui five golden stars for that accomplishment. AUSG and TAC should really work together and help one another because they share the same noble goals.
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I can still recall the night when I asked Maui to teach me something about subject-verb agreement because I was an idiot when it comes to writing in English. How I wish that there is really a time machine so that I can go back to those days. She was also my classmate in Differential Calculus and our professor was the android Mr. Saavedra but we were still not Chroniclers then. I usually saw her smoking cigarette before the start of our class in ST building.
Her term also finished publishing the literary folio entitled ‘Bungang-Araw sa Tag-Ulan.’
Mr. Sylvere C. Borromeo (2001 – 2002)
This man has no stain of blood in his soul. He was the type of EIC who was open-minded for views and suggestions of his staff. He didn’t make decisions without asking his editorial board. If there were problems, he would immediately call for an editorial board meeting. He valued teamwork and had no ambition to be the ruler of the world. He only wanted to conquer dream world. I feel that I am giving to many praises to this man but he truly deserves every word of it. He wrote articles so easily that it was unbelievable for me to see him actually do it with the keyboard.
If AFJ is an atheist, Clave is a social activist, and Tiamsic ‘was’ a ‘leftist’; Mr. Borromeo was a very neutral guy when it comes to his writings. He usually wrote articles about computers and anything that you can expect from a commercial Sunday magazine. He didn’t dictate his staff to write what he believed in. The pub’s motif was neither black nor red, but technicolor. During staff meetings, we asked the editors and writers for their ideas for what the next issue would contain. Democracy was the golden house rule then.
When it comes to the number of released issues, we surpassed the record of Ms. Tiamsic by about two issues. His term also showed warm cooperation among the editorial board, the staff writers, and the graphics department - that the term of Ms. Tiamsic was forsaken of. He had no problems with his staff mainly because almost all of my fellow senior jerks disappeared already after the term of Ms. Tiamsic. So his term was literally composed of obedient and peace-loving creatures. We also published our own 100-page San Marcelino literary folio entitled ‘Tabula Rasa…’
But I can say that the ‘democratic approach’ of Mr. Borromeo’s leadership was only seen successful because most of his staff members were new and obedient. But if I will switch Mr. Borromeo to the term of Ms. Clave’s and Ms. Tiamsic’s very hostile environment – I am quite sure that he would commit suicide because he would soon be swallowed alive if he did not. His mellow style would be of no match to the pangs of stubborn editors before that bit the neck of my former EICs. Hence, I can say that there was a good ounce of stardust and luck sprinkled over his term that contributed to its success.
Our major problem came only from one of our senior editors for he was unable to perform his job of furnishing us our own financial statement. It took me a number of memos to squeeze him to give us a financial report. Even after my graduation I was still haunting him for it. I thanked God that after my last year in TAC and after I stepped down to kiss the ground under, that guy was demoted to a lower position because of his undesirable performance.
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Excluding the guitar he broke, there was only one shortcoming of Mr. Borromeo and it was the prevented delay of the editorial board exam. I knew that he didn’t intend it to be late for few months but I still warned him that such delay would cause a very big disaster to The Adamson Chronicle. We had the obligation to turn over the pub to the next term on the first month of the incoming school year. If we overstayed until July, we would have definitely made a very grave offense not only to TAC but also to the next term. The next term needs the complete school year to fully perform their role and it is very unforgivable if their oath taking will be delayed for months whatever the causes might be.
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Regarding the last Editorial Board of Ms. Joanna Paula Belgica…
To Ms. Belgica, just feel free to correct the following paragraphs if there are some details here which you believe are wrong. I don’t know exactly what had happened because I was in Riyadh then.
I have learned that the same delay in the editorial board exam by Mr. Borromeo was one of the mistakes of the term of Mr. Jeffrey Hanapon. Just few months after, the last breed of Chroniclers were sent to firing squad by the friars. I believe that the ‘big’ delay caused by the term of Mr. Hanapon gave the incoming editorial board of Ms. Belgica with a very little time to group itself. Mr. Hanapon failed to give the results of the editorial board exam and left TAC waiting aimlessly for nothing. He didn’t come back. So, Ms. Belgica who was the associate editor at that time, decided to hold a new editorial board exam. It is stated in TAC’s editorial board policy that in the absence of the EIC, the AE shall take the position of leading the paper. I believe that the oath taking of Ms. Belgica’s term was held in September – roughly four months late. And TAC I believed was closed in November of the same year. With such weak moments, the Admin grabbed it as a golden opportunity to execute their long overdue nasty plan of finally conquering the almighty Chronicle. The Admin assaulted the three-month-old (I don’t know how long exactly) editorial board with a blitzkrieg of crimes-against-humanity-like cases. They were asked to stand trial for the violations of the previous terms. What’s that?! Third-Degree of Holy Sh*T!!!
I believe that the last ed board also did their best but unfortunately, they hit the jackpot. Honestly, almost all the other previous terms had their weak moments also. Even weaker. We were only fortunate enough back then because we had learned to make use of our own special mutant abilities. Alvin was a goddess, Celia was a Medusa, Maui was a dinosaur, and Sylvere was simply blessed by God.
The only difference was that the last ed board led by Ms. Belgica was given so little time to do something about the Admin’s attack. Even if she wanted to change their fate she can do nothing because however she wanted to make it happen, a complex institution like TAC was so hard to be moved. The EIC herself cannot do magic alone. Everyone must cooperate especially the entire editorial board.
Again, I honestly don’t know the details of their struggles.
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I believed that TAC was also temporarily closed during JB’s term. Maybe he could tell something about that because I feel that the Admin is really the culprit.
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Anyway, we still managed to peacefully handle over TAC to Mr. Michael Gallego’s term with an almost clean sheet and no more strings attached to some pesky third parties sent from hell. I was not sure if it was June or July that they held their oath taking. Anyway, that’s all what I can share. I cannot say something about the existence of the succeeding terms. After my graduation in 2002, I just remained a spectator of the succeeding terms of TAC for I was busy and was starting to orient myself to the bigger world of corporate slavery.
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May I clarify to you that I am not boasting when I enumerated all of our accomplishments. I am just giving statistics to prove that TAC actually was able to distribute issues frequently and that every term aspired to serve the students better no matter how big the problems we were experiencing back then and how trivial our funds we were receiving. Also, we didn’t release issues as if we were on a car race or that we just wanted to outdo the previous term. It is a very bad motivator. We only wanted to make the publication serve the students better. If we could make this thing good today then after a year, we can make it better. I assume that it is not a sin to dream to be better and serve better.
Now after laying our green turf, I am proud to tell you again that we did our very best despite the big barricades that blocked our way. We had problems but we managed to solve it. With our records, I can say that I have the authority to say things about the illegal closure of TAC in 2005 and some serious issues concerning the new TAC. I was not born yesterday and I am not an ignorant bystander from a very far, far, far away galaxy aimlessly throwing baseless comments to issues that I don’t know.
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I have my own solutions on how to make TAC perform better based on what I have experienced before. I agree that there should be an overseer for TAC because as what I also experienced, every term was a new start for TAC. We always start to zero every year. There was no sense of continuity and long range plan for TAC because every year there would be a new line up of players eager to make their own style and etch their own performance. That is why we made the former EIC to be a part of the next editorial board to serve as an editorial consultant or as an ‘adviser’. We had our own ‘adviser’ before but we picked it from our ranks who has more experience compared to what Admin has placed to the new TAC. If I will choose between our editorial consultant to that of Admin’s appointed adviser, I will choose an editorial consultant. What experience does an adviser have that would benefit the new TAC? She is just a faculty of Adamson. Does she know how to make a newspaper and how to manage a student publication like a former editor-in-chief? I think not. She is just also a newbie like the new generation of TAC when it comes to managing a student publication. A former editor-in-chief knows how to bleed blood during presswork and he knows what to do in order to make the new term perform better. Based on what he had experienced as a writer and as a student before, he can guide the new TAC to avoid certain academic problems like failing grades and absences. A former editor-in-chief still has the soul of a student. He knows what his fellow students need. I could name EICs like Ronnie Biando, Joebert Lazarte, and Alvin Julian.
An adviser can be picked by the Admin from any faculty member of Adamson. She still has her own problem and teaching responsibility. How can she help the student pub? Will she teach the newbies how to sing harmonically? I believe an adviser is just a surveillance cam of the Admin to monitor the student publication’s activities – as what we had believed before. I still want to see TAC to be managed by the students only. But to really achieve our own goal of continuous development, I suggest that the editorial board should ask a former EIC to be its editorial consultant. Before I suggested that the editorial board to have a ‘council of elders’ to guide the new writers. But with a very small fund, we cannot lure any alumni to take the position for he will surely be busy for his family’s daily needs. Maybe some might accept the job but it is better to temporarily keep that idea in a freezer until we were able to increase the student publication fee from Php 20 to a more senseless amount. So that we could able to give the chosen editorial consultant at least some transportation allowance to go from his office all the way up to SV Penthouse. I don’t want to sound materialistic, but there are only very few Good Samaritans remaining in this world. We cannot ride LRT for free.
I know that the publication doesn’t need an adviser. But for the helpless status of the new TAC today, they do need some guidance and assistance for their first years of re-existence. For now, I have no choice but to accept an adviser. It is because two years after the TAC holocaust, the new TAC is no different to an orphaned chick recently hatched from an egg without anymore parents to take care for it. Instead, the wretched white hunter who shot their parent dead was the one who adopted them. Irony.
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I don’t have any personal vendetta against Ms. Arlene Paredes. I really don’t personally know her. It only happened to be that she was the first one who sat on the hot seat of the adviser position. We in the pub were against of having an adviser before. Almost all my former EICs, fellow editors, and my ancestors have fought for the ‘no-adviser’ status of the student publication for decades. So it is not only me and it is not only now that I am singing this old chant.
But as a young professor like Ms. Paredes, I have deep respect for her. And now that she is the adviser of the new TAC and knowing that I can do nothing about that, I just hope that she will do her very best. And I know that she can ask assistance from some of her Chronicler friends. May the force be with her.
I will just ask JB, what if it is not Ms. Paredes? What if the Admin chose someone you know who is IMMATURE and a DICTATOR? I am quite sure that you know that there are such wretched people existing in Adamson. What then would you say if an IMMATURE ADVISER is placed to ‘guide’ the new TAC? Will you still say yes for an adviser? Surely, the ‘benevolent’ Ms. Paredes will not be there forever.
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One of the things that I cherish most about TAC is the unfading loyalty of its alumni. Unlike AUSG and RSOs. When any of our members have left the pub, there will always be a string that the pub itself will tie around their hearts. I only saw that phenomenon in TAC. When I was still in the pub, I was always seeing our former editors frequently visiting and assisting the present term. I saw them helping the new editors in editing articles and giving advices to some issues. Before, because of them, we felt that we had our own ‘advisers.’ In the time of Mr. Alvin Julian, I saw Mr. Joebert Lazarte in our presswork. In the time of Ms. Ma. Celia Clave, I saw Mr. Ronnie Biando. In the time of Ms. Maureen Tiamsic, I saw again Mr. Alvin Julian. In the time of Mr. Sylvere Borromeo, there was Ms. Tiamsic and the complete support of the staff.
So I really say NO to an Admin-sent adviser because TAC has already produced a dozen of its own well-experienced EICs. All we have to do is just to dig for their graves.
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The other issue is the publication fund. It has to be increased. Php 20 will bring you nowhere. I hate annual tuition and miscellaneous fee increases but look at me now I am asking for an increase in our fund. That amount has been the same amount for eons. It was unchanged. And the Admin was so selfish to give our own little increase. They were asking too much from us. I believed that even if we beg for mercy, kneel on rock salts, do somersaults, and sell our souls – they would not approve our petition. But when it comes to their TFI, all praises to the Almighty Lord and all the singing angels in the heaven above for the bread and butter that He keeps on providing them. Amen! Hallelujah!
I know that the university has to make increases because all the prices are also increasing. But why it has to be done every year and why it has to be between 10 to 12 percent always? Can they reduce it to only 6%? And why they cannot make it as big as 25%? If they can resist the temptation of having a succulent 25% TFI, then they can also resist the temptation of maintaining their quota of annual 12% TFI and make it lower to 6%. A student doesn’t need air-conditioned rooms to study better. The sad reality about these lavish renovations is that it is only the rich Adamsonians who can afford its corresponding TFI. A ‘labandera’ mother of a poor Adamsonian now has to be an ‘all around katulong’ to earn bigger money to sustain the ever-ballooning tuition of his son. Before, she was only serving one ‘amo’, now she has to look for another ‘amo’ or start to be a ‘jueteng kubrador’.
Have we seen the effects of TFIs to poor students and to their parents? Why are we only focusing our senses to the new paintworks and all-year round campus beautifications? We don’t need all of these ‘enchanting lotus plants’. We don’t need too much ACs. We don’t need the four-thumbs-up accreditation of PAASCU. We don’t need state-of-the-arts telebots to solve our security problems. We don’t need plasma TVs. We don’t need excessive landscape beautifications. We don’t need to see that the Estero de Balete can actually sustain live tilapia fishes. We don’t even need to see our own reflections from that creek while there are dehydrated live ducks swimming around. And we don’t need additional expenses to things which are unessential.
Adamson University is a learning institution and not a theme park!
A student needs quality education and he needs to finish his studies without giving additional burden to his parents every enrollment. That’s all he need and I guess that the Admin can actually decrease the TFI to at least 9% or 7.5%. At least with a small decrease in lavishness of Adamson there would be a corresponding decrease in TFI and eventually a ‘labandera’ mother can finally have a rest in her house with a certain degree of assurance that even if she has a rest day she can still expect that her son can finish his education.
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I just want to reiterate the real role of TAC and that is not be a cute student publication like the rest but to show the students the real deal and to wake them up and tell them that they are also leaving in a programmed Matrix-like realm. That they think that they are awake, but actually they are still in deep slumber.
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To Josh, I know that TFI is NORMAL. But it doesn’t mean that anything that is NORMAL is RIGHT. Having a mistress is already a NORMAL thing to a Pinoy, but can we consider this normal right? Broken families, failed marriages, early pregnancies, kidnappings, graft and corruption – these are all NORMAL things to our society nowadays. But can we consider them right? As a new editor, you must see the real thing and not only the scoreboard.
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And finally, I still stand to NO TO TFI! TFI is not that impossible to stop. Our idyllic struggle when we were still in TAC is still possible to be achieved. If our Vincentian priests would only see what a normal student truly needs, then they can reduce their over-the-top spending. And if only our venerable Saint Vincent de Paul is alive today, I would definitely ask his view about TFI. But unfortunately, old Enteng is now just a big pile of colored and hardened concrete mixture; he can do nothing but to be a solid perch for birds.
Now I finally remember why his statue is facing TUP.
Tags: Adamson University, Adamson Chronicle
stiban_graffiti has blogged 7
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