Baguio City (CNN Philippines) — This week, 19 year-old University of the Philippines (UP) – Baguio student Anna Sta. Romana should be busy preparing her graduation dress and her “sablay” (graduation sash) for her graduation on Thursday (June 25).
But it seems that she will not be able to march this year. Her graduation has been put on hold, pending the review of UP President Alfredo Pascual and the Board of Regents (BOR).
Sta. Romana does not know how to explain the situation to her parents in Lingayen, Pangasinan.
“Kanina po tumawag na naman ang mama ko, tinatanong kung kumusta na, ayokong sabihin na nahihirapan ako at sila din mismo hindi nila pinapakita na sila din nalulungkot kasi matagal namin inasam ito, ang makagraduate ako. Kasi sa family namin, ako lang po ang magtatapos sa UP pagkatapos baka madedelay pa kung sakali,” she said.
[Translation: “My mother gave me a call earlier asking how I was, and of course I didn’t want to tell her how difficult things are for me. Even my family, who have been really looking forward to this, won’t show how much they were hurt by the situation, especially since I will be the first UP graduate in the family.”]
Sta. Romana is one of the 27 students from UP Baguio’s College of Arts and Communication (CAC) who cannot graduate yet because of errors in their checklists. Twenty-one are Communication Arts majors, four study Language and Literature, and two are Fine Arts students. Six from the group are supposed to graduate with honors this coming Thursday.
In the past, UP-Baguio students were free to take any general education (GE) classes in the social sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities. In 2011, the university implemented a new checklist under its Revised General Education Program (RGEP) that subsequently required students to take a definite set of subjects.
Last May 19, the 27 students were informed by the CAC that they were using the outdated checklists.
“It’s a case of 27 students who have academic deficiencies because they were not required to take the needed GE subjects under the Revised General Education Program,” explained UP Baguio Chancellor Raymundo Rovillos.
According to Rovillos, college officials have admitted that the 27 students were not given the correct advice by the CAC regarding which checklist they should use. He also said that there was a lack in monitoring, which resulted in the students taking subjects that they were not supposed to enroll in.
“From 2012 up to recently there was a breakdown in the monitoring in the CAC, because there is hardly any monitoring mechanism in place: they have no folders of students, they have no copy of the checklists of the students, they don’t have a set of advisers for students, there was no monitoring of the right curriculum development for the students.”
However, he also said that the students should have also taken notice of the error, given that they were given an orientation about the usage and implementation of the checklist. Of this year’s 138 graduates, only the 27 were using the old checklist, Rovillos pointed out.
Rovillos said that the CAC Executive Board tried to convince the University Council to waive the students’ required subjects. They did not get enough votes. The case was subsequently elevated to the UP president and the BOR, who are expected to release a decision on Tuesday (June 23).
Rovillos also explained that the decision to waive the GE subjects is difficult for the UP president because the case of each individual student is unique from the other. He added that the president should ensure that honor and academic excellence is not sacrificed and compromised by allowing the students to waive their GE subjects.
“They will also have to look at the merits of the individual case. It is not as if those 27 students are in a similar situation. There is a possibility that each case is different from each other. We want to avoid the idea of free riding or a blanket response to the 27 cases which is why UP President Pascual asked us to assess the students individually,” he said.
Should the decision not be in their favor, the students are seeking to enroll in the midyear term as an alternate plan. They are concerned that the extra two months would entail additional expenses for tuition and boarding fees — an added burden for their families.
For her part, Sta. Romana said her family is hoping for her to be employed in those two additional months, and that hopefully she would be able to contribute to the family income.
