years TOWARDS A PROGRESSIVE CAMPUS PRESS | VOL. LXXXV NO. 02 | WEDNESDAY, 15 AUGUST 2012
BOOTH BUILDING. Carpenters start bulding booths at the Ravello Ball Field as Silliman University’s 111th Founders Week Celebration is fast approaching. The opening of the Hibalag booth area is scheduled on August 21. PHOTO by Alexandra Iso
Elman: ‘Tell us who these guards are’ Students bag gold, bronze in Hong Kong By Susanah Jane L. Lapa THIRD YEAR HIGH school student Anchelle Grace Ho bagged gold in the Grade 7 level category in the 1st Asia International Math Olympiad in Hong Kong. Ho is one of the four Filipinos to win gold in the recently concluded Olympiad. Being unable to participate in the Mathematics Trainers’ Guild (MTG) training in Manila, she studied the materials sent to her by the organization and did a self-review. Over 200 students faced off in this year’s tournament which is considered one of Asia’s major competitive events in mathematics. Despite being just originally considered as an alternate, she won her first gold in the tournament. She won silver when she was in first year from a competition in Singapore and a bronze from China in elementary. Meanwhile, a third grader at the Elementary Department of the School of Basic Education also bagged a bronze medal during the 8th Asia Cup Stars of the Olympic Math Finals held July 26 in Hong Kong. After finishing third in the final round for his category, Jose Marco Antonio contributed to the 57 medals that the Philippine delegation won in the five-country math tournament. Antonio, along with his twin brother Jose Miguel Antonio, underwent the In-House Intensive Training, where the screening of trainees was conducted to choose who was to join the Philippine
Delegation Team. He qualified for the final stage which was the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Training conducted last April 15 to May 15 before qualifying for the competition. The training consisted of classes and exams that covered topics beyond the classroom setting. “[In the summer training] We only got breaks on Sundays for one month [We] trained from 9-5 in the afternoon.” said Antonio. When asked about his keen interest in the subject Antonio answered, “Math allows you to think. It’s challenging and sometimes when you solve problems, you have to think hard.” His twin, Jose Miguel Antonio added: “Everything you do is Math. Like when you pick up two objects, you already do math. Like when you count how many people are there in the office.” The Antonio twins are children of Institutional Advancement Officer Jose Mari Antonio and Jovito R. Salonga Center for Law and Development Director, Atty. Myrish Cadapan-Antonio. “We raised them to just try anything out. Since they were young we would buy them cheap activity books and they easily finished them. They started reading novels at five and completed all kinds of series” said Atty. Myrish Cadapan-Antonio Jose Miguel Antonio, together with Francis Roy Albina, received an Excellent Prize in the same category. Albina and the Antonio twins competed against participants from Singapore, Indonesia, China and Hong Kong.~
ANNOUNCEMENT The Committee on Student Organizations (ComSo) would like to remind everyone of the following events: Torch Parade Hibalag Booth Area Opening Miss Silliman Pre-pageant Cheering Competition Miss Silliman Pageant Night Parada Sillimaniana Founders Week Closing Ceremony
August 21 August 21 August 22 August 23 August 24 August 27 August 29
By Jelanie Rose T. Elvinia PUBLIC ASSISTANCE AND Security Office (PASO) chief, Dr. Nichol Elman, challenges students to report names of security guards who selectively check IDs, in order to facilitate an investigation. This was prompted by an alleged incident that took place on Aug. 4 wherein a carpenter had been granted access by a security guard to the booth area without prior clearance from PASO. The guard, Elman revealed, had already been endorsed back to the security agency contracted by the university. As of press time, the said guard has not been back to his assignment on campus. Elman said that it is not his role to dismiss anyone of the guards. Imposing sanctions is within the jurisdiction of the contracted security agency. Even before this incident, students have already observed how guards selectively check the IDs of those entering the campus. “It’s not good that we do a half-baked job,” Darrell Bryan Rosales, sophomore
AB Speech and Theater student said. Rosales is one of many Silliman students who observed the inconsistency of some guards in the campus in terms of checking students’ IDs upon entry. He added that the guards seem to be firm at certain hours of the day. Lorie Jayne Soriano and Christal Faith Javier, sophomores from the College of Mass Communication, said that since the guards are strict in checking them in the morning, they should be consistent throughout the day. “It’s unfair for others who are not allowed to get inside the campus, missing their classes while others have the chance to get in because the guard on duty is not strict,” Soriano said. For PASO’s side, Elman explained that while they are doing their best to ensure the security of the students,
PASO cannot do it alone. He added: “I need assistance here. This is now the proper time for them [students] to tell us who these guards are so we can clean our ranks.” He asks full cooperation of Sillimanians since the issue is of safety within the university premises affects everyone. “Students should know their responsibility. They have to validate their IDs on time if they don’t want to face the consequences,” Elman said. Elman said that guards go through routine orientation daily before they start their shifts. If there is any protest on the guards’ actions, PASO performs an investigation before carrying any action.~
Sillimanian ranks 10th in PT licensure exam; SU places 2nd in Agriculture board exam
By Kriztja Marae G. Labrador and Jairah Sheila Joy F. Hernani LOVELY APRIL CAMELLE A. Dy, a fresh graduate of the Silliman University Institute of Rehabilitative Sciences, placed tenth with 83.20% in the Physical Therapist Licensure Examination given by the Board of Physical and Occupational Therapy in Manila and Cebu this August 2012. Dy graduated cum laude last March. Out of the ten examinees, Silliman University (SU) produced nine physical therapists, garnering a percentage rate
of 90%. Out of the 884 examinees nationwide, only 469 passed the examination, according to the website of the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC). SU’s percentage rate is above the national passing average of 53.05%. Dy’s fellow passers are: Julliane Dean G. Alolod; Jerald John D. Demerre; Melissa Anne M. Martin; Zoe Emilea A. Menguito; Val Tyrone N. Omandam; Millecent Hope S. Quinan; Arrabella R. Tantengco; and Marie Febra Claire E. Te. Meanwhile, 49 out of the 112
examinees nationwide passed the Occupational Therapist Licensure Examination, which was also given this month. Another success goes to Silliman University College of Agriculture which ranked second among schools all-over the country with at least 30 examinees at the 2012 Agriculturist Licensure Examination. Twenty graduates who took the examination last July 29 to 31 accumulated a passing rate of 70% greater than the 37.9% national passing rate. continued on page 4
‘A botanist father’s love raised me’ –Poet By Samantha L. Colinco
FOR A 4-YEAR-OLD girl, who lost a mother to breast cancer in the middle of World War II, a father’s love would be more than enough to survive and someday, even excel. Dumaguete-based poet, Myrna Peña-Reyes, former faculty of the Department of English and Literature and coordinator of the National Writers Workshop, was that little girl. Even at age 74, Peña-Reyes said during the Creative Writing Center (CWC) lecture last Aug. 9 that she remains thankful to her father, the late Alfredo Y. Reyes, former SU botany professor, after whom the A.Y. Reyes Zoology and Botany garden at the Center for Tropical Conservation Studies (CENTROP) was named after. “He made it possible for me to be what I am. I do what I do well to acknowledge the love and trust he had for me to honor his memory,” she told 180 students and teachers at the Dioscoro Rabor Lecture Hall (SC 110).
During World War II, Peña-Reyes and her twin sister, Lorna, along with their father and sick mother, fled to the mountains to evade the Japanese. A year later, her mother died, leaving her father to fulfill both mother and father roles. “It was father who stayed and took care of us, protected us and provided for us. It was he who gave us answers when we had questions,” she said. Peña-Reyes is an author of two books of poems, The River Singing Stone (1994) and Almost Home (2004). However, her “very reticent father who could not express his feelings openly” had not always understood her poems. “He would complain to my sister, ‘Unsa man na ang gisulat-sulat ni Myrna? Bisag unsa man lang? Why doesn’t she write like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who wrote very clear and verbally-inspiring poems?’” Peña-Reyes recalled with a smile. She added that her father was a loner who did not make friends easily and would not really tell his children when he was pleased with something.
“Ours was not a touchy-feely, chummy-chummy, warm kind of relationship. We never said ‘I love you’ to each other,” Peña-Reyes said. To remedy the situation, she wrote more “accessible poems” about him such as “To My Father” and “Homecoming”. Other poems she wrote about him were “Breaking Through” which is about receiving the wedding present her father mailed to the United States, and “Across the Date Line” which she wrote when she found out, while in Oregon, that her father had died. Peña-Reyes added that she had written about her twin sister and her mother but focused more on her father because of his sacrifices for them. “My father was just a special person because he never remarried. Imagine that during the war, he took care of us, his children, all by himself,” she said. An A.B. English graduate of SU, Pena-Reyes is the third lecturer of the Edilberto K. Tiempo and Edith L. Tiempo CWC lecture series named after the two founders of the SU National Writers Workshop. ~