Lasallians choose to operate under this democratic context. Political parties field candidates with the end goal of producing student leaders. These student leaders represent the student body by sitting in multi-sectoral, University and national level meetings for them; they also have the task to lead the student body to become ideal Lasallians grounded in social awareness, excellence and competence, morals and ethics as well as holistic achievement.
Hence, candidates make certain to include such means of student transformation in their platforms. These programs are key in setting the positive direction of the USG for the student body; these also help unify DLSU’s diversified student cultures.
Effectiveness, therefore, of the USG, can be gauged by student participation in USG-led programs.
Sample size insufficient
For this academic year, one of the University Student Government’s (USG) formative programs was the Advocacy Calendar, which involved the spreading of advocacies every month through events, seminars, forums and fairs.
Under the Advocacy Calendar initiative, the USG pushed for a general advocacy every month, collating all of its resources and manpower, and mobilizing all of its units to create activities for a specific advocacy.
The main problem in assessing the impact of these events lies with consistently low attendance. Many Lasallians have mixed academic and other extra-curricular commitments that undermine the promise advocacy seminars hold. Moreover, many Lasallians who voted for their batch governments and college governments choose to attend the other aforementioned commitments.
Cabe Aquino, current President of the University Student Government, asserts that despite the numerous annual seminars organized by the batch and college governments for Lasallian formation and advocacy awareness, low attendance is still prevalent. This may have been partly due to the conflicting priorities of students with regard to which seminar to attend. “We are 90 officers and we have so many offices and everybody tries to do some different thing, so it is difficult to focus our efforts.”
Rachel Lucero, Vice President for Community Development for the Ramon V. del Rosario College Government of Business, says that the difficulty with the attendance for advocacy projects is that you cannot really expect students to take the first step. “Rather, it is the [organizing bodies] who should be making that extra effort to coordinate and attract people to attend the event,” she says.
She adds that efforts in publicity through text, social media and internet blasting can be small details which, when left overlooked, can have cataclysmic repercussions on the attendance of students. “How can they attend if they do not know the issue, or that a seminar even exists?”
The end result of low attendance would then put the platform of candidates who espoused advocacy as a promise into jeopardy because students would perceive the projects as ineffective due to low attendance.
Brian Chuahiock (II, BSA) shares that he as a student did not sufficiently feel the USG advocacy campaign even if he was present. “It may desensitize students who see advocacies [too much].” He also adds that some campaigns were unable to utilize anything more beyond tarpaulins and central plaza booths, lacking that bang necessary for successful branding. “As far as I knew, the said efforts were ineffective [as] tarpaulins only go so far as to provide information on something.”
In an effort to increase the number of participants, many student bodies ask for incentives from professors, a common practice for most professional organizations.
Significance without study
Lucero, however, empathizes with the students. “I am a student myself, and I know that there are really a lot of options that would not immediately appeal to me, and so it is [really the fault of two parties]: that is, the failure of the organizer to make the event as appealing as possible, and the students’ lack of drive and unwillingness to participate [in his or her own transformation].”
The USG’s advocacy calendar, while relatively successful in tapping established institutions and influential resource persons, may have proven that despite the presence of formative opportunities, Lasallians are still unable to maximize them.
And in spite of the differing approaches of both political parties in training their candidates about student transformation, the actual situation and its end result may remain conclusively constant: that is, without student initiative, even the best designed programs would not meet their goals.
“That makes it our job to [hike up] the quality of our programs, as well as the incentive to attend,” concludes Lucero. Given such, student empowerment and motivation to participate remains the actual challenge, which elected officers must contend with and prove when they win their seats.
