The Student Government Annual Recruitment (SGAR) ended last June 21, concluding a four-day recruitment period spearheaded by the Executive Board offices and College Governments of the University Student Government (USG).
The SGAR serves as a recruitment period for freshly elected Executive Board (EB) members to seek potential officers for their committees. In addition to the SGAR, the USG also holds a recruitment period over the April – May summer term.
Successful, surprising turnouts
According to various USG EB offices, a high applicant outcome was obtained by this year’s SGAR in comparison to previous years.
Executive Treasurer Kayne Litonjua shares, “Usually the Office of the Executive Treasurer has the lowest applicants per year — usually thirty, forty, fifty, sixty — but [this year], 100 applied [for summer recruitment].”
He reports that SGAR brought in roughly 400 applicants, the highest turnout among the EB offices. He expresses his surprise, and adds that 168 are accepted into OTREAS.
Litonjua explains, “I want the office to be a bit small and reliable at the same time. I’ll be mobilizing all officers [to ensure] that they are not idle, and find ways to make them engage in a specific project.”
Litonjua adds that his office will implement a Junior Associates program, a training program geared towards ID 113 OTREAS applicants.
Executive Secretary Ria Atayde also reports a satisfactory outcome from SGAR. “For OSEC (Office of the Executive Secretary), we were able to get about 130 applicants.” Atayde states, “The summer recruitment for OSEC was successful as well. We were able to get about 95 applicants. We accepted all our [summer] applicants.”
She furthers, “We accepted everyone that showed up for the interviews as per the request of my chairpersons. That’s about 56 new members for OSEC.” She concludes that OSEC has around 150 officers.
Meanwhile, Vice President for External Affairs Beatrice Liu’s office saw 80 applicants for the summer recruitment, and around 224 applicants from the SGAR. Out of the 131 who passed their application forms, 112 officers were accepted.
Liu states that all summer applicants were accepted, totalling to 192 officers for OVPEA. “Personally, I don’t believe in rejecting people.” Liu says. “I’d rather get them the units, and they’re given a chance to prove themselves.”
Vice President for Internal Affairs Carlo Inocencio accepted around 180 applicants into office during the summer recruitment, and an additional [235] from the SGAR, totalling roughly [400] OVPIA officers for the academic year.
USG President Migi Moreno reports 58 accepted summer applicants for the Office of the President (OPRES) operational team. For OPRES, SGAR yielded an outcome of 100 applicants. Around 30 were accepted into the operations team, totalling around 80 to 90 officers for the academic year.
Moreno elaborates that under OPRES, there exists an ad-hoc committee called OPRES Ambassadors, 200 in number. The team does not possess a direct role in OPRES operations, but function as a volunteer group that partakes in general assemblies in order to receive first-hand updates on the direction and projects that OPRES is implementing this academic year.
In light of acquiring fresh teams for the USG, Moreno concludes that he is optimistic for the upcoming academic year. “It’s going to be a year filled with so much excitement and promise,” he says. “Especially when there’s something new, it’s always something to look forward to.”
On expanding the USG’s scope
Student LIFE Operator of Student Organizations Jessica Ginete-Morales expresses her concern regarding the number of officers per USG office, especially since it would be difficult to mobilize officers of a large office, she says. Morales believes that with the nature of the USG’s role, the number of officers should be fewer.
With an operational office of less than a hundred, Moreno believes that a smaller team would be more focused. He states, “One of the challenges for the USG offices/units — given the number of people they have in their respective offices/units — is to ensure that the roles of each member is clarified, and something that can be seen and translated into something that can be evaluated.“
For Litonjua, he says, “I’d like to keep [the office] as small as I can. I wanted to accept everyone,” he states. “[But] the more compact the team is, the more they’re involved. For me, accepting all the 400 would be a hard task, even if I wanted to.”
Former Vice President for Internal Affairs and incumbent Santugon President Robert Hechanova, who managed an office of 175 to 200 officers last academic year, believes, “It’s based on the approach of the elected officer. For me, my leadership is focused on empowering as many people as possible. For others elected, for how they work, it would be more efficient for them to work in a smaller team.”
Liu explains, “If you look at the recruitment, it seems like such a big number, but if you think about it, it’s around eight people per committee [for OVPEA].” She states, “I’ve been in the USG for a while. The target audience that we have, I think that it increases. Now I’m [in-]charge of an executive office. We’re going to need a lot of manpower.” She adds that the OVPEA is pushing for more events this academic year.
Inncencio echoes similar sentiments and believes, “The USG itself is the training grounds for the students that don’t already have the experience in terms of extracurricular activities.” He elaborates that besides the OVPIA’s focus on academics and facilities, his office is heavy on providing student activities, which calls for a lot of manpower.
Former OVPIA Chief of Staff and former OTREAS Chairperson for Operations and Human Resources Maan Tuason describes, “The number of members per committee varies on its nature or description. For example, the Activities Committee had about 15 officers since they were mainly responsible for all projects of OVPIA. On the other hand, the Finance Committee had only 6 officers, including the Executive Treasurer.”
Former OVPIA Chairperson for Logistics and Documentations Michelle Lojo echoes Tuason’s observations. Lojo explains that her committee started out with 17 officers and decreased to seven active officers towards the end of the year. She stresses that a committee like Activities needs more officers to efficiently execute university-wide activities, as compared to other committees, which function with an average of six to eight officers.
Lojo concludes that regardless of the officer count, the determining factor of an active committee lies on each officers’ commitment to their duties.
