In a matter of days, festivities in celebration of the University Vision-Mission Week (UVMW) 2019 will officially take place. Headed by Patricia Andulte and Nates Martin, UVMW 2019 is scheduled to be on June 14 to 22. But behind the scenes, the problem of a P364,268.36 net loss from last year’s UVMW has yet to be settled.
Andulte, at least, acknowledges this. However, she assures that addressing this concern has been their priority ever since. Discussions with administrators from the Office of Student Leadership Involvement, Formation and Empowerment (SLIFE) and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Administration have taken place to pinpoint the origin of the problem and to find a means to recover.
Martin adds that plans for improvements have been made, maintaining an emphasis on “student participation”. Some of these activities, he cites, range from laser tag to a University-wide sportsfest.
Environmental concerns
The UnivWeek Bazaar, famous for its food concessionaires, has historically been the main profit-generating segment of the entire week’s festivities, covering most, if not all, of the event’s expenses. New policies and bureaucratic delays, however, forced the 2018 bazaar to scale down, from having 80 planned concessionaires to only 40 actual stalls in the previous UVMW. Former University Student Government (USG) Vice President for Internal Affairs Brian Chen stated in a previous interview that this was the main cause of the catastrophic loss last year.
The LaSallian reached out to Associate Vice Chancellor for Facilities Management Antonio Maralit for further clarification on the concessionaire guidelines. He declined to give a statement and instead recommended Vice President for Lasallian Mission Fritzie de Vera.
A representative from de Vera’s office suggested that SLIFE and the Office of Student Affairs can better answer the publication’s concerns. SLIFE Director Patrick Lo, who was interviewed in a previous article on the UVMW 2018 issue, initially recommended Maralit as a resource person. As of press time, neither Maralit nor de Vera have provided The LaSallian a direct comment on the matter.
Apart from the aforementioned concerns, Andulte notes that violating the city’s environmental protocols carry hefty fines. Despite the guidelines set by the DLSU administration and the UVMW 2018 central committee, many concessionaires still incurred violations and carelessly dumped their oily residue on the grass or directly into the University’s sewerage.
“[Officials] test the sewerage systems of DLSU, and if they see that it is contaminated or does a lot of external damage to the environment, there’s a fine for that. Everyday [it was not cleaned], [the fine] was P11,000. Now, it’s P16,500,” Andulte elaborates.
The money spent on these fines, she argues, could have been allocated to more productive causes such as funding scholarships or paying the University’s other expenses. Aside from financial concerns, any association DLSU has with environmental damage carries a reputational risk.
To address this, the 2019 project heads eye food trucks as alternatives over fixed food stands. These vehicles are equipped with their own cleaning areas, which would help cut down on improper waste disposal and protect school property.
“[Food trucks are] a way for us to mitigate the problem because it’s self-contained,” she explains. She hopes that this solution will still help the committee reach its revenue targets and serve the students’ best interests.
Restructuring revenue streams
UVMW 2018 was an unwilling victim of circumstance: it faced protests from the school’s own concessionaires over “unfair competition” with the bazaar stalls; it was affected by tensions between the DLSU administration and the DLSU-Parents of University Student Organizations at that time; and it suffered from lackluster revenues across the board, most notably from the Culminating Night.
Lo admits that while last year’s UVMW project proposal and documentation appeared “over budget”, it was still at an acceptable range of approval during its proposal stage. “It just so happened that the fundraising activities that would also fund the whole [UVMW] event of the student government did not deliver as it was proposed,” he justifies.
Adding to Lo’s sentiments, Andulte confirms that the 2018 UVMW committee was banking on a P1.2-million income from last year’s bazaar. The changes in policy, along with the time constraints the committee faced, proved to be difficult, with the 40 approved stalls only generating P690,000.
Issues aside, the present project heads explain that since the beginning of planning, they emphasized managing expectations. Plans were built around conservative estimates of profit levels rather than the high benchmarks their predecessors used.
“Ever since we were officially announced as the project heads, we’ve always been attending administration [meetings],” Andulte narrates. “In each of those meetings, we always talk about why it stemmed out that way, why the problems have risen, how we can further improve our partnerships, and [why] we plan things [as such] in order to recover from the losses.”
Learning from last year’s issue, adjustments were made for this year’s UVMW, with the committee devising a new way of generating revenue that still abide by the new protocols. The restructured concessionaire scheme will now be based on profit sharing. Interested partners will sign a memorandum of agreement which states the percentage of profit shared between the concessionaire and the central committee. Martin believes that this arrangement is less burdensome for them as it allows for greater flexibility.
‘Reshift the focus’
Andulte notes that this year, her committee is driven to increase the sales of UVMW 2019 “not just to profit and not just to recover from the losses of last year,” but also to raise funds for their beneficiary, De La Salle Philippines’ Lasallian Zero Extreme Poverty Initiative.
The movement aims to reduce extreme poverty in the Philippines by addressing problems in health, education, and livelihood in urban locales. The proceeds from the event would contribute to the teaching of impoverished barangays on how to create and maintain a livelihood.
Dean of Student Affairs Nelca Villarin tells The LaSallian that this year’s organizers worked “day and night” to serve the Lasallian community. “The [2019] UVMW team of the USG did their best to provide the DLSU community a great culminating event experience,” she declares.
Sharing the same goals with the previous UVMW committee, Andulte expresses her desire to have UVMW 2019 similar to “a welcoming event”. Instead of the event focusing on just DLSU and the Lasallian community, her team wants to “reshift the focus” into welcoming the “external market”, hopefully pulling in alumni, senior high school students, and even patrons from outside the University.
