In the past month and a half that enhanced community quarantine measures have been in place, calls for increased testing have remained ever present, if not grown steadily stronger. Although the increase in COVID-19 cases seems to have stabilized in recent days, as well as newly reported recoveries outnumbering new fatalities, this cannot beget complacency.…
Category: Opinion
With the threat of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) drastically changing the landscape of the country, and the subsequent announcement of Metro Manila being put under Enhanced Community Quarantine, the University’s Academics Council (AC) decided to suspend online learning from March 18 to 24, allotting time to evaluate the situation at hand. During this week-long…
Acknowledging their burden
Daily struggles can be a burden, especially for those who can barely make it through each day. As a child, I would always know when my mother—a single parent—felt like she had too much on her plate, even though I had no idea what it was like to be a parent. There are single parents…
Take a break
Last month, I received the results of my annual physical exam, a yearly checkup that I do for both school and work. The results were mostly consistent with previous years in that there were no significant findings to report. There was, however, one part that caught my eye: I had a low level of HDL—what…
Bursting the bubble
At any given point in time, there are perhaps a dozen or so crises happening simultaneously around the world. The global spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the yet ongoing bushfires in Australia, and the protests in Hong Kong are just some of the world’s present troubles that beat down on everyone’s psyche, not…
The unknown
One of my greatest fears as a kid was the dark. I was afraid because I couldn’t see anything, letting my imagination run wild from all the horror films and stories I would bathe myself in. Sleeping alone at night would be difficult for me, urging myself to leave the door open and the night…
Back in 2017, The LaSallian spearheaded a campus journalism seminar, PressPlay, which focused on the credibility and reliability of news reporting—especially from outlets like Philippine Daily Inquirer and ABS-CBN who, despite being impartial, were labelled as “biased media” by President Rodrigo Duterte. At the time, news coverage on his administration’s Drug War, whose effects on…
Yesterday, February 24, the Senate held a hearing on the renewal of ABS-CBN’s media franchise and its alleged violations of the conditions stipulated in Republic Act 7966, the law that allows it to operate as a broadcasting company. Two weeks prior, Solicitor General Jose Calida filed a quo warranto petition before the Supreme Court seeking…
Through small eyes
I’ve always had a problem with the way my eyes look. My earliest memory of my disdain for my Chinese features was when I was told that Piolo Pascual was the epitome of male attractiveness. Young, impressionable, kindergarten Westin was heartbroken when he looked in the mirror; he faced not the chiselled, brown-skinned, wide-eyed Piolo…
Role models
What does it mean to be a “role model”? A frosh candidate said, in the Miting de Avance (MDA) held last November, that leaders are the “role models for the future”, as people would use their actions as a benchmark for what it means to be right and wrong. It was an admirable answer, and…