Volume LXXXVIII, No. 4 • November 24, 2016 THE OFFICIAL STUDENT PUBLICATION OF THE UNIVERSIT Y OF SANTO TOMAS Manila, Philippines
Medicine okays proposed 6-year program By ROY ABRAHMN D.R. NARRA THE FACULTY of Medicine and Surgery is backing the Department of Health’s (DOH) proposal for a six-year medicine program, which will eliminate the pre-medicine course. Medicine Dean Jesus Valencia said this would be a “buffer solution” to the expected impact of the K to 12 basic education reform in the faculty by the year 2021, when there would be no graduates of premedicine programs such as biology and nursing. Valencia said the faculty had begun planning for a new two-year program. Upon completion of the program, students will be able to start medicine proper, and graduate after four years. The six-year program will also allow the faculty to cater to an “elite group of medicine students” since the number of applicants will be fewer. “Medicine is just like any basic course na medyo toxic or hectic. A lot of times, we see quite a few students [with good] academic credentials, okay na okay sila but after two weeks or one month, they drop the course. Sayang din lang naman `yung slot na `yun.,” he said. The shortened medicine program can ease the lack of health workers in the country especially in isolated provinces. Shortage of facilities Valencia however admitted the faculty was not yet prepared for the shift, as it must first address some problems like the lack of classrooms. The STRONG OPPOSITION. Youth activist groups gather in UST last Nov. 18 to denounce the sudden decision to bury deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. ALVIN JOSEPH KASIBAN
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Duterte showed no mercy during Jubilee Year — bishop Dominican ‘saint-maker’ THE ADMINISTRATION of President Rodrigo Duterte failed to show “mercy and compassion” in dealing with suspected drug pushers and users during the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy, a Catholic bishop has said. “Hindi niya inunawa ang kalagayan ng mga tao. Hindi niya sila binigyan ng pagkakataong [magbago],” Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo said in an interview with the Varsitarian. An outspoken critic of Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs” that has led to the deaths of some 4,000 drug suspects, Pabillo said the reality was the opposite of the peace and order situation being claimed by the government as an achievement. Pabillo added that nothing changed in the Catholic Church in the past few months that Duterte had been in office – it is still the same institution Filipinos have come to know, he said. “What we do is still ‘critical collaboration.’ We collaborate with what’s good but we criticize what’s wrong,” Pabillo said. Despite the tirades it has received from the Duterte administration, the Church
will continue to help the government with its community-based drug rehabilitation programs, Pabillo stressed. Rehab program The Archdiocese of Manila, through Caritas Manila’s Restorative Justice Ministry, launched the Sanlakbay Para sa Pagbabagong Buhay Program last Oct. 23. The program seeks to provide rehabilitation to drug dependents and aid their families. The UST Psychotrauma Clinic is among the organizations tapped to aid the Archdiocese in its drug rehabilitation program. “Our team will be creating modules that focus on dealing with trauma, grief and loss that could be utilized in training volunteers in handling drug surrenderers,” Michael Edward Buenaflor, project coordinator of the UST Psychotrauma Clinic, said in an interview. The Ruben M. Tanseco, S.J. Center for Family Ministries (RMT-CEFAM) is also contributing to the program through their three-way Gabay process of “teaching, training and treating” drug users.
“We help through the parish volunteers who will have teaching and training and then, hopefully, get some supervision through the weekly sessions, when they start applying their listening skills,” Fr. Teodulo Gonzales, S.J. priest-in-charge of RMT-CEFAM’s Research and Program Development said. The modules will include 20 topics that will run over 10 weeks, every Wednesday and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. The topics include the science of drug addiction, listening skills for understanding, mindfulness, anger management, laughter therapy and grief and trauma counselling. “We wish to help save a few lives because we believe in the dignity of the persons as children of God. We believe in hope in healing or a culture of life as part of the good news of Jesus Christ,” he said. Other organizations tapped to design and implement the modules of the program include the Department of the Interior and Local Government, Philippine National Police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. SIGRID B. GARCIA and KATHLEEN THERESE A. PALAPAR
Nobel laureate named honorary professor by UST PERUVIAN-SPA N ISH author Mario Vargas Llosa was named “honorary professor” by the University on Nov. 7 for being a “divinely gifted storyteller.” The 80-year-old Vargas Llosa, who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, stressed on the role of literature in addressing contemporary social ills. “Good literature is necessary for a society that wants to be free, that wants to be democratic,” Vargas Llosa said in Spanish during his lecture at the Grand Ballroom of the Buenaventura G. Paredes, O.P Building “Literature has somehow contributed a grain of sand toward civilization and progress,” he added. Vice Rector Fr. Richard Ang, O.P. lauded Vargas Llosa’s works, citing how the writer boldly
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Villarroel remembered
By CHRISTIAN DE LANO M. DEIPARINE and KATHLEEN THERESE A. PALAPAR ACCLAIMED historian Fr. Fidel Villarroel, O.P. is known for his intellect and gentle manner, and will always be remembered for giving the University its “institutional history,” former students and colleagues told the Varsitarian. The prior of the Priory of St. Thomas Aquinas, Fr. Rolando Castro, O.P., once a student of Villarroel, said the Dominican historian’s death was a challenge for budding historians to continue his work. “There’s only one Father Fidel but if we will do our work well as historians, as Dominicans, then his memory is not wasted,” Castro said in an interview. Prof. Eloisa de Castro, who teaches history at the Faculty of Arts and Letters and Saint maker PAGE 10
Filipino Catholics urged to aid persecuted Christians worldwide WITH the surge of Christian persecutions and Islamist attacks worldwide, the Aid to Church in Need, a Vatican foundation that provides relief to Christians and non-Christians in conf lict areas, opened its Philippine chapter in an inaugural conference last Nov. 12 at Saint Pedro Poveda College in Pasig. One out of five countries from Sweden in northern Europe to Australia in Oceania including 17 African countries are experiencing violent Islamist attacks, according to their report in the conference. Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas was appointed as president and will head its Philippine office at the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines complex in Intramuros. He called for Catholics to remain faithful to the Church even if the persecution
DIVINELY GIFTED STORYTELLER. The University names Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature awardee, as “honorary professor” last Nov. 7 at the Grand Ballroom of the Buenaventura G, Paredes, O.P Building. ALVIN JOSEPH KASIBAN
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