This is not the first school year when the Weekly Sillimanian
(tWS) published articles regarding tardiness of teachers when it
comes to submitting grades and coming to class.
Last Jan. 2014, tWS published an editorial titled “Meet Halfway.”Even
if the staff back then knew that late passing of grades and arrival in
class have been norms through many semesters, they hoped to “no
longer hear of students running after their grades and teachers running
away from their responsibility.”
According to Fred Cadelina, the chair of the sociology and
anthropology department, teachers are ‘supposed’ to be aware of the
rules and penalties existing in the university manual. Also, knowing
that this manual has been subjected to a lot of hearings and changes,
he “is not interested to know [about the provisions] anymore.” Instead,
he chose to perform his duties as a teacher efficiently.
Sadly, up to the present, students and teachers are still not meeting halfway. Despite sanctions provided by the Unified University Manual for these infractions, teachers still continue to submit grades and meet
the class late.
Nonetheless, it is important for teachers (and students, too) to be
aware of these provisions. The manual guides everyone as to how people
in the university must function and behave to have an ideal university
system.
It is also necessary that teachers should have a clear process on how
to deal with student feedback. We suggest matters to be addressed
directly to the teacher in question and, if ever it is deemed necessary,
the problem be sent directly to the administration.
tWS also believes that students are first witnesses of injustices inside
and outside the classroom. They are responsible for bringing cases of
injustices to authorities instead of continually subjecting themselves to
these. The administration has a point: students must be bold enough to
voice out their concerns so that the administration can do something
about it.
However, the administration cannot blame students for being silent
about these matters; students may be subjected to getting undeserved
low grades as a sign of intimidation from an ‘affected’ teacher. ~
