Here and There
‘Boy’ Rayos; Dissolve the Frats if…
By Gerry Garcia
Fraternities on some if not most Pinoy school campuses today, even if the members think they are impressive and envied owing to the classy Greek-based names they have chosen for their society, have become nothing but unprincipled groupings of friends. Friends or barkada united by a fondness they commonly share: love of fun and the bottle.
There are, of course, the more serious ones. But they are negligibly few. Limited to groups initiated and formed by caring and concerned students who select their members
No wonder most news about campus fraternities that we often read in the papers, local or national, always deal with violence. Often with tragedy.
There have been brutal incidences in membership initiation, for instance, resulting in either serious injury or death.
Only recently we read of the untimely death of a young engineering student resulting from brutal hazing. To us it was news but we are not shocked. Death from hazing is just one of the dime-a-dozen happenings taking place on the Pinoy campus.
Campus violence is also spilling out in to the streets outside school as shown not so long ago by news accounts of school teeners being chased or stoned by another group, both belonging to the same school. The cause, established by police probe, was rivalry which ignited animosity between members of two school fraternities.
There have been no news so far of school authorities doing anything to about these unscholarly shenanigans being perpetrated by their own students.
Former Councilor “Boy” Rayos, presently head of the Student Affairs Office of the University of Pangasinan, is apparently incensed by this hooliganism gripping certain schools (not including Boy’s Upang)…. And he has pointed proposals to “curb this problem”.
Mr. Rayos proposes first that schools “formulate stricter policies which will mete out heavier sanctions to erring fraternities. Frats found to be transgressing rules/regulations should be dissolved and students involved should be expelled from the institution.”
Again even as stricter policies are enforced, schools should exert efforts to harness the potentials of fraternities. Members should be made to engage in a number of activities where they can release their energies and gain recognition.
Offices of Student Affairs should line up a program of wholesome activities for the fraternities.
Boy sure has the balls and like the great man Blas Rayos, his grand pa who founded the first private school in Dagupan in 1925, the Dagupan Institute, fore-runner of Dagupan Junior Colleges and the University of Pangasinan, Boy will always be on the go behind his present boss, Cesar Duque.
Happy Easter Sunday to all…. And everyone here and abroad who has a laptop to rein in Punch in the internet.
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