Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

I attended the monthly faculty meeting yesterday, forcing me to leave David in the computer lab for the third hour of the 11am mechanics laboratory class' activity on graphs and equations. As was expected, the students, even though they had the use of the spreadsheet software's graphing capabilities in front of them, still had to take home the activity to finish it by 5pm today.

The meeting, which was itself supposed to wrap up by 230pm (giving me enough time to follow up on the 2pm lab class) ended two hours later.

I volunteered for revising the residency form of full-time faculty, as well as helping Ronnie with the preparations for the Freshman Orientation next schoolyear. Besides that I was assigned to the Student Handbook revision committee, along with Maila and Ronnie.

There was extensive talk on the change of grade form, that it was to be discouraged as much as possible so that the teachers would double check and triple check before submitting their grades. It got to the point where only completion of requirements because of mitigating circumstances were the only acceptable reason for changing of grades.

A mural painting contest was proposed for the inner wall bordering the quadrangle, with a poster-making contest (suggested last term or during the first term) as a preliminary way to find out about the students' artistic capabilities.

Lastly the dean read aloud the official statement of the system about the accident involving the students from Zobel. The van was in Bacoor when in occured, a little after 9pm. One student died, (as I've reported before) and several others were hospitalized (paid by the school), including the son of a prominent actor turned Cavite politician, which was why the incident was televised. The van was full of students, a lot of them Student Council members, and driven by a student.

They are still waiting for the official police report, as well as trying to reconstruct events, because there were only two sanctioned buses from the school going to Dasmarinas. One bus had left when the van moved out also, along with another unofficial car carrying students. The van even overtook the first bus along the way.

This is why they are now turning strict on transportation for students during off campus activities. Private vehicles may be used, as long as there is a faculty or staff member aboard. Otherwise, as much as possible, students should be brought by their parents to school and picked up there after the activity.

I told the dean about the case of my field trip to the theme park in Sta. Rosa, where it has always been our policy that students go there on their own, and leave at the time that was convinient for them. This is because they are just given an activity sheet they are supposed to complete in the park, at their own pace.

The dean told me that after the meeting he was going to meet with parents who, after hearing about the accident, wanted to talk to him about the recent and future off-campus activities.

And since the dean will be out of town in a conference until February 1, I guess I’ll hear about the restrictions that will be placed on field trips and the like by both the parents and the administration on Monday at the earliest.