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

Had my first lecture in TrigApp yesterday. As expected, I covered more topics than I did during the same meeting last term. Maybe I am expecting more from these engineering students. But I did remind them that this is mostly just a review, and I asked them if I was going too fast. They didn't complain.

Or maybe they still haven't gotten over their inherent shyness. I also tried to make the lecture interactive, but only the same few people were reciting. I could start again with the recitation doubling for attendance that I had with the mechanics classes last term, but that will depend on whether the students and I warm up to each other or not in the next few meetings.

Now, onto the subject that I have been avoiding all week: the second behavior I was noticed among the students during the first few days of classes, which ties in with an incident during the Recognized Student Organizations meeting last Wednesday.

There was an initial and almost tangible wall between the upperclassmen and the freshmen in the halls during this past first week of classes. This is despite the upperclassmen having been present, friendly and interacting during the Orientation two weeks ago.

And the first hostile words spoken out in the open about it occurred when Student Activities Director Ronnie talked about planning for the Recruitment Week/Membership Drive of the accredited and proposed students organizations.

Ronnie said that proposed student organizations will be advertising their presence during the drive. Some upperclassmen complained and said that the proposed organizations should be accredited first before they try to get members.

The purpose of the inclusion of the proposed groups in the first place is because they do not have the luxury the upperclassmen have of the whole schoolyear to meet the requirements for accreditation. We also did not want the freshmen to feel that the only way for them to be part of organizations is to join something that the upperclassmen have already set up. We wanted them to see that they could form their own.

The purpose of the membership drive in the first place is to show the freshmen and the upperclassmen that they have common interests. For the proposed organizations, it was also supposed to be to attract volunteers who would help in attaining accreditation, instead of relying on word of mouth to gain support.

One of the freshmen spoke up and voiced my worst fears, that they took the opposition to mean that the upperclassmen were against their starting their own organizations and against them joining in the membership drive.

Of course the upperclassmen denied using those exact words.

The compromise reached though, was that next week will be the application period for the proposed organizations. That will be followed by two weeks of processing while the organizations have to come up with a constitution, by-laws and a proposed list of activities. Only afterwards will the organizations who have satisfied the requirements be able to join the membership drive.

That's enough for now. There's one more major point about this that I'll bring up next time.