Students to push another dialogue with OSA on organization registration guidelines

A second dialogue with the Office of Students Affairs (OSA) was held on September 7, Tuesday at the Sampaguita Conference Room, Student Union building, where the University Student Council (USC), UPLB Perspective, College Student Councils (CSCs) and various student organizations laid down the organization registration guidelines.

The student-crafted proposal aims to scrap the existing organization recognition policy of SOAD-OSA.

The main points of the proposed organization registration guidelines are:

• To pursue the constitutional right to form and be recognized as an organization even with three members;
• To scrap of the good academic standing of 80% of the organization’s membership;
• That the presence of advisers during organization’s final initiation rites be limited to one, instead of two;
• To scrap the submission of activity and financial reports;
• To scrap the submission of organizations’ constitution and by-laws;
• and to lift the freshmen recruitment ban.

However, due to time constraints, the OSA and student organizations were not able to fully discuss the proposal.

Dr. Nina Cadiz, Director of OSA asked the organizations through the USC to submit arguments behind the proposed guidelines.

On the other hand, OSA also asked organizations to give them time to explain the rationale of the existing organization recognition guidelines.

“Yung Presidente ba, kaya ba niyang i-explain ang constitution line by line?” asked Mr. Miguel Santos, Head of Communication and Information Technology (COMMIT), which the students strongly answered “Opo, dapat.“

Moreover, the USC, UPLB Perspective and CSCs expressed their commitment to pursue the student-crafted organization registration guidelines.

With this, another dialogue would be held on the fourth week of September, hopefully.

“We invite everyone to attend the dialogues with OSA, express grievances, and collectively act upon the advancement of our rights to organize,” Yvann Zuñiga, Vice President of UPLB USC said. [P]