STILL UP. The Oblation of University of the Philippines Manila School of Health Sciences in Palo, Leyte, still stands as a symbol of the country’s premier state university system, amid the ruins left by Supertyphoon “Yolanda” in the province. RAFFY LERMA
AT LEAST 30 students from Leyte and Samar who are enrolled in the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) in Laguna have been given a tuition break for one semester to assist them and their families back home to recover from the devastation of Supertyphoon “Yolanda.”
The university waived their tuition in response to the UP system-wide call to help the students affected by the typhoon.
Three students from UP Tacloban, who cross-enrolled to UPLB after the typhoon, were also provided free accommodation in dormitories.
UP President Alfredo Pascual earlier described the UP Visayas Tacloban College, with a population of 1,543, and the UP Manila School of Health Sciences, with a population of 209, as “severely affected.”
At least 20 students from these Eastern Visayas campuses have cross-enrolled to UP Diliman in Quezon City, while 10 are now in UP Manila, according to UPLB Chancellor Dr. Rex Cruz.
In a memorandum to UPLB faculty and staff, Cruz sought for pledges to raise P25,000 that would cover the meals of the three cross-enrolled students for a semester. The annual Christmas faculty follies on Dec. 5 would also be turned into a fundraising program for the typhoon survivors.
Yasmin Salces, president of the UPLB Kaiban, said her group started pooling donations to raise the P4,000 monthly allowance for fellow students. Kaiban, which means kasama in the local language, is an organization of Visayan-speaking students in UPLB, with at least three members from Tacloban City.
Despite the tuition assistance, Salces said one of their members, a chemical engineering student, had to go on a leave of absence to find a job. The student, she said, was with his family in Tacloban when the typhoon struck.
“We heard from him four days after the typhoon. He said he and his family were okay, but the roof of their house was damaged and they had to stay with his brother in Cebu,” Salces said. “He said he needed to stop (his schooling) and work because they did not have enough left to survive.”
One of the cross-enrollees from UP Tacloban, Salces said, had hitched on a C-130 plane to Manila in order to make it for enrollment. The student, she said, came from a poor family and used to send the stipend he receives from UP to them.
UPLB professor Dennis Aguinaldo said the initiative had affirmed how UP works as a system—helping another campus at times of crisis.
“But I hope it doesn’t stop in the financial (assistance) as there are other aspects like the psychological (trauma on students) caused by being away from their families as they rebuild their lives,” he said.