Mindanaotoday.com | NorMin takes campus journalism leadership
By: URIEL QUILINGUING
Third overall was the highest rank Northern Mindanao had achieved in the annual National Schools Press Conference (NSPC) and that was 27 years ago in Kalibo, Aklan, but the region has assumed national leadership in campus journalism of late.
For at least a year, the Department of Education, the agency that sets the policies and approves campus journalism activities and the conduct of the NSPC, would be consulting leaders of school paper advisers and campus journalists from the region.
Roman Catholic priest Max Ceballos, school paper adviser of Saint Joseph Academy of El Salvador, Misamis Oriental, was elected president of the National School Paper Advisers Association (NSPAA) in 2019.
Ceballos and his roster of officers were supposed to serve two-year terms, based on the NSPAA constitution-and-by-laws (CBL), but the Covid-19 pandemic and the suspension of NSPC for two years prevented them to perform their mandates.
On Tuesday, July 18, at the Archbishop Patrick Cronin Hall, St. Augustine Cathedral Compound, Cagayan de Oro, he and nine other NSPAA officers had something they did not asked for, a one-year extension of their terms after a motion filed by a delegate from Cordillera Autonomous Region was severally seconded and unanimously approved.
There were 89 NSPAA members in attendance in an election of officers which is one of the side-events of the four-day NSPC which is held, for the first time in more than three decades, in Cagayan de Oro.
In sponsoring the motion to extend the term of NSPAA officers for a year, school paper adviser Jobelle Batanes of CAR argued that the Covid-19 pandemic had interrupted the two-year term of office of officers, thus they deserve more time to fulfill their mandates.
School paper adviser and current business manager Jesus Valencia of the National Capital Region, however, insisted that new officers be elected and the two-year term limit, as stipulated in the CBL, be followed strictly regardless of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Valencia’s opposition was overruled, hence all 10 NSPAA officers who elected five years ago would have until next year’s NSPC to exercise their mandated functions, except for the public information officer position that had to be filled up.
John Adams Magtanong of Central Luzon (Region 3) voluntarily gave up the seat because he has ceased as school paper adviser, thus an election had to be done.
School paper adviser Jay Bersamina of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) got the backing from the general assembly, thus he took the vacated post for a year.
Aside from Ceballos, who is also president of Northern Mindanao School Paper Advisers Association, the other hold-over officers are: Lydia Liclican, vice-president for Luzon; Emily Cabusa, vice-president for Visayas; Lovelet Adjarani, vice-president for Mindanao; Madonna Sua, secretary; Irlo Dumo, treasurer; Maria Teresita Aguilar, assistant treasurer; Dennis Vidar, auditor; Jesus Valencia and Eliza Abelon, business managers.
“For this one-year extension, we are mandated by the assembly to review, revisit and amend our existing CBL,” Ceballos told this paper.
In separate elections, two school paper editors from Northern Mindanao took leadership positions among editors in the elementary and secondary schools.
Features writer Denise Guangco from Andrea Costonera Elementary School, Ozamiz City, was elected president of the National Elementary Editors Guild of the Philippines (NEEGP), while Micah Jemimah Calahat of Ozamiz City National High School, a science writer, was chosen vice-president for Mindanao in the National Secondary Editors Guild of the Philippines (NSEGP).
Martina Venice Doroteo, a column writer of San Juan City Science High School, National Capital Region, was chosen NSEGP president.
NSPC delegates, who were in grades 10, 11 and 12, were not allowed to be nominated and participate in choosing NSEGP officers.
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