November 19, 2018

PILAR C. BRAGA
City Councilor
Davao City
8000

Dear Councilor Braga,

Greetings of peace and solidarity!

We, the undersigned, are 5th year engineering students from the University of Mindanao – Main
Campus. We are writing to your office to seek assistance on the questionable exercise of
academic freedom of the professors of our college. More than half of the graduating students
received a failing marks for the mock boards for Engineering.

The school has implemented the mock boards as a requirement. However, following the tenets of
curriculum, we do not understand the need to make it as a requisite for graduation and we feel
that it is an excessive requirement to make the lives of the students more burdensome. We felt
the constant pressure and some of us became emotionally unstable due to the result of the said
mock board.

We enumerated all the issues that we’ve experienced before, during and after this correlation
courses in our department. First, our classes were delayed for more than two weeks. Thus, our
time to study on our own for the finals was reduced. Second, the schedule and venue for classes
for the first few months were not well organized. The classroom provided was not conducive for
learning since we are more than one hundred students in one classroom. Also, one of our
instructors does not have any teaching experiences, therefore, was not effective. Third, there was
no transparency in our exam results since the examinations were given and checked by the
Academic Planning and Services (APS), thus, they automatically shred our papers after
checking. Fourth, the exams given were far more difficult than the board exam question, that’s
the reason why a lot of us failed. They should evaluate first the exam questions before giving it
to the students. It was way too far from what we’ve studied and learned from our review classes.
Lastly, our faculty assured us that they will let us see our partial grade before our final
examination but that did not happen. There was no verification of grades and exam results.

Finally, we are respectfully seeking your good office’s function for the University to reconsider
its action. Ninety-eight per centum (98%) of the hopefuls will not graduate this year plainly
because of the sudden inclusion of the mock boards as “academic” requirement. We hope that
the university will not consider the correlation subject for graduation but only an evaluation for
us students. Whatever the result is, failed or passed we hope that they will still consider the
student to graduate.

We fervently pray that you will provide us guidance and immediate intervention so that credit is
given to whom credit is due.

Thank you.

Respectfully yours,

5th year Engineering Students

University of Mindanao – Main Campus