Saving Our Youth REVISED

8/2/2019 Saving Our Youth REVISED

1/5

Capinpuyan| 1

Aimee Lorraine C. Capinpuyan

Mr. Maximino Pulan Jr.

En 101 M02

Mar 07

Saving Our Youth

They say young people are apathetic. As a senior in high school, I was just

bored. Towards the final months of my stay in Kong Hua, I felt like I had nothing

more to gain from school, especially since my fate as a Health Sciences major in the

Ateneo had already been ascertained. Graduation practices were, for me, a waste of

timedid anyone really care how perfectly timed our bows were?and were often

spent enumerating the ways in which my friends and I could destroy Kong Hua

before we left it for good. However, even devising plans of burning down the

cafeteria grew tiresome after a while. Not wanting to mimic our parents and teachers

by discussing our imminent college lives, for our distraction purposes we turned to

the only other immediate source of confusion and conflictPhilippine society.

We were at that point in our lives where social awareness was all the rage. It

was considered cool to be well-equipped with the latest statistics on the Philippine

2010 elections, and this, I found, was a surprising (and very welcome) shift from

having to memorize factoids about Korean pop icons in order to rank up in our

collectively imagined High School Student Hierarchy. The trend, as I saw it, all

started when a group of seniors, handsome members of the basketball varsity

notorious for spending class hours in Internet cafes, decided to christen their circle of

friends with the name S.O.Y., or, as their Facebook fan page explains, Save Our


2/5

Capinpuyan| 2

Youth. Because of their ambitious and misleading name, plenty of the younger

students mistook the S.O.Y. for a youth activism group. Filled with hope at the

supposed goodwill brought about by a group of good-looking truants, they decided

that they too wanted to be involved in the countrys affairs.

And so, for weeks there was an onslaught of inspirational, nationalistic

Facebook statuses. Students came to school wearing jackets patterned after the

Philippine flag. The school paper received a total of seventeen poems about social

issues, each from a different person, when normally the paper is lucky to receive even

one submission. The teachers, excited by this fresh display of interest, decided to fuel

the fire by adding Is there still hope for our country?-type essay questions to their

exams. I knew it was all a passing trend, that my generation would no sooner discard

nationalism than it would an ugly pair of camouflage pants,but I couldnt help but be

filled with hope - lots of it. Maybe we werent such a messed-up bunch after all.

They say young people are apathetic, but I soon found our graduation

practices being interspersed with conversations about the elections. Our plans of

razing down the school were quickly replaced with squabbles about why this

candidate was better than the others. Even the S.O.Y. boys, while doing nothing to

dismiss or confirm the talk about their alleged social involvement, would wage

discussions about the elections, and theirs were always the most entertaining to listen

to. I was chiefly a listener at these debates, but when asked, I would say my candidate

of choice was Noynoy - he seemed like a nice enough guy. Plus, both of my parents

liked him, which seemed like reason enough to vote him president.


3/5

Capinpuyan| 3

Majority of the country seemed to be smitten with him, too; by the time we

graduated, Noynoy maintained his big lead over Villar. In April, the Save Our

Youth mentality that I expected to wear off a long time ago had unexpectedly

intensified, both in the virtual community and in the country itself. Online, the

debates I had thought were confined to the gaps in our graduation practices somehow

managed to find their way into our Facebook discussions. Blogging site servers were

loaded with art and prose meant to inspire Filipino pride (my personal favorite being

the image of a Philippine flag superimposed on the text, Where I come from,

everyones a hero). And, after having attended Noynoys rally (along with about a

fifth of the entire population of Cagayan de Oro), I was feeling more and more

hopeful about the future of my country. I was certain that my batch could change the

Philippines for the better, that we could repair the damage done by the generations

before us. I believed it was all a matter of faith in a new presidency and faith in our

own selves.

Finally, it was time for the actual day of the elections, and my friends and I

had signed up as volunteers for the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting

(PPCRV). Consisting of only five steps, our job at the Voters Assistance Desk

sounded easy enough: should a voter need our assistance in remembering his precinct

number or in locating her room, we were to search the database in the provided

laptops for the needed information. The first few minutes of the day went by

uneventfully, but then there came a voter whose name couldnt be located in any of

the databases. Then came another, and another. These voters were told to speak to

COMELEC. To do so, however, they had to wait in line for at least an hour, and even


4/5

Capinpuyan| 4

then, speaking to COMELEC did not guarantee their problems solved. In many cases,

COMELEC only referred the voters back to us, the volunteers at the front desk!

It was a very ugly tennis match, with the voters being referred between

COMELEC and PPCRV back and forth, back and forth, and there was nothing more

my friends and I could do than sit and watch the ugliness of it all slowly play out. We

were useless. We could have spent the day in the comforts of our own homes, away

from the mess, away from the failure, away from the dizzying stench of sweat,

cigarettes, and frustration, simply reading Facebook updates about the election

mishaps instead of actually contributing to them.

In the end, about half of the people whose names werent in the database left

the voting center without actually voting, feeling all sorts of sad, angry, and tired. The

half that persisted did eventually get to vote when, later on in the afternoon, the

problem was fixedall it took was a quick database update.

On June 8, 2010, the canvassing period ended, with Noynoy winning by a

landslide. It wasnt a surprising victory; hed been leading in the polls for a long time,

and all of his opponents, save for Erap Estrada, conceded defeat only a day after the

elections. The Philippines was congratulated for having had its first peaceful

automated elections. The angry complaints from some of my batch mates at the

outcome of the elections, both online and offline (Id rather have Erap win than

Noynoy!) subsided after a week or so, as the whole country transitioned to a new

administration.

I was going through a transition period myself, as college was starting, and so

was my new life in Manila. My high school batch, the S.O.Y. included, was scattered


5/5

Capinpuyan| 5

around the country, dissolving with them the hype that they had once created in Kong

Hua. The trend they set had turned out to be just that - a trend, albeit one that lasted

slightly longer than camouflage jeans. But Im glad that it happened. Im glad that our

generation was able to unite for a common good, even if it was just for one election

period.

Now Im not so sure my generation is really as apathetic as were made out to

be. Sure, we werent the ones waiting for hours on end in hot, crowded schools to be

able to feed ballots into the Smartmatics, but we did get involved, and we did

volunteer. Maybe thats the best preparation we can get right now for when were

older, for when its our turn to have our names lost in databases. Who says trends

have to die? The good trends stick around, and I hear camouflage jeans are making a

comeback.

On June 30, 2010, President Benigno Aquino Simeon III was officially

inaugurated as President of the Philippines, and even though I now realize my old

reasons for supporting him are petty, I have not lost hope in our generation. Still, I

cannot help but wonder if the student bodys response to S.O.Y. would have been as

positive had they realized that the true meaning of it was Sex Our Yayas.

Documents

Saving Our Youth REVISED