Some of the 2,222 currently enrolled freshmen can be found in the Zen garden, boisterously laughing at jokes. Some can be found looking at their tuition fee receipts, wondering what “TBA” is and what their teachers would be like. Meanwhile, some students are still adjusting to the presence of classmates from the opposite sex. These freshmen, however, are all bonded by their eagerness and excitement to know more of the Ateneo’s culture and traditions.

The Introduction to Ateneo Culture and Tradition (InTACT) program tries to satisfy this excitement. Based on the feedback of former freshmen, however, their expectations are far from being met.

The InTACT experience

According to InTACT Coordinator Joseph Capuno, it is a two-unit, non-academic program that aims to make the freshmen and transferees aware of the program’s four pillars, which are academic survival, spirituality, community building, and service in the Ateneo.

Known then under the names Blue Bonding and Intract, InTACT was set up around 1998 and tied up with the Freshman Orientation Seminar (OrSem). Before Basic Math and English courses were established, it was the program tasked to help freshmen pass their Math and English courses. According to Vice President of the Loyola Schools Ma. Assunta Cuyegkeng, Ph.D., however, the administration realized that the more appropriate approach is to help freshmen be more at home in the Ateneo and understand what it requires from them.

For Cuyegkeng, InTACT is about introducing the student to what Ateneo culture is and how to cope with it. She also says that, with the help of the Loyola Schools Guidance Office (LSGO), this program helps the student to learn more about himself and how his skills could help him cope with the Ateneo’s academic rigors.

“We don’t want it to be another class. We want it to be an experience,” she says.

From 1999 to 2002, however, InTACT’s tie-up with OrSem was not as strong as it should be. According to Office of Student Activities Director and former InTACT Coordinator Director Christopher Castillo, the program functioned more as an activity than the program it was designed to be. He says in a mix of Filipino and English, “There was much effort in trying to make something that works. But like any idea, it has to start [functioning] even if it’s a raw one.”

Efforts to centralize InTACT were made when the Office of the Associate Dean for Student Affairs (ADSA) took charge in restructuring it in 2003. With these efforts, InTACT formed a committee, which consists of representatives from LSGO, the Campus Ministry Office, the Office of Social Concern and Involvement, ADSA, various faculties and, just recently, the Sanggunian (Sanggu). Also, modules on the program were revised and homeroom advisers were taken out.

Meanwhile, the Committee on Non-Academic Formation (CNAF) serves as the venue for students to raise their concerns on InTACT. According to CNAF Head Andrea Alleje (II AB Eu), the committee has since started conducting year-end surveys on assessing whether InTACT catered to the freshmen’s needs. To get feedback more effectively, it also asks the block representatives to gather their own blocks and share their insights regarding the efficiency of the InTACT program.

Irrelevant?

According to Sanggu President Omi Castañar (V AB DS), the feedback received remains consistent: that freshmen believe that the lessons InTACT aims to teach are irrelevant and useless. “So, whatever modules you apply into the program, students would still react the same [finding InTACT irrelevant] because they don’t see [its] application in their field of concentration,” he says.

Castañar also thinks that some students lose interest in the program because it is a required formation subject. Although there are still students whose interest is to participate in the activities sponsored by InTACT, there are some who don’t share the same perspective. As these students immerse themselves more in these activities, they feel more forced to do them than when they first entered the InTACT program.

For Alleje, the problem lies in the program’s misleading title. According to last year’s feedback, instead of living up to what its title says, that is, introducing the freshmen to Ateneo’s centuries-old culture, the InTACT program’s homeroom advisers taught them how to manage their time well and survive the school’s academic workload, among other practical skills. Because of this, most of her batchmates saw InTACT as an extended homeroom period and a venue for guidance counseling.

“They [the freshmen] were hoping something more Ignatian-inspired… a bit more to explain the Ateneo way.”

One of these misled freshmen is Henry*, now a sophomore student. Although he believes that the practical skills taught were important, he says that the program shouldn’t compromise the Ateneo’s traditions he and his blockmates could have learned.

“Studying here and getting the grades… is not just what makes you an ‘Atenean,’” he says. “The culture of the Atenean… the traditions of the Atenean [are] just as important.”

Mix and match

For Cuyegkeng, the challenge that the InTACT program faces is whether the student facilitators and the classes they handle would get along well. “We will have shortcomings,” she says. “Not all facilitators… and not all the students are the same.”

She also adds that the responses the program gets from the freshmen vary because they come from different batches. According to her, it is another challenge for the program to be able to adapt to the culture of the different batches of freshmen it teaches.

“What might not be applicable two years ago is not necessarily the same for [the current freshmen.]”

Capuno, on the other hand, says that the success of the InTACT program relies on the homeroom advisers’ delivery of their modules. According to him, they usually tailor their lessons according to the needs of the classes they handle. He also says that InTACT would be at its most ineffective if the facilitators’ method of teaching the students were one and the same.

Despite these challenges, Castillo believes that it is still necessary for the Ateneo’s freshmen to participate in its InTACT program. For him, realizing the importance of what the students learned does not immediately happen. “After they graduate by their senior year… that’s when they’d realize what happened and what it was for,” he says.

“This is [the Ateneo’s] way of living. This is how it’s done here.”

On the other hand, Cuyegkeng says that InTACT shouldn’t cease to be implemented because students don’t see the relevance of participating in it. She also believes that formation programs like InTACT provide the very core of the Ateneo education as it goes hand in hand with academic formation.

“We would like you to be beyond just professionals,” she says. “We want you to be professionals-for-others.”

“That entails some work. And that’s what we hope we are doing.”

Constantly evaluating

To further evaluate InTACT’s efficiency, Castillo and his co-workers in the program make use of the Likere Scale. According to him, it works like a spectrum where they make use of quantitative analysis to determine whether InTACT’s objectives were met and whether its components, like the facilitators’ delivery of modules, provided impact to their classes. It also measures how useful each module was to the freshmen.

Castillo also says that, for the past two years, the program hasn’t received any grade lower than C+, as far as quantitative evaluation tools are concerned.

After making use of these methods, as well as getting the student facilitators’ and homeroom advisors’ insights, the InTACT’s committee set up a priority list to determine in which areas they made mistakes and what could be done to solve them.

Although Sanggu responded to Castillo’s invitation to help them in planning the program from about four years ago, the student council’s past leaders were only able to join after the evaluation process. This prevented the past Sanggu to participate in making a module that would cater to the freshmen’s needs, as well as InTACT’s goals.

This year’s Sanggu, however, was able to construct its own module during the summer. According to Alleje, its springboard revolves around the line, “Win or lose, it’s the school we choose,” which is a line from the Ateneo’s hymn, “Song for Mary.”

Castañar explains that this module would also focus on getting the freshmen acquainted with the different sectors that comprise the LS community, such as the offices that students would need to visit in the later years. He hopes that, through this module, the students’ negative insights on the program would be altered.

“It’s not a guarantee [though]. Even the students [who participate in the program] don’t know what they want and what they need.”

Alleje hopes that these changes would give way to a culture that would bring Ateneans closer to each other. “When you choose to be an Atenean, that means it’s a commitment that you have to stay faithful to the institution,” she says in a mix of Filipino and English.

Castillo, on the other hand, says that the changes to be employed in the InTACT program wouldn’t be successful without the collaborative efforts of the students themselves. “It’s like a dance,” he says. “Someone has to lead and the others have to follow.”

“There has to be trust between the two. [The] reciprocation [of that trust] is where the wonder, the magic, the greatness [will happen],” Castillo says.

*Name has been changed to protect the individual.