WHEN I WAS A FIRST-YEAR COLLEGE STUDENT, I frequented the Batibot seats with my friends, most of whom came from the same high school. We checked up on each other, silently complained about professors who didn’t show up or classmates who couldn’t write a paragraph. We’d eat together on certain afternoons—sometimes hastily—as one of us would have class in an hour. It was mundane most of the time. But I miss the mundane.
In the last academic year, I’ve seen less of them. Slowly, the university—once a witness to students who stayed between classes, sat on Batibot benches, loitered at tambayans, made posters, brainstormed events, failed events, fixed events, cried over deadlines, laughed at burnout—has withered. Campus life, once vivid and unpredictable, feels eerily uniform. I’ve come to realize this is a pattern that began when the university quietly removed something so simple, yet so essential to community-building: the activity period.
After the memorandum gutting the activity period from 04:30–05:30 p.m. was put into place, a new routine emerged. Students had once had protected time to participate in organizations, attend talks, or simply unwind. Now, the default setting is survival mode. You run to class, run to lunch, run to finish a requirement, and run home. The brief silences between classes, once filled with real connection, are now replaced by fatigue and disengagement.
Once the noisy epicenter of student leadership, Xavier Hall has fallen eerily quiet. The second-floor doors—save for the Office of Student Affairs—are locked shut. Gone are the debates over venue reservations, the officers dragging tables, the exaggerated rants over late orgmates. Even the tambayans feel colder, the spaces lonelier.
But what was lost is more than just an hour. The vibrancy of student life is suffering a slow, painful death. And with it, the university is transforming into something it once claimed it would never be: a degree factory.
The decision to remove the activity period was framed as efficiency. In practice, it compressed stress. Students now spend entire days in back- to-back classes, often skipping meals. The rhythm of learning has become mechanical.
Before, the activity hour served as a breathing space. Organizations met, student leaders coordinated, and even those uninvolved had time to pause. It was the campus’ pulse. When that hour was removed, student life flatlined.
The effects were visible almost immediately. Fewer than half of recognized student groups managed regular meetings, event applications dropped significantly, and attendance fell due to exhaustion. Students weren’t unmotivated; they were simply unavailable.
This runs contrary to what the university claims to uphold. In Jesuit education, cura personalis—care for the whole person—demands that learning extends beyond the classroom. Formation doesn’t happen only in lectures; it happens in collaboration, failure, and friendship. But when the schedule leaves no room for those, what remains is not formation, but production.
There’s a reason students remember their organizational work, their failed events, their last-minute rehearsals, and their campus lunches more than their midterm scores. We grew when we led projects that flopped. We learned when we stayed late to finish a banner. We cried in hallways after personal breakdowns and found comfort in others who just happened to be nearby.
These moments aren’t “extra” to our education; they are our education. And they all happened in the in-between the activity period protected.
Without this time, students are increasingly isolated. Meetings are held online because schedules no longer align. Events are moved to weekends or canceled. If the activity hour was one of the few institutionalized spaces for community-building, why was it removed?
It feels like a betrayal. Not loud and scandalous, but slow and quiet—a betrayal of the promise that education here is about the whole person.
When the university reinstated the activity period, many of us felt a flicker of hope. But the silence lingered. The period returned, but the people didn’t. When you take away a community long enough, it forgets how to return.
The university must do more than restore a timeslot; it must restore a culture. That means opening spaces that invite students to stay, investing in programs that spark curiosity, and reimagining formation as a living part of studenthood. Students, too, must reclaim their spaces—choose to show up, to linger, to build again.
What we’ve lost is a habit of belonging. And habits, like communities, can be rebuilt.
When campus life disappears, what dies isn’t a tradition; what dies is the soul of the school.
Published in the June 2024–May 2025 print release.
