PUP's human rainbow

Last Saturday, the Polytechnic University of the Philippines made a bid to be in the Guinness Book of World Records by assembling over 31,000 students, faculty and alumni at the Quirino Grandstand in Luneta to form the largest human rainbow. The aim is to break the record set by HongKong Polytechnic in 2002 when they formed an arch of people wearing t-shirts the color of the rainbow.



But this year's bid is also part of PUP's celebration of 100 years, despite being known as the "outcast in the stupendous theater of academic excellence." PUP has more than 50,000 students spread across 18 campuses, and is generally known as the Poor Man's University, but it also gets the littlest sliver of the budget allotted for state colleges and universities. If successful for the Guinness bid, PUP aims to utilize the event to lobby for more funds and to "rouse local legislators to pass legislation that will shore up our material reserves to ease the burden of ‘working [their] way through’ every day." Well, at least they are doing something.

And the university who gets the biggest portion of the budget is also currently protesting because of the Php67 million slice off their budget. Maybe we should also form a bigger human rainbow?

Just to clear off things, I studied high school in PUP's Laboratory hs, and went to university in Diliman. So that makes me a Maroon twice over. My brother is part of the rainbow event--he wore red I think--and they've been practicing for months already. But I sort of slept through the entire event because was too tired from checking papers the previous night.