Ten years of
ZEROS in the bar

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor NANETTE L. GUADALQUIVER Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

Candidates for the bar are now winding up their examinations, and soon they will be on pins and needles as they await the results. How many will pass, and how many will fall by the wayside when the Supreme Court releases the list of the fortunate ones?

So far, however, we know that examinees who come from the colleges and universities with a well-known good batting average in these tests feel more comfortable, confident that they have had the best of preparation, not only in the months of review before the examinations, but also throughout the four years of law school that had been preceded by another four years of the preparatory course.

But there is an unsettling news that came out even before the ongoing tests are over. The Commission on Higher Education has announced that it has ordered the closure of seven law schools in the country that have been making dismal showing in the last ten years of fielding their graduates in the bar examinations. These, according to the CHED announcement, are the institutions that have rated ZERO passers in the bar examinations of the last ten years!

But why have our Education officials waited this long before acting on these schools? Wasn't it a manifestation of extreme cruelty on their part to allow such schools to continue accepting law students all these past ten years when they were incapable of producing any who could qualify in the final test which are the bar examinations?

What about the parents who had worked and sacrificed so much to send their sons and daughters to those law schools, what about the money the institutions had squeezed out of those students they could not teach enough to make them hurdle the final step to be able to practise the profession they aimed for?

The CHED and, most of all, the Education Department, and even the Supreme Court, should step in and impose some sanctions against such institutions. Merely ordering them to stop now is only a slap on the wrist for such an injustice done to, perhaps, thousands of students and families over the past ten years.*