WE, Think

It’s been more than a year now since we crafted the college fair. Alas, after months of planning, talking to various student bodies and consulting most if not all administrative offices, the Loyola Schools Vice President’s Council finally approved the project. The Ateneo College Fair Task Force is the official student body dedicated to the planning and executing the college fair. Originally, the group was mainly composed of Management Engineering students but now, it’s more diverse and less prone to groupthink.

As West and Turner puts it, “Groupthink is defined as a way of deliberating that group members use when their desire for unanimity overrides their motivation to assess all available plan of action.” And as how I see it, groupthink is way more dangerous than how it seems.

The Ateneo College Fair have gone through several approvals from the Sanggunian ng mga Mag-Aaral ng mga Paaralang Loyola ng Ateneo de Manila Central Board—both last year’s and this year’s—, to the first ever House of Representatives—which was composed of all Block and Course Representatives and several student groups—, to the Office of Student Activities—which they themselves call it a slaughterhouse because of the very bloody assessment and planning stages— and lastly to the VP’s Council. These approvals were never “bara-bara.” And although the diversity of the members of the task force could be justified by the affiliations of its members, in a way, have not been saved from the detriments of groupthink.

Even before the group was approved, the group decided, although subconsciously, that the main goal was to get an approval no matter what. On the first two presentations to the Sanggunian, the college fair was denied although the task force remained intact. But during the third Sanggunian presentation, there seemed to be a change of heart. The Sanggunian finally approved the college fair. Along with its approval were four specific points were also granted. After several weeks, Drew made a statement to the Guidon and to our surprise what he was trying to say was that the Ateneo College Fair is NOT a Sanggunian project but has granted an institutional support to the group. Quite weird, huh? But here’s what’s more interesting, the Sanggunian gets to decide where the profit of the college fair will be. Now, that’s weirder.

This is one of the what-the-fuck moments of the task force, if I may say. We were caught up in quite a biased ruling. They have given the college fair an institutional support but it’s not a Sanggunian project and they get to decide where the profit would go. This I think is due to groupthink. The task force wanted an approval and got it but not realizing that the deliberation for approval was biased. The task force accepted the conditions for approval without considering other options.

When we presented to the Office of Student Activities, this issue has been brought up. The OSA talked to us about it and when we went out of the office, we were like “What the hell? What were we thinking when we got the approval?” It took us several more meetings to settle it.

Indeed, groupthink is a pain in the ass. We have to first be critical on what we want before we actually go with it. We’re not supposed to just go with the flow and be okay with the conditions on what we got.