Thursday, January 25, 2007 Speak out: Festival queen furor By Al Evangelio Cultural Affairs Director, Southwestern University
(The letter is for the Sinulog Festival Queen Committee)
Southwestern University (SWU), in the true spirit of cooperation, responded to the eleventh-hour request of the Sinulog Foundation---a day before the contest (Jan. 19)---to field in a candidate for the Sinulog Festival Queen.
Having received no guideline and without asking for it, and believing the competition was a regular beauty pageant, I chose the recently adjudged Miss Southwestern University as the school’s candidate.
She did all the requirements she was instructed to do: wear Sinulog costumes, have backup dancers, etc. SWU had no expectations and had no motive except to participate and support the Sinulog Foundation in the best and most honest way it can as a respectable institution of learning.
Nonetheless, Southwesterners were happy and proud of the result, and the Office of the Performing Arts Corps (Opac), to which the request was channeled, relied on the expertise of the Pageant Committee to guide the winner, as it was also occupied with the participation of the school’s dance contingent in the Sinulog grand parade.
Opac honestly believed that the service that it sincerely extended ended after the pageant and that promoting the winners, just like in any other beauty contests, was already within the sponsoring entity’s jurisdiction.
In was only after the press conference when the chairman, Vince Escario, informed me through phone of the committee’s decision to strip the Festival Queen of her title for failing to honor the responsibilities relayed to her four hours before the Sinulog grand parade.
In the thick of preparations for the dance parade and ritual, the Festival Queen failed to pass on to me her assigned tasks.
We apologize to the Festival Queen Committee for casting it into unintentional embarrassment that also brought the school into an undeserved awkward situation.
In sum, “The problem we have here is the failure to communicate.” And we feel that this should, through reason and heart, reach a pleasing compromise that could ease the undeserved injury that the events had inflicted upon the unwitting “victims.”
