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What You Should Be Doing With Your Free Time During the Paro

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UPR chapter.

As you probably already know, our IUPI is currently in a “paro” until April 5th and will hold an indefinite strike starting April 6th. This means we will have a lot of time in our hands, time that many will spend going to the movies, hanging out with friends, in the beach, and catching up with Netflix at home. These are all fine and understandable, but it would be better if you could also do these couple of tasks in your free time:

  1. Get up to date with the situation – There are a lot of social media pages that cover what’s happening now at the UPR. Read posts, the emails you get on your institutional email, resourceful material, and watch the livestreams of debates or information sessions that sometimes go live on Facebook. Get informed with everything that’s occurring in our university.  

  2. Follow our college’s Facebook Pages –  These will be the fastest ways to get facts, opinions, important dates, live streams, and news of our college. It’s convenient, fast, you get well rounded pieces of facts, and you have it all in the palm of your hand. Please go and “like” the pages to stay informed – at the end of this article you will find some Facebook links so you can get started.  

  3. Go to the “Asamblea Nacional” – This is critical. We exhort you to go to this assembly since it will determine what the students of the UPR system are going to do. Whatever it is you believe, every vote counts. If you’re with the proposals made by the students, go and vote. If you’re against them, go either way and vote for what you believe in. Remember that the assembly needs a certain amount of students to make any decision. So go and support your college on April 5th!  

  4. Go to the student activities – Be it the manifestations, “plenos”, debates, or another assembly, go and get informed. Remember that you don’t have to be in favor of what many of the students who organize this activities think to be able to go. Just by being there and listening to others perspectives and even contributing your own is enough.  

  5. Don’t believe everything you hear or read – Always remember this warning. There are a lot of people talking without any proof to back up their arguments, but still many people believe them. After knowing some new facts about our situation in the UPR, please search for yourself the credibility of the information. Do your own research. Remember there is always someone who talks without knowing.  

  6. Share what you know – If you have done research, believe you’re well informed on what’s going on and already chose what you believe in, share your knowledge with the people near you. There are still a lot of people who don’t know what’s going on with our education and the risks it’s going through, so try and inform people the best you can. Talk to your friends about it, discuss it with your family, neighbors, or some stranger who was totally out of line with their remarks. How can we make the correct decisions if the people are uninformed?  

  7. Motivate yourself to support your university – What our education is suffering right now is not to be taken lightly. Even if our thoughts may be different, this is a time to be united as a student body. Remember to always support and fight for your education and that of those who, in the future, will attend our campus.

 

We hope this has motivated you to support the UPR. Remember that these free days are not  vacations, these are days to fight for our right to education. Get informed and fight for it!

Links for Facebook pages:

Call me Uli. English major and a giant bookaholic. "She gazed through a long reach of future days strung together like pearls in a rosary, every one like the others, and all smooth and flawless and innocent, and her heart went up in thankfulness." -Mary E. Wilkins Freeman