Voguish Versus Unfashionable

By Hanna Sarip

When you walk along the annex building paths—Annex buildings by the way are where most of the students attend their liberal arts subjects—you will meet students from different walks of life. You suddenly bump along boys and girls wearing jogging pants, putting on Spartan flips and carrying their notebooks at hand. The term ‘yagit’ is often used to dubbed these people. Sometimes, I am flabbergasted by the thought of them being able to survive the scrutinizing eyes of some professors who do not allow informal attires in class. In MSU-IIT, students are not allowed to wear sandals. They are required to put on closed shoes which is hardly pursued by students from MSU Main Campus.

But fortunately, most instructors do not put more emphasis the attire of their students. In some cases, they do not mind at all for as long as one can comply with his requirements and get good grades.

But apart from the so-called ‘Yagit’ students, we have the opposite class, the ‘elegante’. They are those fashion-forward, up-to-date, trendy, fashionable ones. They are often stereotyped as rich and ‘maarte’ or vain. These are the students you find who are very particular in dressing. These are the people who can’t go to school without make-ups, colorful veils matching their outfits, trendy bags and dresses and even an expensive pair of slippers, sandals, shoes and peeptoes. For simple people, they could be considered as sosy. They always look like they can go to a party anytime. We often laugh at these people especially the girls included in this class. We laugh at the way they dress, their manner of speech, their way they style their hair, etc. Usually, these people suffer from the bad first impression. Why do people have this supposition that when you are maarte they think of matapobre, feeling, ­­­­_______.

And why do some people have this conception that because you dress informally—or to make it euphonious—SO SIMPLY, they think you mean less to the class. They are often neglected and not given much attention.

Even though they are like that we can never tell that they can’t compete in terms of academics because it could only be their personality. That’s one thing we can’t get away from them. In my own view, there are really people like this strolling around the campus, but people also mistake some ‘social climbers’ to be part of this class.

Intelligence can never be based on what a person wears. As long as you are comfortable with it then you can wear it. Mindanao State University has been known for their students who can afford to go to school wearing anything they want.Indeed, Mindanao State University is a very unique University. We, the MSUans, are very fortunate because we are not reprimanded by our teachers because of the clothes we wear. We come and go wearing anything we want. We are not afraid to be criticized by people. You may be wearing Spartans, jogging pants or expensive clothes, one thing is for sure ~ ONCE AN MSUAN, ALWAYS AN MSUAN!