I attended a committee hearing yesterday with soaked socks and squishy shoes. It was raining hard and I, unfortunately, stepped on a deep puddle while walking towards the Ramon Mitra Building in the Batasan complex.
I spent the rest of the morning till some hours after lunch at the hearing of the Committee on Higher and Technical Education. They were able to pass a couple of local bills, but the controversial Magna Carta of Students was remanded back to a technical working group because of the vehement objections of A TEACHER Rep. Piamonte and Valenzuela Rep. Gunigundo, who were obviously championing the rights of school owners and administrators. Their lines go, “We cannot grant students’ rights at the expense of the rights of school owners and administrators.”
“Schools have a right to exclusively determine fee increases, students or parents can just appeal to proper authority.”
“School-student relationship is contractual. Academic freedom includes the right of the school to determine how to best attain their objectives.”
“We cannot put private schools and state universities in the same situation. Government cannot compel private schools to give students same rights as those who are in state universities.”
Late yesterday afternoon, we also decided to rearrange, for the fourth time I think, the few tables and chairs we have at our Batasan office. Here are some snapshots of our “make-shift” office, which is a compartment in a large room that used to be the office of the Congress security force. The room is now divided among a handful of newly-seated partylists. One of these days I’ll take a picture of our neighboring partylists’ offices. Walang laman. I don’t know kung hindi ba sila nagta-trabaho at sumusweldo lang nang walang ginagawa. Fine, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, baka sa ibang lugar nag-oopisina.
law student, leftist, national democratic, film school graduate, photography hobbyist
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4 comments to “Snapshots of our Batasan office”
It is logical to grant private schools the right to determine their fees. They couldn’t jack it up high enough anyway, else they will deter student bodies.
While it is a fact that there are a lot of students that will be under financial duress, that doesn’t mean that you have to compromise the proprietary rights of these institutions, because it also means the livelihoods of the educators and the administrators.
ang context kasi nyan, provision sa magna carta for students na req’d ang representation ng students and parents sa anumang board na magpapasa ng tuition increase. ayaw ng pro-school owners congressmen. schools have an absolute right to raise tuition without consultation or participation by students.
Mainit na isyu nga yan bro, but what should always be in the minds of lawmakers and most especially owners of schools is the students.
I dont even know if in the years to come eh makakahabol pa ang kita ko sa pagpapa aral sa anak ko, with annual salary increase of around 2-7 sa amin and the tuition fee increase an 7-11%!