Posts tagged with campus issues

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June 6, 2010

On rules prescribed by the Catholic university of the Philippines

Upon enrollment at a law school of a Catholic university in Manila, I was made to sign a conforme prescribing the kind of conduct and discipline the university imposes on all its students.

At the onset, I was taken aback. Not only because I had come from a relatively more liberal environment in the University of the Philippines, but I simply found it repulsive that there are specific prohibitions on what I’ve always thought were personal and political rights.

I understand the concept of “academic freedom” on the side of educational institutions and that they are granted institutional liberty to define what to teach and how to teach concepts and even character and values, but when institutions use this liberty to invade the realm of personal conduct and even appearance in guise of character-building, I think it is wrong.

Aside from prescriptions on personal and inter-personal conduct, there are also vague prescriptions on political actions such as rallies and strikes. In the list of policy guidelines, it is noted that in order to achieve and maintain “peace and order,” students must refrain from “joining boycotts, assemblies, parades or marches, or other gatherings that tend to create unnecessary noise and/or disturbance.” Another provision desists students from “instigating or leading illegal strikes/rallies or similar concerted activities resulting in the stoppage or disruption of classes.”

These provisions virtually bans all rallies, because all rallies create “disturbance”. It is in the very nature of such demonstrations. These provisions were used consistently to suspend and expel student activists in the university.

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March 27, 2010

Our freedom and our rights were not won with diplomacy

Anuman ang sabihin ng mga kontra-aktibista, wala nang ibang magpapatunay sa kawastuhan ng linya at pamamaraaan na tinahak ng mga estudyanteng nag-protesta laban sa tuition hike kung hindi ang mismong pag-atras at pagsuko ng CHED (Commission on Higher Education) at ng PUP (Polytechnic University of the Philippines) administration sa kanilang maitim na balak, at ang hindi pagkakatuloy sa paga-apruba ng mga bagong bayarin sa UP (University of the Philippines) nang dahil sa kolektibong pagkilos ng mga kabataan. The campaigns wouldn’t have been successful any other way.

To be clear, Kabataan Partylist, together with its founding organizations like the National Union of Students of the Philippines and its student leaders, have long pursued lobbying for greater state subsidy for education and holding dialogues against any attempt to hike tuition and other fees. We have always been ever mindful and aware, however, that it is militant and collective action that is decisive in winning our democratic fights. The government never granted us our rights on a silver platter, after all, especially when it is equally determined to pursue its selfish agenda, without any genuine intention to listen to the demands of its constituents. True enough, students had to barricade Quezon Hall, bring down the gates of CHED’s main office and throw paint bombs at its glass doors for these offices to bow down to the democratic interests of the people they were supposed to serve.

Nais kong ibalik ang tanong sa mga kontra-aktibista. Ano ba ang sinasabi ninyong mas mapayapa at mas epektibong paraan na hindi namin ginawa? Ginawa niyo ba ito?

Napakabilis ng pagkondena ng mga kontra-aktibista sa “marahas” na paraan na ginawa ng mga estudyante. Nasaan ang inyong pagkondena sa tuition increase na kung tutuusin ay mas marahas dahil sa pagkakait nito ng magandang kinabukasan sa libo-libong kabataan? Ni hindi ko narinig ni nakita miski sa isang Facebook status message ang pagtutol ninyo dito.

Is it that easy to forget, that throughout history, the freedom of nations, the rights of the people were never won with mere diplomacy. All of them were fought for by the people through street protests and bloody revolutions.

Today, five student leaders of PUP remain detained under the custody of the police for charges of of “robbery” filed against them by the shamed PUP administration. These students were among the hundreds who tried to bring to the gates of CHED their dilapidated desks as a sign of protest against the state’s abandonment of education. Samantala, patuloy pa rin ang sistematikong pagnanakaw sa kaban ng bayan, ang pagakakait sa mamamayan ng karapatan sa serbisyong panlipunan, at ang pinakamadugas na magnanakaw ay nasa Malacanang.

(Students will still gather and hold a protest action on March 29, 2010 at the Board of Regents meeting of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines at a posh bayside hotel in Manila, to ensure that CHED and the PUP administration hold true to their word that they will not increase tuition in the nation’s largest state university.)

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March 21, 2010

2010 Mock Elections in the University of the Philippines

There is an ongoing mock elections happening in the University of the Philippines system this week till next. All UP students from units and campuses from UP Baguio to UP Mindanao are involved. Majority of the national university’s more than 50,000 students are expected to participate.

The project, entitled Botong Isko 2010 seeks to “unite students and the whole UP community for a clean, transparent, and honest elections, and to find out which candidates are favored by the Iskolar ng Bayan.” The endeavor also seeks to engage politicians in the issues of the youth, especially of UP students, and of the country summed up in UP students’ agenda for change.

Kabataan Partylist, which has college chapters in UP Diliman, campaigned on the first day of the mock elections, encouraging students to participate, recognizing the potential impact of an institutional victory among iskolars ng bayan in the premiere university in the country. UP students are perceived to be a legitimate representation of the Filipino youth, with students from all over the country. (“Perceived” because we have to remember that only a minority of voting-age Filipino youth are able to afford and attend college, and the University of the Philippines at that).

The daughter of presidential aspirant Manny Villar, Camille, also went college hopping in UP Diliman on first day, encouraging UP students to get involved, and of course vote for his father, an alumnus of the university himself. Supporters of Makabayan senatorial candidates Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza also made their rounds in the different colleges in campus.

In the next few days, other candidates will be trooping to UP to campaign and sway the votes of UP students. The victors in this mock election may well claim to have the vote of the iskolar ng bayan. As to whether or not it translates to an actual representation of the general sentiment of the Filipino youth, I do not know, but surely it reflects the votes of those among the best and the brightest youth of the country.

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March 20, 2010

PUP students protest proposed 2,000% tuition hike

Yesterday, hundreds of students of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Manila walked out of their classes to protest the proposed almost 2,000% tuition hike in the largest state university in the country. Agitated students threw out dilapidated armchairs and desks from the balconies and piled them up in front of the main arts building. They even set them up in flames to show their disgust at the school administration and the government for its neoliberal policy of abandoning tertiary education in the country.

The Polytechnic University of the Philippines offers the lowest tuition rate in the country at P12 per unit (around a quarter US dollar). This affordable rate has made PUP accessible to the 50,000 Filipino children it accommodates every year in its numerous campuses across the archipelago. Many of the students are children of ordinary wage earners, rank and file employees, overseas workers and peasants.

When the University of the Philippines administration planned to raise its tuition by 300% in late 2006, we were afraid it would set a precedent that other state universities would use to justify similar tuition hikes as prescribed by the government’s foreign lenders, which was one of the reasons we vehemently opposed the move.

We were right. State college EARIST (Eulogio Amang Rodriguez Institute of Science & Technology) increased its tuition a year later, using the UP situation as a justification. State universities have since then been imposing various dubiously-named fees as a result of budget cuts imposed by the government.

Overseas, foreign governments from Greece to the US are also cutting down on the budgets of their state universities and colleges and other social services in order to make do with decreasing government revenues and to accommodate gigantic debt payments to multinational lenders. Students have been confronting such attacks on their rights with forms of protests such as walk-outs. Students of state universities in California, for example, staged massive walk-outs last year, even going as far as barricading their schools in order to protest the budget cuts to be imposed by the state government.

Anti-student and pro-government formations have branded the PUP students as hooligans. The final message of the TV report on the protest, however, was succinct in addressing such accusations. “Mawasak na raw lahat ng gamit sa paaralan, huwag lang ang karapatan ng mamamayan sa edukasyon.” (In the first place, the chairs that were burned were those dilapidated ones that were already unusable). The students and the people have no other alternative but to fight for their rights.

Protests will continue throughout the next week leading to the March 29 PUP Board of Regents meeting that will decide on the tuition hike proposal. Let us support the campaign of the students of PUP. Let us join them in the streets as they fight for greater state subsidy for education. Ang laban nila ay hindi lang laban ng PUP, kung hindi laban ng lahat ng kabataan para sa karapatan sa edukasyon. Mabuhay ang mga iskolar ng bayan!

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March 19, 2010

On student council elections

The past month saw various student council election campaigns in campuses across the country. For some students and for those of us who have graduated, there is a tendency to dismiss student council elections in major universities as irrelevant child play. For me, though, and I’m not saying this just because I have always been involved in campus politics, I believe that student council elections are legitimate exercises of students democratic rights. It serves as a rehearsal for students of their part in the larger context of Philippine society. I also believe that the leadership of the student council is decisive and crucial in the formation of student mass movements against commercialization of education and campus repression.

In the University of the Philippines Diliman, the militant Student Alliance for the Advancement of Democratic Rights – UP (STAND-UP) regained the leadership of the University Student Council, after two years of losing the Chairman position. The Alternative Students’ Alliance for Progress – Katipunan ng mga Progresibong Mag-aaral ng Bayan (ASAP-KATIPUNAN) in UP Manila similarly regained the leadership of their University Student Council after three years of losing. STAND-UP and ASAP-KATIPUNAN’s nationalist counterparts in the other UP campuses in UP Baguio, UP Tacloban, UP Miag-ao, UP Cebu and UP Mindanao also scored resounding victories. This is indeed a reaffirmation of the genuine leadership that nationalist and militant activists offer and the potency of militant and collective activism in challenging attacks to students’ rights and welfare and in engaging the different issues that plague the country.

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June 28, 2009

The Democratization Movement in Retrospect

The following article appears in the latest issue of Oblation, the newsletter of the UP Diliman University Student Council (USC). The last issue was the last of our term, 2008, and serves as a joint/transition issue with USC 2009.

The University of the Philippines bore witness to our militant history of collective struggle. It has been a testament to the tide and ebb of our national affairs which have propelled thousands of students to forge an inextricable link with various sectors in our society in our clamor for a common aspiration””genuine social change.

At the dawn of the decade 60′s, the country was swept by the massive waves of rage and discontent among the youth, laborers and peasants and other sectors of the society weary of the existing social order favoring foreign interests and the ruling class. It was further aggravated by the government’s incapacity to ease the worsening crisis, tolerance for corruption and the use of fascism to quell the progressive mass movement.

At the height of political repression, the students of the University took both issues of national and local significance to the streets: from tuition fee increases, campus repression and the fight for academic freedom to US imperialism and its war of aggression in Vietnam, oil price hikes, land reform and decent wages for the workers.

Youth organizations that were founded in the University along with University professors propelled the progressive movement in the campus as they packaged militant ideas in fora, convocations, cultural performances, educational and classroom discussions and teach-ins.

As a reaction to the government’s inaction involving the release of its 9-millon budget, the Council of Leaders which includes traditional organizations, fraternities and sororities and progressive organizations such as the Kabataang Makabayan, Student Cultural Association of the University of the Philippines and the University Student Council led the picket protest.

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June 21, 2009

Age of Consent

On the issue of the UP Student Code and national issue of the Constituent Assembly

It was modern thinking that placed a high premium on Consent as a foundation of law. Consent has a transformative moral power, but it has its own pitfall: it can transform a wrongful action into a rightful one. If Manny Pacquiao had knocked down Ricky Hatton outside of the ring, he would have been prosecuted for serious physical injuries.

Still, this philosophy stems from the core belief that all men are reasonable, and that Reason will then lead us all to a single, unassailable conclusion. This legal theory, stridently discussed in Malcolm Hall, is relentlessly tested in practice. We note two particular instances: in proposals for a new code for student discipline in Diliman, and for a constituent assembly to change the Charter.

When the UP administration moved for the codification of student rules sometime in 2005, students were only allowed piecemeal participation. In a university where 80% of students are older than 18 years ““ the age of consent ““ the lack of active and inclusive student participation is suspect. The drafting of the Code undermines the basic right of students to be consulted, represented, and decide in the formulation of policies that affect their rights and welfare.

UMAKSYON last year joined 100 other student organizations, in submitting to the Board of Regents an 18-point demand “reclaiming the rights of student organizations in the University of the Philippines”. The document specifically demanded student council control over two properties; softer rules on organization and assembly; and secure student representation or participation in important campus activities.

In contrast, the draft Diliman Student Code emphasizes that the use of university facilities and the use of a tambayan is a grant, a privilege. It also offered stricter guidelines on student organizations, and barely promised solutions to staffing and appointment issues of student publications and representatives. What the draft code puts forward is a simpler procedure for discipline cases.

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May 8, 2009

University Student Council Turnover ’09

Last April 20, we had a turnover ceremony for the University Student Council (USC). That pseudo-officially ended our terms as members of the University Student Council. Good luck to incoming USC for 2009!

The turnover ceremony was a joint ceremony. The outgoing and the incoming editorial leadership of the Philippine Collegian also had their part of the program.

It felt a little anticlimactic for me. After all, involvement in campus issues has never really been confined to the USC, for me. And I didn’t feel that anything ended that day. Even engaging colleagues from the other parties in debates, surely, didn’t end that day–even if it was goodbye to the long and harrowing GA’s we regularly had, when we just couldn’t agree on some issues at all. Though, I’d have to say despite all that, we managed to get along somehow in the end, some more than others, politics aside of course.

Simultaneously, UP Administation officials, USC 2008 and Senator Richard Gordon unveiled a bust of Wenceslao Vinzons, which the Senator commissioned to do, in honor of the hero to whom the historic and quintessential hub of university activism and politics was named after. There were also dozens of brods present too–since Vinzons, the Senator, and a handful of members of the incoming and outgoing University Student Council are members of the Upsilon Sigma Phi.

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May 4, 2009

Student Regent Selection ’09 (Part 2)

The day after the KASAMA sa UP (Katipunan ng mga Sangguniang Mag-aaral sa UP) National Council Meet was the GASC’s (General Assembly of Student Councils) Student Regent Selection deliberations at the CFOS (College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences) Auditorum of UP Visayas, Miag-ao. I forget how many exactly were the student councils who were represented in the assembly, around thirty-three, I think.

As I’ve mentioned, there were only two of us who were nominated to the GASC. Me, from UP Diliman, and Chaba from UP Los Banos. The deliberations started off with an individual presentation of our vision for the office, and our programs of action–platform, if you may call it that. Then, it was grill-time, with both of us in front answering the same set of questions alternately. It was amusing at times since we were responding to the issue-based questions with relatively the same answers, which was no surprise since we are both from the militant political parties in our respective campuses. There were also personal questions, and questions which were deliberately and hilariously out-of-this-world.

After the first grilling, it was lunch time. Chaba and I were isolated from the rest of the assembly, so as not to tarnish the integrity of the student councils’ votes, apparently. So the both of us had lunch in a separate table with our chaperon. An hour after, the entire campus was on black-out, so the assembly was called off till electricity came back.

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May 3, 2009

Student Regent Selection ’09 (Part 1)

I took the first flight to Iloilo City last April 13 to attend the GASC’s (General Assembly of Student Councils) Student Regent Selection Meet at UP Visayas in Miag-ao, Iloilo. My colleagues in UP Diliman’s student councils chose to send me as the nominee from Diliman. There are only two nominees this year, the other one is Chaba Banez, outgoing chairperson of the UP Los Banos University Student Council. She ended up being selected as UP’s Student Regent for this year after just one day of deliberations in the GASC.

Anyway, before we get to that, last April 13, I had to manage my way from Iloilo City to Miag-ao, since everyone else had gone there the previous day to attend the KASAMA sa UP (Katipunan ng mga Sangguniang Mag-aaral sa UP) National Council Meet. I did not expect the Miag-ao campus to be quite a distance from Iloilo City. It was an almost two-hour bus ride from the city to Miag-ao, Iloilo. Bang and I arrived in UPV Miag-ao way past afternoon, and we barely caught up with the rest of the KASAMA sa UP meet.

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