UP President Emerlinda Roman was forced to respond to the students’ demands after student leaders submitted petitions through mass lobbying and demonstration last July 31 during the Board of Regents (BOR) meeting. The meeting held at UP Manila was greeted by student protesters from UP Diliman, UP Manila, and UP Los Banos, carrying their demands for tuition rollback, immediate UPLB student elections, and the reclaim of student institutions and organizations’ democratic rights.

Determined that these demands need to be answered directly by the UP Administration, the students insisted that the BOR face the students and hold a dialogue outside the halls. After minutes of negotiations, President Roman agreed to meet the protesters and gave her responses on the different issues raised by the students. Her initial responses were: there will definitely be no rollback of tuition; the UP Administration refuses to intervene in the UPLB student-elections issue; and that the student organizations’ demands will be studied and be left to the discretion of the Chancellors of different UP units.

Student leaders believe that it was a collective victory that students were able to urge President Roman to give immediate responses to student demands. However, it was also clear to them that she was merely washing her hands off the issue, a clear refusal to take responsibility over the dismal state of students’ democratic rights in the university, according to Jaqueline Eroles, Chairperson of Students Rights and Welfare (STRAW) Committee of the UP Diliman - University Student Council (USC). Student institutions and organizations who led the action pledged that all BOR meetings will be greeted with mobilizations until the demands were properly addressed.

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Tags: Board of Regents, campus issues, petition, University Student Council, UP Administration, UP President

At the height of the Marcos dictatorship, the Iskolars ng Bayan were able to force, through collective yet militant struggle, the re-establishment of student councils, publications, and organizations in UP. Among the rights won in the aftermath of the students’ successful campaign included the beneficial use and possession of fully-functional tambayans and offices, the free use of university facilities and equipment, and the relaxation of the procedural restraints in org recognition. The university, then, encouraged all types of student organizations to re-eastablish their presence and engaging all the others to form their organizations based on their own interests and advocacies. This is in the presumption that student activities play a vital role in the learning process and training of UP students as future leaders of our nation.

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Tags: Board of Regents, campus issues, petition, University Student Council, UP Administration

I’ve been having really bad and recurring headaches almost every day the past weeks. Wala nang bisa sa akin ang paracetamol. I don’t know what to take anymore. I tried paracetamol and ibuprofen already. Barely works to relieve the pain. Undoubtedly, it is caused by stress.

All these headaches gets me into thinking sometimes, what if I wasn’t in the student council? What if I didn’t join the fraternity? What if I didn’t get myself involved in so many affiliations and commitments? What if I didn’t go to law school? What if I just didn’t care about how the government is run? What if I just cared about myself? Life would be so much less stressful. I could surf the net all day, watch all the movies I want to see, go to all places I want to go, spend all the time I want with people dear to me. What if, what if. Not that I’m regretting anything at all. It’s just that it amuses me to think how much stress I would have spared myself had I not gone the path I have tread. But then I wouldn’t be me.

Anyway, somehow related to student council stress… Geez, spare me from all these student council politicking! What a waste of time, indeed. I have my own constituents who expect me to respond to pressing issues. I’m disappointed some of my councilmates talk as if they’re the only ones whose constituents are aggrieved or will be aggrieved. We were popularly elected with the platform of expedient and responsible responses to issues of national concern. Failure to do such is a disservice in itself. I cannot allow the exaggerated ranting of some councilmates to stop us from exercising our mandate. It’s not as if they weren’t heard out or their points considered. It’s so sad that some of us have assumed bad faith against each other. Imagine being called evil and fascist. Hay, try staring at the fascism of Arroyo’s police force in the face! We substantially followed our collectively prescribed procedure. I still hope things could be threshed out amicably. Grabe lang. As public information officer, or the “final arbiter” in statements, palagi na lang akong dehado sa gitna ng party friction ‘pag may statement, kahit sinupaman ang proponent niyan, red, blue, yellow, white, whatever. Whether I release the statement or not, one party would be staring negatively at me. Ang sakit sa ulo.

In the meantime, I would like to prepare for my first midterms in UP Law.

On an irrelevant note, I got new lens for my DSLR! I’ll try to start taking photographs again.

Tags: academics, midterms, personal rambling, University Student Council, UP Law

I’ll try to get the regular blogging habit back soon. As of now, I’m swamped, as usual, with an overwhelming amount of readings for law school, work pending in the student council, among other things, I don’t know where to fit in leisurely writing in my blog anymore.

It was probably the largest anti-Arroyo youth mobilization I’ve been to. Thousands of students from dozens of high schools, colleges and universities in Metro Manila, including several hundreds from UP Diliman, converged at Plaza Miranda and marched together towards Mendiola to air the youth’s collective and justified grievances against the Arroyo administration.

My day started mildly with an interview together with Airah at the Office of Student Affairs as a requirement for recognition of STAND-UP. Then we went back to Math Building to speak with students who have themselves walked out, and invited them to join the protest at Palma Hall and at Mendiola.

Before noon, dozens of students marched from the Math Building and the National Institute of Geological Sciences Building to join the hundreds of other students at Palma Hall lobby for a brief program before we all boarded jeepneys to Espana, Manila.

From Espana, the UP Diliman contingent were joined by hundreds of students from nearby high schools and colleges, and students from the University of Santo Tomas (UST) and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP). Together, we marched along Quezon Boulevard, amidst some cheers and confetti from pedestrians and residents along the road, all the way to Plaza Miranda where the main program of the protest was held.

For around two hours we all chanted and listened to impassioned speeches from representatives of schools and universities, even from the largely bourgeoisie Ateneo de Manila, to sectoral representatives from Bayan Muna, Kabataang Pinoy Party and other mass organizations. At half past four, we all started to march in thousands to Mendiola.

By the time we all got to Morayta in front of Far Eastern University (FEU), the police unleashed their fire truck water canons and tried to disperse the thousands-strong warm bodies by pushing us back. It was agitating. It was the first time I volunteered to to join the front-liners to break through the police barricade. I’ve never felt so angry and agitated in a rally before. As we were linking arms, pushing and shoving against the policemen who were pushing us back, I wanted to burst and scream. All we had were our unarmed selves, our principles and our justified calls. And to that, the Arroyo administration answers back, not with long-term and genuine pro-people solutions, but intensified forms of repression and military intelligence operations against the youth in campuses across the country.

I’ve never felt more resolved in my involvement in the youth movement.

(Fine, to appease those who fear I might default on my studies, I’ve never been more resolved in pursuing law studies having realized how this administration has continually used the legal system and its technicalities to oppress and repress dissent, and maintain its hold on to power. I’ve never been more resolved realizing that the high cost of law studies, even in UP, has made it even more exclusive to those who can afford it, and are fortunate enough to have connections, to the detriment of the people who need legal education the most).

Agitated as we were, we decided to march back towards Espana and held a noise barrage amidst cheers from motorists and pedestrians. We were joined by contingents from COURAGE and MIGRANTE.

This President is a dead duck after 2010. If you still believe she will willfully hand over the administration to the next leader, you better think again. To survive beyond 2010 and all the cases that will definitely come her way, this President will simply not step down, unless it is certain the next administration will protect her. Such she knows we will not allow either in the next elections, (if there will be a national election two years from now). Friends, there’s no other way but to oust this corrupt and fascist administration. There’s no better time than now. Pinning our hopes on genuine change in 2010 is almost plain naivete.

And while she and her family spends our money, amassing billions of pesos from her family’s monopoly on government contracts and other such kickbacks, millions of Filipinos continue to fall below the poverty line amidst a worsening economic crises that has affected and has cut through all classes and sectors in society (except her family and cohorts, of course).

Kabataan, hindi na tayo pag-asa ng bayan. Inaasahan na tayo ng sambayanan.

[Pictures from Jonna Baldres]

Tags: corruption, economic crises, Gloria Arroyo, Manila, political dissent, political repression, rally, STAND UP, Youth Act Now, youth sector

[Photos above, and some below, are from here (Tim Medrano) and here (Jonna Baldres)]

Last Thursday, July 10, 2008, thousands of students across the country walked out of their classes to protest the Arroyo administration’s willfull refusal at implementing genuine reforms and changes in government policies that would alleviate the lives of millions of Filipino youth and their families in light of soaring prices of oil, food and other basic commodities, and a worsening crisis in the education sector.

In the University of the Philippines, where students, especially those in their first and second years, are beset with a tuition increase and new laboratory fees, half a thousand students joined the simultaneous programs held at various points in campus which culminated in a demonstration at Palma Hall at noon.

In the morning, I was at the program in the College of Arts & Letters (CAL) atrium, with Airah, a colleague in the University Student Council, the CAL Student Council and members of other mass organizations inviting students to join the nationwide walkout. Before it hit noon, we held a snake rally around CAL and marched to Palma Hall to join hundreds of other UP students in a demonstration at Palma Hall Steps. We then marched to the University Avenue, where another brief program was held while we barricaded the road. By past two in the afternoon, more than a dozen jeepneys packed with UP students proceeded to Espana in Manila to join other Metro Manila students in protest.

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Tags: CAL, economic crises, Gloria Arroyo, Morayta, Oil Deregulation Law, rally, STAND UP, tuition increase, University Student Council

There has to come a time when I should move on from the overwhelmed phase and just push through with the tasks required of being a law student. But let me just say it again, and rant for the last time (I hope), that the amount of material we have to read every day is just overwhelming. A few days ago, I got myself my copy of 700-pages long worth of reading materials to be discussed for two subjects within just two meetings. Is it even possible? I spent almost an hour sorting them out and stapling them. I didn’t finish reading them before class. I ended up making a blunder in front of our Constitutional Law 1 professor.

A few days ago, in Criminal Law 1 class, it was a lazy afternoon after lunch break and I was so sleepy from reading the night before, that I didn’t realize I snoozed of for a few minutes. It wasn’t until my seatmate nudged me that my recitation card was picked and the professor has been looking at me and has called my name twice already. Fortunately, I was able to pull the recitation off. But still, that was embarrassing.

At least, going through the experience with a set of wonderful blockmates saves it. Everyone, especially the very diligent ones, is very helpful to others, (like me, hehe), who are sometimes left behind with the lessons because of, well, various reasons. And all the lunch-outs, night-outs and karaoke indeed do a lot to boost one’s morale after a depressing performance in class.

There’s now so little time to do any other leisurely things, since I also have my tasks in the University Student Council, and my other affiliations, among my priorities. Which, explain why I haven’t been blogging, nor blog-hopping, or anything else leisurely for that matter.

Tags: academics, UP Law

[Drafting this statement was such a grueling ordeal in the University Student Council (USC) with all the contentions and whatnot. But here it is. The original had a discussion on how President Arroyo must be accountable for the education crises and a call for her ouster, but it was unfortunately disapproved by a simple majority within the USC]

The Centennial Iskolar ng Bayan in the Thick of Crises

Last June 20, 2008, the story of a freshman Chemistry major who dropped out on the third day of his classes found its way in the pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The Letter to the Editor was written by a professor in the UP Math Department who was dismayed to find out that his student dropped out because he was assigned to bracket C of the restructured Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP), which in consequence would require him to pay P600 per unit.

Sadly, our fellow Iskolar ng Bayan’s situation has become more common in UP since the Board of Regents approved the 300% tuition and other fee increases (TOFI) last 2006, despite the lack of comprehensive consultation from the students and the absence of the Student and Faculty Regents in the meeting.

More alarming, however, is how common our fellow Iskolar ng Bayan’s plight is in this country. According to the CHED, 11 million Filipinos aged 6-24 years old or just over one-third of those in that age bracket have stopped going to school. The Commission adds that for this school year alone, approximately a million school-going Filipinos have had to drop out.

Should we be surprised? After all, as the prices of basic goods like rice, bread, canned goods, vegetables, meat, fish, petroleum products, transportation, and electricity skyrocket to record-highs, the Filipino family’s budget for sustaining their children’s education has virtually disappeared.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO), families in developing countries, such as the Philippines, spend 60% of their budget on food alone. Moreover, the IBON Foundation cites that the poorest 30% of the Philippine population spends even more than that. When the cost of staple foods rises, therefore, the poor are the first to suffer. So when both the cost of staple foods and education simultaneously increase, it is nothing but a recipe for disaster for the 65 million Filipinos living below the P112/day poverty line.

Dole-outs in the form of rice and other subsidies do nothing to address the real causes of spiraling poverty and diminishing access to education in the Philippines. Many groups have insisted that a P125 across-the-board wage hike and the scrapping of VAT are realistic measures the government can take to provide instant relief to those hardest hit by the prevailing economic crisis.

Last year, the government allotted a miserable 2.66% of the GNP for education – once again, nowhere near the minimum of six percent set by UNESCO Delors Commission for developing countries. Since 1998, when the education budget peaked at 3.8%, the government has continuously and deliberately decreased public spending on education in line with its commitment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). The IMF’s SAP encourages governments with massive foreign debt to reduce spending on social services so as to increase allocation for debt servicing. Certainly, a look at the Philippine budget in the last eight years clearly illustrates how compliant the government has been to the SAP: giving more than half of the pie to pay off debts and leaving so little to care for the physical and mental well-being of the Filipino people.

Since 2001, President Arroyo with her administration has done nothing substantial to re-appropriate government spending and genuinely prioritize education. On the contrary, she has aggressively pushed for the full realization of the SAP through the Long Term Higher Education Development Plan (LTHEDP), which aims to make 70% of all State Universities fiscally autonomous by raising their tuition fees to private-school-level by 2010. She has also refused to do anything to alleviate the impact of oil price hikes and instead continues to implement E-VAT to the further detriment of Filipinos.

In light of all these, we demand for: the immediate rollback of the tuition increase amidst a worsening economic crisis; the junking of the UP’s most recent tuition policy (automatic tuition increase based on inflation, tuition increase to augment government subsidy, restructured STFAP), without prejudice to further investigation of the STFAP, and; the increase of state subsidy for education. These are but some of the many genuine steps towards providing economic relief to all iskolars ng bayan. These are crucial steps so that families today and in the future no longer have to choose between spending for food or spending for education.

As Iskolars ng Bayan, we must analyze these social and economic issues besieging our country beyond the comfortable confines of the academe. We cannot afford to ignore the widespread hardship, which the majority of the Filipino people are barely enduring, because sooner rather than later it will affect us all – and the UP Chemistry freshman’s story will be too commonplace to be on the news.

Roll back 300% tuition increase!
Junk UP’s newest tuition policy!
Push for a comprehensive review of the STFAP!
Increase government spending on education!
Reform the Philippine educational system!

Tags: campus issues, statement, tuition increase, university policy, University Student Council, UP Administration