Last Wednesday, the sub-committee hearing the budget of state universities and colleges (SUC’s) unanimously committed to restore the budget to its 2009 level. It means to say that the proposed P3 billion budget cut by the President and the Department of Budget & Management is rejected at the sub-committee level, and the budget for the country’s 110 SUC’s would be back to around P24 billion.
Kabataan Rep. Mong Palatino remarked that this is imperative, as the proposed budget has barely any allocation for SUC’s capital outlay. How then can SUC’s affected by the recent calamities rebuild their schools? A few days earlier, the DBM released a statement defending the budget cut in response to several protests launched by the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP).
They claimed that the proposed P21 billion budget is sufficient to sustain the services of SUC’s, as they are anyway allowed to generate their own income. What they didn’t say is that this forced income generating policy is done at the expense of students, through tuition and other fee increases. The statement only proves that our analysis as correct, that budget cuts and tuition increases are state policies that harm the future of the youth and the nation.
For the most part of the university’s existence as a higher institution of learning, policies were crafted and imposed by the Board of Regents (BOR), the highest policy-making body in the university, without the students’ participation.
For the longest time, the BOR had no student representative–the university’s largest constituency long subjected to policies they didn’t see coming. Through sustained and collective efforts of the students, however, which began during the First Quarter Storm, heightened and intensified further during the dark years of Martial Law and beyond, the Office of the Student Regent (OSR) was established.
The OSR serves as the student-run institution where the Student Regent, the sole voting member of the BOR, who comes form the university’s largest sector, is seated. Instituted in 1986, it has served to uphold the interests of the students, voting and arguing on their behalf from issues ranging from appointments of deans to increases in laboratory fees and tuition.
The enactment of RA 9500 or the new UP Charter, however, endangers this institution, under the smokescreen of democratization, by actually subjecting a decade-old Student Regent selection process crafted by duly-elected student council representatives across the UP System and subjected to debates and amendments every year, to a terribly difficult challenge–a challenge that the administration cunningly knows, given the trend of student election turnouts, has the tendency to fail. UP, after all, has more than 55,000 students system-wide.
At the beginning of 2007 I had a mental checklist of things that I would do and a checklist of predictions on how my life would turn out for the year.
However, 2007, turned out to be so much different from how I imagined it when it started. So, so much different, I’m telling you. Fate (or destiny?) had something in store for me, and it really caught me unprepared in the beginning.
By the end of January, I suddenly found myself being invited to join a greek-letter fraternity. You gotta be kidding me, I thought to myself then. List some stereotypes of fratmen and I probably am the opposite to a number of those. But what the hell, weeks later, I eventually became an Upsilonian. It was a life-changing decision and such a difficult process that I’ll never forget nor regret.
So, from the most utterly painful to the most stressful to the most euphoric, ecstatic and fulfilling of experiences of my life this year (and probably of its 19-year entirety to date) belong to this, my junior year in the fraternity. Tangina na lang. Hehe. It’s quite difficult trying to word it out and explain the countless individual experiences adequately without using too many superlatives or revealing things. I guess you just have to take my word for it. If I’m compelled to sum up 2007 in one sentence, I would easily and confidently say, “It was the year I became an Upsilonian.” ‘Yun lang.
(On an interesting note, this blog played a big role in how and why I was recruited into the frat. Oh boy, the things my blog get me into, right? At the beginning of the year, I was hoping it would be TV guestings or something. Hehe, just kidding. Guess the blogger who invited me.)
Anyway, the next big thing for me this year came shortly after I joined. It was late February and early March–campus elections season in the University of the Philippines. It’s not easy explaining to non-UP people how serious elections in this university can get. It’s probably one of the most fiercely contested campus elections in the Philippines, with ideological and historical bitterness and baggage.
Anyway, I was running for college chairperson under STAND-UP. And it was a challenge because students were bitterly divided on some key issues, there was an apparent strong anti-radical sentiment, and we were being contested full-slate for the first time. As everyone in my college knows, despite my “pre-election popularity,” I was defeated. And honestly, for a while then, I was depressed. But as the adage goes, when one window closes, another one opens. It definitely didn’t end with the loss. I eventually got absorbed into the university-wide committees of STAND-UP and from there I worked with the various social and political campaigns throughout the year.
This year-end recap can’t be complete without mentioning that it was the year I first visited the United States. It was a family vacation. We were there for three weeks. Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas. There. I think I’ve chronicled it enough already, so I won’t talk much about this. It wasn’t particularly life-changing, but yea, since it’s a major first, it’s worth the mention in this entry.
I’m sorry, I tried to keep this as short as possible. There were a lot of other things that happened this year, of course. I’m sorry if you’re expecting some things I missed out in this entry. Basta, 2007 will forever be etched in my consciousness for many various reasons. These three simply make the top spots.
Similar to last year, I celebrated the New Year with the family in our family-owned grocery in Bulacan. In the land of firecrackers, fireworks aren’t necessarily those beautiful fiery explosions in the sky that one would normally imagine, but they’re definitely heart-thumping and loud. Just when the year was about to change, the bomb-like explosions of the strong firecrackers went off and it went on for a quarter of an hour, with no half a second of silence.
A little past twelve, I went up to our top floor and watched the landscape flicker in chaos. Tens of thousands of mini rockets exploding everywhere across the landscape of Bulacan. It was quite amusing–I imagined it as a scene from a war, with thousands of anti-aircraft missiles flying in the air to fend off a foreign invasion.
We went back home to Quezon City at around 1 in the morning. It was an interesting sight. There were no other vehicles in the expressway except ours, seriously. It felt like we owned it. Or we were the only survivors of my imagined New Year’s war.
I got my first bashing as a ‘candidate’ in the elections.
if you don’t mind my being honest, it doesn’t mean that you have a medyo sikat na blog ay you have the right to run as film representative. one thing i hate about CMC is its fanatical devotion to people who have accomplished nothing but snag a fair amount of fame (infamy?), in your case, online. sad, but seeing the likes of you worthless folks fill important positions in CMC makes me feel everything is lost. please do all of us thinking, silent majority in masscomm a big, big favor: for your and our sake, don’t run. we have enough nincompoops as it is, thank you. – totoy
You know, I wouldn’t run if I knew that my only claim to fame and my only credentials are based on my “popular” blog. If there’s one thing lamentable with this line of thought, it’s that it leads one to automatically discredit, without further scrutiny, candidates who have say, claims-to-popularity pre-election. Also works on the national scale with the “thinking class”’ automatic aversion of electing showbiz personalities like Erap or FPJ. If you think that is how I am packaged, so be it for now. There’s more than enough time to prove it otherwise during campaign period.
Also, “nincompoops” wouldn’t be holding positions if only you and your silent majority weren’t so silent in the first place. Makes me wonder why you complain at something which is a result of your own lack of action. Speak up more often, it makes for healthier discussions of issues, and with that, you’ll probably finally get the officials you really want and deserve.
I brought the video camera to school because IC borrowed it for their Religion project.
For Math, I didn’t observe the silence bell. I was talking with Alejandro because I was asking for some chalk. I didn’t know that our Math teacher was already at the back of the room so I went on. After the silence bell ended, she warned all silence bell disobeyers to go to the APSA after class, telling us , “You know who you are…” I know it was me. Oh no, a week hasn’t passed after my first offense, a post, and now I’m surely going to get another one. That thought put me so down the whole Math period. I was an active participator in class but now, I just didn’t listen to the review for our long test this coming Monday. Ms. ████ didn’t look at me, I guess because she’s angry at me. I felt so bad disobeying the silence bell.
After Math, I went to the APSA, although it seemed I was the only one to do so. Ms. ████ even passed by as if she forgot that she told us to go there. When the bell rang for the next period, I made a decision to come back to the classroom. Sir ███ was already there, and I was hesitant to go in. Could I go or not go in? Andrew, who’s the first person at the door, told me to go ahead in, and I did. Sir ███ didn’t seem to mind even though I was late. Well, we just had a discussion.
We had the long test in English which wasn’t that hard, although by that time, I already had a headache which bothered me and my concentration. Anyway, at least I made it through. After that, I hurriedly went to the APSA to meet with Ms. Cornejo about that. I waited for lots of minutes and she wasn’t going out. I just found out then that our practice for today was canceled. Oh no, then I thought the bus had left me and I have to commute home. So I just waited for Ms. ███ to go out after I’d paged her. Well, she didn’t. John passed by telling me that she was at the library tutoring some kid. Oh that’s why. So I went there. She told me that I will get a jug. Oh well, as my principle goes, “I accept the consequences of my actions.”
I was down… I didn’t bother prepare for the SabPag Finals tomorrow…