UP marks its 116th founding anniversary this week. But as it enters this milestone, the country’s national university has become less nationalist, less democratic, more hostile to its communities, and increasingly indifferent to the plights of its people.
Though this day, June 18, has always been included in the academic calendar, no one has bothered to remember or commemorate it. But this year is different as the Diliman and System administrations hold simultaneous events and recognition ceremonies for the Linggo ng Unibersidad.
Conveniently, UP President Angelo Jimenez’s strategic plan “Public Service Through Transformative UP Education” will be formally launched later today. The plan will outline Jimenez’s priorities for the remainder of his term. This could perhaps be his attempt to make his mark after the first year and a half of his term, essentially continuing his predecessor’s destructive legacy.
Successive UP administrations have a penchant for buzzwords like “service” and “transformation.” But, as history has demonstrated, the burning desire of the administration for a reimagining of UP has always been to the detriment of its community and the Filipino people. Academic policies and curricula have been changed to fit the diktat of misguided internationalization. Commercialization of properties has led to the displacement of its residents and small business owners. Politics–not merit–becomes the basis for appointing academic leaders.
All of these are happening while Quezon Hall remains deaf to our pleas, and state-sanctioned rights violations remain rife.
UP has established its reputation and legacy of service by consistently instilling in its students that serving the Filipino people is our ultimate goal. But these edicts will not translate into reality without policies that make the academe conducive for its constituents to inquire, create knowledge, and extend those discoveries outside. It doesn’t matter how much UP incentivizes excellence or service as the fact remains that the service-oriented nature of UP has now become a second thought for the administration and the national government.
It is worthwhile to recognize the outstanding performance and service of our students, faculty, alumni, and employees. But this week’s commemoration activities will not mask the longstanding problems that hound UP. If anything, the events this week must force us to rethink if indeed this is the correct trajectory that UP is taking.
We don’t doubt the UP administration’s good intentions in honoring its outstanding students, employees, and faculty. But without meaningful steps in improving the quality of learning and working experience, these awards will remain as they are–mere recognitions. After all, UP can only continue its tradition of excellence if students can learn in a conducive environment, and its workers are compensated and taken care of properly. These should be at the forefront of any administration’s agenda.
If there is anything worth celebrating about UP’s 116th founding, it is the community whose selfless commitment to maintaining the national university has endured through periods of discontent. Students, in particular, bear a significant responsibility to preserve UP’s social role as the national university. The true essence of UP lies in all of us—not in self-serving administrators, wealthy alumni with ulterior motives to commercialize the university, or a government that consistently underfunds us.
As the university finds itself under siege—both from the state and those who seek to subvert it from within—it is, once again, the community’s collective struggle that will pave the way for a meaningful renewal and transformation of UP. UP’s sectors will be the ones who will, ultimately, forge the university’s agenda in the decades to come–an agenda where legitimate public service and education that liberates are at the fore. ●
