As the 2025 midterm elections near, numerous reports of campus press repression have surfaced across the country—the most recent in Camarines Sur with a politician's attack against a school publication over a mock election survey.

In a Facebook status posted last Feb. 7, Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymond “Lray” Villafuerte accused The SPARK, the official student publication of Camarines Sur Polytechnic College (CSPC), of releasing fake election survey results. The outcome of the poll showed that a portion of the CSPC’s community favored his opponent, Ronald “Bong” Rodriguez. 

The following day, the school administration asked the publication to delete the post of the survey results to avoid the consequences of possible legal charges. The editorial board, however, maintained that their survey was done without bias and kept the post up.

Groups like the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, and UP College of Media and Communication condemned the politician’s actions and called for the need to defend the campus press.

“These threats to press freedom manifest what kind of elections we are facing if the current framework of elections permits businessmen, political dynasties, and convicted criminals that can easily suppress the power of the student publications and their voices in reporting such anomalies in the elections,” CEGP National Spokesperson Brell Lacerna said in an interview with the Collegian.

Lacerna also asserted that student publications should only be biased toward the marginalized, as they do not owe anything to any political figures, including Villafuerte.

The SPARK is only one of numerous cases of campus press censorship recently.

Last Jan. 17, Today’s Carolinian was evicted from office by the University of San Carlos administration to use the space for alumni relations. This is not their first experience of repression as the publication has been defunded since 2019 for their coverage of tuition and other fees increase.

Meanwhile, college publications of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines have been barred from covering some of the university’s events. In one such instance,  The VANGUARD was kicked out of the avenue to prevent them from reporting on the deliberation of student complaints against a professor.

“The ceasing of the operations of student publications is a violation of the Campus Journalism Act of 1991. Even the Campus Journalism Act recognizes the editorial independence of the student publications having autonomy on their funds and on how they publish,” Lacerna said.

Lacerna, however, also explained that the standing campus journalism law, or RA 7079, is “outdated and toothless” because the law does not require schools to establish publications nor fund them.

The law also does not penalize campus press freedom violations—something that the Campus Press Freedom Bill, a proposed alternative to the Campus Journalism Act, aims to add.

Last year, the 19th Congress held the first reading of the bill, first filed in 2011 by Kabataan Party-list Rep. Raymond Palatino and Bayan Muna Party-list Rep. Teddy Casiño, and approved the formation of a technical group to review the proposal. However, there is still no committee formed with CEGP until now, according to Lacerna.

“As press freedom is a democracy, [we should] challenge our leaders running for positions to be gauged in publication scrutiny and uphold press freedom at the highest level,” Lacerna said. ●

First published in the Feb. 18, 2025 print edition of the Collegian.