“The road to change is treacherous, to say the least. But to guide us in every step of the way, compassion is what shall set our bearings.” These were the words uttered by former UP Law Dean Danilo Concepcion in his 2017 investiture speech as then incoming UP President. He sought to redefine UP’s culture by enhancing the university’s motto of “Honor and Excellence” to include compassion—the moral core that should steer UP towards its goals.
A year into his term, however, the very core of his vision would be blurred with a case of fraternity-related violence, and leakage of offensive and derogatory conversations involving his fraternity, Upsilon Sigma Phi. Swayed by widespread indignation from the UP community, Concepcion denounced the posts, albeit remaining defensive of Upsilon. His administration was also privy to the development of these cases until the end of his term, keeping mum on a subsequent hazing allegation linked to Upsilon that surfaced in 2022.
Concepcion’s platform built on the foundation of compassion would later crumble in the course of his term. He fell short of his promise to adhere to the tenets of transparency, accountability, and objectivity—evinced in his term’s increased number of executive sessions in the UP Board of Regents (BOR) which concealed records of their discussions and anomalous appointments, persistent neglect of workers’ wellbeing, and bypassing due consultation with concerned sectors on key infrastructure projects.
Concepcion’s aim to be anchored in compassion as he strides towards his aspirations is a noble feat worthy of being pursued, yet he failed to actualize this grand ambition. To that end, it is imperative that we look back and scrutinize where Concepcion departed from the five main points that he outlined in his vision paper.
“First, the university's academic thrust should reflect its concern for the welfare of its primary constituency—the nation.”
Concepcion had a clear vision of the path that UP must tread with the end goal of serving the nation. In his first vision point, he promised to boost the university’s research capability, reform UP’s General Education (GE) program, and respond to social issues.
The volume of research and the university’s reputation improved during Concepcion’s term, based on Times Higher Education World University Rankings. From 9.3 points out of 100 in 2017 for the research category, UP soared to 17.5 points in 2022, owing to the productivity in journal publications and peers’ responses in the Academic Reputation Survey. In 2022, 1,589 journal articles from UP received international publication awards, the highest number since 1999, according to data from the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs.
However, these figures do not tell the whole story of UP’s state of research and development, said former Faculty Regent Ramon Guillermo. As these indicators focus on international publications and citations, there is a tendency for the university to fixate on quantitatively hiking the number of published research while overlooking the overall picture of the country’s needs.
The excessive attention placed on foreign metrics ran counter to Concepcion’s intent to orient the research agenda of the university towards addressing the needs of the nation. For one, a good research environment that caters to what is essential for Filipinos requires a strong multidisciplinary approach supported by a robust GE program. Yet, in his refusal to take a stance on the GE reform debate, the University Council of UP Diliman (UPD) voted in favor of the new GE curriculum that effectively reduced the required minimum GE units by 53 percent during his term. UP Sagip GE lambasted this policy which they said imperils the capacity of the university in producing generations of well-rounded learners. This reduction stunts the holistic development of students in being cognizant of their role in the nation, added Guillermo.
A stronger foundation for social consciousness was all the more needed in the face of both the Duterte and Marcos administrations that facilitated a culture of impunity, disinformation and historical revision, and curtailed cherished liberties. The national government’s repressive measures underpinned the unilateral abrogation of the UP-DND Accord, which bars state forces from intruding on campuses without prior notice to university officials.
Concepcion joined the community in opposing this decision. But beyond his statement, there was a lack of concrete policies that could have allayed the repercussions of the accord’s dissolution that made the UP community more vulnerable to state attacks, Jose Monfred Sy of the Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy told the Collegian. Earlier this month, union leader and professor Melania Flores was arrested by officers in civilian clothing who did not give prior notice to the UP administration.
“Second, UP's admission and financial aid system should respond to the needs of all deserving students.”
The COVID-19 pandemic altered the trajectory of people’s lives as lockdowns had to be implemented and physical mobility was limited. Classes were conducted remotely, relying on a mix of synchronous online meetings and self-studying. Even when other schools and universities started getting back on campus after two years of COVID, UP lagged in its preparations to return to face-to-face setup. It was one of the higher education institutions with the fewest programs held through in-person classes in 2022, noted Sen. Pia Cayetano in a Senate budget hearing last year.
UP’s slow administrative processes also led to the deprivation of much-needed student aid. During the initial phase of the remote learning setup, more than 5,600 students could not afford the technology needed for classes. Over 300 grantees of the student learning assistance system (SLAS) still have not received their grants in 2021, a year after their application, reported the Office of Student Financial Assistance. Worse, only a quarter of UPD students who qualified for SLAS in the academic year 2020 to 2021 were eligible for both the learning assistance package and the 100 percent tuition discount.
These circumstances were among some of the reasons that drove students to petition in 2020 to end the semester and pass all students as they go through an unprecedented crisis. The President’s Advisory Council’s (PAC) proposal to merely defer the grades until 2021 only prolonged students’ anxiety, said the Office of the Student Regent (OSR).
Moreover, even when most courses remained online in the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023, Memorandum No. 2022-127 already lifted the academic ease policies including the 12-unit minimum load, no-fail policy, and suspension of maximum residency rule. PAC’s approval was concomitant with their belief that students must possess the grit to overcome adversities—a move packaged as a pursuit of excellence, but one that lacks compassion.
The gradual return of mobility paved the way for the UP College Admission Test (UPCAT) to be conducted again in 2023 after being suspended for three years. Before, as a replacement for UPCAT, the admission system primarily relied on the high school records of the applicants, as well as geographic and socioeconomic factors. The vagueness of the model and its metrics, however, raised concerns about the equity of the admission process as students will be judged only based on their past records with no way to improve their chances through an examination.
“Third, UP should endeavor to deliver efficient and effective services to its constituency within the campus and extend meaningful support to all its personnel.”
Operations in UP are replete with stumbling blocks that obstruct efficiency. Concepcion planned to resolve these by streamlining processes to hasten the delivery of services.
Delays that have long been systemic were not sufficiently rectified by Concepcion, however, said Guillermo. The release of salaries of university staff and personnel is always delayed due to bureaucratic gridlocks. This continued under Concepcion’s term such as when healthcare workers’ pay in the UP Philippine General Hospital was delayed by nine months due to the slow processing of compensation, according to a 2021 Commission on Audit (COA) report.
Another repercussion of the unaddressed inefficiencies was the failure to fill over a thousand vacant positions in UP, hindering the regularization of contractual employees and the addition of new plantilla items. The Department of Budget and Management required the university to fill those vacancies first before the creation of new regular positions.
With the failure to supply the unfilled posts, the number of contractual personnel rose. In Concepcion’s first year, the number of job order (JO) contractuals increased by 489, according to COA. JO workers are classified as those who work intermittently for a short duration or take on specific jobs within a given timeframe, including research aides, street sweepers, and teachers devoid of an employee-employer relationship with UP. By the end of Concepcion’s term, the Alliance of Contractual Workers in UP (ACE-UP) reported that the number of contractual workers grew to 2,153 in 2022 from 1,841 in 2016, excluding agency-hired employees and teaching staff.
In the words of Concepcion’s vision paper, “UP cannot condemn the evils of contractualization if it cannot practice what it preaches.” These words are now mere empty rhetoric. Contractual workers suffered greatly due to the provision of the “no work, no pay” scheme through Memorandum No. NGY 19-58. ACE-UP also decried the conversion of contract-of-service workers to UP contractuals, which demoted their salary grade and decreased their take-home pay all the while increasing their workload. This is why according to All UP Academic Employees Union, Concepcion’s term ran contrary to his promise of upholding the dignity of workers.
These woes among contractuals exacerbated amid the pandemic. The university had initiatives to equip educators with the skills to effectively integrate technology in instruction, but the employees have difficulty accessing these in the first place. This is because while the president granted internet and device subsidies to teaching and administrative staff in 2020, the contractual employees and lecturers were excluded from the list of beneficiaries.
“Fourth, as its contribution to prudent management of public resources, UP should conceive of creative ways to boost its income without abandoning the campaign for increased government subsidy.”
Roadblocks confronted Concepcion’s endeavor to traverse both paths of demanding higher state subsidies and boosting UP’s income. Though the university’s yearly budget saw an increasing trend in his term, the numbers are still way below each of UP’s proposed budgets. From 2018 to 2020, the approved UP budget was only less than 60 percent of the amount it needed. In his last year of tenure, the approved budget for 2023 is P24.26 billion, over a hundred million less than previous year’s budget.
Concepcion’s defeatist stance was displayed when he conceded that UP cannot do anything if the government opts to decrease UP’s budget. To make up for this, from 2017 to 2022, the average amount of revenue incurred from donations and business income rose to P2.7 billion from the average of P1.6 billion under former UP President Alfredo Pascual’s term. The highest revenue recorded under Concepcion’s term is in 2017, with a total of 4.7 billion or 31.88 percent of the UP budget.
Concepcion’s requested budget allocations also showed that his proposed infrastructure spending doubled that of his recent two predecessors’ average proposed expenditures on capital outlay. His term oversaw the aggressive expansion of buildings and facilities across the constituent units of the UP system. In return, former Department of Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar was conferred with a Doctor of Laws honorary degree for his supposed contributions to the infrastructure boom in both the university and the country.
The OSR dissented to the conferment, citing issues of land-grabbing by the Villar family. In UP’s own spaces, such a problem is also apparent as communities are sidelined in the process of crafting plans and projects. Salvacion Tuboro of Samahan ng Nagkakaisang Arboretum lamented the threats of displacement as barricades around Pook Arboretum were erected to give way for the proposal to build the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) Diliman without prior information to the residents and concrete plans for their relocation.
Concepcion built notoriety in evading consultation with communities and other concerned sectors. In 2021, Pook Aguinaldo farmers received a cease-and-desist order from the Diliman Legal Office, ordering them to vacate their lands. His term also facilitated the inauguration of Gyud Food Hub, criticized as anti-poor by UP vendors as no space was provided for them. “Sa panahon ng transisyon tungo sa balik eskwela’t opisina ay ipinipilit ang mga pakanang humaharang sa mga manininda sa aming puwesto sa loob ng campus,” Samahang Manininda sa UP Campus wrote in a statement.
“Fifth, UP should contribute to national development.”
Concepcion’s incumbency was one defined by attempts to brave the bumps of political and economic turbulence. He faced the challenges of a pandemic, blows to the democratic rights of the citizens, and growing difficulties in people’s living conditions.
Consistent with his vision to create linkages with the government to aid their policies, UP’s integral role in ramping up the state’s pandemic response was seen through UP-PGH’s service as a COVID-19 referral center and the UP-based Philippine Genome Center that provided DNA sequencing services and helped develop the country’s testing kits. These were made possible through the work of UP’s frontline workers who had their qualms over exploitative conditions unaddressed by the administration.
The UP community’s unrelenting struggle against the government’s oppressive policies corresponded with Concepcion’s aim for the university to take an active role in assessing and facing social challenges. From policy recommendations to protest actions, his constituents left trails for the government to follow in cultivating national development.
This is the road that UP must navigate to realize what Concepcion wrote as the mission of “planting the seeds of genuine social change.” The community must be equipped with the fervor to go against the tide of historical distortion that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. carries, which counters the goal of moving the nation forward.
Doing so requires the new president of the university to clear the warped vision of the past administration that failed in its promise of compassion due to its detachment from the grassroots. In his pursuit to be relevant to the communities and people, Angelo Jimenez must redirect the path back to the bearings from where Concepcion diverged. ●
With reports from Adam Torres.
