The UP Board of Regents (BOR) is the university’s highest decision-making body. It has the final say on what the policy must be, who should run the university, and settling cases and controversies that may arise before it. Collectively, it dictates what UP should be.
Republic Act 9500, or the UP Charter, enumerates the vast powers that the BOR has–effectively exerting control over a student the moment it decides to apply for admission to UP until their graduation. The BOR also sets the remuneration and retention of faculty and workers, and it has the final word on how UP properties should be used.
The BOR is composed of 11 members: the chairperson of the Commission on Higher Education as its head, the UP president as co-chairperson, three presidential appointees, the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Higher, Technical, and Vocational Education, the chairperson of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education, the president of the UP Alumni Association as the alumni regent, the faculty regent, the student regent, and the staff regent.
Despite its vast powers, the board has always acted largely behind closed doors. Its meetings are not open to the public, and when it tackles controversial matters, it goes off-the-record, expunging all traces of its deliberations.
Particular attention has been given to the board, especially during the past years. In 2019, the governance of the university reached national headlines after the BOR consecutively appointed three deans against the recommendation of the colleges and then Chancellor Michael Tan. It was three years of chaos and confusion, especially in the College of Business Administration whose faculty united to frustrate all attempts of the BOR-picked dean, Joel Tan-Torres, to run the college.
The undemocratic selection of those administrators planted the seed of distrust between the UP community and the BOR. It led to an unprecedented and intensified campaign for the UP Diliman chancellorship in February 2020. One of the controversially appointed deans, engineering’s Ferdinand Manegdeg, was gunning for the chancellorship against mathematician and then Vice Chancellor for Research and Development Fidel Nemenzo.
Murmurs of Malacañang intervention hounded the 2020 selection as it happened amid the backdrop of the Duterte administration’s plans to militarize the campuses and stifle academic freedom in universities. While Nemenzo, who was widely backed by the UPD community, was eventually selected in 2020, the board would continue to demonstrate its unreliability in upholding the university’s interests. Nemenzo’s selection was a victory clinched by the community’s strong show of assertion over its choice–and it was an exception, not the norm.
When the pandemic forced UP to close, there was no playbook available. As such, all major decisions during UP’s transition to remote work had to be approved by the BOR. And repeatedly, the board has, once again, came up with decisions detrimental to the academic community—from the refusal to end the semester amid the health crisis to its insistence of starting the next academic year fully remotely.
In the years and months that followed, the powers-that-be behind the board and the interest of the wider UP community constantly clashed. Just last year, the BOR conferred an honorary degree to the chief architect of the Duterte administration’s flagship Build, Build, Build program, Sen. Mark Villar, despite the program’s misplaced priorities and anti-people underpinnings.
But the university’s indignation reached a peak when the BOR twice-defied the UP community’s resounding pick for the UP presidency and UPD chancellorship. In a span of less than four months, the BOR selected lawyer Angelo Jimenez to become the 22nd UP president and lawyer Edgardo Carlo Vistan II to become the 12th UPD chancellor—both over the popularly backed Nemenzo.
Some observers have claimed that the criticism of the BOR and its processes are undue because it is, after all, the same ground rules that selected Nemenzo in 2020, the same board that released a formal resolution urging the codification of the UP-DND Accord, and granted the countless appeals of students ranging from readmission to graduation. Those instances, however, do not paint the full picture of the problem that lies in the BOR.
From an institution supposedly designed to “preserve the integrity” of UP, the board has, in its recent decisions, acted way too far from the UP community’s interests. And, as we wrote in our previous editorial, the BOR has acted that way simply because it can do so. Being the supreme authority in UP, the BOR is almost always shielded from demands for accountability and transparency.
In this series of essays, the Collegian’s reporters attempt to spark discussion on how to curtail an increasingly rogue board, from retaining the board as it is to completely abolishing it. As Malacañang emissaries and fraternal ties continue to influence the board’s decisions–appointments or otherwise–it becomes an increasingly essential task for the community to explore all means to arrest the decline of UP’s academic freedom and institutional autonomy.
That a select few in robes could do whatever they could with impunity is simply anathema to the concept of an institution of advanced learning. Worse, these come at a time when assaults to the university’s right to inquire and think continue from all fronts–including from within.
The board purports to put the university’s interests first. But in every decision that goes against the community’s will, regents only erode the delicate trust between the academic community and its leaders. And in every misstep and mistrust in the way, the university stands to lose. ●
Abolish and Replace the Board
If the BOR cannot act according to the needs of its constituents, then it has no business of governing the university any longer. (Johnson L. Santos Jr.)
Curtail the Board’s Powers
What we need not are bureaucratic extravagance and frivolous potency from those who exercise their power unjustly. (Frenzel Julianne P. Cleofe)
Reduce the Number of Regents
Reducing the number of regents from the government will ensure that the decisions to be made by the board will uphold UP’s academic freedom and institutional autonomy. (Sean Marcus L. Ingalla)
Retain but Reform the Board
A code of conduct is imperative in a governing body. Adopting this for the UP Board of Regents could compel them to act with integrity. (John Florentino J. Perez)
