Rallying point

Over the week, many incendiary comments have been made about the propensity of students attending the University of the Philippines to rally and protest and rail against the powers-that-be.

It is common when I meet people, and my UP educational background comes up, for them to comment on UP's student activism. I don't take the bait, because it is hard to explain to a non-UP alumni what it's really like inside. But, since social media has become so inflammatory about UP students, perhaps now is the time to take a crack at it

In UP, freshmen entering the campus are suddenly handed the reins of deciding what they want to do with their time. Here is your life and your future -do with it what you wish. That's such a different environment from their (my) strict religious/Catholic/convent school background, where every little second is accounted for.

There is class time, but some professors don't check attendance. The library and myriad facilities are there use them or not, as you wish. There are hundreds of organizations focusing on diverse interests and pleasures -pick what you want. Skip class and play sports or swim or watch a movie or drive to Tagaytay the university doesn't care. (I even joined the UP Computer Society even if my major wasn't computers and really, only because I wanted to play volleyball during the Engineering sportsfest. Oh. I wasn't an Engineering major either.)

That's the same principle, I guess, for the student radicalism that UP has now become notorious for. Those who have ideologies to propagate are free to talk to their peers. Those who have strong convictions are free to write in the student press or print pamphlets. And those who are around are free to listen and be convinced, and join the next rally. (I myself went to labor union strikes and performed tuladulas). Or to shrug their shoulders, walk over to the fashionista section of the campus, and gossip about the latest rage.

Of course, when crunch time comes and the day of reckoning arrives, the student gets judged according the professor's standards, whether it be recitation or final exams or a production piece or a composition. Those who fail, fail. Doesn't matter if the student burned the midnight candle or attended a vigil for extrajudicial killings.

That's pretty much what UP offers. Freedom of choice. The ability to exercise young minds -yes, perhaps still unformed- and select from competing choices. To make mistakes, and then to either get rewarded or not from those choices.

So I think -and this is offered in the humblest way possible- the conversation shouldn't be about whether UP, as an institution, is breeding dissenters or fomenting unrest. The conversation should be, what is out there, what is happening outside the campus and within society, that's convincing UP students that they have to attend to it first? That they have to take action against it? That they have to protest and rally? What's so vital and such a burning issue, that schoolwork becomes secondary?

Last time I checked, that was when democracy had been stolen, a dictator was in power, and heroes were being either incarcerated or assassinated in the airport.

‘What is happening outside the campus and within society, that's convincing UP students that they have

to attend to it first?’