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It’s only
been two years, but our shared occupation compels us
to maintain close links with each other; our shared
motivation obliges us to work together. Admittedly,
outside this high-perched office we sometimes call home,
we move in social circles so different a chance encounter
would be difficult. Yet, within this 85-year old institution,
we’ve come to share similar experiences, tolerate
each other’s idiosyncrasies, and forge unusual
ties. And though you may scoff at my sentimentality,
I am honestly saddened by your goodbye.
How we’ve changed in our short period together.
Looking back, it seems we were mere children, inexperienced
and unseasoned. Yet, writing is a demanding discipline.
At the behest of our editors, we had to learn to be
discerning and critical. Did you foresee what kind of
battles we would be asked to fight, what sacrifices
we would later make? If not, neither did I.
When Meg stated that every day was a constant struggle,
I didn’t quite understand. I suppose I was still
constrained by the dictates of bourgeois ideology –
a pastel world of comfort, laughter and consumption,
where battles are often individualistic and rarely protracted.
In time, our still dull political consciousness was
sharpened by the rigors of the drafting process. Connections
had to be made, hidden interests had to be exposed,
and conflicting sides had to be identified. Like a person
suddenly cured of blindness, the first rays of light
can be confusing, painful.
For each assigned article was an agitation, revealing
previously held realities as historical mythologies,
exposing natural relations as imposed organization.
In the course of our writing, traditional beliefs were
challenged and discarded as we saw for ourselves the
concealed interests that swathed seemingly innocuous
events. It is in this lucidity that we finally understood
the personal as political, and subsequently, a site
of struggle.
Drawing from our new understanding, we negotiated lines
of contestation – writing, after all, is a form
of argumentation. Here, we learned to argue, not for
ourselves or for individuals, but for the majority.
Here, we learned of struggles that lie beyond the confines
of our personal interests; struggles that cannot be
won in one lifetime but nonetheless must be fought in
our time and by our generation.
Ours is a small yet decisive moment in this protracted
battle. Into the two-pronged confrontation, therefore,
where one front inhabits the physical and the other
occupies the consciousness. As writers, we commonly
take the latter realm, though some choose to tread both
fronts.
Armed only with our understanding, critical analysis
is our most incisive weapon. So we muster what strength
we have to plow through the mundane necessities of writing,
each article a penetrating critique of the asymmetrical
system. Unfailingly, we take the side of the students
and the marginalized, vigilantly guarding against their
further dispossession. That is why we exist; we are
the foot soldiers at the frontlines of the battle for
liberation.
Thus, we reject the ideology of objectivity, because
to claim that journalism is objective is to obfuscate
the values that shape journalistic practice and the
interests that pervade the profession. We oppose the
notion of neutrality, for even the very right to freedom
of expression and the press was won by the people’s
political struggles. Rather than provide a liberating
account of events, objectivity and neutrality are myths
that constrain the possibilities of resistance.
Through the course of two years, we’ve won small
yet significant victories, enough to arouse the students’
consciousness before they are completely usurped behind
enemy lines. In your departure, remember the battles
we fought and continue to fight; and in your own capacities,
extend the struggle beyond the walls of Vinzons 401.
# Philippine Collegian
*For Mini and Tofi
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Demolition of communities
in the university is an old story, with the UP administration,
for all its touted compassion and benevolence, ordering
such policies at the expense of violating people’s
rights.
Last
week, at least 150 market vendors and workers were demanded
to vacate their stalls at the UP Wet & Dry
Market to give way to the Commonwealth road widening
project. Refusing to negotiate, the administration said
the vendors’ operations are not covered by any
legal contract and that they are not “regular
tenants” of UP. Like other “informal settlers”
in Ricarte, Palaris and Dagohoy (RIPADA), and San Vicente,
the administration consistently refused to accept that
it has responsibility for providing relocation to affected
individuals and families.
Meanwhile, one thing is for sure
at this moment. During the three-year rule of President
Emerlinda Roman, the administration has intensified
the destruction of communities that has caused massive
dislocation of urban poor families and loss of livelihood.
For the administration, the goal is obvious: destroy
communities and lease the reclaimed land to big corporations
as part of UP’s income generation schemes, such
as the call centers and other commercial establishments
being developed by the Ayala Corporation in the supposed
Science & Technology Park along Commonwealth.
On the one hand, it serves as a
mere band-aid solution against informal settling or
knee-jerk reaction to the rising number of crimes in
the university. The administration, like the way it
resigns itself from calling for greater state subsidy,
turns a blind eye in demanding the government to address
the lack of public housing. Instead it is the very administration
that agrees to use part of its land to build government
projects that, sadly, would not be used by the displaced
people.
Demolition plans, on the other
hand, become the administration’s explicit strategy
for projecting “modernity” through replacing
the communities with infrastructure developments. Destroying
communities is also a tacit way of showcasing the university’s
“aesthetic value” in an effort to obfuscate
the surrounding dirty shanties and the glaring poverty
around it. Such aspiration clearly presents its entrenched
elitist nature.
By looking at the issue in a larger
context, the demolition of communities is a symptom
of the pervading feudal society within which the university
is existing. The administration, having “ownership”
of these disputed properties, can just “reclaim”
its lands from those the administration believes to
be trespassers. Last week, when I asked Nanay Heidi,
a carinderia owner, how the administration treats them,
she pointed, “Ganito na lang ba kami kallit?”
Her remark clearly expresses the alienating situation
that they must endure to fight for their rights.
By destroying the informal settlers’
livelihood and communities, the administration as the
central seat of power in UP has violated the rights
of these underprivileged urban settlers who have long
lived within the university’s peripheral spaces
which mark their marginalized status. It is therefore
not hard to grasp why UP communities are easily regarded
as outside the university’s mainstream “academic
community” and why the administration consistently
turns down the idea of a community regent as a member
of the Consultative Assembly to replace the colonial
Board of Regents.
Indeed,
land is power; landesslessness is powerlessness. It
is this reason that perhaps the administration does
want to lend part of its land not to the informal settlers,
but to the big, wealthy corporations. For no matter
how we see the administration’s plans, the point
is that they are the marginalized masses whom the iskolars
ng bayan should defend and serve.# Philippine
Collegian
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