Students against barred expression secure SC posts
by TomasinoWeb
During this year’s University elections, two students who agreed to activism were favored by students for their respective councils.
On May 16, Ma. Veronica Angela del Gallego from the Faculty of Pharmacy (FoP) won the vice-presidential post, bagging 51 percent more votes than her contender.
Del Gallego was in favor of the FoP supporting student activism as it can address the needs of their constituents more effectively. According to her, the students will benefit through a “marked resistance of old, unjust systems and an emergence of a free one.”
On Sept. 22, Carl Jeric Mataga, former Central Student Council (CSC) PRO candidate won as president of the College of Information and Computing Sciences (CICS) Student Council. He garnered 800 votes with 86 unanswered through a special election.
Similar to his campaign in the past CSC election, Mataga advocated for democratic rights, student welfare, and the safe resumption of face-to-face classes. For him, “by being pro-activism, it will empower his fellow students and the youth that have something to say about our issues today.”
Red-tagging of student leaders
Student leaders are no strangers to incidents of red-tagging. Some have been targeted for being members of unaffiliated organizations, resulting in their non-readmission for the next academic term.
On May 15, a former Senior High School Student Council head council was denied his good moral certificate due to being affiliated with a human rights organization and eventually barred from enrollment for the following academic year. (READ: Persecution, not activism, besets student leaders)
Mataga was also previously involved in a red-tagging incident. During the Tagisan 2021, he was instructed by the Office of Student affairs to change his protest Zoom background. (READ: CSC PRO, VP candidates call for anti-red tagging)
In an interview with TomasinoWeb, the two candidates shared that administrators should not fear student leaders who are vocal about the issues in and outside the corners of the University.
“We are, after all, an academic institution where our most important goal is that our students are educated in a healthy manner so that they may enter the workforce competent, compassionate, and committed,” Mataga said.
For Del Gallego, ‘red-tagging’ is an authoritarian strategy to hinder the disclosure of truth.
“They fear us because student leaders are capable of molding public opinion, especially since they are in a critical position to influence their constituents,” she said.
Either pro-activism or anti-student
Mataga made it clear that he has no plans on remaining neutral in politics, whether it be in his student council or in the wider Filipino society.
He also denounced those who deny youth involvement on matters that concern them.
“While it is true that students and student leaders alike are meant to study because it is their role as the youth and students to do so, it is also true that we were first and foremost born as Filipino citizens,’’ Mataga said. “It is our right and duty to practice our democratic rights for the betterment of our country.”
He further expressed that pro-activism would allow students to voice out their opinions on policies that would mainly affect them.
“It [is] important for student leaders to be pro-activism because the alternative is to be passive. Being passive would be fine in a world where the status quo is working well for all people, but that is not the case.”
Del Gallego preferred to follow in the footsteps of previous Filipino leaders who “deliberately professed and operationalized their love for the country and their countrymen.” She emphasized how these legacies cannot simply remain as history lessons.
“I could give a list of youth leaders who are written in our history books and those we can learn from, but their time has ended. Now it is our time, [as] present-day student leaders, to be pro-people and encourage our constituents to do the same,” said Del Gallego.
These sentiments were not shared by Artlets’ Student Council (ABSC) presidential candidate Denzelle Jude Caro, who asserted during the miting de avance of the Faculty of Arts and Letters (AB) that the safer option is to defend student rights through “the right channels” such as legal systems.
“I think that the lives of individuals should be protected first and foremost because that is the source of their morality and their ability to access other principles that they deem important for them,” said Caro.
Caro, who was initially proclaimed as ABSC president on Sept. 18, drew flak due to his statements.
A day after, the AB Comelec retracted the proclamation after he failed to gain a majority of the votes.
Bridging lapses with pro-activism
As miscommunications between the administration and students often hinder resolutions regarding students’ concerns, they, as leaders, fill in those lapses by engaging in discussions with administrators to effectively address and provide solutions for their fellow students’ worries.
In regards to what measures helped to ease the communication gaps, Del Gallego shared that the petition regarding the implementation of the Respondus Lockdown Browser distributed by the FoP Student Council opened a discussion between students and administrators on whether “to reconsider or defer its use.”
“It was successful since the faculty members decided to defer its use until sufficient research and training has been done,” she said.
It is still early for Mataga to say what he has done after a week of being elected, but he shared that he met with administrators alongside other council presidents.
“While I was only at the tail-end of the issue that was being discussed, I encouraged the administrators to keep talking to us, to keep talking to the student leaders and keep hearing us out,” he said.
He wished that “a stronger grievance system will be established, more sentiments from professors will be gathered, and more projects that benefit the whole ICS community will be started.”
Both student leaders plan to raise more public and political discussions, hoping to steer away from the apolitical natures their councils used to have before their respective elections.
