Training crooks and murderers

It is horrible we are losing around P700 billion, or around 20 percent of the country’s total budget yearly due to corruption, according to Deputy Ombudsman Cyril Ramos. That, he said, ranks us the 6th most corrupt among Asia Pacific countries.

Now, it seems that taxpayer money is also being wasted in the country’s top educational institutions, my alma mater the University of the Philippines and the Philippine Military Academy. Both institutions are involved in recent cringeworthy scandals.

We have all heard about the death through torture of a PMA plebe. Anyone who has read accounts of how this young man died, notably his diary, can’t help feel that the PMA is teaching its cadets or condoning the black art of torture and murder.

Passing electricity on the plebe’s private parts… that sounds like the stories we have heard of how Metrocom Intelligence tortured activists during the Marcos martial law years. Dreadful to think PMA has passed that on to today’s cadets.

As for UP, news reports have it that its president has overruled the faculty of the School of Economics over a case of cheating students. Cheating in an academic setting is intellectual dishonesty, a mortal sin. That the UP president is condoning it is simply lousy academic governance.

If the UP Board of Regents allows this to happen, the reputation of UP is at stake. This cheating case and its handling by the UP president puts to question UP’s adherence to its motto of “Honor and Excellence.”

The case seems pretty much cut and dried. Based on published reports, some students cheated at an examination. Other students saw the act of dishonesty and bore witness to it to a faculty member.

The matter was brought to the attention of the dean, who formed a College Disciplinary Committee (CDC).  

After a three-month inquiry, the CDC found the accused students guilty of cheating and made its recommendations, which the dean adopted and forwarded to UP Diliman’s Executive Committee, led by the chancellor and comprising all deans of the colleges.

The executive committee approved the findings and recommendations and sent these to UP president Danilo Concepcion. The UP president reversed the verdict on one student and sat on the cases of the other two.

The UPSE was instructed to reinstate the withheld grade of the first student, which would have allowed the student’s name to be included in the list of candidates for graduation.

But the UPSE faculty members signed an appeal to the Board of Regents seeking a reversal of the UP president’s decision. They cited the 2012 Code of Student Conduct which, among other things, states the fundamental principle that incidences of intellectual dishonesty are to be “managed exclusively by academic peers…

“By casting doubt on the capacity of academic colleagues even to act as ‘reasonable minds’ in judgment over academic issues, the president’s decision erodes the faculty’s power to assess and to discipline students and sends a signal to students — particularly to potential witnesses — that truth-telling, honest work, and holding oneself and one’s peers to account will be unappreciated and not worth the trouble…”

Condoning cheating at UP sends the message that truth and integrity don’t count. This is dangerous specially in an era when truth is elusive and alternative truths abound.

I agree with the observation of the Inquirer editorial: “To condone cheating is to breed crooks — the sort that would in the future see no harm in, say, skimming off the top of a public works contract or in making a pile at Customs.”

Yuk! My alma mater is now training and breeding future crooks!

But not too fast. It is only the UP president that’s problematic here. The UP academic community has united in a University Council resolution. There is strength of conviction behind the opposition to the UP president’s decision regarding this case of cheating.

There is a formidable opposition: UPSE dean and faculty members, its Student Council and all eight of its student organizations, along with the UP Diliman Student Council and the League of College Councils.

In fact, the UP academic community has one other beef with the UP president. Apparently, their rigorous screening process for candidates to be deans of colleges was ignored by the UP president. Worse, individuals deemed not academically qualified, no PhD among others, are being named.

I guess that’s the problem when a politician becomes UP president. Danny Concepcion has no academic roots. Then again, the late Sen. Ed Angara was also a politician with no academic roots, but the difference is, Ed respected the academic community.

Here is the position of the University Council:

“…a Dean is, first and foremost, an academic leader, if not first among equals, then, at the very least, a model of honor and excellence in the discipline…

“These UP president and BOR’s actions and decisions give the unfortunate impression that political connections carry inordinate weight in the appointment of Dean and that the requirement of scholarship and professional recognition may be waved aside…”

Danny has been misreading the UP academic and student community from the start. Remember how he invited Imee Marcos and had to backtrack when he got a sharp rebuke from the UP community.

Our investments in UP and the PMA matter because we need the future leaders they are training.

 The cost of producing one PMA graduate is about P2.982 million, according to Sen Ralph Recto, a number he reached based on the previous four years’ appropriations and reported number of cadets admitted.

As for UP, the cost is P507,000 to produce a graduate of a four-year course. The data is based on the UP system budget, less the appropriations for PGH, a UP unit, Recto explained.

That’s a lot of money that should be spent well to produce future leaders we can trust and be proud of. UP and the PMA cannot be allowed to produce crooks and murderers.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco