"While the youth and the UP community receives this news with grief, we are angered by the arrogance of the regents who approved the proposed increase without properly consulting the students," said Karlo Mikhail Mongaya, Kabataan Sectoral Party-Cebu City chapter coordinator and chair of the UP Cebu College Student Council.
The decision of the UP Board of Regents did not include the votes of the faculty and student regents, who had sought for a public consultation with the students. The other regents reportedly did not heed the call for a dialogue with the thousands of students who barricaded the BOR meeting venue.
"The Malacañang-appointees in the BOR has clearly learned much from their masters in the art of approving anti-people proposals despite strong public outrage," Mongaya said.
"Like (President Gloria) Arroyo's postponement of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Summit due to the political storm brought by the railroading of Cha-cha, the UP administration cancelled the annual lantern parade intending to prevent students from joining protests against the said hike."
However, he stressed that unlike the PGMA-allied lawmakers who had heeded the outcry of the Filipino people against Cha-cha, the BOR proceeded to railroad the planned tuition hike in the face of the strong opposition by various sectors.
"We will not take this sitting down. This is an infringement to the basic right to education and a blatant manifestation of the commercialized nature of the Philippine educational system," said Mongaya.
"This is not only an issue of fee increases. More importantly, this is a result of the Arroyo administration's policy of slashing budget for UP and education in favor of militarization and onerous foreign debt payments," he added.
In January, the student council chair said, the BOR and the Arroyo administration may face another "First Quarter Storm," in obvious reference to the historical period in the 1970s that saw hundreds of thousands of students participating in daily demonstrations.
"The BOR has crossed the line. Now that the proposal has been approved, we will be leading massive protests for the scrapping of the much-hated anti-student measure," he said. - Jasmin R. Uy