UP Manila holds ID protest

MANILA, Philippines - University of the Philippines (UP) students and faculty members posted their school identification cards beside a poster-size copy of UP Manila student Kristel Tejada’s ID card as they launched yesterday an alliance to seek justice for Tejada, who committed suicide last week after failing to pay her tuition.

In a press conference at the Palma Hall in UP Diliman, the organizers of the Justice for Kristel Alliance said the ID protest symbolizes the plight of Tejada, a 16-year-old freshman behavioral science student, who was forced to surrender her ID card after she went on leave of absence. 

The alliance will hold various activities that will culminate in a vigil on Friday, the eve of Tejada’s burial.

They blamed the UP administration and Malacañang for Tejada’s suicide last March 15.

Student regent Cleve Arguelles said the government’s policy of pushing state universities to be self-sufficient served as a death sentence for Tejada.

“Instead of resorting to victim-blaming, the UP administration should take steps to ensure that we are not hindering qualified and intelligent students from receiving quality education,” said professor Ramon Guillermo of the Concerned Teachers and Educators for Nationalism and Democracy.

UP Diliman vice-chancellor for student affairs Marion Tan said the incident was not the problem of just Tejada’s family but also of other poor UP students. 

Professor Danilo Arao said the alliance was calling for the scrapping of the Student Tuition and Financial Assistant Program (STFAP) and campaigning for full state subsidy for UP.

“The review is within the framework of how to make it work,” Arao said. 

Students from Adamson University also launched protest actions against the continued commercialization of education in the country.

Members of the newly formed Stand Against Tuition and Miscellaneous Fees Increase in Adamson (STAND Adamson) denounced the 10 percent increase in tuition and another 10 percent increase for guidance, library and athletics fees that would be imposed next semester.

“Lest you forget, education is a right,” Jerson Madrona, spokesperson for STAND Adamson, said in a statement.

Since 2010 Adamson University has hiked tuition and various miscellaneous fees by an average of 15 percent, he said.

“We call on the administrators of Adamson to live up to the institution’s Vincentian orientation of charity for the poor. We ask them to veer away from this callousness against the plight of the students,” he said.

Migrante International, an overseas workers’ group, said workers understand the plight of the Tejada family because they too are suffering from high tuition. “Her tragedy is also our tragedy because we know all too well how it is to strive hard for their families to survive,” the group said. Migrante said overseas Filipino workers support the call to stop the increase in tuition and the prices of commodities that consumes the money remitted by workers to their families. They said President Aquino could actually do something to stop tuition and other price hikes if only he has the political will. 

Meanwhile, an official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) yesterday said even though Tejada took her own life last week, she would still be given the last rites before she is buried.

CBCP secretary-general Monsignor Joselito Asis admitted that he is not well versed on the facts of the case that led to the death of Tejada, but said “usually the Church is not strict on these matters.”

“I’m not aware if she was a Catholic, did she state in her suicide note that she was sorry, if she immediately died or if she was still taken to a hospital where there is a possibility she still had a few minutes to regret her action,” Asis said.

The church would also consider her state of mind. She should have full knowledge and been fully in control of her mind. - With Evelyn Macairan, Helen Flores, Mayen Jaymalin