The little we know

There have been lots of debate about the tragic story of Kristel Tejada, the student at UP Manila who took her own life. She was 16 years old, a freshman at the university and a major in Behavioral Sciences.

I’ve been generally uneasy about the simplistic conclusions that different groups have made over the motivations of Kristel’s suicide. “UP Student Kills Self Over Unpaid Tuition.” The statement alone seems like a very bold conclusion.

Suicide is a very sensitive and complex issue. We cannot even imagine the kinds of emotional turmoil that someone who is thinking of suicide has to go through, what more calling out the prime motivation for doing so. Perhaps even more curious, is that the blame is being pointed at a very specific system, the tuition fee payment system of the University of the Philippines. 

When truth is, we do not know much about Kristel. In fact, we do not know her at all, aside from the data that we’ve picked up from reports. We only know certain facts; that there are certain events that happened in her life during the time leading up to her suicide such as her difficulty with tuition fees to stay in school. We know that her family struggled with money. We know that because of the rules of payment in the university, she was forced to take a Leave of Absence. We know all of these as facts, but we cannot make the analogy between these and her suicide like simple cause and effect. We can call it out, that these were the things that she was going through, but the conclusion to define it as the main motivation, I think is being a bit rash. 

I bring it up because I am surprised that political groups have been fighting, even louder now, against the tuition fee system of the university, branding her suicide as prime example for their call of justice. This plight of political groups is long standing. They have been crying and fighting for this right of education for many years, even before I entered the university. They’ve been fighting for a long time against a system that has become more stringent in their payment terms. It is a plight that I personally admire and believe in, that they are fighting for the education of those who do not have it, that they speak for those who can’t. But to make the straightforward analogy of Kristel’s death and the failure of the school system, I find myself questioning if the connecting lines between the two are as clear as they make it seem to be.

The media has also taken to the same point of view in their headlines. Even if initially, news flash of Kristel’s suicide, allegedly due to her failure to pay tuition fee, was a story picked up from the Manila Collegian, UP Manila’s student publication. “Forced on leave for unpaid tuition, UP freshman commits suicide, says school paper,” reads one of the first national media headlines on this story.

The UP school publications have never really been shy about their political stands. Once understood in this context, it becomes a bit clearer to me the connection made between Kristel’s death and how responsibility of it is placed on the UP system. 

I’d think though that Kristel’s death has far more implications that are personal and confluent, that we may never know, and we may never understand. I find it unsettling that everyone has been throwing blame at each other in the name of the so-called motivations of a young girl. Motivations, unless outright stated, are hard to understand and can only be assumed and theorized.

According to media news reports, Kristel did leave a suicide note. But in the note, there is no mention about the failure of the school system. Instead, the note reads as a very disheartening goodbye, asking only for forgiveness and a short reminder about love.

It is true that the system of UP is difficult, sometimes unfair due to poor execution, especially with regard to the STFAP bracketing system of tuition fees. It is not wrong that we should question the system of the state university. We should question the education that is denied to students who do not have the means to pay. As mentioned, this is a long fight and it is about time that action steps are being made towards change.

At the same time, yes, we should mourn for Kristel. This is a deeply saddening and tragic story. Kristel is too young, at 16, to be disappointed and burdened by the harsh realities of the world that she found she could not handle. 

But the two issues I feel should be treated with some distance. And while we can make some correlations here and there, of the possibility that the system of UP had failed to hear the pleading cries of a young girl, that is all they will be. Our theories. Our fights. Our causes. Our interpretations of who in the picture plays villain to a victim, and who speaks loud enough to be called a hero.

While I listen to the speeches of political groups who are speaking out for Kristel, shedding tears for her and pointing angry fingers at a university system that they claim failed her, I am also reading about the people seated within the system. It seems the same grief and sympathy run through them, already accommodating changes to the system in hopes that this event will never happen again.

And while all of this is happening, and we can be glad that things are being done, I wonder who is curious about what Kristel really would have wanted herself. If anybody listened to her during the time she felt helpless, and I wonder what she would have wanted, what she needed to hear to make her feel that hope was not lost.

Whatever this is, I will never know. No one will ever really know. Thus, maybe when we choose to use Kristel’s name in our cries for justice, we simply cry for, and with her. We simply mourn for, and with her. And we grant her the peace that she rightfully deserves. And whatever issues may have risen, may have been realized from her death, we deal with in a separate battlefield.