Six Incomplete Years
By Milagros Remedios Dasmariñas
Entering the university as a starry-eyed freshman who had not yet developed coffee dependence, I had visions of meeting student leaders I could not only look up to, but also fight alongside. I could not help but expect this after hearing stories from UP alumni about their time at university, some of whom had lived through the dark days of Martial Law and turbulent times like EDSA Dos.
During my first year, it seemed reality was aligned with what I had imagined. The University Student Council (USC) and my college council conducted frequent room-to-room campaigns to help us freshies learn the ropes, inviting us to educational discussions and mobilizations. They even opened their general assemblies to the public so we could see they practiced what they preached about, demanding transparency from elected officials. I never ran for office, but I still felt I was part of something beyond the daily routine of classes, CAS library naps, and D’Cream coffee runs. I even considered joining the council’s volunteer corps.
The first signs of disaster began to show towards the end of the second semester when most candidates for USC councilor lost to abstention. Like a character in any disaster movie or political thriller, I dismissed this as a coincidence, maybe bad luck. Sometimes these things happen, I told myself as we prepared to hold special elections.
When the special elections led to another disappointing outcome, debate erupted over provisions I had never seriously considered, like the validity of abstaining and even of specific candidates’ right to assume their posts. As terms like “50%+1” showed up on my socials for the very first time, I experienced another first: seeing how ugly campus politics can get.
I have never thought of myself as uncritical or naive, or as one who puts others on a pedestal. But when people I thought very highly of accused each other of opportunism in very public feuds, I realized an idealistic part of me still believed student leaders are people of a higher mold. I retreated into the simplistic analysis that UP is a microcosm of Filipino society and that sometimes, these things happen.
Efforts were made to revive student participation, but when campus politics began to show signs of recovery, UP Manila was hit by the plague of COVID-19. As classes shifted online, our priorities shifted, too. Ensuring our health and safety amid the lockdowns and keeping up with Canvas notifications became at the top of our minds, and campus politics became a distant third (if that) in our responsibilities.
For many, especially those who entered and graduated from UPM without ever witnessing a full USC, campus politics is in its death throes, and the pandemic is a blow from which it never fully recovered. In my moments of pessimism, I sometimes think similarly. I have experienced full face-to-face classes pre-pandemic, a fully remote setup during the pandemic, and a gradual return to on-site activities. Still, I experienced a fully functioning USC with all positions filled for only one year of the seven I have spent here. It has been six incomplete years: not just because of the lack of candidates but because a significant experience of university life — a student council I trust to represent me in our struggles on and off campus — has been missing from my stay in UP Manila.
As I have voted in every UPM election and always take time to learn about the USC candidates however I can, I often feel tempted to blame other students for their perceived apathy or ignorance. When we fall into this trap, we apply the ugly “bobotante” narrative to the University as we sometimes apply it to those on the other side of the political barbed wire. When we do this, we victim-blame other students the same way we victim-blame the masses for society’s ills without examining why some ordinary Filipinos vote against their interests or do not even bother to vote.
While there is some basis to the idea that UP is a microcosm of Filipino society, this does not enrich our understanding of students’ rights and welfare. While UP cannot be separated from our other deeply flawed institutions, assuming a 1:1 correspondence between the state of the university and the state of the nation is problematic.
For one, the existence of student councils is not an extension of the semi-colonial, semi-feudal state apparatus but a result of the struggle against it. While our interests will never intersect with those of landlords and bureaucrat-capitalists who dominate national politics, we will always be able to find common cause with our equally oppressed fellow students. Equating our student leaders — however much we may disagree with their actions and stances — with our oppressors is not only unfair but intellectually dishonest and needlessly divisive when we share a common burden.
Worse, it alienates us from our fellow students. It leads us to believe they are disinterested in campus politics simply because they are apathetic. While it is valid to feel frustrated, taking this line of thought too far and applying it uncritically to everybody leads to us pointing fingers at each other when repressive policies like the Return Service Agreement (RSA) are not junked by the administration, when student services remain inaccessible, when our organizations struggle to receive funding. This is an unfair burden to impose on each other when none of us asked to be in this situation, and it also diverts anger away from the real villains in this story: the powerful who trap us in a neoliberal education system that sees us as cheap labor and who benefit from us tearing at each other’s throats because it distracts us from uniting against them.
While conflict will be part of national politics so long as we live under the current system, they do not have to plague campus politics. While our experience at university is transitory (even for those who are delayed like me), we will always carry a shared burden and have an inherent solidarity as students. We study in the same crowded classrooms, are trapped by the same commercialized policies, and are redtagged by the same state forces. While students will never be a monolith, this kinship forged by shared circumstances is something we will never have with traditional politicians.
Finally, calling UP a microcosm of Filipino society obscures the fact that the lack of student participation is not the disease itself but a symptom of a bigger problem. This “apathy” is not a personal flaw but is rooted in a lack of academic freedom under neoliberal education — one that leads to us seeing the university not as a site for meaningful engagement with one another and with our society but as a place to get a degree so we can earn money. If bread and butter issues — the fundamental right to education and basic needs like accessible food and housing on campus — are not addressed, then it’s no wonder student participation is suffering. How can I make time to attend the miting de avance and study the platforms of different candidates and political parties if most of my waking hours are consumed with academics, duty, long commutes, or even working to supplement my parents’ income?
Some believe abolishing certain provisions in the electoral code is a solution. Others feel differently. I have no specific recommendations, not because I’m a fence-sitter, but because there are no easy answers when the lack of academic freedom is not an easy problem to solve. All I can say as a once idealistic freshman and now exhausted senior who still clings to hope is that turning on our fellow students when we’re in the same sinking ship will never be a solution. When we do so, we miss opportunities to turn our vitriol towards our real enemy: the fascist state that prefers us divided and easily picked off rather than united to demand our rights and challenge its power.
