• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro raised his concerns over the University of the Philippines’ (UP) governance and supervision of student activities, following the deaths of some of its students and alumni during armed clashes in recent years.
Teodoro visited on Saturday, May 23 the Philippine Army units that figured in two recent encounters in Negros Occidental, which resulted to the deaths of 24 New People’s Army rebels.
He said while UP has been described as a “laboratory” for learning and activism, such an environment should still be subject to regulation and oversight.
While he agrees on the claims the laboratory of UP is not merely in the classroom. Teodoro said “when you say laboratory, that does not mean to say you do not regulate the activities that students do”.
He stressed that a laboratory by definition is a controlled environment and “a school is principally and primarily liable for danger or damage to its students.”
In an earlier statement, UP appealed to the public to withhold judgment on the presence of its students in underserved communities.
It added that no UP student is limited to lessons learned within the classroom.
“We are not going to interfere academically, but certainly, when the activities of some of its students, are contrary to law,” Teodoro said.
Alyssa Alano of UP Diliman and Maureen Keil Santuyo of UP Open University died during the encounter in Toboso on April 19 while UP Cebu alumnus Vince Francis Dingding was killed during the clash in Cauayan on May 16.
Jhon Isidor “Dee” Supelanas, who also studied in UP Cebu, died in an encounter with soldiers in Kabankalan City last year.
All of them were members either of the League of Filipino Students or Kabataan partylist, according to the authorities.
The United Sugar Producers Federation (UNIFED) also strongly supported the call of Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson for schools to be more vigilant in monitoring their students amid allegations that most “recruitment” to join the insurgency movement are happening on campuses.
UNIFED president Manuel Lamata said the presence of student leaders in the Toboso encounter is evidence enough that the insurgency group have a strong presence in academic institutions.
“Sadly, many of them are even ‘scholars ng bayan,’ attending topnotch government funded universities,” Lamata said, adding that it is also incumbent upon the University of St. La Salle in Bacolod to investigate how one of their supposed student leaders ended up getting tagged as a member of the rebel movement.
Noting that recruitment in schools is not surprising and have been happening for decades, Lamata called on academic institutions to “strongly advocate among the students that there are democratic ways to air their grievances instead of being sympathetic or worse, join the rebel movement, that has been denounced not only locally, but internationally, as a terrorist group.” | GB
