For the past weeks, I have been involved in the campaign of different youth organizations against Tuition and Other fee increases (TOFI). Last week, I was part of the group of students from all schools of Baguio who went to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to register our petitions against the various violations committed by school administrators regarding TOFI consultations in their respective territories.
The call was crisp and clear: CHED should take an active hand in regulating tuition hikes in the region. They can do this by strictly supervising the procedures by which school administrators make their TOFI proposals. They should ensure the proper implementation of CHED memo 13 – the memorandum they themselves drafted to serve as the key guideline for administrators in proposing TOFI.
TOFI is a curse to me, and at that, it is hard to forget. I belong to the batch that was first affected by the 300% TOFI last 2007 in the University of the Philippines (UP). Admittedly, that made me think very conscientiously regarding my decision to study in Baguio. Definitely, the probable expenses were my family’s primary consideration in deciding for my college education. Against embittered luck and with feigned conviction that everything is foreordained, I enrolled here anyway. First semester, June 2007: twelve thousand tuition fee.
At present, I am a graduating student. That should make me heave a sigh of what, perhaps fulfillment first, then relief. Four years of laboring to create academic papers, prepare for reports and field works and talking to dead thinkers just to go above mediocrity are surely worth-celebrating. However, the cause for celebration must likewise emanate from the near fulfillment of the idea that I will be able to graduate despite the cost of schooling in Baguio.
That is why I see activities like what we just did last week as very significant and meaningful. Activities like this provide a venue for students to do something about the schemes which apply in their concerned territories that primarily affect them. Activities like this give the youth and students the chance to avoid being completely under the control and jurisdiction of other people. Activities like CHED trooping can be a venue where we can negotiate our concerns with those supposed powers-that-be. This is one of many activities by which we can show them humbly and with bold confidence, the power, the youth wields and would not flinch in using that power.
We must not be hypocritical and fascinate ourselves with the idea that certain ideals like equality and freedom can blossom nicely out of the most ordinary circumstances without anyone doing anything for it to come about. Conflicts of interest are a given in the setting where we all operate and the idea that the powers-that-be will easily give in to our demands is only an illusion. To avoid being caught as losers in the web of conflicts, we must continuously assert our own stand, our collective voice.
Personally, the CHED trooping last week where I participated in was something that I felt like I should do, something that I should find no excuse for not doing. It is something that every student and youth must all engage in. It is one of the most basic ways by which we can act upon the difficult experience that affects all of us.
CHED is the most immediate government department where we must address our concerns regarding our right to education and we must be united and bold in doing so. We all know how the government is so flawed and corrupt and how it is becoming an utter failure in doing its job. Now, the task for all of us is to shake them, expose them that we know how blunderrous they have become and that we are dismayed.
We have to holler our complaints out loud, clear and firm. By asking for an open dialogue with the CHED regional officer, we can register our voice, present our grounds and the reasons for our action and demand from them what we want them to do. Telling or reminding them, what they should do only emphasizes how inefficient the present government is.
Ultimately, contradictions like that exist. Those who are lulled into their grand and cozy offices will always fall short of doing what they are supposed to do. They have their own interests to consider. But we also have ours. And we can never have full hold of our rights if we content ourselves just sitting in classroom corners or strolling along Session Road. Doing only that will keep us forever entrapped in a world where few people like government officials rule and benefit.
Source: nordis.net
The call was crisp and clear: CHED should take an active hand in regulating tuition hikes in the region. They can do this by strictly supervising the procedures by which school administrators make their TOFI proposals. They should ensure the proper implementation of CHED memo 13 – the memorandum they themselves drafted to serve as the key guideline for administrators in proposing TOFI.
TOFI is a curse to me, and at that, it is hard to forget. I belong to the batch that was first affected by the 300% TOFI last 2007 in the University of the Philippines (UP). Admittedly, that made me think very conscientiously regarding my decision to study in Baguio. Definitely, the probable expenses were my family’s primary consideration in deciding for my college education. Against embittered luck and with feigned conviction that everything is foreordained, I enrolled here anyway. First semester, June 2007: twelve thousand tuition fee.
At present, I am a graduating student. That should make me heave a sigh of what, perhaps fulfillment first, then relief. Four years of laboring to create academic papers, prepare for reports and field works and talking to dead thinkers just to go above mediocrity are surely worth-celebrating. However, the cause for celebration must likewise emanate from the near fulfillment of the idea that I will be able to graduate despite the cost of schooling in Baguio.
That is why I see activities like what we just did last week as very significant and meaningful. Activities like this provide a venue for students to do something about the schemes which apply in their concerned territories that primarily affect them. Activities like this give the youth and students the chance to avoid being completely under the control and jurisdiction of other people. Activities like CHED trooping can be a venue where we can negotiate our concerns with those supposed powers-that-be. This is one of many activities by which we can show them humbly and with bold confidence, the power, the youth wields and would not flinch in using that power.
We must not be hypocritical and fascinate ourselves with the idea that certain ideals like equality and freedom can blossom nicely out of the most ordinary circumstances without anyone doing anything for it to come about. Conflicts of interest are a given in the setting where we all operate and the idea that the powers-that-be will easily give in to our demands is only an illusion. To avoid being caught as losers in the web of conflicts, we must continuously assert our own stand, our collective voice.
Personally, the CHED trooping last week where I participated in was something that I felt like I should do, something that I should find no excuse for not doing. It is something that every student and youth must all engage in. It is one of the most basic ways by which we can act upon the difficult experience that affects all of us.
CHED is the most immediate government department where we must address our concerns regarding our right to education and we must be united and bold in doing so. We all know how the government is so flawed and corrupt and how it is becoming an utter failure in doing its job. Now, the task for all of us is to shake them, expose them that we know how blunderrous they have become and that we are dismayed.
We have to holler our complaints out loud, clear and firm. By asking for an open dialogue with the CHED regional officer, we can register our voice, present our grounds and the reasons for our action and demand from them what we want them to do. Telling or reminding them, what they should do only emphasizes how inefficient the present government is.
Ultimately, contradictions like that exist. Those who are lulled into their grand and cozy offices will always fall short of doing what they are supposed to do. They have their own interests to consider. But we also have ours. And we can never have full hold of our rights if we content ourselves just sitting in classroom corners or strolling along Session Road. Doing only that will keep us forever entrapped in a world where few people like government officials rule and benefit.
Source: nordis.net
