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SAKBAYAN, onward with 15 years of genuine student representation

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 16:24:55 +0100

Since its foundation on July 1, 1996 as an alliance of then 25 organizations, fraternities and sororities with a common interest for advancing a pro-people and pro-student education, Samahan ng Kabataan para sa Bayan (SAKBAYAN) remains the widest alliance of student organizations in the whole UP System with more than 50 member organizations to date.

Despite the continuous and direct assault on students’ democratic rights, our alliance, together with the broadest ranks of students and progressive sectors in the university, remains unwaveringly committed to our noble cause of genuine service as “Iskolar ng Bayan”.

For fifteen years, our alliance, backed by the students and the people, has always been the perfect manifestation of success through collective action. In 1997, we were successful in scrapping the then proposed dormitory fee increase in the university. Two years later, we have ousted the anti-student administration of then OSA Director Vivian Gonzales. Moreover, our alliance led more than 5,000 students in our campaign to overthrow the corrupt Estrada Regime in 2001. Recently, we have succeeded in uniting more than a thousand students in UPLB to fight against Large Lecture Class Policy (LLCP) as a commercialization scheme to education.

Consistently, SAKBAYAN pursues the interests of the students whose rights for accessible and quality education have been stepped upon for more than fifteen long years.

As we continue to face repressive actions from the part of the administration, posing insults to our most basic right to education, manifested in the recent STFAP Rebracketing and Tuition Fee Increase, Budget Cut, Large Lecture Class Policy, Dorm Fee Increase and stringent Org Recognition Policies, history will attest to the veracity and validity of our cause. The ever expanding membership of our alliance is a truly tangible proof that our cause and struggle reflects the genuine interests of the students and the people.

Our alliance triumphantly led a 15-year struggle against commercialization and campus repression. As commercialization and fascism become glaring realities we each have to face in the university, dissent and protests becomes imperative for the scholars of the people.

We are ready, more than ever, to make history for another fifteen years of genuine student representation and united struggle against commercialized education!

LUMALAKAS, LUMALAWAK, LUMALABAN, SAKBAYAN!

STFAP Rebracketing, another form of Tuition Fee Increase

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 16:19:38 +0100

Come enrolment period, parents and students alike face the huge burden of sky-rocketing fees in education. In UPLB, this is a result of the amalgamation of different state mechanisms and university policies with the purpose of absolving government responsibility to education, taking the form of Education Budget Cut, Large Lecture Class Policy, Dorm Fee Increase, and the current re-bracketing in the Subsidized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program, known to all as STFAP.

Through STFAP, students are classified in Alphabetic Brackets (A, B, C, D, E) based on their family’s annual income. Such classification determines the cost of education they are set to pay in the university. It operates under the principle of social justice, maintaining that “those who can pay should pay more, those who cannot shall be subsidized”. However, the administration’s collection of about P500 million and a meager P25 million expenditure for STFAP beneficiaries from 2007-2009 clearly attests that such tuition scheme is only an instrument for the university to earn from the students whom they are supposed to serve.

When STFAP was first introduced to the University of the Philippines in 1989 to justify the then impending tuition increase from P30 to P200 per unit, students knew right away that it is the university’s mechanism to amass more income to compensate for the budget supposedly received from government subsidy. True enough, its re-bracketing in 1994 raised tuition to P300 per unit, and in 2007, to P1000 per unit. This goes to show that STFAP is never separate to the bigger issue that is Tuition and other Fee Increase.

Currently, another re-bracketing is set to be implemented for all UP systems. From the default Bracket B where incoming students pay P1000 per unit, freshmen students will now have to pay P1500 per unit, as the default bracket is moved to Bracket A. This re-bracketing is just but another form of Tuition Increase for the country’s premiere state university.

SAKBAYAN and other student institutions like the University Student Council have continually supported the studentry in strongly opposing the STFAP. More than two decades since its implementation, we have never been wrong in saying that the issue is not the "rich providing for the poor", but has always been government neglect to education.

There is a greater necessity for a united struggle to expose and oppose anti-student policies now that we face greater state neglect and commercialization policies. Through our unified actions against state-abandonment of education, let us bear witness that social justice in education can only be attained in the absence of pretentious reforms to education. Social Justice is Right to Education!

JUNK TOFI!

SCRAP STFAP!

ASSERT FOR HIGHER STATE SUBSIDY!

SAKBAYAN: TOWARDS A STRONGER ALLIANCE

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 16:24:14 +0100

SAKBAYAN: TOWARDS A STRONGER ALLIANCE

This academic year started with a blast for SAKBAYAN, the widest alliance of student organizations in the whole UP System. With nearly 50 organizations who supported our service advocacy for the new “ISKOLAR NG BAYAN”, we succeeded in pushing forth two programs as the academic year commenced: “2011 Freshmen Enrollment Helpdesk Program” and “ISKOPEDIA: Encyclopedia na Laan sa mga Bagong Isko”.

Together with the University Student Council and Student Councils from CEAT and CEM, SAKBAYAN launched its “2011 Freshmen Enrollment Helpdesak Program” and set-up four booths around campus (CA, OUR, Hum, SU) during the freshmen enrollment period as part of its “SERVE THE PEOPLE BRIGADE”.

On the other hand, ISKOPEDIA was launched during the “AlmOSAlan” last June 8. It contains relevant information every “Iskolar ng Bayan” is set to face inside the university, primary are pressing issues in the education sector like the recent re-bracketing of the Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP), Dorm Fee Increase, Large Lecture Class Policy (LLCP) and Budget Cut in education, among others.

Our success in these two endeavors is a clear manifestation that there are bigger gains through our collective action. Indeed, our biggest gain comes from successfully laying down the foundations of what UP Education is to the new scholars of the people. Despite repressive policies from the part of the administration, hindering even the students’ basic and democratic right to organize, you have served as the rightful models every student organization should emulate by standing for what is truly, the core of UP education, that is, SERVICE.

Let us continue to unite in protecting the rights and welfares of the studentry. For a stronger alliance, carry our deepest gratitude as you fight with us in pushing forth our fight against commercialized education.

JUNK TOFI!

SCRAP LLCP!

NO TO DORM FEE INCREASE!

UP EDUCATION---From the People, To the People

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 16:27:15 +0100

UP EDUCATION---From the People, To the People

For more than a century, the University of the Philippines boasted of its unrivaled dedication to providing its constituents quality education through instilling academic freedom, critical thinking and accessible education. Hence, nothing compares to the very rewarding feeling one gets after passing the UPCAT and besting thousand others who likewise dreamed of a UP Education.

Being a state university, the University of the Philippines is subsidized by the state, supposedly to cater to competent youths who could not suffice a university education because of financial incapacities. This being so, a UP student is thus called “Scholar of the People”. They are students who are subsidized by the taxes the state receives from its laborers, government workers, and businessmen who, despite more pressing needs amidst continuing increases in oil and commodity, give a chunk of their revenues for educating Filipino youths.

Oblation, which is a prominent figure in UP, best embodies how a student should view a UP Education. Oblation, which means “self-sacrifice”, truly reminds students that education is not merely for one’s selfish needs and aspirations. Instead, it entails sacrificing our individual preferences for a greater cause, that is, being of service to the “people” who once sacrificed their personal comforts just so we be provided of a much-coveted UP education. A UP student is set apart from other students such that it sees itself never separate from the masses, never contented with the proud notion of "ISKOLAR PARA SA BAYAN". They remain firm that the real score of service is being one with the masses, experiencing their miseries first-hand, and not being atop ivory towers regarding oneself "separate" from the people. Being an "ISKOLAR NG BAYAN" both acknowledges the fact that our education is FROM and FOR the masses.

While our much coveted education is supposedly accessible, if not free, being among the people’s constitutionally guaranteed rights to a healthy and fulfilled form of life, the current administration continues to play deaf on the needs of the education sector. For this fiscal year, the Aquino administration slashed the budget of State Universities and Colleges (SUC’s) by 1.7%, from P.23.8 billion in 2010 to 23.4 billion, citing that SUC’s could raise their own funds through private partnerships, thus directly manifesting state-abandonment of education. UP alone faces P.1.39 billion budget cut, resulting to even more commercialization schemes as the newly-approved Dorm Fee Increase, among already existing University Policies as Large Lecture Class Policy (LLCP) and Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP).

In response to the Aquino administration’s move on making students bear the brunt of poor government subsidy, students from all over the country marched the streets in protest of the biggest budget cut in the history of education. While such marks the even more appalling state of education in the country, and more particularly, how a UP Education proves to be all the more necessary, it also tells of victory. Students who have chosen the streets to register their right to education found themselves victorious after the senate approved an increment to the then deducted education budget.

Indeed, freshmen students ought to take pride in being chosen as the next Scholars of the People.They are chosen to bear the torch of a united and continuing struggle against commercialized education. Truly, there is no other way but assert for what is rightfully ours.

SCHOLARS OF THE PEOPLE, UNITE!

ASSERT FOR GREATER STATE SUBSIDY!

SCRAP LLCP!

NO TO DORM FEE INCREASE!