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Rising violation of students’ rights in University of Baguio

Alliance of Concerned Students Against Campus Repression-UB

July 30, 2006

It has been almost a month since classes had started in the University of Baguio. Since then different issues concerning students have been heard. One recent issue is the arbitrary abolition of the Supreme Student Council.

Looking back last school year, the Supreme Student Council (SSC) devotedly served the students. SSC officers and representatives whom students legitimately voted through Student Body (SB) elections fought against the administration’s move for the increase of tuition and other fees. The SSC officers and representatives of different colleges and university-wide organizations catered to the students’ issues through dialogues, petitions and forums.

As a result of this great effort made by UB-SSC, students enjoyed the perpetual ID, conversion of the questionable Research Fee (a new fee collected from law students for the past two years) to a BAR operations fee and for non payment of student handbook for those who are neither freshmen nor transferees.

Because of this dedication to serve their fellow students, the SSC is now threatened to be abolished. It has come to the knowledge of different student leaders that SB election for this school year is exclusively for SB’s and does not include any vote for a Student Parliament (SP) representative. This is a clear violation of our student right for a centralized government wherein we can have representatives for our college and university-wide organizations.

The new guidelines for SB election, issued by the Office of Student Affairs (OSA), is without legal basis to speak of (with no Constitution and By-Laws to depend on). It is true that the students did not ratify the Constitution and By-Laws which is the basis for the SSC-SB election last July 2005 but the mere fact that this was ratified by the former Council of Governors (Academic Year 2004-2005) and was approved by the OSA and UB administration. Also, they recognized the existence of a Supreme Student Council headed by Mr. Carlo Lupian, as the present Prime Minister.

We, the students of UB, vehemently oppose this squid tactics of the OSA to abolish the SSC through a new set of guidelines for SB election. We also want to subject for discussion the legal basis of electing new set of officers from what was already legally practiced in the past in electing SB officers for each college.

Now, we call all our fellow student leaders and all UB students to assert the validity of the Constitution and By-Laws which was implemented last school year. We must assert our right that there should be an SP representative to be elected in each college. We call our beloved OSA and UB Administration to respect our right to have a Supreme Student Council through a parliamentary form of government. We appeal to the administration (especially the OSA) to stop harassing student leaders and repressing our student rights. #

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