On November 2, UP Diliman Chancellor Edgardo Carlo Vistan II rejected the request for an official wellness break for the unit. In the small contextless conversation we see from UP Diliman University Student Council Chairperson Buenaflor, we see him respond to the petition and request with “Status quo, in other words” stating rather bluntly that nothing will change about the academic calendar and our calls for compassionate changes are categorically denied.
As a result of these rejections, local college and unit councils started petitioning their College and Program Heads to extend compassion on a smaller scale if nothing on the University level would be done. However, these have had limited success. Indeed, further reinforcing Vistan’s initial position is the response by the UP DEPPO Director De Leon, who put out a rather atrocious response to the student clamor for a wellness break.
In the letter, he cites three reasons as to why a wellness break can not happen. First, he argues that the academic calendar had already been set by the University Council and would require their approval to change. Second, he states ‘too many’ disruptions have already interrupted the normal operation of classes and must be caught up with. Third, he points out that there are only five weeks left in the semester and he would prefer we not extend beyond these dates. He then goes on to suggest that students who simply can not cope take Leaves of Absences (LOA) or transfer to UP Open University.
I notice three interesting things about these responses.
First, it appears the University Council can not take account nor be fallible. When they set the schedule at the start of the year, it seems their word had become reified into this ‘correct’ idea of what the academic year should look like. Of course, unfortunately, they could not have possibly foreseen the outcomes of the transport strikes, nor the typhoons, nor the ongoing influenza outbreak. Students of all kinds have met challenges that they could not have possibly seen coming.
But indeed, instead of extending some kind of understanding about how the academic calendar has caused suffering, it is instead treated as an immutable fact of the universe, upon which the Council could not possibly reconvene or even momentarily reconsider, whether at their own hands or that of the Chancellor’s. Students’ incapacities are treated as their own errors and faults and the calendar merely is.
Second, it appears the pace of the University is non-negotiable.The University must maintain its calendar in the name of honor and excellence, after all, and its power to make changes about this definition… well, it must be limited. We must not intervene in the free market— I mean, the free-thinking space that is UP. If someone can not rise to its challenges, then surely it is from a lack of trying.
Such neoliberal character of the education system in UP is undeniable. The University drips with such decadent thoughts regarding students’ capacities, underlining their failures as their own, while treating its own decisions as unchanging and unfeeling “parts of the system”.
Third, it appears the University is made of machines. It seems everyone who has the power-in-name to do something have their hands tied and everyone who wants something to be done must succumb and submit to those who have that alleged power they can not exercise. It seems the cogs fit too tightly for any change to ever occur. And with nothing but goodwill and hope to grease the wheels, there appears to be nothing that can be done.
At the same time, those living in the University, students, faculty, and staff alike, are treated like machines whose only goals are compliance. Whose lack of basic services are just a symptom of their own lacking. Whose errors are misprogramming and unforgivable in the crushing boot of University perfection.
At the end of the day, the University has built itself into a tomb for student demands.Where flexibility and grace were once more liberal allowances, the University has hardened its positions over what is worth giving to students, faculty, and staff alike.
Yes, the University’s academic calendar is running short, but why must it run exactly that long anyway? On whose time do we live by? And why can’t it seem to make any mistakes? Why is the system so perfect that requesting for lenience is somehow our error? Why are students assumed to be lesser for not maintaining the demands of the University? Why must we forgo education entirely for needing a little more time or just a bit of mercy? What if I can’t take a LOA because I need to finish my degree program within my Maximum Residency Rule (MRR) period? Why does our education lose its excellence because it was not made difficult? Why the hell is UP Open University suddenly being treated as a refuge unit from face-to-face classes when nothing about its modalities is no less demanding from students? And what about wanting to be seen as human and being provided care and compassion is “entitlement”?
The wellness break is not just about having a break this semester. It’s also about the character of the University we’re in. It’s about fighting for a University that offers its students genuine compassion and grace for living lives that intersect with others. It’s about students who had to go on Leave because they got an autoimmune disorder. It’s about students who can’t afford to take a Leave because they lost their parents. It’s about students who can not afford another day of classes because their meds ran out and no one can help them fund their psychiatric appointments. It’s about students who lost to a house fire, who lost their pet over the semester, and whose father is trying to make ends meet at the transport strike.
What truly buries the honor of the University is its stubborn refusal to yield to humanity. The University instead acts as a cruel gatekeeper of knowledge and capacities, distinguishing and embodying the neoliberal character of the education it provides to its students by teaching its students as well as faculty that only through this neoliberal character that students can be truly excellent– because then they make excellent docile and obedient laborers, when they never complain about their conditions, when they never appeal to their needs, when they never wonder or ask for more than they have been pathetically meted out in their conditions.
Some people say the purpose of a system is what it does– that what happens under a system, no matter how abhorrent isn’t a mistake, but exactly what it is meant to do. If so, then the University has done a truly astonishing job of building a neoliberal nightmare of an education system for us to get trapped in. Our administration is doing an excellent job of instilling in constituents that despair. And our pleas falling on deaf ears is exactly as intended. The system makes no mistakes and our suffering under it is on purpose. It was made to force us into the neoliberal mold, even and especially at the cost of yourself.
Is this the character of education we want? Have we made a mistake building up the reputation of this system after all?
