UP Student Regent's Reply to Gonzales

Persisting as Social Critique: The University of thePeople

"Well-behaved" Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalesmaligns the University of the Philippines yet again,f or producing "destabilizers and naked runners".

As this gentleman's gentleman is entitled to his own opinion, U.P. is not required to respond, but precisely because it must, it will. The Universityhas the right and the responsibility to dissent.For how else may prove its worth? U.P. as an educational institution can only affirm itself when it puts theories into practice. Woe the day U.P. stops talking, commenting, and thinking--which is in contrast, the time Sec. Gonzales happily waits for, when U.P. performs its "true role" in government service.

U.P. is bound to defend Philippine statehood. Sec.Gonzales must understand that U.P. does indeed, in a manner that is idiosyncratic, sometimes abrasive, but always with best interest at heart. U.P. is a social critic, not a yes-man, so it will not ask permission or forgiveness when it says it like it is: government sucks. But U.P. is also an agent of change, which is why, in the same breath, it contributes thousands of its best graduates to help make government and society better.

I will now claim the privilege to opine: Sec.Gonzales is just rattled in his prude morality by streaking, in his occupational delusion by U.P.'s firm request for clear leads in Karen Empeño andSherlyn Cadapan's case. But I am disturbed that this is just half of the truth, and that the whole lies somewhere between the lines of the military's "Know the Enemy" and Oplan Bantay-Laya.

In the midst of all this name-calling and witch-hunting, I am sure the thinking populace is becoming more emboldened to stand up. I can find more than a thousand other U.P. students who would gladly wear a sign saying "destabilizer" just for the pleasure of driving a point through: what's wrong with it? If dissenting has destabilized anything, I am comforted one example is Marcos'regime.

He with the gall (and gallstones) to disapprove of academic freedom, Sec. Gonzales stands now a stalwart enemy--barring Gloria Arroyo herself--of human liberty. But God has been kind enough to also make him bigoted, for if he had more sense to comprehend the essence of the Oblation Run, he might have also joined these celebrated naked runners.

And surely, that would have been obnoxious.

Raffy Jones G. Sanchez

Student Regent

University of the Philippines System