[The following manifesto will be distributed in different UP campuses to be signed by students.]
TO: The Honorable Members of the Board of Regents
Enough is enough. As months idly pass by without starting discussions on tuition policies in the University's highest decision-making body, we are left only to speculate on whether we will face the same unjust, regressive, and flawed tuition scheme in the next semester.
As early as March, during the height of controversy on the University's Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP), proposals to reform the program have already been submitted by Bukluran ng mga Progresibong Iskolar - UP System to the Board of Regents (Policy Recommendations on the STFAP and Other Tuition Policies, "Appendix B"). These proposals were intended to complement reforms prepared by former OSSS OIC Asst. Prof. Richard Philip Gonzalo (Proposal to Revise the STFAP and Student Financial Assistance Services of UP, January 2013) which were a product of numerous workshops and consultations.
Both proposals detailed mechanisms to adjust existing STFAP brackets, make bracket assignment more efficient through decentralization, and ensure that brackets reflect the actual financial capacity of students to pay for the assigned tuition rates. In April, the Board of Regents met and came up with nothing more than a policy statement that no student should be deprived of education in UP on the sole basis of financial incapacity. Actual deliberations on possible tuition reforms were deferred for the next Board meeting. Come June, discussions were once again delayed.
The situation becomes more frustrating if we consider the fact that, as early as 2007 or shortly after the current STFAP was approved, we already submitted proposals to revise the STFAP (UP ALYANSA’s OpenLetter on the Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP) andTuition Increase, "Appendix C"). As early as then, we already pointed out the unjust bracketing system and raised the idea of "delayed paying schemes."
The same proposals were adopted in 2008 (STFAP: Paid Under Protest!, "Appendix D"), adding that the OSSS was administratively unprepared and incapacitated to faithfully implement socialized tuition and that the STFAP, despite its background of years of study, must be regularly reviewed. In 2012, barely a year before the tragedy of Kristel Tejada, we again raised the same proposals, that time additionally calling for transparency in bracket assignments (Policy and Procedure Recommendations for STFAP, June 2012). Indeed, as the years pass by, the injustices of the existing STFAP only become more and more apparent and only more and more exacerbated.
Six years since the adoption of the current STFAP, we have been met with nothing but refusal to even start discussions on crucial and urgent reforms in our tuition scheme. We have had enough. For years, we have waited in long queues for too long, waited for results of our bracket appeals that are regularly released late and beyond periods of payment, waited for bracket assignments that do not match our actual financial capacity, having been skewed by odd and outdated factors.
The entire point of reforming the STFAP is to institute urgent and crucial solutions to immediate problems now. The government must be blamed for its inadequacies in providing sufficient subsidy for education, but if we cannot look for ways to immediately address problems in our own tuition policies, if we cannot make socialized tuition work, we have no one else to blame but you. You, whose honorable title cannot be separated from the mandate to serve this University's largest sector of stakeholders - more than 50,000 UP students pleading for help, asking for relief, crying against injustice in the present tuition policies. Will you refuse to listen to us? Will you set aside years of our relentless struggle by simply waiting it out?
Shall this be our fate - that, as students of this University, the status of which as a national university is as prominent as its reputation for long queues and delays, we shall wait and wait? How many more of us must helplessly endure four or more years of unheard cries against the unjust, regressive, and flawed tuition scheme, only to graduate without even the slightest empathy from you? Shall we wait for another tragedy, another death, another moment of national humiliation on TV and broadsheets, for that prompting shock to make you act, and act swiftly?
The discussions on proposals for crucial STFAP reforms must start now. Not next month, when there will have been less time to carefully deliberate on possible reforms. Not next semester, when we will have incurred loans after being assigned to wrong brackets. Not next year, when you will have been judged for an entire year of doing nothing.
We will not let you delay any further.
Fight for quality and accessible education!
Reform the STFAP now!
