The University of the Philippines is more popularly known as a bastion of activism. But perhaps unknown to many, the vast majority of students, faculty, non-academic personnel and administrators aren’t activists. For most of its history and even until now, UP is actually a very pro-Establishment institution. In fact, it is a pillar of the establishment, providing batch upon batch of government officials, business leaders, intellectuals and other professionals that uphold the status quo.

Things changed in the 1950s when students rebelled against a modern-day inquisition that sought to demonize anti-establishment ideas inside the university. UP soon became one of the two main centers of activist discussions and activity (the other being Lyceum of the Philippines in Intramuros) as many members of the community gravitated towards the cause of national democracy and carried the demand for national, scientific and mass-oriented education.

Not that the student rebellions of the 1960’s to the 1970’s changed the very nature of UP. National democratic activism reinvigorated UP and infused the community with new ideas at looking at things and events aside from the official government line. The activists continue to hurl at UP a rather challenging question: Academic excellence for whom? For the government or for the people? The question remains relevant to this day because despite the government calling UP the “national university” and consistently giving it the largest share in the annual budget for state schools, UP still caters to the needs of a government that is alienated from the people’s concerns and conditions. Just recently, we saw the implementation of huge increases in UP’s tuition fees, making many wonder how the brightest sons and daughters of the masa will be able to shoulder the costs of UP’s brand of education.

Some of the opportunist sections of the UP studentry are actually very reactionary or, in other words, very anti-masa that they find cause in the tuition fee increases and the long-running project to commercialize UP. For them, we must submit to the questionable notion and policy of the government to scrimp on education and let UP fend for itself through tuition fee increases, long-term lease of university assets and corporate sponsorships. These people also makes themselves feel good that UP outdoes the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and other state schools in cornering the largest share of budget pie. What they say is true and factual, but they forget or would like the rest of us forget that the pie itself is small and ill enough for the entire tertiary educational system and the demands of young people and professionals and even industry. Such thinking is self-deceptive and aims at mass deception, and does disservice to the people who pay taxes in order to finance UP’s operations, however limited or reactionary.

There is a small iota of practicality that we may sense in this school of thought but it is nevertheless thoroughly anti-masa, undemocratic and presents the reality that there are structural and ideological walls being set up to fence out the masa.

I wrote this after reading on Rising Sun a new and unofficial version of the UP Hymn. The new version is really more progressive but, at the moment, fails to represent the real UP that we have now. It is the hymn of, let’s say, a future UP under a government that is truly pro-masa, a university that our people truly need and deserve.