ON THE SUBVERSION OF
ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Alex Poblador
1977-1978
Just as the national crisis which
necessitates the maintenance of this extra constitutional state of martial law continues,
so too the attempts to subvert the academic freedom of the University. The traditional
autonomy is contained in the budgetary innovation mandated by Presidential 711 entitled,
"Abolishing all existing special and fiduciary funds and transferring to the general
fund the operations and funding of all special and fiduciary funds."
Not content with the packing of the Board
of Regents with government officials by virtue of PD 58 which reorganized this University
into a system, a designation which apparently gained such opprobrium that the regents
recently moved to delete it; not satisfied with the establishment of the Philippine Center
for Advanced Studies, its own think tank, as an autonomous unit to Diliman itself ; the
present national regime had, through its regents, installed an administrator steeped in
the government service as president of the University as part of an apparent program to
reorient this foremost seat of dissent and to redirect the academe in line with national
development goals. Now, Dr. Corpuz is being offered a pottage of lentils worth, it must be
admitted, a little less than a cool P200 million, excluding the appropriations for the PGH
and the services to be rendered to the University by the Departments of Public Highways
and Public Works, for our birthright of autonomy from the government and the state.
Although the University is both a state
university and state-supported university, we had always had our own sources of income:
tuition fees, endowment funds, and so on. Under the one fund concept enunciated in PD 711,
all this will go to the national government which will subsequently control disbursements
to the University. Logically extending this budgetary innovation, therefore, even student
fees which go to the Collegian and the student welfare funds will be subject to the
control of the present regime.
It was such a possibility that had led
earlier national governments to establish income earning land grants to ensure the
independence of the University central to its role and mission of seeking, disseminating
and preserving truth and wisdom. It is this independence that is now threatened by PD 711.
With our eyes fastened on the Student Conference and visions of an autonomous Council we
failed to perceive this danger to the autonomy of the University itself.
Such might not have been the case had there
been a student regent as authorized by PD 58. For this representative of the studentry on
the Board of Regents would have at least been informed of the University Budget which was
approved last month. Such might have been the case had there been a student council. |
