Letter To All

Dear all,

I can't help myself.

After reading Kenneth's piece, Paolo's letter and the APSM's letter re the egg-throwing incident, copies of which were sent to my email, I found it hard to resist throwing in my one centavo's worth of ideas. Granting, Paolo and the pol sci majors could already be my grandchildren, and it's not for grownups to meddle in kids' fights, but heck, I was a UP student, too, and part of the crop that struggled not only for academic freedom, but for our country's freedom from military rule.

First, please bear with this Lola Basyang tale. The first organization I joined during my freshman year was...well, UPSCA (UP Students' Catholic Action), that pious organization. Those times, young people my age were already in the countrysides, or in underground organizations in the cities, struggling every second from being arrested or killed by the dictatorship' s armed forces. At that time when student progressives were fighting for the restoration of student councils, we in UPSCA were fighting against...dyaraan. ..hazing (such an important issue, 'no?) because, we were told, "the body is the temple of the human spirit" which should not be violated.

Campus politics-wise, we were against the slogan-chanting bunch. There were 'elders' in the organization (now I realize, they all were getting their bread from the Marcos government then) who advised us that "a dead hero is a useless hero", in reference to the militant side of the organized studentry - those unreasonable" ND's who seemed always to be in a fighting, shouting, marching mood. We were UPSCA, the ones who were more "balanced", "pragmatic", "for peace."

In one of the student fora organized by the "ND's", I even questioned the need for student participation in the restoration of the student council (my god, I bury my head in the sand whenever I remember that moment). Can anyone blame me? I just turned 16 then, impressionable, and like may other young students at UP, amusingly naive.

Just one year at UP turned me into someone else, however. Maybe it was the bigger social ferment that did it. Maybe it was Malu Mangahas waxing eloquent about academic freedom, or Sonia Sotto leading the fight for a Magna Carta against police and military presence in the campus (that's right- we couldn't bear the thought of a single policeman's or soldier's booted foot stepping on campus grounds). Maybe it was my professors - "Mad Marx" Ed Villegas, and Roland Simbulan who made me read Karl M. as part of our Devt Studies curriculum (though I admit the only insight I got then from my reading was - if Marx had written against the slavery of women and children, then maybe he was a good person!?)

Or perhaps it was the 'Barrio Work' program of UPSCA which made military and police abuse, semi-feudalism and the desperation it brought to poor peasants something as concrete as the buildings and classrooms of UP were to me.

We were a bunch of curious kids then who spent two weeks in a barrio in Bulacan, on pretense that we were from Maryknoll and Ateneo. But then the local police learned we were actually UP students, so one night he sent some men in a tamaraw (not the animal, but the vehicle which preceded the FX) to the barrio, presumably trying to find out where the "UP kids" were staying. And since the local police have just "salvaged" two youthful organizers in a nearby barrio a few weeks earlier, our hosts decided that very night to "rescue" us.

A kindly, middle-aged man, I now forget his name, a military man himself but had resigned out of conscience, drove the jeepney that took us out of the barrio, but first advising us that should we be ever caught in a military checkpoint "tumakbo na kayo sa unang pagkakataong makuha ninyo." Gee wheez, and to think the oldest in our group then was a guitar-loving pretty boy of about 20 years, maybe weighing 80 lbs, and couldn't hurt a single fly.

So why do I tell this story? It might seem mababaw, and I might sound just like your lolo or lola glorifying his/her days.

No, my message is really quite simple. In my UP days, and the years before mine, students didn't just throw eggs. They threw molotovs and pillboxes. They didn't spend days troubling themselves with the 'safety' of their fellow students, knowing that harm does not come from the slogan-chanting rabble-rousers but from the ARMED elements of the government clinging, butts and all, to power.

UP students of those days troubled themselves with making their classmates realize the true meaning of wisdom, of being "a iskolar ng bayan", of grasping the summed-up experiences of other peoples embodied in social theories, testing these in our country's social waters, and thus in the process, sifting the chaff from the grain. That was the way we learned. Not just inside the classroom, and certainly not by listening to someone who's spearheading a campaign to kill political dissent. (You kill dissent, and you kill political discourse itself. Shouldn't that be more troubling for a pol sci major?).

UP students then, as many other young people now, threw themselves into the struggle, AND MADE HISTORY as a result of it. Think Edjop, Lorena Barros, and other stellar names.

One of the greatest things I learned at UP was that the middle stance as the correct stance, is well...a funny assertion. A blind man's perspective. A joker's. "Middle" denotes balance and equality. Can the Right ever be equal with the Left? Only in mathematical equations. Never in social reality. The Right has arms and might, while the Left derives its might only from being on the democratic side. "Middle" is only for referees in a boxing fight.

Ensure the safety of the top military official of the land by searching students' bags? Hello? is this UP? Golly, I salute those who still attended the forum despite the searches. Why would I want the organizers to peep into my lunchbox or know how many coins I've got left in my bag ?

A student organization trying to ensure the safety of the top military official? Has everyone in this university gone mad? I bet the General went there with enough bullets to finish off everyone who was at the UP campus on that day. When you've got a lot of enemies, you don't walk around with just a sandwich in your bag.

My dear pol sci majors, you've got a terribly disturbing view of the world. Maybe you're reading the wrong political science books. Or are listening to the wrong professors. Try reading Mao Tse Tung once in a while. He's the demon incarnate to many people. But there's at least a line or two in his writings that will make you cry. Read him to find out why.

R. Jitana