Side Comment on Shirt Violence

As my experience, some engg students (not all of them) dirty dig the social sciences and my discipline. They say social sciences are too impractical, easy, uno-able, commonsensical and just a form of wordplay-to-make-sense discipline. As if they could do the things that we do. Well I could not blame them if they are being made to believe they are the paramount of all discipline just because they can earn higher wages. There are explanations why ‘uno ka nga, engg ka ba?’ shirts swarm the campus. Those shirts don’t intend to establish an identity of excellence but instead impose symbolic violence on non-engg students. These kids might not be aware of that and most of the times they are not careful to prejudicepeople.

Deproffesionalizing Sociology: A Reflection


Randy David’s works continues to inspire me. Recently I have read his essay ‘Deproffesionalizing Sociology.’ It hovered on the paradox of the intellectuals’ stand as an agent for social and political ‘problems.’

He basically identified the distance of sociologists and social scientists towards reality. Students and intellectuals are imparted with theories and methodologies. David’s question was: does too attention on these, effect to distance knowledge away from practical use. Praxis is compromised. What happens is that the intellectual is a dysfunction of her ends—to change something.

He suggests that sociologists should strive to use that knowledge and training to change what is seen as a problem. She [the intellectual] should pay an active involvement for social invention and legislation. She should propose changes and plan how it will take effect towards certain ends—to quench the drought of society. These ends would be related to social justice, social equity, national autonomy and others than point towards a better Philippine society.

The problem only is that the distribution of symbolic goods neglects the importance of sociology as a discipline. I believe that sociology can suggest ways to lift us from the self-perpetuating and quick-sanding problems that are considered as an impasse. The only problem is that pragmatism (being practical) kills the inducement of people to indulge in the discipline. You can count how many sociology departments there are in the Philippines and how limited the students are.

So it suggests that social scientists should have a special understanding from the people. People should understand that theory is meaningless without practice. Practice is the final end of the social sciences’ fulfillment of function.

I just hope the people will be aware of these things. I hope that stigmatism will lessen towards the sociologists who indulge in social legislation who most of the times break the law and mores. (I presuppose that the legitimacy and conventions will not be the sole guideline for social design.) In relation with this, there should be an increase attention for the social sciences—make it available for the public and make it a beacon of trust for the people, institutions, and whole society’s well-being.


Note: I may not have a complete or correct interpretation of the reading. So readers of Randy David, ping me if I messed up the ideas. Comments are always welcome.

The Dysfunction of Individualistic Freedom

The university community is open for new and diverse ideas. The problem is, being political is being compromised. Democracy and academic freedom has been arbitrary for everyone.

In my experience, when it comes to student convocations, auditoriums are hardly occupied. Convocation is a form of exercising democracy. This is the place where vast kinds of people merge to indulge into an activity of information exchange and a place where students are ideally united according to their collective interests. So, if the mass of students are present, every partition of the population will symbolically feel involvement into a community. Such scenario will ideally create an invisible tie of responsibility towards each other and the bigger group.

People, who don’t attend community activities, will feel detached to the system that it should belong. Thus, apathy branches out and self-perpetuates. When people or groups are devoid of the idea that they belong to that bigger group will ideally end up to social distrust and distance.

I knew a friend that said that the people who don’t vote for the student council’s election will have no right to complain about anything related to the student welfare. I was kind of accepting his idea.

When people are given enough autonomy and freedom that they can skip student community gatherings and instead go to the mall, there is something sacrificed.

A student convocation made a difference just few days ago. The UPD USC cancelled the classes for time when convocation was about to be held. Reasons not to attend were narrowed down. Aside from that, organizations will be forced to attend the event. Attendees would be counted for points for the UP fair. So people were crowding the Educ Auditiorium.

A little push would gather parts of the community together. The student body was able to address issues to the kids present there.

So, before we celebrate any freedom, we should also put in mind what we may lack to give back something for that freedom. Freedom what we are talking about is to allow ideas and not exactly to allow us to be using that freedom for something else that does not return to a related end intended for that freedom. Freedom is not meant to sacrifice and destabilize the involvement of constituent groups and entities in the community.

Student academic freedom is fought for the students’ collective interests by the students themselves. So, we have a little due to pay—help that freedom to keep on.

No fight won

Well, right now I don’t feel the sense of community and the existence of public realities with some kids of my age. There are some instances that when I am in a group opening a discussion for a social issue, people tend to be quiet and seem to be uninterested. In my experience, my friends’ stamina in talking rise up when talking about gossips, cell phones, branded clothes—things to brag about and people to get envy with.

When I try to put a finger on social issues, silence comes—urging for a topic change. Sometimes I am considered to be overly concerned with things that I can not change—things young people should not be touching in a conversation. They think such topics are irrelevant and inappropriate.

Well, the standards have changed. Young people are more individualistic. They are more concerned with their own dispositions on how they want to manage their lives.
If it isn’t for young people who fought for the rights of their age class and other dominated strata years way, way back, these kinds of choices everyone is crazed to be putting much attention with would not exist today.

I argue that if there are struggles already won few decades ago by our fellow youth, then we should stop there. There is no such thing as a state of completeness. We can not be sure of an absolute social justice. If the youth of the past generations fought for the struggles of their time, then we have our own struggles also.

We should consider every bit of hardship, inconsistencies and contradictions that we feel in our daily realities. Let us consider also our own interest. The battle is never been over unless we try to move. No battle has been completely won.

Meaning social issues that seem so distant from our concerns might actually be ours. They are not hard to find. We just have to realize every bit of questions that we set aside everyday. We should envision our own interest—the youth—part of society which ideally should have been questioning the existing way of things.

Well in some sense, part of the youth is regressing and rotting for conformity and consumerist individualism. Still, there are some who know how to stand on their own interest and active in their role as responsible kids struggling to make history to the Filipinos.

Typhoons

I panicked when I could not text my parents the day when the storm was announced to hit the country. I was wondering what happened at home. I got no clue whether people there were safe or what.

I texted my ‘kababata’ studying here in Manila if she had any idea how was our province. Then, she just confirmed that, yes, the typhoon hit our province. Neither of her relatives were reachable by phone.

So I just thought my vacation will be wrecked. And that impulse was just too selfish. My personal concern there was, that our phone line has just been restored, after two months of waiting, after Milenyo ripped the communication systems apart. So when I go home for the Holidays, there might be a difference between spending it with city services than with none. Pretty weird. Actually, the reason behind that is during my semester break, just right after Milenyo’s doom of horror, there was neither DSL signal nor dial tone. And I am ashamed to confess that—not a social issue though.

Just this noon, my mother called me over the phone. She traveled to Daraga, Albay because communication in Sorsogon was dead and she was checking up on my Auntie there. I was relieved to know that our house was fine. Our phone line which I was crazed to care about was fine. There was a dial tone.

Compared to the damages brought by Milenyo, Reming was not as destructive in our place according to ‘ma. Compared to Albay’s condition, where 300 and rising dead bodies found, we were pretty lucky. She was visiting my Aunt in Daraga.

What was very alarming was that the majority of my batch mates in high school are studying in Bicol University Campuses, which are located among the seriously affected areas (Legaspi City, Daraga, Tabaco, etc.) in Albay Province. And there were reported cases of students which were dead. The mudslide, brought by the excessive rainfall over massive ash deposits formed on Mt. Mayon’s slopes, was pretty much too convincing to be destructive. I saw on the television that some houses were buried up to their ceilings—trapping people inside. It is far more that what happened in my province in late September though finding trees in the horizon was tricky during my sem break in Sorsogon.

People here in NCR might be celebrating typhoons coming in the country because they bring ‘classes suspended’ announcements. But there are some people suffering the loss of property, livelihood, and life in some places they might not take to consider.

Provinces on the pacific side of the archipelago suffer the worst because they serve as the frontlines or receptionists of typhoons. People there might have just recovered from Milenyo. Some of them could not bear to witness the trauma of another typhoon.

Natural calamities have been a part each Bicolanos life—not just siling labuyo, pili nuts, or Peñafrancia Festival. They have been part of mine too. I don’t mean to really embrace the fact that destruction is something cute or exotic. It just feels uneasy for me not to be with my family in times of calamities. I was used to power-downs and water fetch-burdens.

We can’t change calamities. They don’t need a revolution for them to: halt, go around our borders and hover to China. We can not blame any president for these. We just have to pick up what is left and put them up together.

Moving on is slow and painful. The problem is, the quality of living here in the Philippines does not compensate for the loss and damage the affected people discouragingly trying to endure.

We Can Not Be Apathetic

In times like this that the identity of our beloved university will be knocked off its feet by its nearing neo-liberalization, we have the role as students—the youth—to act.

It would be shameful for us that on this time that we have witnessed a big turning point of big social conflict of the community that we can not unite for a common interest. Yes we will graduate and leave the campus soon but it will be far from what it is now in the future.

We can not let the grown-ups tell us what to do, even if they were in the frontline of every picket line during the Marcos’s time. They faced a different reality far from ours today. Simply we can not be living to start on what they left behind and finish what they failed to do. We have the role to create and see our own world according to how we see it.

What is the unique of being a youth? When we graduate we can not be really free. In fact, when we leave the university we will be more tied down. We can not just subvert things, for such point of time, because—chances are—our concerns would be finding a job, working on our savings and helping our families. We get to be more submissive and become docile warm bodies. We are aging and we are realizing the structure and we lose the youth spirit to express our innocent questions.

Ever spent a time with a 3-year old child? If you would spend a day with her, you would probably think of gluing her lips together because of her ‘to the nth power’ number questions. She would never stop asking about everything. The expected crude answer for the questions is simple: ‘That is how it works’. Basically the child challenges things because she has not yet assumed structure on her reality. However grown-ups already did—choices are reduced—norms are familiar and accepted. Think about it. We lose pieces of our huge and numerous aspirations of who we want to become bit by bit as we ladder age groups.

When I was very young I wanted to become a doctor—as clichéd as it sounds—or as a film director. As I stepped in high school I realized that hard sciences aren’t for me and film requires a lot of creativity and capital. Considering also my family’s capacity to spend for the education I needed for the road to any those professions. Other factors also put effect on my decisions. There is just no such thing as serendipity. Fate is weaved not by coincidence but in subtlety.

The more we age, the less we feel for agency over our reality—the more we realize prohibitions and limitations to our childish fantasies. When we grow up we have all the time to be ‘obedient’ to norms (which are presumed to be ‘just’) because we have to deal with ‘real’ things.

The saying that: ‘Ayusin mo muna sarili mo bago ang iba,’ can not be firmly applied. See, it is very hypocritical and it expounded no exact standard of what is ideally acceptable. If we are meant to conform to the norms, then why should we put effort to change it? If we give in, it would be hard to challenge it later. It doesn’t even follow that what is wrong is justifiable just because we are not yet that ready to be ‘right’. When can we say we are ready enough?

We should not be afraid to be over-angered by things around you that threaten youthful values. We have to prove where we stand. Antagonisms are everywhere—with our parents, the academe, media, fellow students and the grown-ups. We are not brainwashed just because we deviate from their standards. In fact those who call corrupted are the ones who readily gave up their youthful ideas to the ideological apparatuses. They were the first to be corrupted. They are the ones got brainwashed in the first place.

Yes we believe in academic freedom, but not all of our ideas are made out of a genuine preference of our subscription. Academic freedom ideally should function not to divide us among political camps but to help us define our own emancipation with less stigma for the interest of a student community. I believe that being cynical and apathetic is not inborn. We are conditioned to act so. Before we become apathetic let us at least know the interest of our cultural class. How can we be responsible citizens if in the first place we pay neglect to our own category? Before we become apathetic and hypocritical, let us first envision our reality in the perspective of a youth, as a UP student—that each can not be isolated from our bigger social concerns.

Let us not allow our freedom to be reduced to the freedom to consume goods or the freedom to park a vehicle. Let us not allow others do significant choices for us. We want to do it on our own. The saying ‘Ang kabataan ay ang pag-asa ng bayan!’ still holds though it sounds sappy and passé. Apathy will not lead us to anything worthy. Let us know how to stand upon these overwhelming social issues we are currently facing. Let us be involved and be conversant.

When you get stabbed, the least you could do is to be aware of it.

University Convocation

I attended the University Convocation yesterday sponsored by the UPD university student council. Well it was going well until one elite-looking hysteric ruined the forum. The girl was not that pretty to be considered cute of what she had done and said in that occasion. She was journalism major and a junior student. She was questioning the legal credibility and transparency of the claims of the student groups in relation to TOFI (tuition fee and other increases) and the withholding of funds for of The Philippine Collegian (the campuses student publication).

The girl was asking for papers and credentials that would actually only convince her to believe such statements about the administration of this university.

Her comments and inquiries were definitely off the topic. She was distracting the discussion and delaying it so that other questions would not be raised. I see she had hypocrisy with her. She was pretending to be concerned but her only aim was; to look good with her knowledge of journalism ethics as her lone standard in her inquiry and eventually put the event into a mess.
Questioning the student movement groups with respect to legitimacy is something stupid. Stupid, in relation to the present issue, the administration is using the legal and legitimate means to repress student rights; and lead to sufficing some goals that might not resonate the values of the studentry. If the administration or the dominant party uses legitimacy to undermine the stud entry then why should we be fighting for our rights? We are not law makers and we are students. Knowing that everything is not fair and equal between the student groups and the admin, why should we be restrained to express the sound injustices in our perspectives by considering equality? Equality is dysfunctional if both sides are not really equal in the first place.

The girl was very irrational and her mind was corrupted (did not go any depth on the issue. Not in all places we carry the law especially in scholarly discussions. She definitely adhered on the ethics of journalism crap. Ethics and norms of a technical discipline or a marketable profession is something backed up by the legitimate order. If we will just subject our actions relative to the legitimate order then we are do live 'our own truth'. We are letting the structure corrupt us. We know that the studentry is repressed by the admin but why should we be guided and limited, in standing for our rights, by a tool used against us? That is stupid for me. She was thinking that maybe what she had done made her any smarter. She might have thought how clever she looked at there over the microphone.

The question is not about legitimacy or being intelligent, it is how you stand on your issue. Legitimacy is a crude and surface level (not well thought) perspective to consider.

Assessing student movements with legitimate standards is very uncritical-thinking. You are just masturbating the norms and do not envision the perspective of your milieu, the student. There is really no such thing as a revolution that is dramatically obeying the law. So what was she part of the party envisioning if she were concerned about the issue? Was she in the perspective of a student in this institution or as an administrator, hypocrite, TV anchor?

She mentioned that having different views is good. I agree to that. But her inquiries were really irrelevant. Now her inquiries should have not been entertained. I believe in academic freedom. Okay she expressed her irrational doubt. She was freely let go to question and bullshit the students’ movement's stand. Now, that wasn't really what should be the topic for the discussion. She was not repressed but she repressed relevant ideas that should have been put on the table in the interest of the goals of the forum: to lay down the facts and know how student sees these events. Pretty much her inquiries don't resonate with mine. Hers and her company's ideas are so out of the field of discussion. Now, because she caused so much delay and trouble; she heatened up the room and made other people hysteric (because of her irrationality to assess the issue), she repressed viable ideas and just drained the time. She committed enough symbolic violence to spoil the campaign for a movement. Now, she might not believe about symbolic violence because mainly her standard is 'what is lawful and ethical crap.' The law doesn't recognize this as something oppressive but it [symbolic freedom] definitely does the same as hitting someone’s head with a mic stand. Her symbolic freedom wasn't really directed to the administration but to the campaigning party, the Collegian.

Lastly she wasn't clear of her standards and perspective. So possibly the crowd was confused that what she was saying was the divine norm for every action to be acceptable.

I pity the socialite lady. I wish she should have taken Sociology 10 before she could graduate and leave UP. She made me prejudices against Journ/CMC people. She was lucky the majority of the people there inside were not CSSP majors and its faculty. It would have been a laughing spectacle. She was lucky Sarah Raymundo, my sociology instructor wasn't around on that event, or else, she might regret she attended that forum. I feel bad that apathetic people still push to be apathetic and put down the emancipated active students. I find it funny. The apathetic don't care but the effort to attack the subversive. She is a dysfunction of the university. Then she is bragging about she is from UP. Ha. Think ate. Prove your status. UP journ majors have a lot of prestige so don't ruin it by your crude judgments. Know first about how movements work. Good diction and style just isn't everything.

Ethics is something not innately there. They are MADE; and there are reasons why they exist and the reason behind their nature.

I suggest if you are not convinced about this, find someone who understand student power better with their own perspectives--they don't claim the one-way-road-to-the-truth so you are not forced to be hegemonised unlike your ethics and the admin. Know more about student power. More is still behind prejudices and distortions made by the media, our parents and the apathetic.

I want to make clear that this not just a hate letter but an invitation to understand more on student power as a social text.

I stand against TOFI (tuition fee and other increase). Uphold the Philippine Collegian's autonomy.
Let it not be, that in our present residence in this institution, a turning point of the massive negligence to public welfare will take place.

Sumbungan

Pakonti-konti ay nagiging sumbungan ko na itong blog mga bagay bagay na personal. Failed exams... mga frustrations... mga kabaliwang nakakatawa para sa akin lamang.... at mga katangahan.... ewan ko kung bakit....

Nauso ang sentimental moments

Kanina lang ang exam ko sa math 11. Eh kagabi 2 pm na ako natulog para mag-aral kuno. Kaya lang pakiramdam ko bagsak ako kasi lahat ko nasimulan wala akong natapos ng test item. Galing ano. (kunyari masaya pero may poot sa loob ng chest) Yun.

Pero ang istorya ay hindi tungkol doon! Tungkol ito sa nangyari pagkatapos ng exam... nang medyo pauwi ako. Yung nangyari eh naglakadlakad ako sa may AS papuntang Vinzons. Medyo cloudy. Medyo may hangin... Medyo nililipad ang mgay tuyong dahon. Medyo may mood. Makulimlim ang paligid... Mabagal ang mga taong nagjojogging. Medyo may naririnig akong kanta parang sentimental pero para sa mga broke na tao.... Nasa music video ako... well feeling lang... parang feeling ko kinukunan ako ng 35-mm film motion picture camera. nagsesentimental kasi babagsak ako sa math 11... parang may emosyon sa mukha ko kanina... nagpagkamalan ata akong baliw na mabagal na naglalakad sa may harap ng educ habang ng slowslow-s--ll--o-o-o-ww motion ang mga galaw at ang mga lingon. Medyo tingin sa malapit... yuyuko... tingin sa malayo.... titingala sa mga sanga ng mga puno sa acad oval... baliw.

Sa madaling salita para akong tanga kanina.

I am a Bit Down

Maybe it is just bad luck or maybe something else. I was frustrated to know that I didn’t get uno for Socio 10. Well I admit I am a bit conceited and I had a very ambitious expectation. I just thought that I had invested much on this subject. I am desperate not to pull my GWA down because of my failing Math 11. I do not really aspire for a 1.0 if I think I have done wrong. I have no problem with such issue. It was just, the pressure gets to me: that I am a sociology major and I could not get an 1.0 for a socio GE.

I am failing Math 11 and I am not sure if I will pass. I might not go home for the semester break this year because there is no power in my province. The power restoration will take months. And my vacation is already ruined.

I feel that my efforts weren’t awarded the way I expected. I am regressing. My writing had already started to wear out. I am becoming more stupid everyday. I feel that I am losing hope to be in good standing. I could not write good essays and papers. I could not manage my time because of my complicated class schedule. I waste a lot of time. I am decaying.

I would get through this soon. It is just that I haven’t slept last night for a paper. I am really tired. But never bother this entry. I am very far from suicidal. Ha-ha.

Understood

I had this final rites from a provincial org just last Saturday. The days before the event, I really never understood its purpose. I kept deconstructing it. I always question it. I thought that the certain stage of membership could not really attend total loyalty to the organization.
But after the final rites, it really made sense to me. Now I beleive that agalma could explain this--that someone outside something--a ritual, a belief or anything similar-- is always not percieving thing with the right eyes, so prejudices arise.
I have these co-applicats who really were not very tempered when it comes in expressing their dissenting opinions. One--whom irritated me much--talked about liberalism and other Marxist stuff--that actually did not make sense in that very situation.
The fact there was, me myself, did not feel the right to practice freedom of expression and democracy. I had to play by their rules because I took the choice to participate in that activity. So basically it is my prerogative to quit if I don't like the things that were expected to happen.
I realised that there is better to understand things when once you are inside it. It is an agalma thing...

Wasting their Chances

I, myself, am sometimes guilty of this, depending on the object of reference.

Sometimes, or most of the times I get resentful with those students who really have the resources, capital and all the means. They are fortunate that their parents provide them with this and with that. They have laptops, computers, super-fast DSLs and all the conveniences that help them to move a lot more easy with things at school. At least their efforts are maximized and not compromised with the hassles that these conveniences counter. If they really want to get down on their academics, they can easily deal with things that are needed to be taken care of.

On some instances, I feel the grudge on people who really have the means, all the resources and the convenience but sadly do not envision their acts towards academics. Also those who do not provide the rationality of their choice in failing to adhere from the expectations on them, as students, to get involved in the production of knowledge or at least acquisition of it as a minimum (at least to puppet knowledge). This is very irritating if you would find out that many of these people are in state-subsidized universities.

These people pass state university exams, for example UP. This university is known for having the exams quite tough pass, too tough to admit all who aspire. However, I know of some people who passed the exams are just wasting, spoiling their privilege. Just because they passed the exams, they have the right to bullshit everything, then consider themselves as people of high intellectual capital, and do nothing. They just pass the exam. They just got high with the single damned exam.

Evan the title ‘Iskolar ng Bayan’ is not entitled to everybody. Not everybody who passed the exams deserves it. It should be constantly earned.

What is sad about this is that: there, outside, there are more people, who I think, deserve more of our positions here in the university, especially those apathetic students. Some people outside should have been in the place of some of us because of the exam. Some of them needed the access to our educational system more than the apathetic students maybe because it is relatively low-cost and the academic excellence and freedom, which seem to be hard to be found all in the same school.

The people whom I referred to as apathetic are wasting a lot of advantages, which are entitled to them. Subtly, there is the need that these advantages are to be paid back with their expectations as students, or, at least a little modest will of it.

What more irritates me is that some of these students reason out of such dispositions towards academics with the freedom of choice, celebration of autonomy or maybe they would say: “I have the right and the means, why should you care?” That has got to hurt.

Please DO NOT get me wrong about this. I do not hold grudge against these people whom I criticize. This is not a hate letter and I do not curse people and resort to a class damnation. I just want to raise a query to scrutinize thing that fail to reach out stigma because we blur our vision towards freedom. Freedom is good. However, the question is, do we really deserve it? I myself do not want to give a damn on others choices and dispositions but I criticize on the rationality or the logic of these choices. Do their freedoms parallel their duties and expectations?

What I want to point out here, as I was saying a while ago, that we need to take a look out of own milieu—that our actions are still subject to a bigger social structure. Some people use golden toothpicks however a large chuck of population try to endure uncertainties and high levels of danger just to be fed for a single meal.

Think about it!

*Healthy and responsible antithetical comments are accepted. I want to hear from your perspective.

I just thought

I admit I was a little carried away on what I had discussed about the marginalised workers in UP Diliman. I was writing without really being eclectic--or even considering about the word 'balance.'

I was thinking if we are going to fight for the rehiring of those janitors, what happens to the current janitors who where hired by carebest? I think they will be laid-off also... So I thought to solve the problem will still end up another problem. If they will be rehired there will be still workers that will be displaced off their jobs. The thing there is that, pursuing their interest will still employ actions, that will affect to the current workers, the problems that they themselves had also suffered.

But I have nothing against those displaced workers because they actually were working in this institution for more than decade--some more that that.

I am not withdrawing anything from the previuos blog entry but somehow I think of these...

Things are just not that simple.

7 am class gets sentimental

Today's Sociology 10 class was one of the mushiest experience I have ever... had... in a good way ha...

The class was really fun... having Neeks as the intrsuctor thoughout the semester... We felt sad though because she will be taking her graducate studies outside the country and she will be leaving before the end of this sem.

Well I got admit I really learned a lot from the class. Though I am a Sociology major, my high sociology subjects could not foster such a very interesting manner of handling the discussion... because sometimes higher sociology subjects can be pure pain... I thought a while ago the the class was a live talk show having the stage audience giving their testimonials and all those mushy things... I understood what they really felt.

I appreciated that people really are invited to be imparted with sociological thoughts and try to take it inside thier ... because I know of some that really are very resistant to such issues.

The class a while ago would be the last meeting for this sem... Sad... But we, the students, will be still doing our think piece and other req. activities and will be sending them thru email...

Anyway, I wish that my classmate would think that Sociology10 is worth taking... And also good luck to Neeks for her graduate studies... See you around na lang sa mga susunod na taon... Kukunin ko si neeks na prof pag magoffer ng higher socio.

That's all! Tuloy ang buhay!

a BMI on the marginalized workers

The Immersion

I attended the ACLE titled Side Trip: A Basic Masses Integration facilitated by Anakbayan UPD. I with people from the vast universe of UP students went to Quezon Hall. We spotted there the janitors who were having a demonstration against the UP administration. We first had an introduction of the facts and figures and general issues concerning the activity. After that we had the chance to talk with the people, the workers there.

I, together with few students, had a chat with Rey Dayag and few of his former co-workers. He said that there were a lot of displace janitors summing up more than a hundred. Now there are ousted from their jobs replaced and no where to go.

What really happened is that the agency handles the workers. The UP administration pays the agency and the agency gives the salary to the janitors. Every year the agency is being replaced but still use the same workers. The agencies undergo bidding to which is the process in choosing the agency to handle the workers for that year. It was just this year that the agency which was allegedly appointed did not hire or really did not intend to hire the original set of workers but instead they brought a new mob of workers. Now the displaced janitors who served the institution for a long time, for a man in the venue pointed to us to a woman in her 60’s, I presumed, has been or she worked for UP for 20 years – people who have served generations of ‘mga Iskolar ng Bayan.’

Manong Rey told us about the hassles that the agencies were brining to them. One is that every year they changeover into another agency they were required to comply numerous documents, uniforms and other things—which is so taxing on their salaries.

He also shared to us the wisdom beneath these decision of the admin and the agency is to gain more profit from these new workers which are just starting—meaning less offered benefits, lower starting payments, etc.

The Implications

If we could look at it. It is not only about the pity, compassion for the workers and being mushy about the dispersal of the workers in Quezon Hall. What is important also to look at is the text the is waiting to be read in the said events.

Six in the morning on the 11^th of August, the workers were said to violently shooed off the said building. I was informed that it was the SSB who took on the process which is said to have some of its members working for the military. It was said by the workers there that the reason why they were dispersed was that they did not provide a permit to conduct such activity. Huh? Then I came to realize, when was the time people in UP had to comply with a legal permit in conducting demonstration? Based on what I know and what common UP student know, military entities, NBI, Police or any other similar institutions and their operations are not permitted within the campus. But how come rumors say we are being watched by spies from these groups. We are being watched on our activity particularly related to the dissent from the government. These manifestations of irregularity defy of what UP has to be.

Personally, I always feel that many or some of the population of UP students avert these issues. They say that ‘Ah, practically I am not concerned with such and why should I care.’ Often when they see dispersals induce the image of ‘garbage that is needed to be wept of the sights’.

We might not relate or not really obliged to know all the stories of these workers but what happened has to do with all of us, residents and parts of the UPD Comminity. We can not simple be isolated to the things that happen within. How can we make sure these SSBs could still be serving for the welfare of us, the students. How can we make sure our liberties and rights as UP students be not repressed and violated?

The administration has a way to slaughter the dissenting entities. Symbolically, the dispersal of the people in Quezon Hall proved only that external military forces have already won to infiltrate this very institution. They have been are already with us everyday. What is not very acceptable in the dispersal is that the sense of democracy and liberty for expression is suppressed and displaced. The integrity of this institution to foster relatively higher degree of emancipation and freedom for the people is greatly challenged in this event—read as a text.

A Query of Curiosity

Of my previous knowledge, I am aware that UP is suffering from the ‘budget cut’ (shortage of subsidy from the government) and the consequences—deficits. The challenge is how to compensate for these deficits—the sources and strategy. The Janitorial Service Association had submitted a proposal for the UP administration to take the janitors as their employees. The janitors will work directly to UP and will not make use of an agency. They say for a year the strategy could save more or less P13 M of the budget compared when that have worked to an agency.

My question here would be: if the janitors made a proposal to save more money, why did the administration did not consider the proposal in the first place? If it was too desperate to compensate for the deficits and to precarious of its resources that it already proposed a tuition fee rise from P 300 per unit to P1000 per unit or more. Why was the proposal ignored? It was still a lot of money to be saved. Are there other parties the admin is serving for its interest aside solely from the good of the university and its parts.

Politicizing corporate cronies? Let us not speculate – but why not?

On Probe: Political Killings

The military is one of the examples of the repressive state apparatus. The repressive state apparatus’ function is to channel the state’s will and to assert the state itself. Whatever happens, the state will use the repressive state apparatus to crush descent. Descents are deviations or disturbances that are seen as disorganizations to the social order, seen as threat to the leviathan-like government. The leviathan has to assert itself. So it happens… violence.

Contrary to the repressive state apparatus it counterpart called ideological state apparatus which instructions like that family, educational system and the media which shape how we think and what we should think. For me, sometimes, in some cases, it is this kind of state apparatus could critically harm us because it attacks stealthily, without us knowing that we commit ourselves to an ideology without our rational consent.

Fronts

The P 1B-funded anti-insurgency campaign GMA (OPLAN BANTAY-LAYA) was allegedly targeting affiliations of legal organizations which give critique to the current. It includes student activists, peasant unions, workers unions, religious organizations, urban-poor organizations, and other which empower the mass. The government rages a war against it’s political destabilizers—to be put down and to keep the others silent—not to engage in the same act to those who had shed blood. What is wrong here it that these entities are legal organizations and mistakenly or intentionally attacked by the military with the approval of the administration.

Universality of Human Rights

There raised the issue of the universality of human rights. Several political entities strive to protect people from abuse and other forms of violation of the human rights. I was astonished on how the authors and the essays deconstructed human rights. It was said that human rights are only for the whites and should be universalized.

Human rights is something arbitrary. In anthropology, anthropologists’ greatest challenge in their practice of field work is their critical predicament on how to react on the violence they observe on their respondents in their ethnologies. One specific case is in studying Islamic culture, when FGM is seen, in a perspective of an American eye, as something inhumane and irrational. The question goes like this, do we really have the right to intervene and change it? What make us right and what makes us wrong? Is it funny to think that changing a ‘violation’ of human rights a form of violation?

Cultural patterns are not as simple as counting 1-2-3 and guessing what’s next. Thus, there is no such thing as a universal standard of human rights. Simply, the whole idea of it is very ethnocentric. How do we know someone’s culture is wrong? How do we define wrong? People were not raised similarly on the same milieu. What I am trying say, based on the arguments, is that the step of universalizing human rights is simply giving the right for others to violate you. Thus, I believe that imposing universality of human rights would rather be a violation of human rights itself. It would rather annihilate differences since realities don’t work though a same process.

If this would be the core rationality of the urge to universalize human rights—though crushing insurgent entities, democratization of Islamic countries, etc.—something is not right. Why do we have to universalize? I believe that the whole concept is not humanitarian in nature but economic and political. It is to subtly dissolve the walls that divide the different states from being open markets. For me, a political economy does not always work well in all perspectives. They want to globalize the world into a single economic ‘nation’ which only benefit few. If someone’s got to win and someone has got to suffer. Thus it heightens the polarity of the economic classes.

Journalists at Stake

We fill the 2^nd notch, next to Iraq (the first in the list of the most cases violence against and death of journalists. The present administration already includes journalists as its enemy, thinking they are fronts of one of the insurgent groups the CPP-NPA. Now we call our country democratic.

Democracy as Questioned

Democracy! Is it really democracy that we practice? I really agreed on the cohesive antagonistic approaches of the essays to our country’s repressive state criticizing democracy.

Democracy in our context, in globalised 3^rd World Country, our civic liberty as a citizen of the estate is just something floating in the air—just a name we do not really practice. This freedom we mistakenly identify as civic liberty is just freedom to consume goods, but still we are being deprived for the rights that we are legally and legitimately entitled to.

It is said that anybody can run for presidency but how come only those who have possession of capital (may they be economic, cultural or social) are the only ones qualified to be legitimate for candidacy.

Democracy, when we could shift TV channels anytime but does not give us the right to redefine the nature of media.

Democracy, when we have leader incapable of proving that she really was voted by the people. She might lie about fact that she is legit (technically) but what a matter is that he is sadly unwanted.

Democracy, when journalists can bring the hottest gossips about celebrities; however, news that talks about ‘their lives at stake’ does not reach the newsprint.

Democracy, when the government does not practice it and does not even provide social confidence to its people who practice the so-called democracy.

Democracy, when the government turn its back on the economic interest and rights for resources of the populace while serving the interest of transnational corporations, its political allies, including ‘Uncle Sam,’ which helped the leader to be put into office.

If democracy really reins, how do we explain the government’s defiance of public welfare and the irrelevance of its actions to the country’s vision of progress and betterment?

Life surely is paradoxical—an oxymoron.

The Solution

I could not hide the fact the people turn back on me when I pursue that idea that there is still hope to the current political conditions and trends in our country.

Though being aware, not only about the ‘facts & figures’, but also knowing the implications, the meaning, of such we can help. I believe that the self had never been apart from the society, the reality, which he/she is living in. I know that there are many aversions towards mass demonstrations because on how they are portrayed by the media, family or may be educational institutions. They are always associated to violence, with riots, with irrational societal disturbance, which should be corrected.

I knowledge also that all of us have different levels of capacities and it should not be the gap that should segregate us into groups but instead unite us because we belong into a nation (though our nationhood is arguably questioned). Having these invitations presented, we should not consider these present conditions as totally beyond of our control. They seem to be beyond of our control because we are afraid to try to take control—to suspend those people who are in power, who do not embody the vision of our country but instead push for a totalitarian power. All we need is a unified revolution which would withstand the pressures of public stigmatization of the mass, economic constrains and threats that kept us hiding in the dark to urge for a nationalistic unified goal.

It is not important that we know if we belong to the left, the right or the center, but that rationality of the choice that makes a difference.

Donsol is one of the entries in Cinemalaya, an independent film festival held in CCP annualy. Donsol actually is a municipality in Sorsogon, a province in Bicol region just South of Albay (the province of the Mayon Volcano). Sorsogon is my province. Well let us go back to the movie. The movie 'Donsol' was starred by Angel Aquino, who plays a widowed breast cancer patient; Sid Lucero, a tour attendant in Donsol. Did I mention that one of the main feature of the film is the whale sharks (locally known as 'butanding') which annually visit the town's coasts? Ok the answer is no. Donsol have became a tourist spot for people from in and outside of the country to witness the bigest fish in the world, the whale shark.

Location

I can say the locations were generally authentic (as it was really shot there).

Mood

The movie was a sort of 'a-walk-to-remember' type of movie which portrayed a environment isolated to industrial and commercial cities in the country

The Townsfolks

Well they made a great job on portraying the townfolk. You know, I lived with the townsfolks in my father's place during my summer vaction when I was 7 or 8. The feeling the film ellicited was authentic about the people in the community.

Depth

I found it not so very sociological. Well I may not have the license to actually judge the film because I am not a Film maor, I am a Sociology major. Maybe few that could be pointed out there which may be sociological is maybe the tourism & commoditisation of the whale sharks which pratically benefits the locals for the income but somehow raises some environmental issues. Another, social classes could be identified and stressed in the film. Another also, is it is like it was having a propaganda of actually inviting people to pack up and go for a vacation in the province of Sorsogon to witness the sights.

to be continued...

Well, mahirap magisip ng isusulat.

I will describe na lang silence. eto



















Salamat. Thats all.

To Go or to Stay?

Finally, I got the results from UP Diliman’s CMC. It said I haven’t qualified for the application for transfer. I applied for BA Film and Audiovisual Communication. Maybe it was not for me. I really felt sad about it. I got my visions of being a filmmaker or maybe anybody in the field. I felt sad really sad. I was just qualified for BA Sociology because of my grades. My GPA was 1.72 that maybe helped me qualify. I had the predicament of taking it up and finally transferring to Diliman; or going back to UP Baguio. It was hard to decide. If I go back I’d be back to my course which I like (BA Communication Arts [Maj. in Journ/Min in BroadComm]) but I’d be wasting all my efforts I made for transferring and might regret the decision one day. Well, goodbye Film. I don’t know if will be getting a good career out of BA Sociology – mean a very financially rewarding career but I could make things work out. I believe I can be put on any situation. ‘Malay mo’ I will be thanking that all of these had happened – that I came to BA Sociology. It's complicated.

The Da Vinci Code Issue is ‘So Yesterday’

"You asked what would be worth killing for. Witness the biggest cover-up in human history."

- from The Da Vinci Code motion piture

I think banning 'Da Vinci' is a form of a cover up... the church and devout Christians’ actions upon the film justifies it.

The film was actually a fiction, as many people are saying these days. The film may bear controversial facts about Jesus that some people doubt that were verifiable. The fact is, the book is actually said to be poorly researched. The book claims that the places and people in the story were based on reality. Some people in the devout Chritian Nation from the US released a documentary, which analyzed and exposed some inaccuracies in the novel. Personally, I am convinced that the novel was fiction but people criticize details on the story which were claimed by Dan Brown to be factual which people doubt.

When it comes to the motion picture adaptation of the movie (self-titled), banning it on the mainstream cinemas is I think a bit of an over-reaction. Even in the first place rating it unfairly as R18 is I think an action of a desperate hypocrite. In most countries populated by almost Roman Catholic, like France, US, UK, etc., the film was rated at least R14. They say the film would be even more appropriate for children. Moreover, how about academics – people who work for knowledge? For me, in my point of view, it is a form of media repression. They want to cover up the film, which actually do not directly attack the faith but history – considering it is fiction.

What I want to pursue here is that the issue of the Da Vinci Code film is a outdated and not timely to discuss encourage strict censorship. It is because more people have already read the book for a few years from the present. If it really takes offense on the religion, why not ban the book. This is not the time to talk about this and be strict about it. It is really a very OA, Over-reacting (or whatever we may call it) issue to debate about on this time. People are aware of the Novel. They are not stupid to believe everything they see. The issue had already gone a long way and it is not right for the Filipinos to be divided because some hate it. The novel was praised because of its art to weave events together to form a clever story rather to attack religion. People did not want it to be read or to be viewed on screens just because they hate the Christians or the church. It is the talent and courage of the writer or filmmakers, which is taken significance here, not religion. Some people are just too shallow-minded. Come on. Banning films is so desperate… cheap. Anyway, banning it will cause the film to be over-talked-about and will heighten curiosity among people who actually never did plan to watch the film. Weird. Lame.

I understand that it might bring a negative icon to the church for the populace and young viewers of the country. Why is the church afraid? Would Filipino Christians sell their faith for two and a half hours? What happened to their job to ensure their people have good faith of the religion they are proclaiming? Did they fail to do the job? If only they assure that people will not turn back on the faith after the film, the church and devout Christians would not be acting crazy on the issue. It just proves that we have many hypocrite brothers. People do not allow themselves to see daemons can never distinguish one from the not. Being good and holy doesn’t mean you avert doubt or having reservations on the faith. Come on! Faith is faith. Religion is religion. Should religion and the church always come our way? I suggest instead of banning anti-Christ films or media, why not focus on doing their job effectively so that wherever their people can be, a film same as the Da Vinci Code will not bother them so bad.