Nights filled with vivid dreams and at times sleeplessness, feeling the crawling anxiety at the rise of coronavirus cases, and the struggle at home finding ways further survive. The pandemic is affecting us in all aspects; mentally, emotionally, physically and financially. The sudden unfolding of events have left us all in a disarray and at the top in our list of priorities is our safety and well-being, although academic institutions remain unsighted.
As sources of income and livelihood are crippled, students and parents are still expected to follow through policies that are both inconsiderate and anti-poor, failing to recognize the issues at hand. Students from Holy Angel University have put their foot down and stood up in a collective voice with the ANGELITE 7 POINT DEMANDS, spearheaded by The Angelite, Anakbayan HAU, and HAU SPEAKNOW in alliance with organizations, college publication and student councils. It addresses the affair students are faced with—early opening date, exclusivity of e-learning, tuition and other fees increase (TOFI), unclear tuition breakdown, payments for unused services, unsecure wages for teaching and non-teaching personnel, and student loans. The #HAUyokoNa clamored online platforms calling the attention of the university’s ill attempt to uphold its mandate to accessible quality education. Students shared their personal stories of struggle and how it affects their families.
The forced portrayal of ‘new normal’ is a clear romanticization of the plight of the masses, as it fails to truly give a sense of direction to its constituents. It aims to normalize the impoverish and privileged ways that academes aim to impose as the education remains neoliberal— privatized and commercialized. Along with the ‘globally competitive’ narrative that strays us away from innovating our own nation as the educational system itself reinforces individualism and competition rather than collectivity with subjects prioritizing demands by industries losing focus for arts, history, and social sciences. Likewise with the K-to-12 program, the current model of education, means to produce cheap labor for other countries as human capital. These attacks on education entails the sad but harsh reality, academic institutions are still mechanized as businesses rather than a human right and a public good. With this continuous rotten educational system, students are not seen as the ‘hope of the future’ but rather as commodities meant to exploit and provide income for these educator-capitalists.
The pandemic has exposed the putrid core of both government agencies and the academia, it is high time for the Filipino to unite and not divide. The youth of today knows no exhaustion in fighting for their rights. Perhaps the ‘new normal’ should be the destruction of the neoliberal educational system and the establishment of a genuine free education with the goal to bear responsible and critical citizens for nation-building and not workers and consumers to further oppress and exploit and fulfill their commitment as a bastion of quality, accessible, and inclusive education—until then, we will keep on fighting!
