Just because I miss being in high school. I miss dressing up. I miss dancing. I miss having clean fun. I miss being carefree. I miss my fairytales. I miss my prince charming. Wait. I dont have a prince charming. Fine. I miss dreaming of a prince charming. Man is the most elevated of all creatures; woman is the most sublime of all ideals.
God made for man a throne; for woman, an altar.
The throne exalts; the alter sanctifies.
Man is the brain, woman, the heart.
The brain enlightens; the heart loves.
Light illimunates; love revives.
Man is the genius; woman, an angel. Genius is immeasurable. An angel is undefinable. A genius contemplates the infinite; an angel attains the unattainable.
The aspiration of man is supreme glory, the aspiration of woman is extreme virtue. To obtain glory, man does what is grand, to acquire virtrue, woman does what is divine.
Man has supremacy; woman the preference. Supremacy signifies strength; preference represents right.
Man is the symbol of heroism; woman, of martyrdom. Heroism ennobles; martyrdom sublimates.
Man is the code; woman, the gospel. The code corrects; the gospel perfects.
Man is the temple; woman, the sacrarium. To the temple, we reveal; to the sacrarium, we kneel.
Man thinks, woman dreams. To think is to recollect the past or to reason the present; to dream is to anticipate the future.
Man is the lake; woman, the ocean. The lake contains the poetry that dazzles; the ocean contains the pearl that beautifies.
Man is the eagle that flies; woman is the lark that sings. To fly is to dominate the space; to sing is to conquer the soul.
Man pursues the goal of conscience; woman follows the star of hope. Conscience guides; hope preserves.
Lastly, man is placed where earth ends; woman is placed where heaven begins.
Victor Hugo
IT IS neither accurate nor fair to associate all students of the University of the Philippines (UP) with the so-called boycott of classes that was supposed to have taken place this past Thursday in protest of proposed tuition and other fee increases. What is accurate to say is that there was no boycott, or the boycott attempt failed. Why can one say this? According to information from all the colleges on campus, the classes proceeded as usual -- none were cancelled for lack of attendance. And this was buttressed by my own personal experience -- I teach two lecture classes on Thursdays, held in an auditorium because of the large class-size, and both were well attended. Definitely, there was no diminution of attendance that would spell “boycott.”
What is accurate to say is that what occurred was a rally/demonstration, attended by anywhere from 200 to 400 people (whether they were all from the UP community, one could not be certain; neither was it certain whether the students at the rally were all UP students), per eyeball estimate. One cannot really tell from the pictures because they were all “tight” shots -- almost close-up, giving the viewer no idea of the magnitude of the crowd. Which is in itself a dead giveaway, because if the crowd was large, the pictures taken would have been panoramic.
Moreover, as anyone familiar with the Diliman campus knows, these rallies/demonstrations are commonplace, and are generally organized by the same groups. Nevertheless, in the spirit of academic freedom and freedom of speech, they are allowed, defended, and even encouraged by the UP authorities. In effect, a rally of that size is no big deal.
A logical question would be: Why were there relatively few participants (considering that there are more than 25,000 students on campus, not to mention about the 1,500 faculty and 2,200 other staff)? One reason for this could be that, in the main, the students were indifferent -- probably because they will not be affected by any tuition fee increase, since this will only be imposed on incoming freshmen. The principle underlying this is that there is an implicit contract with students who had entered under a particular tuition fee structure that the structure would remain unchanged until they finished their studies. Doing otherwise would be like perpetrating a hold-up on their families, who would have very little choice other than to pay, because it is difficult to change schools.
But another reason -- which is not considered by many because of the perception that everyone in UP is a leftist/radical -- is that the students, studied, with no preconceived notions, the De Dios Committee recommendations (the report was released over four months ago) and found them reasonable. They refused to be carried away by the slogans and buzzwords that they were being inundated with.
A stretch? I don’t think so. In my years on the faculty, I have found that UP students, for the most part, have more important priorities than to wave banners, throw eggs, or scream epithets. But the latter is the kind of behavior that gets the publicity, and gives rise to the perception (including, that of Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez, who should know better), that UP is a waste of public money.
Everyone has a right to his own opinion, of course. I do not quarrel with that. What I find disturbing, however, is a certain similarity between some campus leaders and their national counterparts: the tendency to take liberties with the truth. Putting their own spin, as it were the facts, until they are unrecognizable. The youth hate the “trapo” [traditional politicians] for doing it, but they seem to have no problems doing it themselves, if it helps their cause.
Take for example (if newspaper accounts are accurate) one UP student leader quoted as saying: “Can you imagine? From P6,000, you’ll suddenly have to shell out P18,000 a semester?” This young man must have known (unless he didn’t do his homework, in which case he is even more like his adult political counterparts), that only (incoming) freshmen whose annual family income is more than P500,000 a year -- i.e., those belonging to the top 5 percent of families in terms of income -- will have to pay that amount. Since it would be silly to waste his sympathy on them, or on those who will have to pay P30,000 a semester because their family annual income is over P1 million, he makes it appear as if all students have to pay that much.
Not content with that, he then expresses his concern that more and more indigent students would not be able to get into UP for the simple reason that they could not afford it. Excuse me? Again, he completely ignores (or just as bad, is ignorant of) the Student Tuition and Financial Assistance Program of UP. Under this, the poorest students are not only exempted from paying the tuition and other fees, they are also given stipends of P12,000 every semester. As I mentioned in last week’s column, even the not-so poor (with incomes of P70,001 to P135,000 a year) will not experience a tuition fee increase at all, because they will be given a 70 percent discount from the new fees. In other words, UP is definitely taking care of its poor but (intellectually) deserving students -- it has been doing so since 1989.
Intellectual dishonesty or incompetence has contributed to the nightmare that is Philippine governance. That it has started in one so young, an “iskolar ng bayan” [people’s scholar], and a possible future leader of the country, is a shame.
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Bon: Pwde ba kayo maging ninang?Laughtrip.
[natigilan kami ni Atoy, Abby at Eunice]
Bon: Sa kumpil.
Eunice: Di ka pa nakukumpilan?
Abs: Bakit mo naman pinatagal ng ganun?
Atoy: Nagkukuwentuhan nga kami ni Jomer, tinatanong nya What Sitti was like in college at ang sabi ko [sarcastic tone], MAS SIKAT PA KAMI NI EUNICE 'dun. Sya nga sa ramp lang sa gilid dumadaan pag pumapasok sa Econ, kami ni Eunice sa gitna tapos nagh-hi lahat ng tao. Si Eunice nga hanggang AS ang kasikatan, at ako naman mas maraming beses pa nag-perform kay Sitti nun college. [tonong nang-iinis]Tawa ko ng tawa nun narinig ko 'to. Of course we were just kiddin... ALthough, totoo un mga sinabi ni Atoy except for Sitti using the ramp. We love her, she's a simple, pretty and nice girl. Sobrang talented pa. We're proud of her ng sobra.
We are all made to believe that we should be headed in the same direction, inside a seemingly restrictive box that gives us free will a...
