UP AyalaLand TechnoHub and UP Town Center
are standing in UP lands, but do these establishments play the role and serve
the objectives of the University? More focus was put to this question when
Ayala started walling off and putting posters of the soon-to-rise UPTC around
the former lot of UP Integrated School. This social forum, KAPEKONOMIYA:
Probing the UP Land Use, laid down the issues and inequities behind the
utilization of UP lands for commercial purposes.
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The first speaker, Ruperto Alonzo, was
able to point out that the private sectors are not new to UP, like cafeterias,
food services, and now private concessionaires, but these should benefit UP,
especially the employees and the students. According to Professor Alonzo, we
must preserve the value of the assets of the national university, like developing
land properties to be used for education and research purposes. The second
speaker, Judy Taguiwalo, was able to impart to the audience her message that there
is a need to strengthen UP as a public university. She mentioned that CHED and
the President push SUCs to be self-sufficient for our own income. Since “lack
of money” was the constant reason, the government wanted to implement privatization,
but according to Professor Taguiwalo, in reality, there will always be enough
or even more money to support the country.
Before attending this public forum, I
already noticed how none of the mentioned establishments even cater to the
needs of UP students, other than expensive food. It only benefited those who
can really afford. I even remembered how TechnoHub was planned to house science
laboratories and more dormitories for the students, but none of those even
happened. This talk was an eye-opener on the deviation from UP’s original Land
Use Plans to pave the way for the rise of privatization and commercialization. I really agreed to the negative views of the
speakers on this issue because UP should be filled with buildings that benefit
the students and the professors, buildings that improve the students’
performance, and buildings that make students enthusiastic in going to school.
Philippines had already welcomed thousands of malls, let alone in Metro Manila.
Students had access to a restaurant-lined Katipunan or to an SM mall every
thirty-minute drive. Why would we need new malls, new places to eat at? The
government had always relied on market for its sufficiency, but it had not
really helped the disadvantaged, it only supported the private owners and the
politicians who had found a way to launder money.
For me, having allowed these
establishments on UP lands decreased the university’s prestige and main
objective, which had always been to serve the people. Although, this may not
solely be the fault of UP, because the government was the one that pushed the
state university to enter privatization due to billions of budget cut they
imposed on the latter. For me, it would be reasonable to privatize if it were
not for commercial purposes, but for the actual benefit of those studying and
working in UP. Privatization was supposed to improve the university’s income,
but why were we still faced with a yearly increase in our tuition fees? Where
did the billions of money from our tuition fees, from the privatized lands, and
from businesses go?
This public forum indeed made the Iskos
and Iskas aware of the objective of UP, of the issues that UP faced due to
commercialization. We need not to waste our land assets for more malls,
restaurants, and shops. Instead, we must utilize them to construct more innovative
facilities and services. Due to the growing power of private businesses, the
University succumbed to commercialization to gain more profits as well. These
questions will still remain: Will we, as UP students, still be able to do
something now that TechnoHub and UPTC are established on our lands? Will we
still allow the use of UP lands for commercial purposes again?
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