Ateneo needs new activist student leaders

Student leaders must be activists. We live in historic yet despairing times; Ateneans face threats to their rights and welfare within and outside the university. Only activist student leaders with firm convictions and hardline stances on students’ and peoples’ rights can help move our struggles forward.

In the years just before the pandemic and lockdowns, Ateneo saw a decline in organizational life and culture after the implementation of K-12. Compounded by the education system’s neoliberal design, this resulted in the increased atomization of students. Their attention was redirected to curricular matters, lessening their involvement in the student and youth community. But the student leaders then were tireless in engaging the students, and as activists, were committed to raising the student body’s social consciousness.

Now, after years of distance learning, Ateneo returns to a mostly faceto-face setup. With the barrier to social interactions lifted, Ateneans are fully engaging again in the student community through its orgs and institutions.

Yet the student body finds itself with relatively inexperienced and uncertain leaders—they need reminding of the social gravity of student leadership and Ateneo’s history and tradition of vanguard activism.

Student orgs and institutions are crucial to collectivizing and consolidating students. They can be critical spaces that expose students to the social and political realities beyond the classroom. Orgs and institutions are thus essential for an empowered student body. Student leaders play a key role in setting the direction of these collectives or in mobilizing the student body when necessary.

Among the orgs and institutions, of chief importance in role and function is the Supreme Student Government. As the elected representative of the student body, it is tasked with helming the protection and advancement of student democratic rights without compromise. This also means that it should—it must—go beyond university-centered student activities. The SSG is vitally positioned to be the spearhead of a student movement.

Many of the gains for students’ rights and empowerment by Ateneo’s student movement were made under the leadership of activists in the SSG.

Ateneo’s changing of its dress code policy allowing students to dress according to their gender started with the SSG’s research-backed proposal in 2018. The university’s first Pride March that same year was also organized by the SSG. During this period, they endeavored to tie and relate their programs to the broader social issues beyond the university. It hosted forums and political discussions while also co-organizing and leading mobilizations and protest actions with mass organizations.

Naga City’s biggest student mobilizations and youth protests in recent memory were led by activist student leaders in the SSG who were also part of mass organizations. They constantly coordinated with various organizations as well as student leaders from other schools. These protests along with small-group political discussions stimulate social consciousness and raise public discourse.

In times when student welfare conflicts with the university administration’s interests, uncompromising loyalty to the student body proves decisive.

During the first month of the 2020 lockdown, the university wanted to push through with the semester online. However, the students and faculty were still coping with the uncertainties and fears of the pandemic. Students’ individual circumstances and the limited resources of some made the decision to move the semester online exclusionary and burdensome.

After conducting a constituency check, the SSG submitted a position paper and letter calling on the university to end the semester and grant mass promotion. Despite receiving a rebuttal from the university administration, the SSG stood its ground and joined the tide of student clamor to end the semester until the university relented.

Ateneo’s history of genuine student leadership and militant activism goes all the way back to Arroyo’s crackdown on progressive groups, Estrada’s ouster, and the Marcos dictatorship’s martial law.

The student leaders during these periods were able to do the things they did because their commitment to student welfare and peoples’ rights were more than just words or individual advocacy. They were themselves intimately involved in the various peoples’ organizations and their political struggles. Backed by the mass, history, and principles of the national democratic movement, they stood on the shoulders of giants. One of the founding members of Anakbayan-Naga City, a national democratic youth mass organization, was an SSG vice president along with some SSG volunteers. A former SSG president was a representative of Gabriela Youth, a natdem mass organization for young women.

But now we come to Ateneo’s present student leadership. The officials currently sitting in the hallowed office of the SSG are a far cry from those who came before. Besides their recently demonstrated dubious understanding of accountability, their brand of student leadership has been passive charity and hollow advocacy.

The current SSG leadership has not been proactive in guarding students’ rights nor in raising awareness and discourse on the most pressing social and political troubles confronting us. Perhaps most grievous of all, they have failed to oppose or rouse dissent against the recently proposed tuition and other fees increase (TOFI), a policy at odds with the principles of accessible education. This despite some having professed to be against it during their election campaign. Worse, they asked for an increase in their budget themselves during the TOFI consultation last March—something previous SSG administrations would have been ashamed to even consider.

This is not the kind of leadership the student body needs.

The threats to students’ rights and welfare are resisted through collective vigilance and remonstrance. But they thrive when student leaders are passive and apathetic.

With the return to power of the kleptocratic Marcos family and their emboldening clique of neoliberal and imperialist lapdogs, activist student leadership is needed now more than ever. This is a critical period for the student body to determine its trajectory in Ateneo’s history. The SSG elections are fast approaching. If any aspiring student leaders are to head a genuine Supreme Student Government, they must take up the mantle of activism. Student leaders must be activists.

FROM THE DESK | Who is ThePILLARS Pub?

It has been three years since our last print release. ThePILLARS Publication acknowledges its shortcoming in failing to publish any print issues during the pandemic, and we apologize to the student body.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, the publication was going through a process of rebuilding. After the implementation of K-12, we experienced a decline in our membership and critical vacancies in our Editorial Board. The lockdowns’ social restrictions prevented key operations such as productive trainings, field coverages, and physically obtaining funds for our activities. Like other school organizations, we were also personally confronted with challenges in terms of the social and emotional effects of the pandemic. These factors set back the publication’s pre-pandemic efforts to rebuild itself and crippled our functions.

Still, we persevered within our capacity to fulfill our basic journalistic responsibilities. We released news updates and online coverages through accessible digital platforms. These efforts have contributed to our drive to adapt to modern journalism. Now that we are at better capacity, we are in the process of developing our official website. Besides traditional print, our reportage will now be available on a digital medium.

Who is ThePILLARS Publication? We are the Ateneo student body’s issue-based news outlet. Our brand of journalism is pro-student and pro-people. We advocate the raising of social consciousness and advancing students’ and peoples’ rights as part of the nation’s democratic struggles.

This print issue represents our commitment to student journalism as part of students’ right to be heard, be informed, and to participate in the shaping of society.