Tag: University of the Philippines Diliman

too much charity is not healthy

I had always wanted to take a picnic in the UP sunken garden. The wide expanse of the grassy field and the majestic narra trees surrounding it, have their aesthetic appeal to my gustatory senses. This is a wish that thanks to my busy UP schedule, I wasn’t able to really fulfill. And so during my recent UP visit, wherein I had time in my hands, I opted to eat my lunch at one of the benches facing the sunken garden.

 

UP Sunken Garden (source: ChrisVillarin.com)

 

 

I was enjoying my bolognese pasta and chicken, the breeze softly blowing, when all of a sudden two pitiful impoverished kids went near me. They were insisting that I give them my food! Can’t they see that I am not yet finished? Sometimes, I swear that the beggars of the UP community have a certain attitude already – demanding that you hand over your unfinished food because they are hungry and poor to buy any for themselves. Not that I disagree with that but whatever happened to basic courtesy? And what irked me more was that their mother was just in the vicinity. I came to the rash conclusion that she instigated her kids to come near me, disturb my peaceful lunch, and beg their way to my pocket!

I scurried the kids away. I am not normally heartless to the less fortunate citizens of this country but at that point, I had no intentions of being compassionate. Having successfully ignored and driven the kids away, another kid, a much younger one and more pitiful looking came to me. He was the younger brother of the two and I think the mother, seeing that the two older kids didn’t succeed thought she can appeal to the compassionate nature of my heart by sending her youngest kid. And it was harder to get that kid off. So I simply ignored him. Since the youngest had no intentions of leaving me, the two older kids went back and resumed their begging. So now I had three kids, begging in front of me, while I was finishing my lunch. It was even worse than eating at the window table of a restaurant and having street kids stare at you from outside! To get rid of them, I hissed that I was almost mad and they wouldn’t like to see me get mad. That got them to stop and scurry away. No doubt, they, and the people who could witness us, thought of me as a very heartless bitch.

 

Source: Pinggoy Danguilan's Multiply Site

 

 

But what can I do? I was really mad that the mother won’t try to device of some other way to feed her kids than have them begging for food from hapless students like me. (I am an official student since I’ve just enrolled.) I am also angry that there are poor people in this country – though I do not really know who to blame for that. And I am equally angry that no one is now allowed to enjoy one’s lunch or eat in the public spaces of UP without being pestered by these beggars. Not that I am being coñotic and mata pobre but then doesn’t anyone have the right to at least eat in peace while enjoying some scenery?

I know I really came out as harsh, evil and whatever that day. I finished the last morsel of my lunch in peace – the beggars long gone after giving up all hope of touching my compassionate cord. I fumed for a while over the incredulity of the situation, then rationalized the matter over and tucked it away in my mind to be pondered on for another point in time.

I have been doing charity work for the longest time I can remember – maybe it is not much but it is what I can do. I wonder now how long will charity work be needed in the country? How many more Filipinos would need to rely on charity for their survival? Will there never come a time when charity will be a somehow obsolete thing because everyone has learned to survive on their own means and resources? And because the government has learned that instead of providing charity to alleviate the dire situation of most citizens of this country, they’ve provided rewarding jobs and opportunities that would really build a nation up?

 

Outreach in Pampanga (UPCYM Caravan 2008)

 

 

Must the Philippines always rely on charity? What if charity grows tired and jaded? What would our country do?

UP cycle of life

During my recent trip to UP, I had the fortunate experience of observing the dawn of UP registration, that is, the start of the UP enrollment process. It amazed me to observe freshies with either one of their parents, on the prowl around UP grounds – either familiarizing themselves with the surroundings or to securing a slot in a required but hard to get subject. It further amazed me to see senior high school students, still in their high school uniforms, fawning over their freshly-obtained UPCAT forms and dreaming of the course they’d like to take in the country’s state university. Then of course there are the undergrads, who are in the middle of their college journey – braving yet another registration period which marks the opening of another grueling semester.

I look at them and think that here they are, beginning a chapter of their lives, that I’ve already closed and left behind. There are times when I could see myself in their shoes and remember all those long-ago moments when I was a new student in UP – everything totally new and foreign to me. Now, I can say that there is no nook and cranny in UP which I haven’t explored at one point or another. I can remember, when the sight of the Acad Oval or the AS steps incited the thrill of discovery in my heart. Now that thrill has been replaced by nostalgia and wishful thinking of the memories forged in such places. I can recall the day when I first travelled to UP, while aboard the UP Philcoa, the first glance of the UP landmark in the intersection of University Ave. and Commonwealth Ave., stucked my breath in my throat.  I was thinking, “Finally, the beginning of a new chapter in my life – a completely new life in a completely new place.” Now, when I pass by that landmark, my breath comes out as a sigh – sometimes it is a sigh of resignation that I still haven’t marched amongst the infamous sunflowers in April and sometimes it is a sigh of nostalgia of my UP years.

The most remarkable experience of my UP visit was when I paid my tuition. Having applied only for residency, and that is residency without library and medical benefits, I basically have no units enrolled (I’ve finished all my required units and I only have some other requirements to attend to). As such, my “tuition” is a meager 40php. While I was waiting for the RA to fix my Form5 (which is also my OR), I happened to glance at the other students paying their tuition. I was aghast to see one of the cashier’s counting a lot of 500php bills. I glanced at the computer monitor and saw that the student’s tuition was for 23Kphp! At first I thought she was paying for 3 students already but then I recalled that in UP, there is a sort of one student per transaction policy so it is impossible for her to be paying, all at once, for 3 students. Then it hit me! These undergrads are now under the revised tuition scheme wherein the average cost of a unit is 1Kphp. And I glanced at the other monitors and saw one paying 17Kphp! Gosh! What happened to UP education? Just because my batch was not covered by this revised tuition scheme, I cannot feel the increase at all but now seeing these students paying such hefty amounts, I can feel the reality of the tuition fee increase.

This was such a hot issue when I was somewhere in my senior years, and being a bit apathetic, I didn’t really give a damn back then. I even rationalized that this is for the good of the school so that our facilities will improve. Well, within my senior year, indeed a lot of buildings cropped up but thinking back – shouldn’t that had been sheltered by government funds and not students’ tuition? Then again, I am still dubious over the facilities that laboratories offer. In my senior year, I didn’t see any marked improvements in the facilities of my lab classes. But then again maybe because I was not paying the incredulous increased tuition and lab fees.

Yet still, I am led to ponder, what would happen to those high school student who dream of a UP diploma and a UP education. What would happen to them when they learn that the cost of a UP education is almost the same as that of a private school in their respective provinces? Would they still risk the immersion in an alien environment, far from the comforts of home and family? My sister said that her tuition fee in Ateneo De Naga rivals the 23k tuition fee of one of the UP students I saw. However, in her case she has the option to pay that on a monthly installment. In UP, tuition fee payment is always one time big time. No wonder, most UP students now parallel Atenistas and La Sallites. No wonder, you will seldom see the typical UP student of the good old days – the simple probinsyano/probinsyana wearing simple clothes and having simple means of living. UP education has been indeed thrown farther out of reach from impoverished yet eager bright minds. It makes me sad that the Iskolar ng Bayan is no longer a scholar.