Start Digging
"Tubig sa water pipe/Burak sa kape/Gamot sa ubo/sa utak ng gago" - From "Masarap" by the Radioactive Sago Project
The sago quote says it all, pure and simple, like a random donut mistakenly left unglazed. And while it has absolutely nothing to do with the college administration's proposal to raise tuition fees in the near future, it practically spells out what we think about the whole deal.
The Task Force on Tuition Fee Increase was formed to deliberate on the matter and come up with their recommendations. Reading the minutes of the past few meetings was akin to hearing a rogue band of mice plotting to snag the Big Cheese.
If bleak was a color, it would be the perfect shade to paint the college's future with, overblown centennial festivities aside. Government subsidies have been steadily declining. Donors are allegedly suffering from "donor's fatigue" and have refused to help our plight. We have fallen on hard times and barring any windfall, the administration has seen that a tuition fee hike---is the most---and at times, it seems---only viable solution.
While such a move is something most of the Starbucks-swilling creatures this campus can afford, not everyone can pay for a tall latte four times a week, much less have enough money left over to provide for their medical education. The task force only hinted---and rather vaguely, at that---about "strengthening the scholarship program" to address the needs of this subset of the Dean's "cherished students".
We can only commend the Task Force's and this administration's actions for boldly addressing the issue of finances. Apparently, it takes more than just hot air and trademark peyups yabang to keep the country's premier medical school afloat.
Still, the lack of effort to find other means of funding is unsettling. Problem solving is a creative process. If creativity came in soda cans, we would be more than willing to help out by pelting the office with three cases worth each day just so the task force can get a clue.
Lastly, we are sorry to rain on the parade but the centennial buzz is the last straw and leaves a particularly butt-ugly notion as to how this administration sets its priorities.
A lot of money has been poured into the preparations and activities, more than enough money perhaps to support five students in need of aid for at least one school year. We find it extremely befuddling as to how the administration can ask us all to live large and loud when it should really be squeezing every peso that comes its way.
Which begs several questions: Is a tuition fee increase unavoidable? Does the college really not have enough money to stay out of the red? Are there still other means by which these problems can be addressed?
And most importantly: are the centennial celebrations our own lame remix of The Matrix's overlong party scenes where the whole point of frenzied decadence is to forget that tomorrow, our world will be smacked to bits?
With scenes like these, we believe that the best course of action involves procuring an absurd number of shovels and having students work four-hour shifts, digging all over campus.
Who knows what we'll find down there?
Marcos gold? Oil? A long-sleeping dragon to help us lobby for funding?
And if we still don't get anything after sorting and sifting through the dirt, we could all just throw ourselves in because, truth be told, that's where this whole deal is going to take us anyway.
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