Stand with TomasinoWeb!

“The educating community is responsible for ensuring respect for the life, dignity and freedom of pupils and other members of the school.” – Congregation for Catholic Education

Let us call a spade a spade. The University of Santo Tomas (UST) through its Office for Student Affairs (OSA) clearly censored TomasinoWeb over a benign photo of students. Its order to take down the image and its threat to dissolve the organization is definitely an encroachment on the constitutionally-enshrined rights of students.

We, Thomasian alumni, believe that the gagging of the campus press through OSA is just a symptom of a much more malignant disease in UST, one that has plagued the university since its establishment under colonial rule. The UST administration’s transgressions against TomasinoWeb is definitely not isolated, but part of a systemic problem of campus repression which they have refused to address and instead have allowed to fester.

Years have passed without any genuine changes and meaningful reforms for students’ rights and welfare. To this day, students and their organizations continue to live at the mercy of OSA’s repressive, arbitrary, and outdated policies under fear of being policed and sanctioned.

It is clear that what brought UST public ridicule is not TomasinoWeb’s photo, but the university itself and its refusal to uphold and recognize students’ rights.

This must end now.

All officials involved in this blatant case of campus repression must go. We assert that there should be no space in the University for people without competence to properly handle organizations, compassion for the welfare of students, and commitment to ensure that UST is a space where students’ democratic rights are protected and upheld.

As Thomasians and student organizations in the University now find their courage to publicly speak out against these repressive policies, we also call for vigilance and demand University officials to keep their hands off of students who are merely exercising their democratic rights.

We stand with TomasinoWeb’s incumbent officers and members and with every freedom-loving Thomasian in this fight to uphold students’ rights, and to end all forms of campus repression in UST.