CASSayuran

 CASSABA | Set the Record Straight

It is never foreign—cliché at some point even—to hear “IIT biya mo.” The phrase echoes like a broken record, wielded as shorthand for a brand of excellence that carries weight in classrooms and job queues. While the phrase bears the expectation befitting the stature that the university upholds, it is important to set the record straight: the responsibility rests not only on students but on the entirety of the community itself.

Last February, during the 39th EDSA Commemoration, Malacañang’s brazen decision to move the holiday for supposed economic advantage was met with defiance, as universities suspended classes in protest. At MSU-IIT, however, the administration—along with the broader MSU System—issued a last-minute, half-baked suspension only from noon onwards. The gesture, far from proactive, seemed indifferent to the spirit of the occasion.

While the university eventually suspended classes to allow participation in student-led events, the move reeked of an afterthought, granted only in the face of mounting resentment. This pattern is hardly new: memos released too late, pronouncements staged for optics, while students’ time and fares are wasted for the sake of appearances. To its credit, the administration has welcomed certain initiatives such as forums, solidarity walks, and commemorative events. Yet to claim this as support borders on irony when hyper-bureaucratic permits and processes so often throttle the very mobility they purport to enable.

Worse still, authority figures hover not as participants but as overseers—security personnel whose presence looms less for safety than for control. They may simply be following orders, but whose interests are truly being safeguarded?

The issue does not stop on the ground. Online spaces like MSU-IIT Cats or the Dakilang Pamantasan have become breeding grounds for trolls, some red-tagging students who dare express progressive views. Recently, an infamous account even implied that campus organizations serve as gateways for the New People’s Army (NPA)—a castigating smear against the healthy practice of democracy.

At present, universities such as the University of the Philippines, University of Santo Tomas (UST), and neighboring Mindanao institutions—namely Xavier University, MSU Gensan, among others—decry in unison their grievances amid public outrage over massive corruption scandals. Students, as expected, are now in search of the same initiative from IIT. As usual, we are yet to hear from the school.

But we do not need another templated text of rhetorical monologues meant to soothe rather than stand. In times of crisis, the university must show the same passion and vigor it flaunts when chasing metrics. These are not matters to be judged by criteria or rubrics; they are tests of principle, rooted in values far deeper than performance charts.

It is time to demand the same level of expectation from the very institution that parades proudly its supposed social impact. For all the feats it boldly declares, it should not take this much clamor from the student body for the university to feel compelled to break its silence.

To my fellow students: it has always been this way—and it should never be again. Noteworthily, tomorrow dawns the remembrance of an era in our history that plunged the country into the same ills. May we join the stride this September 22 at the CASS Lawn. As a community, we collectively bear the civic duty to do our part and hold those in power to account.

Written by Spider X