Take it to the streets and DEBATE!

 

Student activists gathered in front of the university on August 17 to call out systemic injustice and foreground societal issues that affect not only the student body, but also the Filipino working class. It is a civic and political right for students, especially in a state university wherein the tuition is funded by taxpayers— to call out the very systems that attempt to silence accountability, the systemic oppression that cripples the people through ridding them of land and livelihood, and to hold those in power responsible.

Recently, the Office of Student Development Services (OSDS) shared the University Debate Team tryout post with the caption: “you don’t have to take it to the streets, DEBATE.” This comment was rather uncalled for and unwarranted. The post drew attention from students who advocated for their right to protest. Yet, we must ask: is it right for institutions to make such comments? The caption reflected as to what is politically convenient for this institution.


Academic debate tests a proposition from multiple sides, regardless of their own personal beliefs in order to deepen one's understanding of an issue. A rally, on the other hand, is an organized movement that serves as an act of advocacy to collectively pressure those who hold power, and benefit from the status quo. To debate is to inquire; to rally is to confront. Offering academic debate as a replacement for protest begets control, not progress, as it is merely class management disguised as guidance to channel the voice of the dispossessed into a debate hall where the university is not the one being examined, rather than the streets where the institution might actually be forced to account for something.

It is rather appalling for an office whose very purpose is to develop civic and leadership skills in students to discourage the very act that most directly exercises what it preaches. Discouraging protest does not neutralize an issue, it manufactures consent for the university's inaction while giving the appearance that students have been given an outlet. This is how institutions under capitalism tend to manage dissent — not always through outright repression, but through the gentle redirection of energy into channels that pose no material consequence for those in charge.

For student calls to be shunned, criticized, or curbed by bureaucratic requirements such as rally permits is hypocritical. Asking the system you seek to hold accountable for permission to protest transforms a movement into a supervised parade. A permit to assemble simply shows bureaucratic control that the state uses to regulate and suppress public dissatisfaction. Needing permits will allow these systems to cherry-pick “acceptable” messages that will fit their narratives to bury the true messages the people are fighting for. What will become of the word of the people when it is policed by institutions, what becomes of freedom when everything is under surveillance?

Beyond the cost of permits lies another price: the red-tagging of students who participate in protests. The Commission on Human Rights has publicly condemned the red-tagging of students following protest activity, citing cases where student demonstrators were stopped, questioned, and treated as security threats rather than citizens exercising a constitutional right. Simply showing up and participating in these events come with consequences that fall hardest on those with the least institutional protection. When a university, which could have chosen not to replicate this dynamic, instead uses a debate recruitment post to nudge students away from protest, it deserves to be asked directly: whose comfort is being protected here?

Article III, Section 4 of the 1987 Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, expression, and peaceable assembly: “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for redress of grievances.” The students are not there to cause ruckus nor mass hysteria through “brainwashing” but simply to petition against corruption, land dispossession via imperialist projects such as Pax Silica— where farmers are being displaced and our natural resources are stripped for the sake of AI data centers, and systemic injustice. Yet who upholds the law when the institution that governs the students disallows and discourages student activism and free speech? Though the constitution does not ask for the university to tolerate protests, it forbids it from abridging it.

The university preaches its tagline, “Influencing the Future,” yet it gatekeeps progressive movements. Academic debate is not a replacement for movements that amplify and advocate for the grievances of the student body.

Among the issues student activists highlight is the stalled investigation of a former College of Education - Student Council (CED-SC) officer who allegedly committed corrupt acts through pocketing the collected college funds totalling to one hundred forty-seven thousand pesos. It is quite alarming that there is no statement coming from the university regarding this matter. It begs the question, why do we criminalize and red-tag student activists who actively seek out answers to the questions the system is too afraid to answer, but allow such corruption to happen and be swept under the rug? Whether or not these speculations hold up or not, the university’s silence on such allegations speaks volume.


Does “Influencing the Future” simply mean conforming to systems that breed complacency? Academic excellence is preached, and the university proudly announces its rankings among other institutions— to be regarded as a top university in Mindanao means nothing when excellence means silencing concerns and grievances of the student body. Real excellence would mean answering questions exclaimed by those who are in the streets, not redirecting the students who are chasing answers into a format where the university is never on the other side of the podium.

To make it strikingly clear, academic debate and student protest are not competitors, and this piece is not an argument belittling nor is it against debate. The practice of formal debate builds critical thinking, research rigor, and the ability to argue in positions where students may not personally hold nor resonate with. Yet this is exactly why debate cannot substitute for a rally, it was never built to hold those who hold power accountable, it only tests ideas. Rallies exist because some grievances are not up for debate— they are the outcry of people who understand that appealing to goodwill is not the same as organizing enough collective pressure to move an institution.

 

Written by Cassie Long-legs