Photo by Jiru Rada
by Arjay Ivan Gorospe
UP Mindanao (UPMin) students will soon be allowed to train under military personnel, after the Board of Regents approved the reactivation of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) in the campus during its 1316th meeting on March 31.
The university’s highest policy-making body discussed the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ 11th Regional Community Defense Group (RCDG), permitting members of the 11th Infantry Battalion to conduct the classes.
The MOA approval brings back the ROTC program in UPMin despite the absence of an implementing academic unit, effectively relegating control to the AFP.
Amid the policy revival, various student groups condemned the administration’s railroading of the approval. Together with the Sagip GE Alliance, the UPMin University Student Council (USC) marched to oppose ROTC on the same day of the BOR meeting.
“Like all of the other policies implemented in Mindanao, the ROTC manifests the continued rejection of our admin to the students’ plea for representation and participation. We have been calling out the presence of the military camp beside our campus, we dare to ask, why can’t the UP admin railroad the abolishment or retreat this camp instead,” said UP Mindanao USC Chairperson Leah Aying.
Military presence
ROTC is a component under the National Service Training Program, designed to train, organize, and mobilize citizen soldiers for national defense preparedness under Republic Act (RA) 9163. Freshmen and scontinuing students may opt to take the ROTC to satisfy the NSTP requirement.
The mandatory requirement for the program was repealed in 2001, after cases of hazing allegedly occurred under supervision of the ROTC program. The corpse of Mark Chua, a student from the University of Santo Tomas, was found floating in Pasig River in the same year after a supposed security training in Fort Bonifacio under ROTC.
Within the UP System, ROTC has been maintained as an option for students in compliance with the NSTP requirement in all constituent units expect for UPMin.
“To avoid repeating history, we should look back at the case of Chua, whose story has become the motivation to abolish the ROTC before,” said Aying.
Even before the reimplementation of ROTC, the Army Reserve Command (ARESCOM) headquarters has been squatting within UP Mindanao for years, but previous chancellors remained powerless or unwilling to present relocation proposals.
“Right now, they just put up a wooden fence, and during these summer months, they are accommodating training exercises on their ample grounds (which should be UP grounds). We often see uniformed men on the University Avenue,” said Aya Ragragio, UP Min Social Sciences professor.
The presence of the ARESCOM violates a special agreement called the League of Filipino Students- Department of National Defense Accord with the university and the national government, which prohibits the presence of military agents within any UP campus.
Currently, 60 percent from the total of military forces in the country are based in Mindanao as part of the Oplan Bayanihan, the Aquino administration’s counter-insurgency program.
“Over 60 percent of the AFP is located here, and what have they done so far? Aided and abetted Lumad killings. Encamped and attacked community schools. I cannot believe that the people behind the MOA can be so naïve as to think that this is a purely neutral occurrence,” said Ragragio.
No academic unit
While the MOA has already been confirmed within the BOR, the UP Min USC has yet to get a copy of the document. The council also slammed the board for approving the program without prior student consultations.
“Lacking any form of consultation, it has become a tradition that policies are railroaded to promulgate repression among the students,” according to an official statement released by the UP Min USC.
The UP admin’s entrustment of the students’ education to the 11th Infantry Battalion is reckless as they cannot prove if they even have a dignified mechanism to train the students, said Aying.
The ROTC program is supposedly placed under the Department of Military and Science Tactics, which reports to the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, according to the Implementing Guidelines on NSTP-ROTC Component No such department currently exists in UPMin.
With the absence of the DMST, ROTC as an academic program is questionable if it is to be carried out by the Philippine Army through the MOA, said Ragragio.
“We know that the ROTC before has been used to collect intelligence about progressive groups and individuals in the University. This is the nature of the armed forces: they are deployed not against real enemies, but against ordinary Filipinos, who happen to be courageous enough to speak up or act about social issues,” he added.