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filed under: things you write because there's idiots and you still hold on to the hope that one day there will be less of them*

*There will never be less of them. Ever.

Point A: Whether or not Kristel Tejada committed suicide because UP forced her to file an LOA is irrelevant. Repeat, in case that did not get through to you: whether or not Kristel Tejada committed suicide because she was forced to file an LOA is irrelevant. You do not know why she committed suicide. It is not your business to know why she committed suicide. It is disrespectful and dismissive and simplistic to sniff around her life trying to find out the ~real reason, like suicide can ever be boiled down to one thing.

It is, however, your business to know that two repressive policies prevented her from studying in a university that 1. accepted her as a student, and 2. professes, by virtue of its being a state university, to be a university of and for the people, where the people is generally presumed, again by virtue of its being a state university, to refer to everyone who qualifies and not just those who can afford to pay for a top-tier education. (If I am mistaken about any part of the above sentence, feel free to correct me.) It is your business to know this as either a taxpayer or someone who depends on one, because this means that your money is going into an institution that does not perform the functions it was designed to perform (the entire government notwithstanding). It is even more so your business to know this if you are a part of the university in question, because these are policies that affect your learning environment, at the very least, if they do not affect you. It is your business because as a human being your business is other human beings. If it weren't we'd have spent our formative years sitting at home and reading instead of going through the three-ring circus that is the education system.

Point A.1: Whether or not Kristel Tejada committed suicide because UP forced her to file an LOA is irrelevant. I understand how frustrating it is to keep on hearing people reduce her suicide- anyone's suicide, actually- to one focal turning point. If you are truly fed up with the way people discuss mental health and the direct results of the lack thereof- well, talk about mental health. Talk about how discussing mental illnesses is still taboo at worst and about how they are hardly ever taken seriously as physical diseases and not as failings of character. Talk about the lack of awareness about mental health in the country and about how, when people talk about making health care available to all, mental health is often forgotten. Talk about how the increased stress on people of lower socioeconomic status correlates to increased incidences of mood disorders, and about how a lot of these are left undiagnosed and untreated due to a dearth of available, accessible, affordable health care. Assigning blame to her family and to her personal life and character and then saying multifactorial like it will magically make everything better... does not qualify as a reasonable discussion, to say the least.

Point B: Whether or not Kristel Tejada committed suicide because UP forced her to file an LOA is irrelevant, but the fact that she was prevented from attending a university that 1. she qualified for, and 2. is meant and was made to give those who could generally not afford to pay for a top-tier education said top-tier education, is not. The fact that preventing her from attending UP because she could not pay her tuition benefitted neither her nor the university is not only relevant but is also the kind of relevant that cannot be described using words suitable for general audiences.

Point B.1: It costs exactly as much to educate 5843 students as it does to educate 5844.

Point B.2: UP spends a good amount of time and money screening graduating high school students to determine which ones they were going to give aforementioned top-tier tertiary educations to. It seems a waste of time and money to not let a student study at your university after figuring out that this was a student you thought was worth educating just because they couldn't meet a payment deadline.

Private universities have the practice of giving students promissory notes and allowing them to pay for their tuition up till the end of the semester. This has the dual advantages of 1. ensuring that the student in question will have the chance to pay, and 2. ensuring that the student in question will have the chance to study. I am sure that the quote-unquote best university in the country has developed a better system of doing both, instead of ensuring neither. Hang on.

Point B.3: Of course, there is an unspeakable amount of entitlement in reducing people to the resources they eat up and those they will produce, but efforts must be made to speak the language the world at large seems to understand.

Point C: It is impossible to run a university using policies looking out for sustainability without looking at the students said university is supposed to want sustainability for. In simpler words: if you are running a school, the students come first. The only way to run a school is to put the students first. Everything else is just window dressing, if expensive window dressing.

Point C.1: See why UP needs more of a budget?

Point C.2: It's a state university. Three guesses what government-run universities are supposed to provide. Hint: it's kind of the same thing all government-run services are supposed to provide, which is why we pay taxes in the first place.

(Once upon a time, people figured out that it was best for everyone if everyone had access to a few basic things, but they couldn't figure out how to make it such that everyone could access these things regardless of how much money they had. From that necessity governments were born. They just kind of mutated along the way.)

Point D: Of course we should be quiet and calm and reasonable and respectful in our discussions. Of course we should go through the proper channels, whether or not the people in charge of running these channels are willing to give you the minimum amount of time and respect. Making people in power uncomfortable has never brought about necessary changes, in any way. Oh, wait.

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