SR, Rep Casino to push for changes in Charter working draft

By Katherine Lopez


Student Regent Terry Ridon and Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casino said last Sept. 26 they will continue to push for amendments in the approved working draft of the UP Charter Bill, particularly in the provisions on commercialization and land grants.

“The bill has some very good provisions, but it also has very bad [ones], specifically the provisions on land grants and assets of the university,” Casino said after the hearing of the Committee on Technical and Higher Education at the House of Representatives last Sept. 26.

Casino also said in a forum the day before that whatever the university would earn from land grants and agreements with private entities should just be a bonus.

“When it comes to commercialization and privatization, we draw the line that this is a state university, and it is the obligation of the state to provide its premier university with all the support that it needs,” he said.

Meanwhile, UP President Emerlinda Roman said the administration is glad that the House version was adopted to be the working draft.

“They (congressmen) really facilitated it so it can now go to the plenary,” Roman said. “They saved time in deliberating… which to me is a good move.”

But Ridon said even if the House version, with all the amendments they were to push for, would be passed in the Lower House, the bicameral committee can still reject it. "There is no assurance today except painstaking efforts sa students and other sectors to really be vigilant," he said.

The House version, or the Zialcita Bill, was introduced by Rep. Edgardo Angara, Rep. Eduardo Gullas, Rep. Eduardo Zialcita and Rep. Guillermo Cua during the 13th Congress.

Entitled An Act to Strengthen the University of the Philippines as the Premier State University the House version obliges the state to “provide financial support to the [UP System] as the premier state university through the General Appropriations Act and in kind, through land grants and donations and use of other real properties.”
Under the House version, the Board of Regents, the highest policy-making body in the UP System, can also “fix and adjust salaries and benefits of the faculty members and other employees” following the revised compensation and position classification system and other compensation laws.

The House version also authorizes the BOR “to fix the tuition and other necessary school charges after due consultations and consent of the various student councils of constituent universities.”

Before the approval of the House version as the working draft, there were two other versions of the bill amending the UP Charter: the Bicam version and the Casino version.

The Bicam version, also known as the Pangilinan Bill, was introduced by Sen. Francis Pangilinan to the Senate and was approved in the Upper House during the 13th Congress. However, the bill has not been ratified in the House of Representatives because of time constraints.

Entitled “An Act to Strengthen the University of the Philippines as the National University,” the Bicam version authorizes the BOR to “plan, design, approve and/or cause the implementation of contracts, mechanisms, and financial instruments… to give the University the flexibility to generate revenues and other resources from land grants and other properties,” as long as those “mechanisms” are “exclusive of the academic core zone of the campuses” of UP.

The Bicam version also allows the BOR “to fix the tuition fees and other necessary school charges, as the Board may deem proper to impose, after due consultation with the students concerned.” The BOR can also “fix and adjust salaries and benefits of the faculty members and other employees” so that they can be “comparable to those being received by their counterparts in the private sector.”

On the other hand, the Casino version, introduced by Casino during the 13th Congress, proposes to abolish the BOR and replace it with the UP System Assembly (UPSA), to be composed of members elected from the seven constituent universities to represent the students, academic personnel (faculty and research, extension and professional staff), administrative personnel and alumni; and the chair of the Commission on Higher Education, the president of UP, the chair of the Senate Committee on Education, Arts and Culture, the chair of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education, and the president of the University System Alumni Association.

Entitled “An Act Reorienting the Charter of the University of the Philippines as the Premier State University,” the Casino version “prevent[s] the commercialization of the university” by stating that “programs, projects or mechanisms to generate revenues and other resources from the land grants… should be consistent with the university’s academic mission and orientation as the premier state university and shall not be meant to replace, in part or in whole, the annual appropriation provided by the national government to the university.” The approval of the UPSA is also required to carry out those programs.

The Casino version also allows the UPSA to “fix the tuition, matriculation, graduation, laboratory and all other special fees upon consultation with and consent of the student body.”

Need to Amend the Charter

Efforts to amend the UP Charter started during the time of former UP President Jose Abueva from 1987 to 1993, when the Senate Bill 2587, which sought to recognize UP as the National University and exempt its employees from the Salary Standardization Law, was first crafted. The bill, however, failed to be voted upon in the Senate during the 13th Congress.

The Salary Standardization Law mandates that government employees be "provide[d] equal pay for substantially equal work" that corresponds to their rank according to the position classification system.

Roman said the changes that have occurred in the university have rendered the UP Charter, crafted in 1908, quite “obsolete.”

“We have really grown so big and there really is a need to amend the charter to incorporate [the] changes that have occurred over time,” she said.

Roman also said UP, according to the old charter, is not exempt from taxes when importing equipment. “We are classified as a corporation. We are not exactly an educational institution,” she pointed out.

Casino, too, believes it is time changes are made to the UP Charter and that it needs to be reoriented “from being colonial and elitist” to becoming “nationalist and democratic.”