Remembrance of things past
No, I'm not gonna do a la Proust on this one.
More like, serendipity. Yep, that's it. I was trying to tweak Google's page-ranking system to see if how this blog hits on the search engine, so I was fooling around with some keywords.
I typed in my name, and voila! on the fourth hit, it was related to our case against AMA Computer College. Actually, there were two Supreme Court rulings related to our case:
But first, a backgrounder on the case:
I was the editor-in-chief of the AMACC student publication, Dataline. We came out with a lampoon issue that tackled on issues like tuition fee increases, undelivered services, and other misconduct and abuses by the school administration. Obviously, we cannot do that out front without subjecting ourselves (I meant, my editorial staff and me) to the fascistic tendencies of the school admin, so we had to do it in a contorted albeit truthful way. Thus, the lampoon.
We actually lampooned the tabloid trash, replete with its slangs and nuances -- whatever that is. *It was a lampoon. * Apparently, the admin took it seriously, so they charged us (the editorial board) with obscenity, slander, and misappropriation of funds. That was December 1996.
Allegedly, there were hearings by the student tribunal, a three-person panel composing of a faculty member, a student leader (the then chair of the student council), and the dean of studen affairs (who happens to be the complainant!). Now where can you find a trial where the principal complainant also renders judgement on the complaint? They have a phrase for it: a "kangaroo court".
To cut the story short, after the hearings -- where I was not able to attend, by the way, because I was not even properly informed that there was a case against me -- we were expelled. The school admin was not satisfied, they even filed a libel case against us. The libel was promptly trashed for lack of merit.
We were expelled in the middle of the final examinations. Our recourse was to file for preliminary injunction so that we can at least take the finals and enrol for the next trimester. The ignorant judge (yep, there's already a ruling on that, see above) dismissed the civil case for lack of cause, or something to that effect, rendering judgement on us -- that the school admin had all the right to expel us because, really, we were obscene and slanderous good-for-nothing pen-pushers -- without the benefit of a trial. That's two against us.
Lawyers of the school even held so-called "consultations" with individual members of the board, with the result of four members issuing letters of apology and a motion to withdraw the civil case. Again, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unethical. Sheesh! Lawyers! Don't they know that you don't ever make "gapang" your client's opponents? Or is that standard practice?
So now, the rest of the editorial board had gone their separate ways -- none of them ever went back to schoo again, I think. Even me.
Yep, I'm an undergraduate, not because I was a lazy student who wasted my parents' hard-earned money, but because some people thought they could push us around and play with our future, like the insipid fascists that they are.
I'd like to think that I've moved on, but not really. What riles me is that whenever I see the school's ads on TV (it's a university now, by the way), they actually think that they can pull it off, spreading gloss and floss over their shortcomings and sell the unaware students -- their prey -- short. They have the gall of pronouncing that they're the foremost IT academic institution in Asia when inside, really, students are devoid of rights such as of assembly and speech. Ask any AMA University student if they're satisfied with freedom on campus. Most likely, they'll look at you as if you just dropped from another planet. That's precisely because they are never even aware that they have the freedom to congregate; to air their grievances; to demand for quality education without their parents selling off their legs and an arm.
Sad. But I'm not losing hope. Our case is still pending -- it's on appeal, I think. No, I'm not about to hope on going back to AMA. As I've said, I've moved on. But this case, just this case -- us puny students against them IT-school biggies -- will show them that they cannot ever mess with students who know how to wield the power of the pen.
More like, serendipity. Yep, that's it. I was trying to tweak Google's page-ranking system to see if how this blog hits on the search engine, so I was fooling around with some keywords.
I typed in my name, and voila! on the fourth hit, it was related to our case against AMA Computer College. Actually, there were two Supreme Court rulings related to our case:
- A complaint against the judge who handled the case for gross ignorance of the law; and
- A complaint by our counsel against the counsel of the other party for unethical conduct.
But first, a backgrounder on the case:
I was the editor-in-chief of the AMACC student publication, Dataline. We came out with a lampoon issue that tackled on issues like tuition fee increases, undelivered services, and other misconduct and abuses by the school administration. Obviously, we cannot do that out front without subjecting ourselves (I meant, my editorial staff and me) to the fascistic tendencies of the school admin, so we had to do it in a contorted albeit truthful way. Thus, the lampoon.
We actually lampooned the tabloid trash, replete with its slangs and nuances -- whatever that is. *It was a lampoon. * Apparently, the admin took it seriously, so they charged us (the editorial board) with obscenity, slander, and misappropriation of funds. That was December 1996.
Allegedly, there were hearings by the student tribunal, a three-person panel composing of a faculty member, a student leader (the then chair of the student council), and the dean of studen affairs (who happens to be the complainant!). Now where can you find a trial where the principal complainant also renders judgement on the complaint? They have a phrase for it: a "kangaroo court".
To cut the story short, after the hearings -- where I was not able to attend, by the way, because I was not even properly informed that there was a case against me -- we were expelled. The school admin was not satisfied, they even filed a libel case against us. The libel was promptly trashed for lack of merit.
We were expelled in the middle of the final examinations. Our recourse was to file for preliminary injunction so that we can at least take the finals and enrol for the next trimester. The ignorant judge (yep, there's already a ruling on that, see above) dismissed the civil case for lack of cause, or something to that effect, rendering judgement on us -- that the school admin had all the right to expel us because, really, we were obscene and slanderous good-for-nothing pen-pushers -- without the benefit of a trial. That's two against us.
Lawyers of the school even held so-called "consultations" with individual members of the board, with the result of four members issuing letters of apology and a motion to withdraw the civil case. Again, the Supreme Court ruled that it was unethical. Sheesh! Lawyers! Don't they know that you don't ever make "gapang" your client's opponents? Or is that standard practice?
So now, the rest of the editorial board had gone their separate ways -- none of them ever went back to schoo again, I think. Even me.
Yep, I'm an undergraduate, not because I was a lazy student who wasted my parents' hard-earned money, but because some people thought they could push us around and play with our future, like the insipid fascists that they are.
I'd like to think that I've moved on, but not really. What riles me is that whenever I see the school's ads on TV (it's a university now, by the way), they actually think that they can pull it off, spreading gloss and floss over their shortcomings and sell the unaware students -- their prey -- short. They have the gall of pronouncing that they're the foremost IT academic institution in Asia when inside, really, students are devoid of rights such as of assembly and speech. Ask any AMA University student if they're satisfied with freedom on campus. Most likely, they'll look at you as if you just dropped from another planet. That's precisely because they are never even aware that they have the freedom to congregate; to air their grievances; to demand for quality education without their parents selling off their legs and an arm.
Sad. But I'm not losing hope. Our case is still pending -- it's on appeal, I think. No, I'm not about to hope on going back to AMA. As I've said, I've moved on. But this case, just this case -- us puny students against them IT-school biggies -- will show them that they cannot ever mess with students who know how to wield the power of the pen.
Comments
Post a Comment