The Sentinel, official school publication of the Lyceum of the Philippines University Manila, scored its school administration for having delayed the application process for new members, removed the publication fee and postponed its transition to a new editorial board. The paper said “the school claims that the said moves are to ‘revamp’ the newspaper in the future.” With this and the school administration’s refusal for a dialogue, the future of the independence of the paper hangs in the balance.
The paper said the Student Affairs Office has not held and postponed examinations for a new set of editorial board since its April initial schedule.
Meanwhile, an announcement posted today on the school’s Facebook account called for a “Qualifying Exam for our Student Publication for A.Y. 2017-2018 which will be on Wednesday, October 4, 2017, at the Boardroom.” It did not state if this is for the editorial board of The Sentinel and bore no logo or reference to the independent student paper.
In its September 27 editorial, the paper revealed some reasons the admin told them of the paper’s status.
“The administration attempts to justify these actions from undermining our reputation to “questioning” the grammatical correctness and accuracy of our stories. We have answered and will continue to answer any justification they will try to catapult to us. These arguments do not and will not give the administration any power to ‘change’ the Sentinel. The Campus Journalism Act of 1991 clearly defines that the editorial board shall freely determine its editorial policies and manage the publication’s funds,” said a part of the editorial.
The 32-year old paper may face a hurdle similar to how it started as an independent student paper.
In 1985, the Lyceum Student Council, the school publication staff and other student organizations pushed for a purely student paper, apart from the setup then of The Lyceum, a tri-sectoral paper funded by the school. The students and the school administration agreed on a compromise: The Lyceum would continue and there would be an independent student paper and they would share the publication funds 50-50. The students voted to have their own paper in a plebiscite, but the administration wanted its own version of the charter for the student paper to be used. The students fought to have their own truly independent student paper. It then took two walkouts and three days of barricading the school gates and paralyzing classes to birth The Sentinel.
Support for the independence of the paper poured in as they started to expose the issue at the beginning of the month. A petition to “Bring Back The Sentinel” has been started on Change.org. The Earist Technozette, official student paper of the Eulogio Amang Rodriguez Institute for Science and Technology, issued a statement in support of The Sentinel.
