STAFFERS of the Independent Sentinel, the official student publication of the Lyceum of the Philippines University (LPU), on Monday chided the LPU management for systematically “killing” campus press freedom.
This month, upon the orders of the Student Affairs Office (SAO) existing staff of the 31-year-old student publication were denied access to the publication’s office.
“Right now, our staffers are not given access to our office. They are not giving us the key to our office,” Jessica Jane Sy, former editor in chief of the Independent Sentinel, told the BusinessMirror.
The SAO of LPU could not be reached for comment.
Founded in 1952, LPU with main campus situated in Intramuros, Manila, is one of the older existing institutions of higher learning in the Philippines. It was founded by Dr. Jose P. Laurel, the third President of the Republic of the Philippines.
Sy said the Independent Sentinel should have released two issues by now, but because of the LPU management’s schemes, it has not released a single issue this semester.
The Independent Sentinel is supposed to hold an exam for new applicants to recruit new staffers as part of the yearly transition process.
The office of the Independent Sentinel has been inaccessible to its staffers since October 5, upon the instruction of the Student Affairs Office of LPU.
The LPU administration is reportedly reorganizing the editorial board to improve the quality of the student publication, but Sy said they view it as meddling with the affairs of a supposedly independent student publication.
Sy added the LPU management has also ceased to collect this semester the publication fee from the students, the source the publication’s fund that finances the printing and operating cost of running the student publication.
“We see this as an act of repression of campus press,” Sy said.
Aside from poor quality, LPU administration accuses the Sentinel of fund misuse, which Sy vehemently belied.
The chain of events started way back in April, when Sy, then the outgoing editor in chief of the Sentinel, requested to post advertisement inside the campus announcing the opening for application for the editorial board for the next academic year.
However, the LPU SAO, she said, decided to hold a comprehensive exam, a violation of the Sentinel’s bylaws that state the existing staffers do not need to take the exam every year but must face a panel interview.
Sy said Dean Jayson Barlan of the LPU’s Student Affairs Office said the editorial board exam would ensue at the start of the first semester of Academic Year 2017-2018, to be held on the third week of July, but the said exam was delayed to a later date this month.
“But later, we learned the management publication fees were not collected,” she added.
The staffers of the Sentinel learned of the LPU plans to expand the admin-owned annual magazine The Tower, and include a Student’s Page.
With no fund for printing and allowance for press work for its staffers, the Independent Sentinel may no longer be able to see print again.