Virtual Repression? UP admin seeks to restrict ‘political’ uses of online resources
By Fil Andrew E. Bagano
The UP community was greeted yesterday by an email from the university’s IT Development Center, containing a cryptic message: “[All] software of the University… must only be used for OFFICIAL academic and administrative purposes [emphasis given].” As of writing, the motives for such a message remain unknown.
Besides this, UP student’s Zoom accounts were downgraded from Licensed to Basic; again, with no explanations from the admin; and more disturbing things were specified. Attached to the mentioned email is a link to UP’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for its ICT resources. Most of the provisions are benign, but students are becoming increasingly concerned with provisions proscribing the “IT System’s use for partisan political activities” as well as its right to surveil student’s data information without the latter’s consent.
Responses to the email and downgrading were varied but were generally negative and critical to what was seen as an attack on the rights of free speech and assembly. The move also threatens to curtail students’ political dissent during the pandemic, at a time where they are limited from physically protesting against the new policy.
UP cites the lack and high cost of ICT resources in the country in its AUP for restricting the use of the same. However, two recent issues have popped up that threatens to undermine this rationale: inconsistency and intrusion. A recent Twitter post showed UP’s Vice President for Academic Affairs Maria Cynthia Rose Bautista “sanctioning” the use of Zoom for personal communication and protest during a remote learning webinar back in July. The webinar, which tackled issues on remote learning, was seen as a policy statement which is now being undermined.
“We actually subscribed institutionally to Zoom before all the issues came up, before whether it’s Chinese or whatever. But basically, we subscribed to Zoom after making a study of what our network in ASEAN and in the Asia-Pacific regions, where their institutions are subscribed. These are for the webinar, synchronous classes, but please these are also for you. As long as you use “@up.edu.ph” you can actually use Zoom to meet everybody for your virtual get-together, for student meetings, even for organizing — and you already know you can protest using whatever we have,” OVPAA Bautista said.
Another concerning fact is that the UP administration has full powers to check on students’ data information without the latter’s consent. In Section 8(b), paragraph iii of the AUP, the university can check all of your online records if they have “reasonable grounds” that a student has committed a violation. Reasonable enough, but how about paragraph ii, which allows access “when necessary to avoid disrepute to the UP System”? What counts as disrepute in this situation? Salacious statements? Or perhaps unsavory political opinions or calls for reform?
This issue is an easily misinterpreted and misapplied provision. Coupled with some university officials’ track record of anti-student stances, this issue is something that we must resist. For only when students are given free rein to speak up and the requisite tools to do so can UP carry out its mandate of providing political reform to the country.
