UP student councils adopted two resolutions junking online enrollment system SAIS and its mother project eUP during two council conventions held last week.
“A Resolution to Junk the eUP Project in the University of the Philippines System” was adopted by student councils on January 6 during the 38th National Congress of KASAMA sa UP, the oldest alliance of student councils in the UP System.
Two days later, student councils embraced a broader resolution against eUP and similar UP projects. “A Resolution to Junk All Neoliberal Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Projects in the University of the Philippines System” was adopted during the 47th General Assembly of Student Councils.
Both resolutions were filed by the UP Manila University Student Council (UPM USC), which has been leading a campaign against eUP and SAIS.
SAIS has sparked outrage from students after it made enrollment worse by making enlistment of subjects more time-consuming or impossible due to recurrent server crashes or website errors during online enlistment.
The eUP is a broad multimillion-peso ICT project that in part discards homegrown student information systems like Diliman’s Computerized Registration System (CRS) or SystemOne in favor of SAIS, a privately developed system employing foreign technology.
The project is a partnership led by former UP President Alfredo E. Pascual with Smart Communications, Inc., which stated that it will employ Oracle, a US-based technology.
Asked about what it will do next after the resolutions, UPM USC said that it will continue its #JunkSAIS campaign. Its manifesto calling for the scrapping of SAIS and eUP has already garnered 638 signatures as of press time. The council is also planning to have a dialogue with the UP administration soon. #
