"Well-behaved" Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales
maligns the University of the Philippines yet again,
for producing "destabilizers and naked runners".

As this gentleman's gentleman is entitled to his
own opinion, U.P. is not required to respond, but
precisely because it must, it will. The University
has the right and the responsibility to dissent.

For how else may prove its worth? U.P. as an
educational institution can only affirm itself when it
puts theories into practice. Woe the day U.P.
stops talking, commenting, and thinking–which is
in contrast, the time Sec. Gonzales happily waits
for, when U.P. performs its "true role" in
government service.

U.P. is bound to defend Philippine statehood. Sec.
Gonzales must understand that U.P. does indeed,
in a manner that is idiosyncratic, sometimes
abrasive, but always with best interest at heart.
U.P. is a social critic, not a yes-man, so it will not
ask permission or forgiveness when it says it like it
is: government sucks. But U.P. is also an agent of
change, which is why, in the same breath, it
contributes thousands of its best graduates to help
make government and society better.

I will now claim the privilege to opine: Sec.
Gonzales is just rattled in his prude morality by
streaking, in his occupational delusion by U.P.'s
firm request for clear leads in Karen Empeño and
Sherlyn Cadapan's case. But I am disturbed that
this is just half of the truth, and that the whole lies
somewhere between the lines of the
military's "Know the Enemy" and Oplan Bantay-
Laya.

In the midst of all this name-calling and witch-
hunting, I am sure the thinking populace is
becoming more emboldened to stand up. I can find
more than a thousand other U.P. students who
would gladly wear a sign saying "destabilizer" just
for the pleasure of driving a point through: what's
wrong with it? If dissenting has destabilized
anything, I am comforted one example is Marcos'
regime.

He with the gall (and gallstones) to disapprove of
academic freedom, Sec. Gonzales stands now a
stalwart enemy–barring Gloria Arroyo herself–of
human liberty. But God has been kind enough to
also make him bigoted, for if he had more sense to
comprehend the essence of the Oblation Run, he
might have also joined these celebrated naked
runners.

And surely, that would have been obnoxious.