Take note ATENEO: taking INSTITUTIONAL partisan positions is improper!

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When a group of us DLSU faculty members signed a manifesto on RH, we made it clear that we were acting as individual faculty members. We did not carry the name of the University.

When bodies like Universities, Colleges or Academic Departments make institutional statements declaring their political positions, it is assumed that it is a product of consensus.  For when an academic unit makes a stand, every member of that unit is implicated.

One can justify a stand when it is taken by a majority, but for me this is only tenable if the minority is allowed to issue its position of dissent side-by-side with the majority's stand.

But what is surely improper is when a minority decision is made to appear as if it is the institutional stand of the whole University, College or Department.

I am happy to note that DLSU rarely takes an institutional stand, even as the Brothers, or some of its units, express their positions.

UP, as far as I remember, do not have an institutional stand either. Its University Council composed of Faculty Members, may take a stand, and so its Student Council. But not the whole University as an entity.


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Antonio Contreras as posted on Facebook.


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