Edel Garcellano on Prof. Raymundo's case

When a researcher unceremoniously disappeared, it became the moral imperative for her former teacher to raise the alarm – but her small heroic act that normally passes for a common, yet supremely ethical, event in a so-called radical turf that is UP, has become a heavy cross for the samaritan: she is now being virtually accused of handling the desaparecido whose fate points towards state minions...

Her tenure is hanging in the balance: She has to answer not only for the alleged alliance/friendship, which happens in workplaces, but even for her involvement in campus orgs that promote student welfare, which should be the case in the first place.

They claim it is all procedural & all that, underlining – on a mode of liberalism – that the charter places her under its wing in a protective, as it were, embrace. Certain observers however suggest it is all inquisitorial, like the caress of an iron hand encased in velvet glove – given the ideologico-bureaucratic fetishism among faculty members. Some secretly protest she's tainted, but no proof has surfaced when empirical evidence assumes a primacy in such petty investigations.

There are alleged loopholes in her subsequent statement, they claim, but her affidavit establishes her rendition of truth. It is all as if she wasn't able to cross her Ts & grammatically slipped...

& to think they are supposed to be conversant with the complexity of communicative thesis of Habermas.

What are they up to?

Is Torquemada back on campus?

In the '60s, the likes of Yabes, Lansang, et al, had to suffer the indignity of confronting the idiotic harangue of the CUFA, like they were debating with the lunatic fringe of McCarthy or Goldwater.

Witchhunt is allegedly alien in today's historical context – but the development, this budding cause celebre, proves it's very much alive & kicking in a domain that pretends to be discursive & cosmopolitan.

Of course, the university denies it is a mirror-image of the state, by seeking refuge in the rhetorics of being hailed as Republic unto itself.

But truth will out, & if there is an eventual miscarriage of justice, a terrible signal might be sent to the faithful & loyal intellectuals who think so highly of an excellent tradition since 1908.

Bourdieu may be turning in his grave.


***


Indeed, what else is new in a “bloodstained” country where “something rotten” that characterizes conduct in high places must pathetically be observed also in lowly departments [in an academic site, at that] where, in manifestos of support, a young brilliant woman, who has made a name for herself in intellectual circles, must now suffer the injustice of being barred from the classroom on charges that seem to be patently whimsical because never formalized and explained?

Sarah Raymundo, who should have been given tenure as mandated by law and practice, instead had her contract revoked [ it runs deep into May 2009]… and we are dumbstruck, like bystanders perplexed by anything out of bounds.

She has been exemplary, her students protest: conducting excellent lectures, acquiring a masteral degree [in effect acknowledging the quality of her mind] from the very department that refuses her, and involving in activities as demanded of the engaged for which the University is cherished….

Yet all this is nada, nada, nada. The Gods of all small things have decreed: they don’t like her, they don’t want her. Just like that, in any fiefdom where the lordship’s word is law.

The lynch mob, a cynic says, came in executive suits and barongs to hold a party in her dishonor and send her off.

What is happening to this country, anyway?

Everything. Everything foul, unfair.


*literary critic, theorist, poet and Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and Comparative Literture, UP-Diliman