Limited discretion

Academic freedom encompasses not only the freedom to determine on academic grounds who may teach, what may be taught (and) how it shall be taught but likewise who may be admitted to study. Under this principle, the school’s action rejecting students who are academically delinquent or violating school rules on discipline, or a woman seeking admission to a seminary, have been sanctioned. But in this case of Lito, such principle found no application.

Lito was enrolled at a private college located in the suburbs (the school) for the degree of Bachelor of Science in criminology. As the PRO and acting secretary of the school’s Supreme Student Council, he was invited to attend the meeting of school officials scheduled for May 8, 1991. Prior to the meeting, the vice president for academic affairs already asked him to sign among other things, Resolution 105 for a 20 percent tuition fee increase for the school year 1992-93. Lito refused. Instead he asked for a two-week period to take the matter up with his fellow officers of the council.

During the scheduled meeting, the Council presented to the School a 9-point proposal. With an assurance that the request of the Council would be acted favorably, Lito finally signed Resolution 105.

Pending such resolution, and when the semester is about to end, the school circulated a memorandum to the effect that Lito had been dropped from the list of students by virtue of a previous memorandum it received from the CMT commandant containing a list of students who have not completed remedial classes in CMT, including Lito. The registrar also informed Lito that the school was voiding his enrollment for the first semester of that school year.Lito took a special training during the semestral break and he was able to pass it, but the school still refused to give him that accreditation, insisting that by then, he had ceased to be a student.

This prompted Lito to go to the Supreme Court asking that the DECS order the School to readmit him and for the latter to readmit him as senior graduating student for March 1992. Lito claimed that the real reason why the School has voided his enrollment as senior graduating student was his active participation in opposing the School’s petition for tuition fee increase.

On the other hand the school invoked academic freedom in dropping Lito from its roll of students. It argued that admission is discretionary on its part, that such admission is a mere privilege, rather than a right, on the part of the student, and that Lito has been allowed to enrol conditionally pending completion of his remedial classes in CMT which he has failed.

Was the school correct?

No.

Like any other right, academic freedom has never been meant to be an unabridged license. It is a privilege that assumes a correlative duty to exercise it responsibly. An equally telling precept is a long recognized mandate, so well expressed in Article 19 of the Civil Code that every "person must, in the exercise of his rights and in the performance of his duties, act with justice, give everyone his due, and observe honesty and good faith".

In this case, the circumstances lend truth to Lito’s claim that the school has strongly been influenced by his active participation in questioning its application for tuition fee increase. The punishment of expulsion thus appears rather disproportionate to his having had some unit deficiencies in the CMT course. So the school has no right in unceremoniously dropping him from the roll. But whether Lito really deserves to be in the senior class as he claims, or he has a number of deficiencies as the School counters, is an administrative matter which the DECS has yet to determine. So the case is remanded to the DECS for its expeditious determination of these unresolved administrative issues. (Isabelo, Jr. vs. Perpetual Help College of Rizal G.R. 103142 November 8, 1993).

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