The law on campus journalism

Every student in all academic levels should be thankful for the provisions set forth in R.A. 7079, otherwise, the Campus Journalism Act of 1991.

Not only does this law uphold and protect the freedom of the press at the campus ranks, it also promotes development and growth of campus journalism as a means of strengthening ethical values, encouraging critical and creative thinking, and developing moral character and personal discipline of the Filipino youth.

For some reasons, I have developed some sort personal affection with this Act, maybe because roughly 10 years of my life was spent on being a junior campus pressman. Or maybe because I love to get hold of the latest gossip grits?

Either way, I’m sure that for years now, campus journalism has opened me a lot of doors, led me to different crossroads (in fact, it brought me to Mindanao) and to top it all, it has catapulted me to a journey into the lives of a myriad of people whose influences, both positive and not so positive, have nourished my being in ways unimaginable.

What I am today as a writer, I can say I owe it to those schools press conferences I attended in high school. These were periodic competitions sponsored by the Department of Education to intensify abilities of young students in writing through campus journalism. They were held in various institutional levels, to wit—area, division, regional—and culminated with the holding of the National Schools Press Conference (NSPC) in places of historical and cultural interest in the country.

 I can still remember that time in 2002 when my high school paper adviser and now Medellin National Science and Technology School teacher-in-charge, Socorro Remulta, egged on me to join this press conference writing contest in a nearby town.

Little did I know that this first revelation to the press world would later on expose me to tens of other competitions within and outside Cebu (NSPC 2005 in Surigao City became a personal favorite after I bagged the grand prize in sports writing category)—which sooner than later paved the way to an editor-in-chief position of the oldest student publication in USC called “The Carolinian” and ultimately, this column at The FREEMAN.

Journalistic writing, or more precisely the love for it, may not always be everybody’s cup of tea. But it’s always heart-warming to feel that our legislators care about the future of journalism in our country. And what’s even more heartening to note is that the government reassures us of its acknowledgment of the critical roles of the youth in the forming of a fair and fearless kind of media.

The challenge now for our students is to live up to the expectations of the Act, expectations such as encouragement of creative and critical thinking and more importantly, values strengthening and moral character formation.

Which begs the questions: When they write for their respective student publications, are they doing it for the sake of imposing honest opinion on pressing matters faced by their school? Or are they just doing so for the heck of it? Are their articles of ample substance that readers can potentially ingest meaningful pieces of information out of them? More aptly, are they fairly but fearlessly written? Or are they just another reinvention masterpiece?

These are questions that they need to answer at the very start and in the very first place because these will be the very same questions they’ll be required to answer anyway whenever they step into mainstream media later on.

Once, I myself tried answering these questions and lest you ask me, my answers have always been well painted with basic principles of integrity and of honesty. To me, operating within those keywords is simply the best I can do to repay and show gratitude to the virtuousness of R.A.7079.

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