Over the past few months, the Sanggunian has been striving to reach out to the wider student body for their opinions on key issues such as calamity response, mental health, sociopolitical formation, and online learning. This saw the rise of “constituency checks,” tools occasionally deployed on Google Forms or SMS to pulse our respective situations.

Though it has technical advantages, these constituency checks are only band-aid solutions to the deeper issue of representation and participation in student governance. Information dissemination and consultation through a Google Form or an hour-long focus group discussion does not offer a full picture of the student experience.

What, then, should the Sanggunian do to widen and deepen its engagement with a diverse student body?

Let us begin with the core concern of student life: Academics. As mandated in the 2019 Constitution of the Undergraduate Students of the Loyola Schools, the most basic level of representation should be the course representatives. Unfortunately, there has always been a scarce number of students running, let alone elected, to fulfill this role. This is why school representatives have resorted to consulting with the home organizations, both from Council of Organizations of the Ateneo – Manila (COA-M) and the League of Independent Organizations (LIONS), instead.

This set-up is problematic because home organizations end up fulfilling the primary function of representation—something welcomed, although largely unprecedented, by their leaders. Not only are there gaps to fill but overlaps to untangle, as most home organizations have also elected block or batch representatives essentially similar to the vacant Sanggunian counterpart.

This leaves us asking: Who exactly are our representatives? Who are the people that can best guarantee enough power, skills, and resources to address our academic concerns?

Perhaps home organizations can be formally integrated, alongside course representatives, into the School Sanggunians to remove the overlaps in responsibilities. If not, then maybe course representatives can be removed altogether. Moreover, these should also consider that home organizations are also within COA-M and LIONS—bringing in more complexity in these dynamics. The bottomline is when it comes to academic concerns, it should be clear to students which representatives bodies can best cater to our range of problems—from course load, professors, and the like.

Furthermore, the student experience is not limited to academics. One cannot simply be defined as belonging to a specific school. We are products of our multiple intersecting identities such as gender and sexuality, religion, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, place of origin, and many more. All these affect the way we live—what beliefs and values we choose, as well as what advocacies and social problems to fight that draw people to organize. 

This is precisely what animates sector representation. As leaders of LIONS’ sectoral affairs we’ve experienced this first-hand. It felt empowering to finally allow non-accredited organizations to have a voice in the student government, after a decade of striving to be recognized in the Loyola Schools. This allows us to have a stake in the budget, vote on the bills passed in the Central Assembly (CA), and to be regularly involved in making key decisions on behalf of the student body. Through this space, we had the opportunity to co-create solutions to issues we have been facing in Ateneo. Ultimately, sector representation legitimized our struggles as a community.

However, we encountered two problems this year. First, there were no streamlined implementing guidelines that would activate the supposed benefits of being a sector. On paper, we may have budget appropriations, but the process of accessing those resources is too complex and tailored to accredited bodies. Moreover, it often feels like LS offices will refuse to perceive us as bodies worthy of serious consideration if we did not have the mantle of Sanggunian legitimacy on our sectors.

Second, there are just not enough voices on the table to represent the diverse student community. We have transferees, shiftees, scholars, LGBTQ+, persons with special needs, and students from almost every region. An ideal student government should embody this diversity of backgrounds such that they are provided the spaces to design solutions nuanced to their lived experiences.

Moreover, CA sessions were arguably uneventful for the most part. We often had the same ideas, leaving scarce room for meaningful interpellations. Barely anyone bothered to watch in order to hold us accountable. It was rare for the livestreams to reach 10 viewers, except for the strike vote last November 2020, which garnered over 2,000 viewers. 

If we want to witness impactful student policies in action, we need more representatives in the CA that can articulate the diverse narratives of the Ateneo student body. As such, there needs to be enabling mechanisms that will facilitate and build the capacity of students to organize. While it’s not a Sanggunian mandate to organize sectors, they must at least initiate the call and provide the support to these communities.

But the only way we can rally students to care is if we know our voices matter—if we know that we have the right and power to place not just problems, but our solutions, on the table. This isn’t something mere constituency checks can capture. 

All this we must consider, given the evolving nature of both in-campus issues, and national issues. The shift to online learning and poor government response to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitate a system and culture that ensures vibrant participation from the student body. If we want to do better in the coming academic year and prepare for 2022, we ought to take these bigger steps together.

Cristina Batalla is a Development Studies senior at the Ateneo de Manila University. She is currently the Coordinator and Sector Representative of the League of Independent Organizations and a member of GoodGovPH, a youth-led non-profit organization that champions good governance in the Philippines.

Kara Angan is a Political Science freshman at the Ateneo de Manila University. She is a convener of ASHS Safe Spaces, an activist in Akbayan! Youth – Loyola, and a deputy for Sectoral Affairs at the League of Independent Organizations. Kara is passionate about good governance, communication strategy, and establishing safe spaces.