Issues regarding the Office of Student Activities’ (OSA) Performance Management System (PMS) had largely fallen on two opposite categories or value-systems: that of upholding its success and efficiency, and the other of rejecting such notions because of what they perceive as the excessive policing and control by OSA.
It would, however, facilitate deeper discussions if the student body were to be aware of the many nuances and values those who purport to call for its radical reform uphold. Here, I present three such terms: questions over the legitimacy of the powers of the Office, organizational accountability, and finally, the increasing homogenization of projects and events, something which had not been brought out fully when discussing the PMS.
Legitimacy
What legitimacy or mandate does an office have if its original intent and mission was only to ensure that organizations do not violate the terms of their accreditation to even have a management system in the first place? Since when, and under what circumstances, was the intrusion of the Office into even the smallest detail of an activity justified and indeed accepted by the organizations themselves as being necessary for their own survival as an organization?
Perhaps the point of such a question is to nuance the assumption from the reformists that the Office functions under the rule of imposition, when it would seem like a majority of the students voluntarily choose to subsume themselves under a system for the fear of being punished or being rendered inactive. It must be remembered that, as far as the operating terms and conditions of OSA has been laid out, undergoing the PMS is largely determined by the students’ volition. It would be good to remember how some organizations and students that function within the university (such as student publications) are not mandated to undergo such processes, which is a political choice for the purposes of maintaining their autonomy and further capacity to engage with their audience/constituencies on equal and student-oriented terms. What we do observe in the current situation, however, is that OSA (and complicit to this, relevant student bodies of representation) have taken gargantuan steps to normalize and institutionalize the practice of PMS, effectively making it an unquestionable norm without the complicit study and decision of the student body which they are purporting to serve.
Accountability
For whom and by whom is OSA’s will to knowledge of every minute detail of a project or event, legitimized and made plausible or acceptable? Assuming that, like any administrative body, OSA has a defined mandate, where do we find in its official duties and responsibilities are the capacity and privilege to information and subject-formation emphasized/mandated? How have we come to a point where the final arbiter of an organization’s success is an external office rather than, say, its own membership?
Project Homogenization
Perhaps one of the things that the PMS had brought upon this University that those for or against the reform of the PMS had not carefully looked into is the seeming tendency of the PMS to homogenize student activities. Organizations seem to be trapped in the mold of the activities that their predecessors have made. With radical changes being only seen in internal restructurings and quantification of responsibilities and mandates, OSA seems to reinforce a notion of participation and organization formation decidedly trained towards income-generation and service delivery, which is the hegemonic logic of corporate organization today. It is telling that the very name of the system, ‘performance management’, is a key term in the dominant logic of business process re-engineering as it is being promoted by corporate bigshots today. Are we, therefore, saying, that the realm of “organization” or corporeality is only the purview of market and business logic? Are we therefore subsuming every form of organization and participation in quantified and commoditized terms? Are we therefore complicit in commodifying our very selves and the liberal education we pride ourselves here in the Ateneo?
*Dissensus here is defined as “not a conflict of interests, opinions, or values; [but] a division in ‘common sense’: a dispute over what is given and about the frame within which we see something as given.” From Ranciere, Jacques. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. ed. trans. Steven Corocan. London and New York: Continuum, 2010. p. 69. Print.
Miguel Rivera (IV AB-MA PoS), is the Party Premier of the Christian Union for Socialist and Democratic Advancement (Crusada). The opinions contained in this piece, however, are solely his own.
