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by Rodel Rodis
November 13, 2010
I wanted to write about something else entirely this week but this issue just doesn’t quit. When I wrote “The Silence of the Eagles” on Tuesday, November 2, the “Memo to the Loyola Schools Community” had not yet appeared in the Internet so I was not able to read it and refer to it in my piece. After my article was posted on Inquirer.net on Thursday, November 4, the “Memo” had already appeared causing staunch defenders of Ateneo to use it to rebut my criticism of Ateneo’s deafening silence.
Ateneo is not silent, they protested, as prima facie proven by the “Memo” of Loyola Schools Vice President John Paul C. Vergara on the “Subject: Treatment of Plagiarism Cases in the Loyola Schools in Light of the Recent Supreme Court Decision.” This Memo was widely disseminated to all Ateneo egroups by Mr. Jun Dalandan of the Ateneo Alumni Association.
In response to my article, reader Jojo B wrote: “The memo is VERY CLEAR: “plagiarism is identified not through intent but through the act itself. The objective act of falsely attributing to one’s self what is not one’s work, whether intentional or out of neglect, is sufficient to conclude that plagiarism has occurred. Students who plead ignorance or appeal to lack of malice are not excused.”
“In other words,” Jojo B wrote, “it is VERY CLEAR: the Ateneo does not agree with the Supreme Court (SC) ruling….Therefore, Mr. Rodis, I think your conclusion is not well-founded”.
When I read Mr. Vergara’s “Memo”, I noted that it was addressed only to “the Loyola Schools Community” and not to the entire Ateneo Community. According to Wikipedia, “the Loyola Schools is the school unit of the Ateneo de Manila University that offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the Arts and Sciences. It operates under the statutes of the Ateneo de Manila University. It is located in the Loyola Heights campus of the Ateneo de Manila University.” It does not include the Ateneo law school in the Rockwell campus, its professional school in the Salcedo campus or its medical school in Taguig.
Other points were raised by Felix Antero, an Atenean and a lawyer himself, who wrote Mr. Dalandan about what he felt was Ateneo’s inadequate response: “The memo is not addressed to the Supreme Court nor to the general public; it’s not even worded strongly enough as a repudiation of the Supreme Court opinion. Besides, the policy behind the memo does not even have teeth because, as it stands, the “Del Castillo test” (i.e., was there any “malicious intent”?) is now the law of the land” despite Vergara’s Memo pronouncement to the contrary.
“In other words,” Felix wrote, “moving forward, any student whom Ateneo decides to expel for plagiarism can easily hire a lawyer now and file an injunction to prevent the expulsion because Ateneo’s act would be considered illegal, unless of course Ateneo can prove either (1) malice or (2) that the law does not apply to it.”
Felix is hoping that “maybe Ateneo, as an institution, is now in the process of crafting, and will shortly be issuing, a REAL statement in support of the embattled UP Law Professors who are in danger of losing their jobs? Perhaps in support of integrity and truth?”
If Ateneo is contemplating such an act of courage, Felix suggests that Ateneo check out the De La Salle University (DLSU) Law School statement which stated that UP Law Dean Marvic Leonen and his colleagues in the UP law faculty “deserve praise, not censure, for publicly criticizing the Supreme Court.”
“The members of the court may not agree with them; they may even feel hurt by the words used; but this does not justify the use of the strong arm of the law to gag the law professors into submission,” the DLSU law faculty said. “We therefore exhort the court to abandon its new definition of plagiarism and dissolve the show-cause order against the law dean and professors of UP.”
The DLSU law faculty disputed the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the meaning of “plagiarism” and “institutional attack.” “In the first, the court conveniently changed the definition of plagiarism to justify a member’s exoneration. In the second, the court mistook the statement of the UP law faculty as an ‘institutional attack’ on the judiciary when the statement was issued precisely to preserve the rule of law in our country,” the DLSU law faculty said.
Felix suggested that perhaps someone in Ateneo can just “copy” the DLSU statement and adopt it since there would be no malice intended in doing so.
That would be preferable to Felix than the statement issued by Ateneo Law School Dean Cesar Villanueva who told GMA news: “The resolution of the Supreme Court on the plagiarism complaint against Justice Del Castillo is already resolved and we live by that.”
On the issue of the show cause order of the Supreme Court against the 37 UP law faculty, Dean Villanueva clarified that the Ateneo Law School’s position on the matter was already made public by Law School Dean Emeritus Fr. Joaquin Bernas who wrote in his column: “For me, this is a very unfortunate court order. The Court has been struggling to rebuild its tarnished image before the legal world and now comes out with a blow against freedom of expression.” “For me”? What about for Ateneo?
While the eagle is going through the flapping motions of a chicken, other educational institutions are stepping up to the plate. The Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) and the Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (Cocopea) took out full-page ads in the Inquirer and other major dailies, urging the Supreme Court to “withdraw its threat of sanction” against the UP law professors.
It stated that the Supreme Court’s decision exonerating a colleague, Justice Del Castillo, and his legal researcher “abets a culture of intellectual sloth and dishonesty” among students. “We invite every citizen to be vigilant in monitoring the development of this case so that our Supreme Court will truly uphold the rule of law, maintain integrity and trustworthiness so that our people in turn will restore the moral confidence that this democratic institution deserves,” the CEAP said.
In other words, how can we get rid of corruption, which is stealing, when the Supreme Court, with its plagiarism decision, has just given thieves the license to steal?
(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call 415,334.7800).