Kabataan Partylist - CNU

thats the student movement! ❤️‍🔥

Our Demand for Transparency and Accountability Continues.

Following the release of our post “The High-Rise Illusion,” we noticed a sudden surge of online accounts defending the Smart Campus project— many of which appear coordinated, using identical posts, stolen photos, and even non-Bisaya profiles.

This only reinforces our concern: that instead of transparency, resources are being spent to drown out legitimate student criticism.

We, the students of Cebu Normal University, do not oppose development. What we oppose is the lack of accountability, consultation, and transparency in billion-peso projects that directly affect our education.

The unfinished ₱2-billion Smart Campus and the still-unresolved ACAS issue demand answers — not troll defenses.

We will continue to demand for accountability, transparency, and a student-centered governance. Because to question is not to attack— it is to demand that education serve the people, not profit.

𝐍𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐄𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐞𝐬.

As the CNU Board of Regents met today, Normalites stood their ground— loud, firm, and united— demanding that our voices be heard.

We did not protest against online learning — we understand the need to stay online for safety. But we condemn and question the administration’s decision to extend the 100% online setup for an entire academic year without consultation, without a clear transition plan, and without providing phased alternatives or concrete support to ensure quality and accessible education for all students.

While the BOR met behind closed doors, we were outside on the campus reminding them who they serve: the students.

We demand accountability for the leaning ACAS building, whose negligence has displaced students, wasted the people’s money, and made it even harder for many programs to transition back to safe and effective face-to-face classes. We also demand transparency in the ₱2-billion Smart Campus project, which remains unfinished and riddled with unanswered questions.

Our demands remain loud and clear:
1. Transparency in every contract, memorandum, and allocation of public funds.
2. Accountability from the CNU administration, DPWH, and CHED.
3. Student-centered governance built on participation, consultation, and student welfare.

This fight goes beyond today’s protest. This is our stand for a university that listens, for education that truly serves the people — not profit, not prestige, but the students.

Normalista, patuloy ang pakikibaka.

kitakits, CCAS! 🌹🥹

Normalites, Salmot ta!

It’s now or never, Normalites! One voice matters, but a united student body is unstoppable. While our student regent represents us in tomorrow’s BOR meeting, let’s turn up, show support, and amplify our demands. Accountability.
Transparency. Our rights. Our future.




CNU | Front Gate | 1 PM
GC link: https://m.me/j/Abbzzh9Q9w5ltfcB/

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡-𝐑𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐈𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐂𝐍𝐔’𝐬 𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐭

When Cebu Normal University (CNU) suddenly shifted to 100% online classes last July, the outrage was swift. Within days — and only after gaining national attention through the tireless efforts of the Normalite student movement — the administration rescinded the policy, restoring hybrid learning.

But the problem did not end there. Behind that brief online shift stands the ₱2-billion Smart Campus project, a venture that promised innovation by October 15 yet remains unfinished to this day.

What began as a modernization plan has revealed something far more disturbing: a university driven not by service to students, but by the bureaucrat-capitalist interests that profit from education itself.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐖𝐞𝐛

The CNU Smart Campus shares a contractor with several other state universities: Lancaster, builder of Smart Campus projects worth ₱1.5 billion at Eastern Visayas State University, ₱1.7 billion at Mariano Marcos State University, and additional works at Mindanao State University–Naawan.

Lancaster’s owner, Norlito Domantay, previously served as CEO of LDLA Marketing, one of the firms flagged in the 2021 DepEd laptop controversy — a scandal over overpriced, outdated laptops bought with public funds.

Though Lancaster itself has not been charged, the repeated appearance of the same names and networks in government education projects exposes a pattern of privilege, patronage, and plunder that defines bureaucrat capitalism.

These are not isolated coincidences. They are the machinery of a system where billion-peso contracts circulate among the well-connected, while students bear the cost in disrupted learning, wasted resources, and institutional neglect.

𝐀 𝟐𝟎-𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐲 𝐏𝐥𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐬

Even before the dust has settled from the Smart Campus debacle, President Daniel Ariaso Sr. has floated another grand project: a 20-storey building to replace the Academic Center for Arts and Sciences (ACAS), which was damaged in the September 30 earthquake.

At first glance, this might sound visionary. But a closer look exposes its tone-deaf and opportunistic nature.

Quality of education: Ariaso’s proposal would once again push the entire academic year into full online mode to make way for construction — despite history of students’ clear opposition and the proven failure of the previous online shift.

Misplaced priorities: Why rush to announce another towering project when post-earthquake response remains slow and academic leniency, psychological aid, and concrete recovery plans are still lacking?

In ACAS alone, students with laboratory-based courses face devastating uncertainty. Their classes may not have been formally disrupted — but what of their thesis projects, their aquariums, terrariums, and experimental setups left behind in damaged rooms? Many of these are now likely destroyed beyond repair, costing students up to ₱80,000 in lost materials and equipment.

Will these students simply be told to start over? Will they shoulder the cost of institutional negligence? There is no clear plan of action from the administration. Instead of aid, they are met with silence — as though their losses are collateral damage in someone else’s construction dream.

Neoliberal logic: Turning every crisis into an opportunity for construction — and for contractors — is the hallmark of neoliberal education, where prestige projects and profit come before people. The 20-storey proposal is not recovery; it is capitalization disguised as progress.

We do not need another monument of misplaced ambition. We do not want another ACAS — another leaning tower of negligence.

𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐖𝐡𝐨𝐦?

From the ₱2-billion Smart Campus to the looming 20-storey plan, a single logic repeats: development without democracy. Students were never meaningfully consulted. Decisions are made in closed rooms, then justified in the name of “modernization.”

But modernization that displaces learning, burdens students, and enriches a few is not progress — it is plunder packaged as innovation.

This is what happens when education is ruled not by public service but by the bureaucrat-capitalist alliance — administrators, contractors, politicians and government agencies such as the DPWH or CHED who treat universities as markets for profit, not as spaces of learning.

It is a colonial and commercialized system, inherited from the U.S.-Marcos framework of neoliberal education, where public universities become laboratories of privatization and fascist control. The Smart Campus is not just a building — it is a symptom of a larger disease: an imperialist, profit-driven, and repressive education system that has long abandoned its duty to the Filipino people.

𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) long overdue investigation into Ariaso is only the beginning. Real accountability means exposing the entire system that enables bureaucrat-capitalist collusion — where each “Smart” or “High-Rise” project becomes another cash cow for the connected few.

We, the Normalite community, must demand:

1. Transparency in every contract, memorandum, and allocation of public funds;

2. Accountability from the administration, DPWH and from CHED;

3. Student-centered governance that upholds participation, consultation, and collective welfare.

𝐀 𝐂𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐨 𝐍𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐬

The corruption in Smart Campus projects, flood-control programs, and public infrastructure is not random — it is systemic, the natural product of a bureaucrat-capitalist and colonial state.

As students, we must not remain passive observers of our own exploitation. We must be critical, organized, and unafraid to ask who truly benefits from the billions poured into these so-called modernization projects.

We refuse to let CNU become a playground for opportunists building their careers — or their towers — atop our education.

Education must serve the people, not profit. Until our leaders understand that, the Smart Campus will remain a monument to their arrogance — and to our collective struggle for a nationalist, scientific, and mass-oriented education truly worthy of the name Normalite.




IS THIS REALLY SMART?

𝓐 𝓜𝓮𝓼𝓼𝓪𝓰𝓮 𝓣𝓸 𝓟𝓪𝓵𝓮𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓮 🇵🇸🍉

Amidst the illusion of ceasefires and performative diplomacy, KPL-CNU calls on all normalistas and the youth to continue speaking, organizing, and standing with Palestine. For decades, Palestine has suffered under brutal occupation and colonization—its people subjected to displacement, apartheid, and genocide—led by the fascist state of Israel and backed by the imperialist United States.

Imperialism’s violence is not confined to bombs and bullets. It is also economic, cultural, political, and environmental. It aims to erase not just identities, but entire ways of life. The world has witnessed the ongoing genocide in Gaza, where every breath of Palestinian resistance is met with merciless repression. Yet the U.S. and Israel continue to evade accountability, celebrating their power while Palestinian blood soaks the soil of their homeland.

But Palestine is not alone in its suffering. The claws of imperialism have also sunk deep into the Philippines. Farmers are dispossessed of their lands, fisherfolk are displaced by reclamation projects that destroy coastal communities, and indigenous peoples are attacked for defending their ancestral lands. These are not isolated acts—they are manifestations of the same global imperialist system that seeks to dominate, exploit, and control.

The imperialist grip is global. From Palestine to the Philippines, from Latin America to Africa, to every nation whose people dare to fight back—their resistance must be honored, supported, and amplified.

KPL-CNU, a student-led organization, strongly condemns the imperialist U.S. and fascist Israel for their continued crimes against the people of Palestine, and for their role in sustaining a world system that tramples on sovereignty, justice, and human life. We express our deepest solidarity with all oppressed peoples fighting for liberation.
Together, we must resist the chains of imperialist domination. Together, we must struggle for a world free of colonizers and tyrants.

We honor the unwavering resistance of the Palestinian people and all nations rising against occupation and exploitation. No nation, no community, no person should be denied the right to live freely, to till their land, to fish their waters, and to exist in peace.
�𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞!�𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐚, 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞! 🇵🇸

⭐️𝓝𝓸𝓻𝓶𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓼, 𝓻𝓲𝓼𝓮 𝓪𝓰𝓪𝓲𝓷𝓼𝓽 𝓬𝓸𝓻𝓻𝓾𝓹𝓽𝓲𝓸𝓷 𝓪𝓷𝓭 𝓻𝓮𝓹𝓻𝓮𝓼𝓼𝓲𝓸𝓷! ⭐️

Today, we marched alongside progressive formations from Plaza Independencia to the DPWH office in Cebu City to join the Black Friday Protest Against Corruption and Repression — a nationwide action in condemnation of the recently approved 2026 National Budget and the intensifying attacks on the people’s right to protest.

This budget is a clear reflection of a government that serves the interests of the few. It is filled with unprogrammed appropriations, pork barrel allocations, and confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) — all while basic social services continue to be neglected. These funds are tools of plunder, used to line the pockets of the powerful and harass and attack those who speak out.

We refuse to accept this as normal. This corruption is not an accident — it is embedded in a system designed to serve the ruling class.

We also raise our voices against the escalating repression faced by activists, youth leaders, and critics. From red-tagging, surveillance, to legal harassment, the state continues to weaponize outdated and oppressive laws like BP 880, a relic of Marcos’ Martial Law, to criminalize protest and silence dissent.

Jian Rick Pelayo, a KPL-CNU member, is just one example. He was recently issued a subpoena for participating in a protest against corruption last September at the very same location — the DPWH office. This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern of targeting and intimidating activists across the country who dare to demand accountability and justice.

We ask: If the Philippine National Police truly exist to serve and protect the people, why are they targeting student activists instead of corrupt politicians? Why are those who fight for justice being treated as criminals, while those who rob the nation blind remain untouched and in power?

To the youth: our voices matter. Our actions matter. We must never allow fear to dim the fire of our resistance. While the people are forced to endure daily suffering under a system of deliberate neglect and exploitation, we must choose to fight.

𝓛𝓮𝓽 𝓾𝓼 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓼𝓹𝓮𝓪𝓴. 𝓣𝓸 𝓸𝓻𝓰𝓪𝓷𝓲𝔃𝓮. 𝓣𝓸 𝓻𝓲𝓼𝓮. 💫✨

STATEMENT ON THE ACAS DISASTER: DEMAND TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

The current state of the ACAS building—now visibly leaning after the 9/30 earthquake—is not a mere structural flaw. It is the material consequence of bureaucrat capitalism, corruption, and negligence, revealing how political and profit-driven decisions have endangered the safety and welfare of students.

According to Building Official Florante Catalan, the Office of the Building Official (OBO) issued a permit for only six storeys for the ACAS building, yet it was constructed as eight storeys. The building was also used without an occupancy permit, a clear violation of safety and regulatory standards. The OBO has issued a Notice of Violations to the university and has summoned representatives from CNU, the contractor, and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH)—the agency responsible for implementing the project.

The fact that a newly built university structure is already leaning shows how our institutions continue to value showcase projects and political ties over the welfare and safety of students. This disaster is not just an engineering failure—it is the outcome of misplaced priorities shaped by corruption and bureaucrat capitalism. Who approved the additional floors? Who allowed the building’s use without a permit? Who benefits from these violations while students face the risks?

The ACAS disaster has also made it harder for Normalites to resume face-to-face learning. The limited classrooms and facilities left in use have further shrunk. The lack of safe and available rooms has even pushed classes back into online modality on a longer run—a setup that has long proven to be inequitable and inadequate in providing quality education. Instead of easing the transition back to in-person learning, the negligence that led to the ACAS crisis has only worsened the conditions for genuine and accessible education.

The ACAS disaster reflects how neoliberal education distorts the purpose of genuine education, turning it away from the needs and realities of Filipino students and toward profit, prestige, and political gain. Under this system, universities are pressured to chase “development” and “modernization” through grand infrastructure projects that boost reputation and attract funding, while real needs—safe facilities, accessible education, and democratic participation—are ignored. Development becomes a display of power and prestige, not a service to the people.

We demand full transparency and accountability from Dayagbil, Palompon, and the DPWH. The university must release all documents related to the ACAS project—permits, budgets, contractor agreements, and inspection results—and explain how these violations were allowed to happen under their administration.

We also call attention to the ongoing power struggles within the university administration. These internal conflicts, fought for control and influence, do not serve the interests of the students. Instead, they sustain a culture of self-preservation and silence that enables corruption to persist.

Education must not be treated as a platform for profit or politics. It must uphold the interests, safety, and welfare of the students and the public it serves.

We urge the CNU administration, DPWH, and local government to immediately ensure the safety of all students and personnel by conducting transparent inspections and releasing all findings to the public. We call on the Normalite community—students, faculty, and staff—to remain vigilant and demand accountability. The safety of Normalites must never be sacrificed for politics or prestige.

Mabuhi ang Eatudyanteng Pakigbisog!