Students use viral ‘Danas’ memes to renew calls for increase in PUP budget

MANILA, Philippines — Students of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) posted on social media meme videos of their experiences encountering brownouts during classes, using floor tiles as whiteboards, and other funny campus moments revealing their academic obstacles. 

This memes triggered the school’s progressive groups and student leaders to decry the deep budget cuts in the country’s most populated university. They said the current state funds allocated to PUP limit the quality of their educational facilities as can be seen on the online craze. 

As students continue to hop on the trend, PUP student regent and central student council president Kim Modelo said that the meme exposed the real situation in the state-owned school as the inadequate budget results in numerous protests. 

“Nitong mga nagdaang taon, talagang makikita ‘yung pag-tapyas sa budget ng PUP. Talagang mababa siya […] Ine-expose nila ‘yung tunay na kalagayan ng mga estudyante. ‘Yun ‘yung mga isyu na nagpapakilos sa mga estudyante na nagreresulta talaga sa mga protesta at even pag-e-expose online,” said Modelo.  

(These past few years, one can really see the budget cuts in PUP. The budget allocated is really insufficient. The memes expose the real conditions of the students. Those are the situations that make students act, which results in protests and even exposing it online.)

‘Danas ‘ trend

Popularized by content creator and PUP student Ice Neo (@iceeneoo), the TikTok trend started with him singing Nora Aunor’s 2005 classic “Kahit Konting Awa.” Ice was singing the chorus like in a choir with his fellow ‘iskolars ng bayan’ and jiving to the lyrics about mercy—a double entendre to the challenges the students face.

It was followed by the rest of TikTok contents using that audio and other social media users sharing “normal days” in the school, highlighting their “danas” or experiences studying in PUP. 

These included untimely brownouts, flooded pathways, congested and hardly-ventilated classrooms, and students renting educational materials. Student groups believe they are in this blight because of the budget cuts sustained by PUP.

@angelicurl walang kuryente ???????? danas na danas talaga #pup #awanalang #fyp ♬ DANAS – iceeneoo

In one video, students were seen using their classroom’s floor tiles and glass windows as an alternative for a whiteboard. 

Another upload showed students taking an examination at night, in the middle of a power outage, while using their phone’s flashlight to see the words on the test paper. With a lone laptop, students in one clip were doing a presentation in the dark due to a short brownout while fanning themselves to ease the humidity the classroom. 

The brownouts in PUP, which started in April 2023, were caused by development projects inside the campus. Generator sets are being used by the main campus. 

“Kawawa. Parusa. ‘Puksaan’ ‘yung budget ng SUCs (state universities and coolleges) natin. Saan ka makakakita ng state university na may window hour ang kuryente? Pinapabayaan ni Marcos Jr. ang mga estudyante at ‘yun ang tunay na state of the nation,” said League of Filipino Students (LFS) chairperson Elle Buntag.

(Pitiful. Punishing. The budgets of SUCs are like killings. Where will you find a state university where the power services have window hours? [President] Marcos Jr. neglects the students and that is the true state of the nation.)

Despite the trend, PUP was awarded “most preferred school of Filipino employers” in 2023 by employment platform JobStreet and ranked 551-600 on 2024 Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings in Asia.

Budget cuts

Weeks after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. approved a P6.3-trillion budget proposal for 2025, student groups from PUP, marched along Commonwealth Avenue during his third state of the nation address to push for an increase in their funds.

In November 2023, Modelo and other representatives from other SUCs filed a 250-page petition paper to Senate minority leader Senator Koko Pimentel urging a restoration of the P6.1-billion budget cut to 30 Philippine SUCs, under the approved P5.7-trillion budget in September.

The General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2024, has only allocated PUP a budget of P3.1 billion—only half of its proposed budget of P6.9 billion, which is “extremely insufficient” for the university to cater thousands of enrollees, said the student leaders.

Modelo told Rappler that the PUP Board of Regents has already approved an P11-billion budget proposal for next year. The executive branch targets to submit the proposed 2025 national budget to Congress this coming July 29. 

NPU bill revisions

This is not the first time the government has withdrawn supposed budgets for PUP. 

In February 2024, the House committee on higher and technical education deliberated three bills, including House Bill No. 8860, which seeks to revise the charter of PUP and elevate its status to being the country’s national polytechnic university (NPU).

The NPU House bills were immediately protested by its students as some of its provisions are furthering the commercialization and privatization of services inside the campus. 

These proposals, however, would also benefit PUP’s stakeholders as it would provide appropriations of P8 billion to the university. This provision is one of the sections which made student groups support the bills.

PUP President Manuel Muhi also requested a higher budget of P10.5-billion during the hearings for the subsumption of 11 PUP campuses currently funded by local governments. 

This May 2024, however, a committee report for the bills’ Senate version slashed these numbers and no summed amount of the budget was provided, unlike the House of Representative version. This was sponsored by the Senate committee on higher, technical and vocational education chairman and Senate president Chiz Escudero. 

With more than 20 campuses serving around 84,000 students, PUP is the Philippines’ largest university in terms of population. – Rappler.com

Chris Burnet Ramos was an Aries Rufo fellow. A graduating journalism student at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, he writes for ‘The Communicator,’ the student publication of the PUP College of Communication.