Black Shirt Day

This is the day when the perceived apathetic students of the UP College of Law went out to streets of the campus to have their voices heard. This is the day when the perceived apathetic students of the UP College of Law walked out of their classrooms and the shelter of the college to convince their fellow students to march out in protest. This is the day when the UP College of Law wore black.

When the basest of civil rights are trampled by the very head of state, under a proclamation and general order held valid only by the one who issued it, the constituents of the College cannot be silenced.

It was a surreal sight. The first time I witnessed such an assembly of such composition. The mostly College of Law students, with some of their professors, as well as some of the College staff, wore black and marched under the sweltering heat of the noonday sight; not in revelry but in high protest. As a professor in his closing exhortation later said, I was surprised to see those many. (I was even more surprised to be shouting side by side with a classmate who in my wildest dream, I believe, won’t be joining such. But that is another story.)

Indeed, it was the stuff of dreams.