20/10/2025
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after gaining national attention through the tireless efforts of the Normalite student movement — the administration rescinded the policy, restoring hybrid learning.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as CEO of LDLA Marketing, one of the firms flagged in the 2021 DepEd laptop controversy — a scandal over overpriced, outdated laptops bought with public funds.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?
