“Hello, Ga,” asa na atong student paper?

Before the controversy regarding student paper censorship, the University of Mindanao is popular because of their radio ad, “Hello, Ga”.

I guess everyone in Davao remembers that popular line often played in its radio stations in the past decade. “Ga”, short for “palangga” features a phone call between a couple studying in UM boasting about their school’s achievement.

It’s cheesy, but creative and memorable.  But creativity is something they stifled with its student publication, Primum.

The publication posted a literary piece on its Facebook post last February 20, an allegory on the vice president. 

The story was titled “Ang Alegorya ng Mananakbo” (Allegory of a Runner), the writer goes by the pseudonym Silakbo, and alludes to the Vice President who had announced she will run for the presidency, and run faster than the late Asian Sprint Queen Lydia de Vega, and run away from all the problems she caused and thrown at her.

Having read the four-paragraph allegory, it was imaginative.  As an allegory, it conveys a deeper meaning, usually about morals and politics.

The publication has every right to publish an allegory, or any literary work, as long as it is an original piece written by a student of that campus, and doesn’t violate journalism ethics and literary norms. 

But the administration ordered the editors to have this allegory taken down. 

The editors were reminded to “be apolitical” in their writings. That reminder comes with an added threat: “face the risk of scholarships and the shutdown of Primum.” 
(the details of the story here: https://mindanews.com/top-stories/2026/03/how-an-allegory-on-the-dutertes-led-to-the-shutdown-of-ums-primum/)

The editors and staff of Primum resigned on March 6.  Its Facebook page was suspended.  The page was re-opened earlier this week, with a call for applications for new staff and editors.  It now begins on a new slate, while that allegory is no longer posted on its page. 

But it does not erase the damage the university has done to its students, and to press freedom.  A new staff will contend with running a publication that gets to meddle with its content, especially with political content.

Some of UM’s organizations, alumni and even student publications from other schools have all shown solidarity with the resigned Primum editors and staff, as they called out the administration for censorship, stifling editorial independence and critical thinking, and erasing the efforts of student journalists to write the truth.

It is ironic that UM owns a daily newspaper and two radio stations. They should know about freedom of the press.

It is also telling that while they want their student writers to down with imaginative writings, yet we have a vice president running expressing her wild imaginations against her political rivals of the bloody kind.

That is perhaps one of the deeper issues why the campus press is being stifled.  Student publications in Davao have reflected their voices, questioning the veneration to this local dynast that has lord over the city.  Some have been bashed online by diehard supporters, including Ateneo de Davao’s Atenews and UP Mindanao’s Himati.

So, Hello Ga, Naunsa na ang atong student paper? Naunsa na atong mga batan-on?

Despite these mode of shutting down their ideas and ideals, these students remain unbowed.  They’re out on the streets in Davao, protesting flood control anomalies, holding people in power into account.  For these young generation, truth does not hide behind the keyboard, it has to come out.

There is one more UM ad that runs like this:  “Making leaders across the islands since 1946.”

Those leaders include a city mayor, journalists, lawyers, and civic leaders.  And I believe the editors and staff of Primum deserve to be called leaders of a young generation: independent, critical of the thoughts of the older and crooked ones, and sending them to school.

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Tyrone A. Velez is a freelance journalist and writer.)