UST Student Council denounces award given to Mocha Uson for government service

By Raïssa Robles

Hours after the UST Alumni Association of Asia’s oldest Catholic university gave Mocha Uson an award for “exemplary public service”, the UST Student Council denounced it.

The award was not publicized beforehand and apparently caught the millennials in the UST Central Student Council off-guard.

BREAKING:

A source told the Varsitarian that alumni association vice president John Simon, who was appointed acting district collector at the Bureau of Customs last December of 2017, nominated Uson as one of the recipients of the award.

Office of Alumni Relations Director Cherry Tanodra has resigned. UST Alumni Association President Henry Tenedero and Vice President John Simon have been asked to resign following furor over government service award given to Mocha Uson – Varsitarian said, quoting sources

Now, according to GMA News, Mocha Uson is returning the award. 

      Despite it being a lazy Sunday afternoon, the Central Student Council swiftly issued a strongly worded statement saying that:

“The UST CSC strongly denounces the UST Alumni Association Inc.’s (UST AAI)action of honoring Mocha Uson the Thomasian Award for government service.

Mocha Uson, who is widely known as the main purveyor of politically-motivated propaganda against known members of the government’s opposition; an avid spreader and citer of fake news. Uson is also known to utilize her following to initiate blatant personal attacks against her critics and the government’s, including students and members of the press, all under the guise of fake nationalism and freedom of speech.

We express our dismay over this event as Mocha Uson does not, in any way, embody the ideals of a real Thomasian, and with all due respect, Ms. Esther Margaux “Mocha” Justininiano Uson does not deserve an award that was supposed to be meant solely for outstanding Thomasian Alumni.

The UST CSC urges all Thomasians to fight against the proliferation of false information and to continuously seek for fact-based evidences amidst the denial of truth. We encourage everyone to be critical on every information they receive even if it hails from supposedly credible sources.

We are also in solidarity with all the members of the media in the fight for our democratic right to free press. We condemn all forms of attacks done by the state, aimed towards silencing and censoring the media.”

You can view the Council’s statement here. 

The Student Council also urged Thomasians to take part in an online survey “by using your eleap accounts”.

It would be interesting to find out out who in the Alumni Association had pushed for the award.

It is even more interesting to see that the Central Student Council is not taking what their elders just did sitting down.

By its statement, the UST Central Student Council – the highest governing body of all the students of UST – has given Mocha Uson the #FakeNewsBarbie Award.