Students' Party for Equality and Advancement of Knowledge (SPEAK) was a non-profit student political party in the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP). PUP SPEAK was one of the organizations that pushed for the university's "national polytechnic university" status, with an allocation of additional ₱3 billion budget annually. It also launched the "academic ease" campaign, where it pushed for the implementation of measures that aimed to help students and educators to quickly adapt to distance learning, brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The campaign was supported by Education Secretary Leonor Briones. SPEAK also supports a ''smoke-free environment'' for the new normal.

History and campaigns

SPEAK was formed after its predecessor, PUP Alliance Resisting Repression of Students (ARREST), successfully mounted a campaign to remove a college dean accused of corruption. Since then, the organization has focused on the issues of students' rights, women and LGBT rights,

labor rights Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influen ...

, environmental protection, anti-Marcos burial to heroes' cemetery, anti-religious discrimination, and anti-dictatorship, among many others. The organization had been the ruling political party of the PUP Central Student Council from 2016 to 2021. In 2017, the organization has been tagged as " niversityadministration-leaning", after its founding chairman and then-incumbent PUP Central Student Council President Elijah San Fernando organized the election of the student representative to the university's board of regents. In 2020, SPEAK together with various organization under the leadership of Office of the Student Regent (OSR) held a benefit concert on the university oval grounds to support the mid-to-long-term rehabilitation of the communities affected by the Taal volcano eruption. The concert, which was attended by over 15,000 people, was headlined by

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, Itchyworms,

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, and Rocksteddy. In the same year, SPEAK joined in decrying the detention of its member-volunteer from the mechanical engineering department over alleged violations of the

enhanced community quarantine COVID-19 community quarantines in the Philippines were series of stay-at-home orders and ''cordon sanitaire'' measures that have been implemented by the government of the Philippines through its Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emer ...

. Joining the call to release the student were human rights lawyers Chel Diokno and Erin Tanada, who called the arrest a form of "harassment". The

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has tagged the organization as a " rejectionist group" from the

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divide and claimed that it was exploiting the arrest as part of its agitation-propaganda campaign against the

Philippine National Police The Philippine National Police ( fil, Pambansang Pulisya ng Pilipinas, acronymed as PNP) is the armed national police force in the Philippines. Its national headquarters is located at Camp Crame in Bagong Lipunan ng Crame, Quezon City. Current ...

and the

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References

Polytechnic University of the Philippines Student organizations in the Philippines {{Philippines-org-stub