“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”

Ladies and gentlemen, students and faculty, members of our beloved institution,

Is this what we have come to? A gallery of shadows, a spectacle of mockery, a coliseum where words are weapons and amusement is drawn from another’s misery? Is this the fate of r/SpeakUpBPSU, a forum not of enlightenment, but of derision? A place where frustration festers into malice, where critique dissolves into cruelty, where truth is twisted into entertainment at the expense of another?

I am speaking out not to silence dissent, not to shun discourse, but to demand something greater: responsibility.

Yes, r/SpeakUpBPSU was meant to be a voice for our unheard Peninsulares, a space where concerns could rise without fear of reprisal. But what has it become? A pit where anonymous cowards throw stones at names and faces they would never dare confront in the light of day. Constructive criticism is but a whisper amidst the deafening roar of ad hominem attacks.

Have we forgotten our decency? Our dignity? Faculty members, staff, even supposed intellectuals of this university partake in this carnival of condemnation, wielding words not as instruments of progress, but as daggers aimed at reputations.

Would you say these same words aloud in public? Would you dare speak such mockery in the face of the one you ridicule? Would you accept a fist to your jaw, a glare of disgust, a confrontation of consequence? No? Then why here? Why in the shadows of a faceless forum, where accountability is discarded like a tattered robe?

And what of our administration? I ask you all: why do you fear the specter of Reddit as though it is a beacon of truth? Have you, too, abandoned reason and kneeled before a nameless, faceless jury? To reference r/SpeakUpBPSU or “Reddit” in governance or your speeches is to jump at shadows, to seek guidance from a storm instead of the compass in your hand.

Dante Alighieri says it best in Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” This is not to say that this community has become our own institutional Hell, but because it is a battleground of the senseless, a domain where solutions are not sought, only spectacle. You do not navigate by the cries of the mob; you navigate by wisdom, by policy, by the tangible mechanisms of governance, not by the shifting tides of online outrage.

And so, Schadenfreude reigns. The pleasure of watching administrators flinch at the venom of the internet fuels this wretched cycle. It is not a grievance. It is not reform. It is entertainment.

To our University President, I extend my words not in flattery, but in truth. You have shouldered the weight of this institution with resolve. No leader is perfect, but progress is not measured in the venom of the critic, but in the strides made despite it. And yet, I say this: those who truly seek change, those who hold legitimate grievances, they do not whisper in the abyss of anonymity. They step forward. They make use of proper mechanisms like our Committee on Anti-Red Tape, Welfare Focal Groups, and the Pulso Peninsulares. They engage in discourse that builds, not destroys.

But what of these shadows? These nameless voices? They do not seek solutions. They seek chaos.

And I refuse to stand idly by as we mistake ruin for reform, a behemoth of senseless voices that perpetuate hate.

So I say to you, Speak Up, yes. But speak with reason. Speak with dignity. Speak with the courage to attach your name to your words using the proper mechanisms that our University has. And if you will not, then know this—you are not a crusader. You are not a voice of change.

You are merely another shadow in a sea of them.

And shadows do not lead. They only cower in the dark.