Students in shambles due to vaping ban

President Rodrigo Duterte had recently announced a vaping ban throughout the country to alleviate the growing users of vape and e-cigarettes.

Recently, the Philippine National Police arrested 243 people in public places to comply with the president’s issuance of the ban, taking 2,878 operations for these people to be apprehended.

The ban, pursuant to Philippine Clean Air Act of 1999 and Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003, followed Duterte’s executive law order to arrest individuals vaping in public following the first reported case of vaping illness in the Philippines. 

However, many believe that the issuance of this order was only made due to the government’s selfish reasons of having no profit nor gain from the e-cigarettes circling around the country, being that there is no tax implicated in the selling of these products.

While the Department of Health fully supports the ban, many are expressing their concerns that the vape ban is doing more harm than good, as most vapers use the product as an alternative to cigarettes. With the ban in progress, these vapers have no choice but to revert to actual cigarettes.

“As a student, managing a part time job, studying for my academics while consequently doing efforts for my organization is enough work in itself, I started vaping about four months ago when I decided to quit cigarettes.’ Ven, a fourth year management student from Ateneo says. ‘The vaping ban implemented by Duterte has caused me to relapse back to cigarettes, which has more negative effects than vape. As much as I want to stop all in all, it’s hard to balance everything without having an outlet to let out to.”

While others still less likely follows the ban, “I still vape, I think for me, it’s more of not getting caught when I vape.’ Fran, an Atenean junior studying humanities, says. ‘Not that I want to disobey the president, but I think for me, it’s such a pointless ban to implement. Because they [the government] gain no income from it.”

Various people have also raised their concerns regarding the issuance of the ban and everyone has voiced out their sides on the matter, especially students. As they are the ones most targeted by this ban, being that students have chosen to vape as an alternative in coping with stress, either academic or personal reasons. I personally side with the students in calling out the vape ban to be absurd being that there is no actual law that states vaping, in itself, to be not allowed in the country.

Furthermore, the order just shows how the governments redirection of focus shifts, while it does claim the main reason is due to unstudied chemicals that may harm the body, I believe it goes the same way for cigarettes and how both outlets still causes harm.

Whether or not one is vaping or smoking cigarettes, the risk and harm still stands. It is up to the own person’s discretion to make a choice for himself and while Duterte’s order still pushes through, I ask for transparency with its issuance.

Table for one, please

written by Denise Marcelo

Let’s begin with why being vegan is easy, especially as a college student and a dormer. Contrary to popular opinion, it’s a relatively inexpensive lifestyle. On the weekends, I cook meals plentiful enough to last an entire school week, then bring them with me to my Katipunan residence. I get to save a lot of money by subsisting on my own food. Turning vegan erased the excesses of Food Panda surcharges and Regis trips from worry.

The convenience ends there.

“You’re vegan? How?” is the expression of disbelief that possesses most people when they learn about my diet. They either think it’s unfathomable, ridiculous, or extraordinarily admirable that I am vegan, forgetting that up until that moment of revelation I was quite simply, like everyone else. I want to think I am just like everyone else.

But there are social repercussions to negotiate with. I’ve gotten quite stealthy at navigating them. Feigning normalcy is easy when my arsenal of excuses respond promptly to raised eyebrows and the classic “why aren’t you coming?” questions. The art of deception lies in trotting out a fantasy where my character is implicit. It’s striking a believable balance between nonchalance and regret as I deliver all the plausible reasons as to why I can’t meet my friends in Jollibee, as if God himself had forbidden everything from disrupting the continuity of my studious nature.

I can usually tell when this part of me borders on being discovered. In occasions where food is presented to me directly or when I eat my packed, vegetable-dense lunch in plain view, I’m found out or forced to admit what I am. Most of the time, it’s the latter. I throw my hands in the air and sheepishly attest to being vegan, then entertain the barrage of curiosities that flow from this confession.

I guess what I hate about being vegan most is that it puts me squarely at the center of people’s attention. I start wishing that I could disappear beneath my skin. I know my friends mean well, but I’ve also grown tired of explaining that there are no intricacies to my veganism. I can literally eat anything not made of nor derived from animals. Pretty straightforward, right?

But there is a sense of nakedness that comes with being accidentally unmasked and with it, an indispensable shame. Shame over having to bring my own food when my friends eat in a place that can’t accommodate. Shame over suppressing my hunger pangs when I forget to bring my food, but join them anyway. They say that food brings people together, but that rings false for someone like me, who spends most nights quietly microwaving pre-cooked dinners or in the few places that recognize me or at the very least, vegetarianism.

Some JSEC stalls, like Wrap It Up! (and the fallen Blendabowls and Healthy Co., the health-conscious community misses you) offer veganizable selections, but it’s not enough to feel included in the research and deliberation that goes into crafting their menus.

Fortunately, there are spaces where people like me set the norm, not the exception.

Tucked behind Yellow Cab in the FDR Building is Roots Katipunan, a co-working space and retail store that has an in-house vegan eatery. Along Esteban Abada is Dahon-Dahan, a health restaurant that sells a number of vegan-friendly wraps, salads, and rice meals. A little farther in UP Diliman’s Area 2 is Good Clean Cart, a fully vegan enterprise that doles out fast-food and Filipino cuisine for cheap. These places are often what I mean when I say, “Sorry! I have an LT tomorrow. Can’t go to McDo with you guys.” 

At the heart of the secrecy I shroud my veganism in is that I don’t want to be treated any differently. When you are approached like a mystery and studied with exotic fascination, there comes a point where you don’t want to be seen. Going unnoticed is a blessing that permits me to share essential college experiences with my peers, where this part of me does not eclipse everything else that I am.

Because frankly, I don’t feel that different at all. And because I don’t feel different, neither do I think that my friends should care so much about my choices. But the reality is that I am still a rare statistical deviation in a population of omnivores, and it shows in the calculation veganism requires. The timing of my meals, the contingencies for events where I am hard-pressed to find something to eat. And this is something I’ve accepted.

It has dawned on me that the struggle of being vegan in an unfriendly environment ultimately mirrors an inner struggle for self-acceptance. I have readily adapted to the externalities of at all. Yes, it’s mighty difficult, especially in our samgyupsal-crazed society. But maybe I can make being vegan easier, if I finally overcome the mentality that it can only be done in isolation.

Battle of Katipunan

Back in high school, I prayed to every possible higher power that I would get to live in Katipunan for college—but not for the university I’m currently in. 

For as long as I can remember, my high school self wanted nothing more than to go to University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD). Although I took the college entrance tests of the “Big Four”—University of Santo Tomas, De La Salle University, University of the Philippines, and Ateneo de Manila University—so much of my heart was set to become an iskolar ng bayan. It didn’t hurt that UPD had my dream course: BA Journalism. 

Needless to say, I didn’t make the cut for Diliman. Despite passing three out of the four, there was no other choice in my parents’ head: I was going to go to Ateneo. It was only ever supposed to be either Ateneo de Manila University (AdMU) or UPD, anyway. 

However, I would be lying if I said I had no apprehensions about AdMU; if anything, I was ready to beg my parents to let me file for reconsideration in University of the Philippines Los Baños—my mother’s alma mater—for as long as I got to be in the University of the Philippines (UP) system. 

I didn’t want to go to AdMU. I subscribed to the misconception that AdMU was for spoiled snobs who were more often than not disconnected from society; to my high school self, AdMU was nothing but a breeding ground for nepotism and corruption. These were the people that my friends and I had laughingly dubbed ‘burgis’ (bourgeoisie). I was convinced that I didn’t belong among them. 

UPD was a different story. I felt that I could be a little more of myself if I were to go to a UP school; jologs, if it had to be anything in particular. In UPD, it wouldn’t matter as much if I came from the province. And I could only imagine how much more affordable the canteen food might be in UPD, compared to AdMU’s pricey lunch options. 

Amid these judgemental misconceptions and preconceived notions, however, is one big reason that had me yearning for UP and hesitant about AdMU: politics. 

I had grown up in a household that did its best to stay unconcerned with Philippine politics. A little later into high school, I ended up educating myself about the state of our society—the corruption, the injustices, the history that has been revised and neglected. I was appalled that all these things were happening, but there’s a sense that little can be done if you’re from a small city in the outskirts of God-knows-where.

Katipunan was not that city. Katipunan, in my eyes, was where things could afford to happen. From my social media accounts, I followed the rallies and the movements, swearing that I would one day extend my help beyond online activism. 

Most of the championing I remember seeing was from UPD. The act of protesting had long since been attached to UP schools and, despite my parents’ silent distaste, I had always itched to be part of that scene. As Lin-Manuel Miranda so poignantly put it, I have always been “young, scrappy, and hungry.” I wanted to be part of the revolution! I wanted to put this passion to use! 

AdMU didn’t seem like the place for that. People would snidely say there was nothing to be found on the other side of Katipunan but an apathetic Ateneo; students who could not be bothered to take a stand, who didn’t see the point in rallying. Why would they? These were people of privilege, a population of the Philippines who could probably live their whole lives in ignorant bliss. It was such a terrible thing to think of anyone, but it was the truth that I was fed. It was the genuine fear that I had as I enrolled in AdMU, readying myself to put on hold my fight for the good fight lest I offend some government official’s child with my opinions. 

In my two years insofar of being in AdMU, I have learned two very important things. 

The first would be that I was wrong. I have never been more glad to admit that I was wrong. 

Indifference is not the norm in AdMU. Although there are minor instances—the constant, infamous low voter turn-out during Sanggunian elections—it would be a mistake to judge AdMU by its select few who choose to remain uninvolved. I have met so many people like me, so many students who support causes that matter and answer every call to arms. 

A well-known quote slams Ateneo for servicing only the elite, but I like to think that times have changed. The AdMU I know of today took to the streets after the results of the senatorial elections. The AdMU I know of today organized a rally against sexual harassment within the very University. The AdMU I know of may not still be as aware and outspoken as I’ve hoped it to be, but it’s getting there. It’s getting there.

Which leads me to the second thing that I learned: AdMU does not matter. Neither does UPD. Neither does the two other schools on the other side of this capital.

When I found out I failed the UPCAT—UP’s college entrance test—I ended up crying on the ride home. In the middle of traffic, I opened up to the tricycle driver who was concerned about my breakdown. I told him I wanted to make a difference, and I felt like not passing UP was a sign that I wasn’t cut out for it. 

As I was fumbling with my wallet to pay him, I distinctly remember him shaking his head vehemently; he would not accept the fifty peso bill I was handing him no matter how much I insisted. “Ang bayad mo nalang ay yung pagbabago na gusto mo (Let your payment be the change you want to see,)” he’d told me. “’Di mo kailangan ang UP para simulan yan. Sana lang maalala mo ang mga tulad ko.” 

(You don’t need UP to start that. I just hope you don’t forget people like me.) 

I remember him in every tricycle ride, every immersion, every discussion about equality, every rally that I try my best to show up to. What Katipunan university I go to no longer matters to me as much as what I can do with the cards I’ve been dealt with; what I can do for the people and the country I want to serve.

I’ve been granted by my higher power to be in Katipunan, and I’m not wasting the chance I have to fight the good fight.

The untranslatable language of Katipunan

When I was first warned against becoming conyo upon moving to Katipunan, I was confused as to why I might become a vagina in college. 

I was never fluent in Spanish. I only ever picked up bits and pieces of it growing up. What I was fluent in was English; I’d grown up in an English speaking household, making everything about the language—the grammar, the syntax—natural to me. Tagalog would come a little later into my childhood, and even that was something I was never fully confident in. 

Much of what I know about language came from the environment I grew up in, understandably so. I am from a small city in the province of Batangas called Lipa. The Batangueño ‘dialect’ is characterized not so much by words that are distinct to us but rather our way of speaking; my college friends still joke about how unbelievably loud and crass I was the first time we met.

Despite being rather used to code switching, I found myself jolted by the melting pot of culture that was Katipunan. There were the other province kids who struggled with Tagalog because some words had different meanings in, say, Cebuano. There were the Filipino-Chinese who slipped into Hokien when they wanted to insult someone. There were the foreign exchange students and the European Studies/Diplomacy majors, conversing and learning through one another.

Amid all these vernaculars was one that I have managed to both love and hate: the concept of the conyo.

I’ve unironically adapted terms like “G?” (Game?), “dehins” (Hindi, or no), and “Alat, gago!” (That’s salty!) to my vocabulary. Every now and then, I catch myself tacking ‘make’ on to a Tagalog verb—make pa-print, make kuha. The thing about code switching is that there is supposedly a point in which you switch fluidly and fluently from one speech to another; what Katipunan has made of my tongue is less alternation and more of a butchery.

A large part of this is my need to assimilate. While my friends from home were merciless in teasing my ‘like, parang‘s every few sentences, very few of my peers from Katipunan would be able to keep up if I were to tell them a story in rapid Tagalog. It’s hard to adjust primarily because there is no literal switch in code switching; I still catch myself using words that would only make sense in Ateneo back at Lipa and vice versa.

There are inevitable deeper connotations to the languages we speak and learn. My conyo-ness has warranted a handful of jeering “Nag-Maynila ka lang, ganyan ka na!” from relatives. They nitpick at my accent and decide among themselves that it’s a product of going to Areneyow, always adding that I probably felt like I was now on some alleged moral high ground just because I was studying away from home.

Katipunan, on the other hand, has a naive and ignorant fascination for provincial life, primarily because so many people know very little beyond the echo chambers of their metros. I once joked that I used to ride a carabao to school and almost everyone in the room believed me. Being a probinsyana has served as an excuse for so many of my weird quirks, and the fact that a lot of people are so easy to accept the misconceptions they have about cities outside of National Capital Region still unsettles me.

It has been my daily struggle to find an in-between, and conyo—as flawed and cringe-worthy as it may be most days—has served to me as precisely that.

While I haven’t completely gotten over the judgement from the homes I go back and forth from, I’ve found comfort in this hodgepodge lingo that doesn’t ask much of me. There is no foreign language class for conyo, no crash course to train you in it. Over time, the other province kids and I have seen the humor in the silly terms, and we’ve begun to play with it to our own liking. I’ve come to find less spite in my heart for the Manileños whose accidents are terrible when they speak Tagalog, and more compassion for them when they ask me to translate the readings they don’t quite understand.

To adore Katipunan and its hustle and bustle was easy; to say the same about its language, not so. Whether I look to this mishmash of characters and see the speech as a status symbol or a mere product of the environment no longer matters. At the end of the day, it’s still the words that I choose to say that holds more weight—regardless of what language I convey it in.

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