#COLUMN | Truths pursued by heart
by Grandis Frias
The Press Room is still open.
It is 6 p.m. on a Friday. My last class of the day ended three hours ago. Three hours since I was supposed to go home had I not chosen to bear this press ID.
Two fellow members of the publication have stayed with me. One is sorting photos for the event news report to be posted tonight. The other is writing a script for a short-form video explaining why the school budget will be cut next year.
I am scouring the records of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to recheck the graphs I had previously made when the national budget plan came out. The last few days have been spent analyzing these numbers to make sense of why the budget cut happened.
We first found out about the cut a few days ago, when the University of the Philippines Diliman’s student publication, Philippine Collegian (Kule), reported the university’s P2.4-billion funding slash from the government. We searched for the Philippine Science High School System’s (PSHSS) current and past budget allocations immediately after reading Kule’s report. A few spreadsheets later, our team found out that half of the PSHSS will face budget cuts next year.
When SciScho released a graph presenting funds allocated per campus, the rest of the PSHSS’ student publications followed in reporting. Soon enough, fellow editors-in-chief across the 16 campuses were discussing through group messages.
At the frontline
I tell you this story not to showcase our publication, but to present a truth that is not so visible onscreen: the news does not break itself. Every headline, every interview, every piece of information — they are all brought to you by people who seek to do so. People who are especially not alone in the process.
The news will never be news to the community if not for the people behind them.
I am certain that people in Kule’s headquarters also scoured documents from the DBM and were also faced with broken links on government websites. I know without seeing that fellow campus journalists across the Pisay System dropped what they were doing to inform their respective communities of what is about to happen in 2025.
I can also tell you that this is not a one-time instance. This is the regular scene in the Press Room: a team of students with a few equipment and varying training, united by their dependence on Google Workspace, rushing to report on the most recent, pressing events. Brilliant, albeit sometimes hilarious, ideas being shared and adrenaline following after. Laughter roaring amidst exhaustion from days-long coverage. Occasional silence observed to maintain work-mode headspace. Impromptu brainstorming sessions held when enough members happen to be in the same place.
Humans behind the news
Many might assume that journalism is all about news articles and politically-driven pieces. This is, of course, understandable given the society we are in, where the truths that we work hard to pursue are often political.
But the essence of journalism lies in community — in capturing not only what the people need to know, but also what they live through. This bears stories that are as multidimensional as their human tellers can be. These get to be told not for hard necessity, but for community. For people who might just resonate with them.
I have fellow journalists and friends who write about the best books they have read or the top movies they have watched. Some write about their journey to accept being “good enough.” Others share their Pisay encounters. One even wrote articles out of their love for Mariah Carey and knowledge on effective study habits. This friend also created an entire documentary about the dormers’ experience during the heat wave. Another friend of mine, who’s also one of Pisay’s very few photojournalists, is about to draft an article about dengue — an interest they claim to be the greatest connoisseur of in Pisay. Some other friends are featuring musical artists among the student body. These are the same people who broke the news to you when a super typhoon flooded the campus.
My first article in SciScho was a feature on queer culture in the Pisay community. It was followed by an analysis of Barbie (2023) then a raging opinion on entrance exams and the education system.
Truly, you can write about anything when you have a point for doing so. More so, you can speak, make art, and just create when you have a purpose to do so. Journalism, after all, is bound by nothing but truth and community.
In the same breath, we are nothing without the Pisay community. There is no news if no one would benefit from knowing about it. There are no features, documentaries, or editorials without you who might resonate with them. Without a community to serve, The Science Scholar is nothing.
The things we do with heart
Every year, when we open SciScho applications to new members, there is the tradition of asking, “Why should you join SciScho?”
No single answer can do the question justice. But here, I write mine, hoping it comes close: for the people. Both in and out of SciScho.
I feel closest to the community I belong to when I do coverage and reporting for its people. I feel most capable of sparking — or at least contributing to — change when I put out my convictions through words inked in this publication. I feel as though if I were to leave this lifetime now, I have done the most I could for the people as the words I had written for change will live on. I feel that these very words you are reading, written in hopes that they leave you with something valuable, will outlive me.
I hope you find or have found it, too. In whatever way you can. Nothing is more fulfilling.
There are many, many social perils that need to be talked about. Even as a campus journalist who does not directly report on national issues, you still see them and sometimes must write about them. When you’re at the frontline of reporting, when your job is to find out every day as nobody else will, you begin to understand just how far we are from change even on the small scale of a school.
You see the possibility that bigger change might not happen in your lifetime. You might not exist in the future you are fighting for. Then you realize just how much your community needs you.
There is this certain bubble of time when I am in the Press Room. When we gather around the long tables, squishing together even though there’s space, there is comfort in knowing that none of us are alone in caring about the truths that are often buried, ignored, or unknown. Truly, none of us are alone in fighting for the future we might not even exist in.
The world will not tell us that, for instance, budget cuts are happening, but we will seek to know and deliver. The world will not tell us to write about our niches and favorite movies or books and our principles, but we will.
The world also stops in the Press Room on occasion. Every now and then, when chance allows, there is food on our long tables. Then in the next few moments, we get to pretend that the world is functioning as it should. We get to forget about the issues or events we should and will eventually write about, the national and global problems we must raise awareness for, or the reality of having academic duties aside from this. In these snippets of time, the world is okay, and as young people, we are just that. Before the world continues.
Passion overflows in the Press Room. At the very least, it has to. Pursuing the untarnished truths that matter to the community — to you — takes time to do once and heart to do for long.
It is that time of the year: the Press Room is open. Come inside whenever you’re ready.
