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On Wednesday, Rep. Lourdes Ramos Rivera accused the Financial Oversight and Management Board of violating the human rights of Puerto Rican students by insisting on further reducing the funding for the public university system on the island.
Ramos, who has been a strong advocate for the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), along with its faculty and staff, as well as its retirement benefits, condemned the oversight board once again for jeopardizing the accreditations of various programs at Puerto Rico’s primary institution of higher learning.
She called upon the UPR’s governing board and its chairperson, Ricardo Dalmau, to advocate for university students’ rights and not to be cowed by the federal oversight body.
“There is a difference between pursuing reasonable consensus and remaining silent and submissive to the board’s abuses,” remarked Ramos. “With all this inaction, the UPR is losing its essence!”
The legislator from the New Progressive Party pointed out that Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948, affirms that “everyone has the right to education.”
She quoted passages from the UN declaration to underscore that “education is a fundamental right, a public asset, and a collective duty.”
“The UN indicated that education ‘is the singular investment nations can make to cultivate equitable, healthy, and thriving societies,’” she stated.
The greatest injustice, according to Ramos, is that the oversight board has consistently pursued a policy to financially undermine the UPR, depleting its operational budget incrementally. This includes funds allocated by law from the Legislative Assembly specifically for the university’s use.
“Having already cut $49 million from its budget,” she observed, “the board is also endangering the accreditations of university programs that are vital for training the next generation of professionals needed to foster economic recovery on the Island, post-bankruptcy. This exploitation must cease!”
Ramos found it equally disheartening that this situation arises just one week after the esteemed QS World University Rankings recognized UPR as the best university in the Caribbean.
“It appears to be a coordinated effort by the board to undermine UPR’s reputation, the faculty’s talent, and the research initiatives that have brought it such acclaim,” she argued.
Consequently, Ramos emphasized that Dalmau and the governing board must abandon their passive and complacent stance.
She also criticized the oversight board members for being able to send their children to top universities while denying low-income and middle-class families in Puerto Rico the opportunity for quality education.
“They not only exemplify the harshest form of colonialism imposed by the ELA [commonwealth status in Spanish] but also consider themselves as overlords, as if our students were descendants of slaves with no rights whatsoever,” Ramos declared. “They ought to feel shame!”
