The Department of National Defense (DND) is eyeing exchange of students and professors between the University of the Philippines (UP) and the military schools to ease the tension brought by the unilateral abrogation of the agreement that prohibits easy access of soldiers in UP campuses to preserve the atmosphere of academic freedom.

But Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said it was just one of the recommendations being explored by the Technical Working Group (TWG), composed of representatives from UP and the DND, in order to remove the distrust by both soldiers and students from both sides.

“There were proposals on how to improve relationships like exchange of students, professors, visitation by military students to UP and vice versa just to make them closer to each other and remove the distrust. But there was no agreement to do that, just a proposal,” said Lorenzana in an interview by Pinky Webb in CNN Philippines.

Should the agreement of exchange of students and professors be granted, students and professors of Philippine Military Academy (PMA) and other learning institutions of the AFP and the DND, that includes the National Defense College of the Philippines, could visit UP campuses and vice versa.

Lorenzana made the statement after meeting UP President Danilo Concepcion in a move to settle things with regard to the abrogation of the UP-DND agreement in 1989.

While Lorenzana stressed that he is open to re-sign another UP-DND agreement, he said that it would all depend on the recommendations that the TWG would come up.

But during the interview, Lorenzana stressed that the 1989 agreement is already obsolete and is no longer applicable in the present situation wherein he said there is a high public trust and confidence to the military.

“There was this prevailing distrust or mistrust to the law enforcement agencies by that time and so I think the secretary of Defense then,  General (Fidel) Ramos, had this agreement with the president of UP,” said Lorenzana.

Before the agreement was signed, UP became one of the grounds of resistance against the Marcos dictatorship. UP students were also among those in the forefront of protest actions that include installing barricades to prevent soldiers from entering its Diliman campus.

One of reasons why the agreement was also signed was the arrest of a UP student and campus journalist right inside the Diliman campus who was later linked by the military to the death of an American military officer.

“But now that’s no longer the case. The Defense and the military are enjoying unprecedented approval ratings from the people and I think it has changed already so let us move on and go back to normal without disagreement so that we can proceed with our daily lives. We assure them that we respect academic freedom, we respect the right of the people to protest, to demonstrate or to express dissent against the government, we will protect them from doing that,” said Lorenzana.