How far is off-campus?

Sometimes “off-campus” is not much of a trip at all. It can be the municipal gym across the road, the sports complex a few minutes away, or an oval students can practically see from their classroom. But once an activity crosses the campus gate, things change. Forms come out. Names are listed. Risks are assessed. Signatures are collected. Before long, you wonder: How far do students really have to go before a lakbay becomes a journey?

I thought about this while reading CHED Memorandum Order No. 24, series of 2026, or the Enhanced Guidelines for the Local Off-Campus Activity for Student Knowledge, Well-Being, and Accessible Learning Opportunity—mercifully shortened to LAKBAY. I like the name. More than that, I like what it tries to hold together: learning, student welfare, access, safety, and institutional responsibility whenever schools bring students beyond campus.

I understand the caution. Universities cannot treat student safety casually. One unsafe vehicle, one poorly chosen destination, or one emergency nobody prepared for can turn an ordinary school activity into something everyone will regret. Some requirements look tedious right up to the moment they become necessary. Once we bring students outside the gate, responsibility comes with us.

Still, reactions to the new guidelines raise a fair question: must every activity beyond that gate carry nearly the same administrative weight? One faculty member wondered whether ordinary research data gathering outside campus would now be troublesome enough that it might be easier to require students to conduct studies within campus instead. Another comment was more candid: “Tatamarin na lang ilabas ang mga students.” I can understand the frustration. If compliance becomes too difficult, teachers may simply become creative inside the classroom rather than deal with the paperwork outside it.

That would be unfortunate, especially for smaller campuses in the provinces. A school may not have its own gymnasium, oval, or large activity center because the LGU has one nearby. Sometimes students can simply walk there. Should a short walk to the municipal gym require essentially the same machinery as a long educational tour involving buses, distant destinations, and overnight stays? In many towns, community facilities practically function as extensions of limited campus spaces.

Maybe the better question is not simply, “Is this off-campus?” but, “What does this particular activity actually involve?” Twenty students walking with their teacher to a venue 300 meters away are not in quite the same situation as 300 students traveling eight hours by bus. Neither is research data gathering at the neighboring barangay quite the same as fieldwork along a difficult coastline. Distance matters. So do transportation, duration, group size, destination, and the activity itself. Good safeguards should be able to notice those differences.

Cost matters, too. “Accessible” is easy to say until students start adding up transportation, food, insurance, medical requirements, and everything else. An extra ₱1,000 may be fine for one family. For another, that is already rice, rent, electricity, or a week of fare. Some students will not complain. They will simply not go.

To its credit, LAKBAY does away with notarization requirements, one less expense and errand for students and their families. That is a sensible improvement. Still, there is a small irony worth noticing. If a student needs a medical test or clearance for an off-campus activity and has to travel outside campus on their own to get it, then the preparation for the supposedly regulated trip may itself require an unregulated trip. The medical requirement may be entirely reasonable, depending on the activity and the student’s condition. But the situation does make you smile a little: sometimes you have to go off-campus before you are cleared to go off-campus.

But students need to get out sometimes. Fisheries students need shorelines and fishing communities. Education students need classrooms. Engineering students need actual structures. Researchers need respondents outside campus. There are things PowerPoint simply cannot teach.

Students also have responsibilities. Most college students are adults. Universities still have a duty to keep them safe, but students can follow rules, keep schedules, respect communities, and make responsible choices. We cannot prepare them for independence without letting them practice some of it.

That balance is what I like about LAKBAY’s promise of knowledge, well-being, and accessible learning. Learning without safety is risky. But too much procedure for a simple activity can make teachers decide it is easier not to go at all. And an opportunity students cannot afford is not much of an opportunity.

The comments around the guidelines show that many are still asking practical questions. What about routine data gathering? A nearby gym? A low-risk activity just outside campus? When exactly do the rules apply? These questions do not mean people care less about safety. They want to know whether the requirements will fit the actual risk.

That is where implementation matters. Be strict when the risk calls for it, but leave room for common sense. Three hundred meters and 300 kilometers are very different trips.

Perhaps that is the small question worth keeping in mind as LAKBAY finds its way into our universities. We could probably keep students safest by never letting them leave campus. But that would be a strange kind of education. The world we are preparing them for is outside the gate anyway. Sometimes it is hundreds of kilometers away. Sometimes it is at the shoreline or the barangay hall.

And sometimes, amusingly enough, it is just across the street.

***

Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.