Footnote to University of the Philippines
Footnote to University of the Philippines
Updated 11:23pm (Mla time) Nov 29, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the November 30, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
MY belated congratulations to Emerlinda Roman. She is the centennial president of the University of the Philippines (UP, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2008) after winning a closely contested fight last week. She was pitted against a Malacañang-sponsored candidate, Edgardo Espiritu. GMA apparently went all out to get Espiritu elected, though happily she did not have Benjamin Abalos to count the votes of the board of Regents. Which is all the sweeter for Roman's victory has become a victory for decency or good manners and right conduct.
She is also, not quite incidentally, the first woman president of UP. Well, there's no better way to signal the dawning of the new age, or at least the new UP century, than that a woman holds the key to this country's mind.
I am not from UP. Someone once asked me, "When did you graduate from UP?" and I answered, "Wrong on both counts." I studied at the Ateneo de Manila University but dropped out in my last semester, something I do not particularly encourage today's college students to do-different times, different chimes. But I've always felt close to UP. Most of my friends are from UP, and I taught there for a semester after running out of excuses to give my friend, Luis Teodoro, only to confirm to myself that I'm not cut out to be a teacher.
Several friends asked me the other week to plug for Roman when the contest was deadlocked at 6-6. I did not for a couple of reasons. The first was that the last time I did that, for Dodong Nemenzo in 1993, he lost to Emil Javier. Most of the candidates I've backed for as long as I can remember have lost for the simple reason that they are the best ones. The best candidates seldom win, especially in this country. I thought my endorsement of Roman might help Espiritu and deemed prudence the better part of valor.
The second was that I was rooting for Georgina Reyes, the former MassCom head. Of course, with her out of the running the other week, I'd have gladly thrown my support to Roman, but for Reason No. 1.
Every time the vote for UP president comes up, I keep hearing the idea that it's just a choice between a good administrator and a good academician, a good administrator being more preferable. Not at all. Good administrators are a dime a dozen, good academicians are rarer than water in drought. Good academicians being those who devote their lives to the pursuit of knowledge rather than money. I was about to say to the pursuit of knowledge rather than power, but I just remembered that knowledge is power, as Francis Bacon said, a thing emblazoned on the walls of some schools. But that is a concept that has been lost on the ex-academicians who have joined President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in the same way that the concept of "Serve the people" has been lost on the ex-activists who have joined Ms Arroyo.
I told Georgina, when she solicited my views (and those of other media people) on what kind of vision the UP president ought to have, that I thought she or he should restore UP's role as a powerful voice in national affairs. That is not something a bureaucrat can do, that is something a scholar, or sage, can do. You may not like Dodong Nemenzo, or agree with what he does (some of my friends have no kind words to say about him), but he brings an intellectual stature to the position. Something that hasn't happened in a long time, the mentally (and integrity)-challenged apparently having gotten a lock on the UP presidency as much as the national one.
I said I remembered the time when UP debated ideas with the passion, or murderousness, with which people did matters of faith during the time of the Inquisition. I remembered the time when people wrote treatises and papers and did not just defend them before a panel of peers but before a public of students and teachers. I remembered the time when this country prized literature as it prizes the karaoke now, and writers in a drunken frenzy knocked on critics' doors and chased them with knives after getting a bad review. Arts and letters then were not just the stuff of grades, they were the stuff of life.
Indeed, I remembered the time when the UP Collegian was more than a college newspaper, it was the voice of the free press. Long before We Forum and Malaya, there was the Collegian whose masthead became the national cry: "Kung di tayo, sino pa? Kung di ngayon, kailan pa?" [If not we, then who? If not now, then when?] It captured perfectly the spirit of intellectual commitment. You can't have a deeper sense of personal responsibility and urgency than that. For which intellectual commitment, of course, several Collegian editors and their advisers ended up being detained or interrogated in Marcos' camps. But that was the time when UP represented more than just another school, it was a beacon in the wilderness.
I don't know why it shouldn't be so again. We are as much a wilderness today as we were in the past, even if the dangers that lurk there are of another kind. Though as far as threat of fascism is concerned, that is not entirely a thing of the past. The President has shown a scale of ambition not unlike Marcos', and an equal resolve to use whatever means possible to keep power. We were under de facto martial rule shortly after 9/11. But quite apart from that, there is the wilderness of a country going nowhere, or if it going anywhere at all, going backwards. Certainly the fact that a fifth of the population wants to leave the country must suggest new depths of dark and disquiet for us.
Other schools can afford bureaucrats for officials, whose visions do not go beyond how well they can raise funds and make their campuses bigger. UP cannot. It has far too much prestige and tradition to do so. Maybe Erlinda Roman can bring back the luster UP has lost, or improve on what Dodong has already done in that respect.
I wish her well.
Updated 11:23pm (Mla time) Nov 29, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the November 30, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
MY belated congratulations to Emerlinda Roman. She is the centennial president of the University of the Philippines (UP, which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2008) after winning a closely contested fight last week. She was pitted against a Malacañang-sponsored candidate, Edgardo Espiritu. GMA apparently went all out to get Espiritu elected, though happily she did not have Benjamin Abalos to count the votes of the board of Regents. Which is all the sweeter for Roman's victory has become a victory for decency or good manners and right conduct.
She is also, not quite incidentally, the first woman president of UP. Well, there's no better way to signal the dawning of the new age, or at least the new UP century, than that a woman holds the key to this country's mind.
I am not from UP. Someone once asked me, "When did you graduate from UP?" and I answered, "Wrong on both counts." I studied at the Ateneo de Manila University but dropped out in my last semester, something I do not particularly encourage today's college students to do-different times, different chimes. But I've always felt close to UP. Most of my friends are from UP, and I taught there for a semester after running out of excuses to give my friend, Luis Teodoro, only to confirm to myself that I'm not cut out to be a teacher.
Several friends asked me the other week to plug for Roman when the contest was deadlocked at 6-6. I did not for a couple of reasons. The first was that the last time I did that, for Dodong Nemenzo in 1993, he lost to Emil Javier. Most of the candidates I've backed for as long as I can remember have lost for the simple reason that they are the best ones. The best candidates seldom win, especially in this country. I thought my endorsement of Roman might help Espiritu and deemed prudence the better part of valor.
The second was that I was rooting for Georgina Reyes, the former MassCom head. Of course, with her out of the running the other week, I'd have gladly thrown my support to Roman, but for Reason No. 1.
Every time the vote for UP president comes up, I keep hearing the idea that it's just a choice between a good administrator and a good academician, a good administrator being more preferable. Not at all. Good administrators are a dime a dozen, good academicians are rarer than water in drought. Good academicians being those who devote their lives to the pursuit of knowledge rather than money. I was about to say to the pursuit of knowledge rather than power, but I just remembered that knowledge is power, as Francis Bacon said, a thing emblazoned on the walls of some schools. But that is a concept that has been lost on the ex-academicians who have joined President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in the same way that the concept of "Serve the people" has been lost on the ex-activists who have joined Ms Arroyo.
I told Georgina, when she solicited my views (and those of other media people) on what kind of vision the UP president ought to have, that I thought she or he should restore UP's role as a powerful voice in national affairs. That is not something a bureaucrat can do, that is something a scholar, or sage, can do. You may not like Dodong Nemenzo, or agree with what he does (some of my friends have no kind words to say about him), but he brings an intellectual stature to the position. Something that hasn't happened in a long time, the mentally (and integrity)-challenged apparently having gotten a lock on the UP presidency as much as the national one.
I said I remembered the time when UP debated ideas with the passion, or murderousness, with which people did matters of faith during the time of the Inquisition. I remembered the time when people wrote treatises and papers and did not just defend them before a panel of peers but before a public of students and teachers. I remembered the time when this country prized literature as it prizes the karaoke now, and writers in a drunken frenzy knocked on critics' doors and chased them with knives after getting a bad review. Arts and letters then were not just the stuff of grades, they were the stuff of life.
Indeed, I remembered the time when the UP Collegian was more than a college newspaper, it was the voice of the free press. Long before We Forum and Malaya, there was the Collegian whose masthead became the national cry: "Kung di tayo, sino pa? Kung di ngayon, kailan pa?" [If not we, then who? If not now, then when?] It captured perfectly the spirit of intellectual commitment. You can't have a deeper sense of personal responsibility and urgency than that. For which intellectual commitment, of course, several Collegian editors and their advisers ended up being detained or interrogated in Marcos' camps. But that was the time when UP represented more than just another school, it was a beacon in the wilderness.
I don't know why it shouldn't be so again. We are as much a wilderness today as we were in the past, even if the dangers that lurk there are of another kind. Though as far as threat of fascism is concerned, that is not entirely a thing of the past. The President has shown a scale of ambition not unlike Marcos', and an equal resolve to use whatever means possible to keep power. We were under de facto martial rule shortly after 9/11. But quite apart from that, there is the wilderness of a country going nowhere, or if it going anywhere at all, going backwards. Certainly the fact that a fifth of the population wants to leave the country must suggest new depths of dark and disquiet for us.
Other schools can afford bureaucrats for officials, whose visions do not go beyond how well they can raise funds and make their campuses bigger. UP cannot. It has far too much prestige and tradition to do so. Maybe Erlinda Roman can bring back the luster UP has lost, or improve on what Dodong has already done in that respect.
I wish her well.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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