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My intro to commencement was the graduation of seventh graders and
sixth graders (together) at the Philippine Normal, to high school
just before the Pacific War. I belonged to the latter group who were
herded to the balcony where we watched the seventh-graders on stage
receive certificates and their valedictorian give a speech. We
didn’t have the benefit of the grand march from “Aida” played
on the piano by a seventh-grader who stopped playing as we entered
the hall.
Thus, commencement could be a memorable one.
After the war our high school graduation was in rubbled UP Padre
Faura before the Oblation unscathed by the battle for Manila, with
the young Ferdinand Marcos as speaker. In UP Diliman the
unforgettable commencement was in 1951 when Claro Recto delivered
“Our Mendicant Foreign Policy”—the first salvo against US
imperialism delivered by a Filipino senator at war’s end. I also
attended the commencement at Far Eastern University a week later
when Ambassador Carlos P. Romulo answered Recto in a long eloquent
speech. He had to ask for salabat to relieve his sore throat.
Commencement has been an occasion for personages
to give their views on burning issues like independence or
party-less democracy before the war and the Cold War and
post-colonial issues after the war. A unique address was that of
National Artist Francisco Arcellana who delivered a “descent into
Hades” speech about death squads and prison dungeons in El
Salvador during its civil war in the 80s.
Nowadays commencement organizers are wary about
manifestations of “symbolic action” or protest on national or
local problems.
Recent protest actions during commencement in
two UP campuses (Manila and Diliman) recall the student
demonstration in Diliman in 1970 when graduating students held aloft
placards including one on “Digmaang Bayan: Sagot sa Martial Law”
while student regent Jerry Barican joined the protesters waving a
red flag.
Last Sunday two former student regents tried to
get to center stage in Quezon Hall with “Serve the People”
banners but they were roughed up and hustled off by UP police and
SSB (Social Services Brigade) whom they accused of “fascist”
behavior. From e-mail reports I gathered that faculty and students
staged a lightning rally (including balloons with “Oust GMA”
signs, one of which got tangled up a tree in full view of everyone)
that caught security by surprise. The graduates and some spectators
joined in a “sea of clenched fists” and sang the other version
of “UP Naming Mahal.” (cf, “Anthem for Dedicated Youth,”
this column, 4/5/08)
Earlier in UP, Manila, graduating students,
after receiving their diplomas, staged a protest action calling for
GMA to resign. They were also joined in by other graduates and
members of the audience. Commencement speaker Chief Justice Reynato
Puno was said not to have minded the interruption. A former
editor-in-chief of the Philippine Collegian in 1962, Puno understood
the mood of militant youth.
In UP Tacloban, National Artist for Literature
and “Makata ng Bayan” Bienvenido Lumbera used the Oblation as
his touchstone to inspire graduating students to dedicate their
talents and skills for “Inang Bayan” in the spirit exemplified
by the sacrifices of Jose Rizal and other national heroes.
He cited some UP students who had lived up to
the Oblation—Lean Alejandro, Lorena Barros, Tony Tagamolila, Abraham
Sarmiento Jr., Voltaire Garcia as well as the earlier generation of
UP nationalists and intellectuals like Wenceslao Vinzons, Teodoro A.
Agoncillo, Renato Constantino, Leopoldo Yabes, Ricardo Pascual,
Cesar Majul and others.
Lumbera deplored that Philippine history is no
longer required in the General Education curriculum for all UP
students in the light of the “border-less world” orientation of
the administration. He said UP education should be geared for the
Filipino who has had to shed his/her colonial mindset derived from
Spanish and American rule. He urged that UP education be accessible
to poor but deserving students.
With the approval of a “neo-liberal” Charter
for the UP, opening it to commercialization, we can only expect the
tradition of dissent to continue. Repressing it as the new UP
gendarmes had done to two former student regents will not work.
Academic freedom is still the best means for a university to thrive.
eaordoñez2000@yahoo.com
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