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. Nowadays commencement organizers are wary about manifestations of “symbolic action” or protest on national or local problems

BY ELMER A. ORDOÑEZ
The Other View / Sunday Times
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VIII, No. 13, May 4-10, 2008

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. Posted by (Bulatlat.com)

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