Dirty linen

I was quite surprised to learn that my response to a riposte sent by my good friend Omar Maxwell Espina would see print last Sunday. Had I known, I would have written a longer response to this whole issue. I do not wish to belabor anymore what has become moot and academic because the architects and engineers involved were already ordered to meet and come to a successful conclusion on this ticklish issue.

Nevertheless, I will have to say that I was actually surprised that it was Maxwell who responded to my column last week, given that it did not allude to him at all and was a reaction to a blog of apparently one of my former students who now teaches at the College of Architecture and Fine Arts (CAFA) at the University of San Carlos (USC).

In my earlier years of teaching at the Talamban Campus, I was a very vocal critic of the way the university was run. It had not gone the way that I wanted it. There was no master plan and things were dirty and unkempt on campus. This was way back in the late 1980s. And then in the mid-1990s, the university underwent nine years of a fast-paced transformation mentored by Dutch universities, funded by the Dutch government. And things were going the way I had always envisioned USC should be.

Before I left for studies abroad, I was also advising the Alpha Mu chapter of the fraternity Alpha Phi Omega whose members had to memorize the pledge of loyalty by Elbert Hubbard, paraphrased somewhat this way: “If you work for a man, in heaven’s name, work for him, speak well of him, and stand by the institution that he represents. Remember, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness. If you must growl, condemn, and eternally find fault, why resign your position? But when you are on the outside, damn to your heart’s content. But as long as you are a part of the institution, do not condemn it. For if you do, the first high wind that comes along will blow you away and probably you will never know why.” I had tacked this to the back of my bedroom door so that every time I closed it, this pledge on a sheet of paper with the bold emblazoned seal of APO was the last thing I would see before I go to sleep. The blog that went to cyberspace clearly ran counter to that pledge which had been ingrained in my psyche.

The allusion by way of question whether I am the mouthpiece of the administration was a non sequitor to an otherwise healthy exchange of ideas about how the university should proceed. Still, when considered against the fact that I co-authored and shepherded two thick books on the history and development of USC, then it is incumbent upon me to defend that institution not because I was someone else’s mouthpiece but because that is the proper thing to do.

Everyone at CAFA enjoys a huge building, designed incidentally by Maxwell and associate architects that cost nearly P100 million when it was built in 2004 on orders of the administration. USC could have simply allowed CAFA to have an ordinary drab boxlike structure that would cost cheap but still serve its purpose. But it acceded to the college’s wishes up to a point that it could afford. And a huge building rose. Thus, I expected a modicum of civility in lieu of ingratitude in the form of this puttering protest against what was clearly a plan that had run through a consultation process. In fact, I am told that the CAFA dean, incidentally Maxwell’s brother, already wrote the university president, Fr. Dionisio Miranda, SVD who was then on urgent leave in the U.S. around mid-July to attend to his ailing 97-year-old-mother. The letter, which alluded to a blithe and wanton cutting of trees, was properly responded to.

And that would have been the end of it. But suddenly the blog appeared and even the Supreme Student Council was reportedly prodded to act in protest. Fortunately, the council decided to hear out the administration first and a meeting was held where the plan to widen the streets was presented, coupled with the 20-year master plan for Talamban Campus prepared by the prestigious Palafox and Associates, which has an enviable track record of master plans and actual buildings designed and constructed not just in the Philippines but also in parts of Asia and the Middle East. The student council was, in this case, more circumspect and decided there was no reason to protest.

The final thought I would like to convey therefore to close this whole saga, I suppose, is that dirty linen should not be washed in public. There are plenty of venues to air grievances within USC before one should put out an uninformed blog or start an ill-advised protest. And at the least, have a minimum sense of gratitude. Of all the schools that have architecture in their curriculum in Cebu or outside of Manila, for one, it is only USC that has dedicated a full service building to it. That alone should be read in its proper sense: this is a university that cares for the needs of its only singular paying stakeholder: the students.

It is time to stop behaving like stockholders and accept that USC is a non-stock, non-profit institution who despite this status is willing to hear out those who see how things should go differently.