The letter writer who asked last week what my motives were for writing about the sordid case of Dean Enrique Avila answered her own question. I defend Dean Avila because I was his “former underling”. This, if underling is the word we now use in place of chairman of the Humanities Division of UP Cebu.
In which case, let the records show that along with other proud underlings of the college, I helped write and successfully defended the proposals to open the Product Design program, modernize the curricula of the Fine Arts and Mass Communication programs, incorporate the arts in the curriculum for the proposed high school for the arts, and establish autonomy for the college. All these represent fundamental development for the college that would arrest its “decades long drift to mediocrity.” These proposals along with other acts were possible not the least because we had a good and effective “overling” in Dean Avila who coordinated with higher authorities of the university as well as private and public officials interested to partner with us and help. Whatever they might want to take away from my former overling, Dean Avila—his office, his job, his good reputation—they cannot take away from him these achievements along with the fact he was dean when the Cebu City government donated five hectares of SRP land to the college.
Last Sept. 2, there was a “boodle fight” in the campus to celebrate the victory against Dean Avila. What did they celebrate? The issue of student representation at the executive committee? The issue of the security guards? The return of democracy in the campus? I have in my computer now the official composition of college-wide committees for academic year 2011-2012. I perused carefully and did so many times the composition of the new executive committee. No mention there of a student representative. Every day, I pass through the main guardhouse and see that the old guards are still not there. And then I smell betrayal permeating the stench of everyday traffic. And when I contemplate the absence of any consultation whatsoever in the act of transferring Sen. Sergio Osmeña III’s P30-million donation for a building and equipment from the high school and product design program to the SRP project, I cannot help but feel that what was celebrated was no more than the act of fooling idealistic young students to fight unwittingly for their teachers’ ambitions, by so doing, to give the very concept of student activism a bad name. By so doing, to emasculate not only the institutional office of dean but the whole college as well. Defeat disguised as victory, bad behavior hiding behind the mask of activism, moral and political emasculation, who will account for that?
They celebrated nothing more than the dismissal of one dean, one overling. Besides that, no fundamental change to justify the abject cost of all these. And yet all these prove that Avila did only the right if unpopular things, especially where was concerned the issues of the high school, student representation, the guards, and the accusation he did not consult his constituents; those issues the few aspiring overlings and teachers used to bring their students to the streets in protest. The reader would do well to review the evolution of the charge list against him and see how they moved in three steps from a broad initial list of absurdities to settle finally into just three technical issues: temporary filling materials at the soccer field, the appointment of Prof. Ernesto Pineda to the RDBAC and the release of a centennial bonus for the college.
Having been a underling for almost two three-year terms, I could not help thinking these were issues of mere technicality; issues, which at an earlier and more enlightened time, would have been settled by mere arbitration rather than an administrative case. After all, the filling material was always described as “temporary” from the very beginning. Pineda’s appointment could always have been revoked by no more than the new president’s signature; and the issue of the centennial bonus should have been an issue purely between the dean and his superior, in this case, the new UP president Alfredo Pacual. Why risk creating for the Cebu college the same environment, which bogs down many other UP campuses, where faculty members raise administrative cases against each other for nothing more than the color of the curtains and where collegial debates sometimes become fisticuffs?
As I continued to review the list of new committees for the college I could not help noticing how many underlings have become overlings with the current upheaval. Real cause for celebration and a good time for them to realize that when it comes to development, underlings are often the people who have to put their noses into the grinder, writing proposals, defending these for approval, and generally risking all to manage the college inside the often difficult and always dangerous environment which pertains. Underlings are very important people. All the more important when one considers the tidal rise and ebb of UP politics. Who can tell if and when these new overlings might need an underling to defend them once and even after they have lost all their overling powers? With the historic precedent they set for UP Cebu in the case of Dean Enrique Avila that is more than less likely to happen now. Heaven help them if they do not have a constant underling to help.