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Accents BE MERCIFUL!!!The plea is in big, bold capitals with three exclamation points. It is addressed to one Fr. Vergara who, I heard, is the president (they don't call ‘em rector anymore?) of the University of San Agustin. It is written in black on white canvas small enough to be drowned by the big streamers blazing with red letters. Read one: “SILING NI FR. VERGARA, ET AL., BISAN SIRAHAN ANG UNIVERSITY, IRESGO NAMON.” Wow! The arrogance of it all! Merciful always brings me to a picture of a hungry child before an empty meal table because his striking laborer of a father cannot put food on it. In stark contrast are the kids of the bosses being fed to satiety. Picture, too, the managers of companies or university presidents themselves as they gorge on food, sumptuous food even if the strike is to last forever. The make-shift shelters to ward off heat and rain, the plastic chairs and tables, and portable kitchen shielded by streamers that scream for attention and action—from all these, cut off by a formidable fence, stand massive edifices of the university. And from all appearances what you have is a class war. Reminds me of two contending lawyers (in the case of the University of Iloilo vs. the UI Faculty Union) engaged in an argument crisp and to the point : Atty. Lagon (of UI): You are forcing us [with your notice of strike]. Atty. Lagoc (of the UIFU): The essence of strike is to force you. Atty. Lagon: That's war. Atty. Lagoc: This is a class war. The adversarial stance didn't last long. An entente cordiale was reached, the two parties having dispelled animosities and smoothened relationship for the sake of the student body they were mandated to serve. A long stay abroad finds me back to this province of my birth and city of my young days as a student of UPIC (then UP Iloilo College). Having newly arrived, you give the city a once-over: new buildings, new asphalted roads, new bridge, more and more vehicles so denser traffic, fringes of urban poverty ever present, sidewalk vendors as usual, and the ever vulgar signs of Project of this Congressman or of that Politician as if the money spent for this road or that bridge is the President's own money or the Senator's, and not the people's. Ugh! In this province and city you have come to love, your very own place under the Philippine sun, in the entire month that you are now back to Tinubu-ang Lupa, day in and day out, you pass by the screaming streamers of the strikers of the USA, not the U.S. of A., and you get distressed. Because it is here in the USA that my grandson Jetrone, a recent graduate of the Philippine Science High School, is taking up Med-Tech preparatory to becoming a doctor. Day in and day out, faculty and students get to see these streamers. USA alumni, USA officials, public officials, priests and nuns, the religious and irreligious see these —all to no avail? How callous can we get? The values we hold sacred got corroded? I don't believe my own alma mater (in Diliman where the maroon and green banner fly high) will allow such a protracted tug-of-war between administration and labor. Three months, going on four. Oh, no. The denizens of the hotbed of radicalism and free speech will reduce to mince-meat the issues, pulverize them until the finest grain (never mind the mix metaphors) of fairness and justice and truth will shine forth to the satisfaction of all concerned. That's UP, and okay, call this my not-too-impartial assessment. Prevent the conflict from descending to its lowest ebb where a hungry stomach pleads for mercy; therefore, resolution should be highest priority. Let me end this with a quote from what I have written on the UI controversy where I was once an instructor myself: “Far from being a business proposition, what is a university but a wellspring of knowledge and a citadel of freedom. It must pursue everything that is fair and just and not exploitative. Otherwise, the name university is but a farce.” (Comments to lagoc@hargray.com ) |
