lasalista, lasalyanetan or aranetan

I recently renewed my contact with my alma mater, the Gregorio Araneta University Foundation (GAUF). Or, should I say its bastardized metamorphosis—as I'd written in a recent blog (http://raulgalangsarmiento.blogspot.com/2014/04/passing-on-at-sixty.html)—the De La Salle Araneta University (DLSAU)?  This was made possible by the invite of the DLSAU’s Supreme Student Council (SSC) to share my thoughts on Aranetan (GAUF) identity during the “Lasalyanetan Identity Forum” last January 22, 2014. 

In nearly a decade, that was my first public engagementJ, although only the first few front rows of seats of the Osmeňa Hall were occupied.  I was there as a resource person since I was the GAUF SSC president in Academic Year 1986-87; before that, the vice president for external affairs.  The other resource person was the DLSAU SSC president in 2008-2009.   I think I had become notoriously famous (to a small section of the student population) for being at the helm of the SSC and the most visible spearhead when the University President was ousted in 1987 through the concerted protest actions of the broadest formation one could organize in a university—the core of the protesters coming from the students, faculty and employees’ unions and alumni—that lasted nearly two months, if I’m not mistaken.

On hindsight, though, this historic first—ouster of a sitting university president—now appears to preface the transformation of Don Salvador Araneta’s “bastard son” into a member of the De La Salle (System) Philippines after a circuitous and calculated turn of events.  I was initially tempted to use the words deceptive and premeditated to describe the manoeuvres that led to its incorporation in the DLSP but opted not to in deference to the De La Salle brothers as a religious order.  As mentioned in another blog, “the noble bastard son” (https://raulgalangsarmiento.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-noble-bastard-son.html), I and the other members of the University Rehabilitation Task Force (URTF), which was constituted immediately after the resolution of the above protest, were made to believe that the university would really be rehabilitated.  As a “consuelo de bobo”, though, that event had somehow cautioned the De La Salle brothers and made them to work harder and shed some sweat for 15 years to snare a known agricultural university into their system to narrow the gap of its academic status vis-à-vis the UP System and its famous rival, the Ateneo de Manila University.

I was in a fix whether I’ll accept the invite sent to me through the Facebook a few days before Christmas.  But I found myself in a deeper fix after I accepted the invite a few days past the New Year.  As I reflected and really thought harder, I realized that I don’t really know what identity GAUF was able to establish since its founding in 1946 as Araneta Institute of Agriculture (AIA).  I realized this when I asked myself:  “Did GAUF, as an educational institution, able to establish an identity—some sort of a trademark—that when it’s mentioned people will automatically think of that trademark?   Was this slowly developed from its founding up to its eventual assimilation into the DLSP early on in this millennium?

A line in a pre-owned (the term before was second-hand) book I was reading then made me to conclude that it did not.  That line was: “If a business can be run from the grave, the Tribune was.”  The author, James D. Squires (1993:29-30) was of course referring to the Chicago Tribune in his book “Read All About It! The Corporate Takeover of America’s Newspapers”.  And the man running it from the grave was Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, grandson of Tribune founder, Joseph Medill.

That, to me, is the undeniable manifestation that that newspaper had clearly established an institutional identity.  According to Squires, the Tribune started out as a progressive social force dedicated to the abolition of slavery.  But its long association with the Republican Party and allegedly the Colonel’s hatred of Franklin D. Roosevelt had established it as perhaps the country’s most conservative voice.  He further noted that in the 1970s the “Tribune’s editorial page clung to the 40s and 50s and its political reporters continued to punish the Colonel’s targets as if he were still reading their copy” (Ibid: 30).  So, if you’re going to mention Chicago Tribune, before the corporate takeover of US media, the people, or at least those in the know, would probably chorus “the most conservative newspaper”; and that was the Tribune identity.  Its 1970s editorial page clinging to the 40s and 50s when the Colonel had long been laid to rest was the clearest proof of that conservative tag.  The Colonel surely had not just installed but institutionalized certain policies, systems and procedures that made this possible.

 

On the other hand, in my development work experience, if you mention the Panay Rural Development Center, Inc. (PRDCI) among Visayan NGOs, POs and GOs in mid-2000s, they would most likely unanimously say “community-based river and watershed rehabilitation”.  Cite CARE Philippines, you’ll probably hear various answers, if not, none at all.  And to think PRDCI was only founded in the early 1990s while CARE Philippines was set up after World War II (1949) as the US government's arm in its war reparation and reconstruction efforts in the country.  Obviously, PRDCI made its mark in river and watershed rehabilitation although it also implemented (and still implements) other programs and projects in its pursuit of holistic community-based rural democratization and development.  CARE Philippines, I believe, engaged in numerous development programs but failed to be identified with a particular project or program until it closed shop in late 2000s.

Following this analogy, was GAUF able to establish an identity throughout its existence?  If you’ll mention it to people who somehow knew what it was, will they chorus one answer?  To this I can offer a conjecture.  For those in the know, the most likely common relevant reply would be “the best private agriculture and forestry university” in Metro Manila.  But for the ordinary people—the masa—they would be unanimous in declaring “the university at the Balintawak Toll Plaza”, which is probably what DLSAU today is known, too. Obviously, “the best private agriculture and forestry university” tag failed to spread and gained wider recognition among the people.  Contrast this to the identity of UP, or, even of De La Salle University (DLSU) which are identified by specific tags.

I can’t claim I know Don Salvador Araneta for I hardly knew him.  But nobody, I assume, would dare to contradict me if I say that he envisioned GAUF to be the best affordable private agriculture and forestry educational institution in the country.  Given his knowledge and skills and the endowment he bestowed to his “bastard son”, there was no big reason why this dream could not be realized.  In the end, however, it did not only miserably failed to achieve this but, the saddest part, the most likely biggest legacy of his greatness as a benevolent man folded up at the turn of the millennium.  Why?

Again, I'll dare to forward a conjecture.  May be because of the many hats he wore as a man, he failed to do a Colonel McCormick.  He failed to mainstream and institutionalize his vision in the organization that will manage and run GAUF once he’s laid in his grave.  It now appears that not even his nearest kin shared his vision for his bastard son. Moreover, there were no mainstreamed, much less institutionalized, policies, systems and procedures that could have deterred his successors from going against his vision.  Or, in resolving problems revolving its operations the way he did while he's at the helm.

And, of course, the little that might still be institutionally installed was lost when his bastard son was assimilated into the DLSP for he would now have to play by the rules—policies, systems and procedures—of the De La Salle brothers.  True, the latter are a religious missionary order but that, I believe, is not a guarantee that they’re more humane and compassionate than Don Salvador.  After reading “GLIMPSES ON THE LIFE, PHILOSOPHY, AND ADVOCACIES of DON SALVADOR Z. ARANETA” written by GAUF old timers (Tadena, Callangan and Blancaflor 2005), I came to that conclusion.

I can’t imagine Don Salvador going to the extent of antagonizing and dissolving the student council and the school paper, Tinig, just to have his way, which was the strategy applied to facilitate the assimilation of GAUF into the DLSP.  Following his concept on Complete Education—the education of the mind, of the heart, of the will and of the body—he would have most likely considered the student council and the school paper as ideal venues for extra-curricular activities for students to “educate their hearts and their will” for he believed that “a perfect complete education produces a good leader” (Tadena, Callangan and Blancaflor 2005: 50).  He would most likely opt to influence and direct the rebelliousness of the student activists in particular, and the students, in general, toward achieving his vision of Basic and Complete Education instead of developing schisms between him and the students.

There were a number of more than anecdotal testimonies to support my claim.  Corazon D. Vicario, Ph.D., who joined the university when it was Araneta Institute of Agriculture and fresh from her graduation from UP Diliman more than half-a-century ago, remembered in her glimpses that “student organizations were encouraged, and campus socials were frequent and well-attended” and Don Salvador and Dona Victoria attended and participated in these (Ibid: 129).  She also narrated how Don Salvador handled the COCOFED scholars, whom he had given “free quarters at the Men’s Residence Hall, when they held a torch march to the White House to complain about their quarters.”  White House was how the old timers fondly referred to the family residence of Don Salvador.  Instead of berating and booting them out, a typical reaction of lesser school administrators, he was “pleased instead that they had the courage to speak up, as he had always encouraged everyone to do.”  Of course, the students went home when he bade them to with the assurance that he would solve their problems because they knew him as a man of action and one who keeps his words (Ibid:133-134).

This is not surprising for he had great faith in the youth that was reflected unequivocally in his “My Credo and My Votum”, where Don Salvador declared that the youth “may disappoint us many times, basically and essentially he is the same young Rizal, with an ambition for education, determined to win for himself a place under our tropical sun. . . may be irresponsible at times, but yet he is made of the stuff of heroes and martyrs when the call and the hour is come. . . he may reach college very formless and uncouth, but like all rough diamonds in the hands of artificer, it can be made to shine and become a material for leadership, unbending as steel. . . a keen and conscientious educator will discover, shape and direct his genius to what is noble and basic” (Ibid: 78).  

This is a timely reminder to all school administrators and educators, especially to the De La Salle brothers, which are now the controlling interest of his bastard son.  I hope that in the future I won’t be hearing students being barred from their graduation because of what to me is the knee-jerk reaction of DLSAU factotums over trivial juvenile pranks.  I sincerely hope they won’t turn out to be jerks because of their decisions.  I sincerely hope too that like Don Salvador they should dig objectively into the heart of the problem before coming out with definite solutions (Ibid: 133).

 After reading that book, how I wished that those who succeeded Don Salvador as University President had learned a thing or two from him; also, developed his innate uprightness and honourableness in dealing with the various constituents of GAUF.  Although this is now purely in the realm of imagination and what-ifs, it still excites me to speculate the extent of greatness GAUF could have become if it was run from the grave by  Don Salvador just as the Chicago Tribune was allegedly run by Colonel McCormick.  Will it still go under like the big newspapers if his successors followed his “formula”?  As we look back, the Golden Age of GAUF was definitely achieved when Don Salvador was figuratively at the driver’s seat, so to speak.

This and the residual good repute of GAUF that was passed through word-of-mouth, I believe, is what motivated a section of the student population to question their identity.  Are they Lasallians, Aranetans or Lasalyanetans?  A budding photographer in the school paper asked me during the forum my position on this.  My answer was they’re Lasallians but sans the “coňo” tag that’s associated with De La Salle University (Taft) students.  That the Lasalyanetan Identity will be temporary and will be replaced by a single identity  that will evolve from all the member-schools—including the DLSU Taft—of De La Salle Philippines.  The Aranetan Identity or what remains of it will be completely neutralized or erased with the passing of time, if this has not happened at this juncture.  Following the strategic direction set by the De La Salle brothers that can be gleaned from their vision, mission, goals and strategies (VMGS), this common identity will manifest in due time in all the 16 member-schools.

In my view, the Aranetan Identity could have developed further and strengthened if only GAUF had become a De La Salle Philippines-administered university where the DLSP’s best practices here and abroad in managing and running schools would be used to pursue and attain the vision of Don Salvador for his bastard son.   But his bastard son is now being run by St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle from the grave.  Perpetuating the legacy of the bastard son, I believe, would speak better for the De La Salle brothers than subsuming him in their system to be at par with their rival schools.

So, unlike other GAUF alumni, including some of my colleagues in the national democratic movement, I cannot write DLSAU as my alma mater in my resume or even in my Facebook profile.  I don't need the Lasallian green tag to take pride in my Aranetan Identity. (30)