Echaves: UP Cebu

UP Cebu is a centenarian this year. What memories and milestones do its 100 years invoke?

One is that its alumni always had its back, from birth to its rebirth, and the phases of its life in between.

Its many phases were usually due to politicians playing tug-of-war.

But UP Cebu’s struggling years also saw some of the Cebu Provincial Government’s shining moments. It provided the 13-hectare lot in the Lahug site, financed the construction of the two-story building in the campus, and contributed annually to help defray its expenses.

For a time, UP Cebu’s existence was wispy and fragile, somewhat contributed by the UP Board of Regents’ confusion over what to do with it. Its name changes totaled 10, from Junior College of Liberal Arts in 1918 to the present UP Cebu.

In my 17 years at UP Cebu, first as teacher in its high school department and then school principal, I witnessed the name changes from UP at Cebu, to UP College Cebu, and then UP Visayas Cebu College.

I also witnessed how colleagues could be such best friends but be aggressive opponents of project/idea proposals. Of course, the discussions were lively, sometimes impassioned. But finding the light at the end of the tunnel always brought both sides to laughter and developed greater respect for each other.

The learning environment stimulated and developed in the students and faculty a love for not just answering questions, but also questioning the answers. Newcomers or transferees used to the culture of “approving without thinking,” or not rocking the boat, were often shocked by the “noise” in class discussions or other fora.

The first year of UP Cebu High School opened late, but brought in transferees from exclusive or private schools. We the faculty and staff were amused at how some young scions thought their parents transferred them as punishment.

How, in their young minds, could they be required to sweep their classrooms, erase the blackboards, or arrange the chairs after classes? Were there no school janitors to do that?

The colegialas regularly trooped to the school clinic with welts on arms judged delicious by caterpillars. And into the wall-less classrooms with nipa-thatched roofs sauntered a curious goat, sending the young students giggling.

Many came from well-painted and well-ventilated classrooms, and knew well-equipped libraries. But in UP Cebu, they experienced lifting pingpong tables to become makeshift stages for cultural presentations in the open air--yes, complete with caterpillars struck deaf by the bleating sound system.

Many alumni visiting the Lahug campus have the same first question, upon seeing the improvements and infrastructure mushrooming in the school, “Why did we not have these during our time?”

But then they rattle off the countless anecdotes that marked their schooling years, when their own parents’ never-say-die spirit kept UP Cebu going.

Alumni speak about having lived tough during the school’s struggling years, but proudly own those years, like some war veterans bearing and wearing their own badges of courage.

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