Saturday, August 04, 2007 Roperos: Crucial homecoming By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
TOMORROW, University of the Philippines (UP) graduates who are still alive and living in Cebu will hold once again their annual homecoming or reunion at the Grand Convention Center at 6 p.m. It will mark the state university's 99th year of service to the Filipino people.
UP alumni who are in Cebu or in neighboring islands should come and join the event and be in position to propose how the local chapter could further enrich the celebration next year of the Alma Mater's first 100 years.
The State U has produced for country highly trained leaders and quality educators. It was even said a couple of decades ago that most of the key officials of the national government were graduates of UP.
That, of course, was when education in the country was still in its "teens." Today, with more universities spread throughout the republic, the state of our education has definitely matured.
But UP has remained strong in its role as pacesetter in the setting up of standards of education in the country, a role that has been part of the government's rationale in appropriating millions of pesos in people's taxes to the institution annually.
When Cebu emerged from the ruins of World War II, what was left of the UP Cebu Junior College was only the administration building that is still looking the way it is now. Or that was what I saw when I enrolled there as a third year high school pioneer in 1947.
The "experimental" high school catered only to third and fourth year students then. There were only 17 of us in third year and 18 in the fourth year. We were all young survivors of the war.
Until then, there were only a few members of the alumni association in Cebu, though the number increased through the years. And so has its physical plan. There are now many structures that has risen on the campus.
And despite the fact that Cebu's politics has interfered with its growth (it closed for sometime in the mid-'50s), UP Cebu came back on its feet and is now on the threshold of further expansion.
If plans push through, UP Cebu will become more effective and efficient in setting standards of quality for graduates in Central Visayas, as well as in northern Mindanao where it has not yet gained a foothold unlike in Davao, for Southern Mindanao.
But given the growing vitality of this public institution, there is no reason it could not spread its influence through out the archipelago.
