UP naming mahal

I've been re-reading Yan ba ang natutunan mo sa UP and I cannot help but smile and think a few thoughts on the University of the Philippines:

Marami daw kasing kalokohan sa UP. Andun na ang tumatakbong nakahubad, ang mga nagpapalu-an ng tubo, mga taong hindi naniniwala sa diyos, mga estudyanteng wala nang nakitang maganda sa pamahalaan, mga taong namundok, may mga buntis na ayaw magpakasal, may mga anak-mayaman na tumalikod sa karangyaan, mga nag-aaral ng mga kursong hindi mapagkakitaan, mga taong nagdyu-dyugdyugan sa damuhan, mga taong mukhang di naliligo, etc. Sa UP ba natin natutunan yan?

Whenever some friends ask me which Philippine university is the best I invariably say the University of the Philippines. They, of course, would conspiratorially smile, and say, "Ah, that is, of course, because you went there."

But I always explain why I think UP is the best. It is the best because only in UP will you see the child of a domestic help sitting side by side with the child of his mother's amo and sometimes, just sometimes, performing even better. I knew one such pair before who, by chance, got enrolled in the same elective class , and both, I observed, felt awkward, as if there was something not quite right in the arrangement.

The general public, after a cursory glance and an incidental passing through the campus on the way to Katipunan, sometimes get the impression that UP has degenerated into a university for rich kids. They point at the cars at the parking lot, the well-groomed students at the AS steps, the sorority convoys around the Sunken Garden celebrating an anniversary. Even President Estrada pointed out the traffic congestion at the University Avenue as proof that the taxpayers' money are paying for the education of the elite. Senator John Osmena also made the same observation, thwarting the efforts of UP President Nemenzo to reform the university.

There are many, many well-off kids at UP. Sometimes, I even think, far too many. They pay matriculation fees at UP far lower than what they paid for their high school. But while there are many rich kids in UP, there are also many poor almost destitute ones. How then do we explain the impression that some people get that UP has gone upmarket ? Because it is far easier to notice well-groomed, goodlooking students on the campus than emaciated provinciano jologs-looking students.

My sister told me once the story of a classmate of hers who was not able to take a calculus exam because he fainted on the way to the Math Building. Upon talking with the classmate, my sister learned that he had not had a decent meal in a day because the meagre STFAP food allowance has run out. My sister also learned that to save on precious money, her classmate hitchhikes on garbage trucks on the way to a Laguna landfill to visit his family.

UP is the only genuinely democratic institution in the country where the rich commingle with the poor as equals and get to learn about each other during their four-year sojourn in the campus. (Some will say there is another institution, the ROTC, but its class-mixing mechanism is effectively diluted by the well-known fact that the rich and the inflential buy their ways out of it or feign asthma.) Students in other universities come from more or less the same socioeconomic backgrounds. The Ateneo and La Salle, I know, have some destitute scholars in their schools, but their presence is more to assuage the guilt of the priests. I have also heard that to be on a a scholarship grant in those institutions was to wear a scarlet letter in hell.

It is because of this class mixing, unique among Philippine institutions, that, I think, UP is the best Philippine university hands down.