(Graduation is drawing near. When I was about to graduate from college, I dreamed of delivering a valedictory speech, but that dream would remain just that: a dream. If I were to deliver the valedictory speech, however, I would've given this speech.)
I wish I could talk about how our government manages the public money, so that the accountancy and commerce students could relate to me. I wish I could talk about our criminal justice system, so that the criminology student could relate to me. I wish I could talk about our health care system and child abuse, so that the social work students could relate to me. I wish I could talk about the use of psychology in preventing crime, so that the psychology students could relate to me.
I wish I could talk on those different fields, so that everyone present here could relate to me. But I could not because I don't know any better. And if I do talk about the things I know better, I'm afraid you could not relate to me. If I would talk about Multiple Intelligences or Learning Styles or Teaching Strategies, nobody but the education students would listen to me.
I'm not even sure if they would listen, and listen like their grades depend on it. They've heard enough of them in the classroom. Surely they don't want to recall their harrowing experience in the classroom, not even now that they are wearing toga whose origin they barely know.
So I will talk about my own experience in college. After all, we human beings are by nature chismoso. We always wanted to know something about other human beings.
Yet I won't try to please everybody because I'm afraid that if I try to please everybody, I just might end up pleasing nobody.
Thank you for listening to the introduction. If you have one more minute to spare, do spare it.
People say that if we graduate from college, we leave the comfortable confines of the school and enter the uncomfortable real world, where people gripe, fight, and bite.
If that were the case, does it mean to say that the school reeks of fantasy? Is everything we experience inside the school a dream, an illusion? Does it mean we have been sleeping all the while and graduation is the time when all of us wake up, rise up from bed, get out of the house, and get things done?
I disagree. And I would even say that the school is a window to the real world. For it is in college where I was able to see and experience many things.
It is in college where I saw that education is no longer a right, but a privilege. We need no statistics to prove this. We need only look at the students who fall in line at the Finance Office to see the Sister Treasurer to have their promissory notes approved. They are the students who want to study but whose family can barely support them.
Of course, there are students who fall in line, not out poverty, but out of stupidity. They are the students who have the money, but spent it not to pay their tuition fee, but to buy brandy or whiskey, whatever they want to poison their belly with.
Still, the fact remains: Many students can ill afford to pay their tuition fees, much less buy books or join useless outing masquerading as educational tour.
It is in college where I realized that our rights are nothing if we don’t fight for them. I have had that awakening not at any rally denouncing the violation of human rights, but at the very entrance gate of the Holy Cross of Davao College.
I once had a row with the security guard. The guard confiscated my I.D. because inside my bag, I had with me my slippers. Why, I asked, what is not allowed is only the wearing of slippers, not the bringing of slippers.
The lady guard said that some students, once they’re inside the school, wear the slippers they bring, so bringing of slippers is also not allowed, too. I was shocked. The guard has just revised the handbook. In my mind I wanted to discuss with the guard if that new regulation had undergone procedural due process before it was implemented.
But I did not, and gave my I.D. instead, as if I were a rat who’s at the mercy of the cat. I did not because I didn’t know then what I know now: That our rights are nothing if we don’t fight for them.
There are still many things I have seen and experienced in college that I want to share with you. Many are good, some are bad. And few are better told over a bucket of beer.
On a few occasions, our school mocks its own ideals. It says that it wants to create a community of totally-liberated persons, but stifles activities that will create totally-liberated persons. It says that its mission is to produce leaders who are effective agents of change, but shies away from undertakings that effect change. It says that its main concern is the welfare of the students, but shirks when the credibility of the school is at stake.
Yet it may be well to keep the lessons we learned in college, however flawed our school is and the people who run it.
After all, the school is like a mother. That’s why it’s called Alma Mater. We sometimes loathe our mothers because they are naggers. But we must thank them. They are the only people who can call us handsome although the evidence shows the opposite.
Good morning.
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