Crimson letters

I remember my first month in UP. A wide-eyed, eager freshman; in love with the campus, reveling in the freedom, confident of the fact that I would be able to breeze through college left relatively unscathed.
Then I joined the Philippine Collegian, and life was never quite the same again.
When you interact with perpetually cynical people on an almost daily basis, a dismal outlook on the world begins to rub off on you. How many times have I heard staffers and editors ruminate about their own financial woes, political killings, cyclical poverty, and the sorry condition of life in general? Not to mention the kind of topics that the paper covers — 14-year-old gimmick girls, campus militarization, the floundering RH bill, tuition hikes, the hegemony of G8 countries… It’s no wonder we have that notice on the side of the door reading: “First-Aid Kit: Bang your head here.”
These days, I can hardly digest good news without finding some way to ruin the experience for myself. I watch Pacquiao (or recently, Donaire) win a boxing match, and the first thing that runs through my head is that we’ve appropriated these boxers as national commodities, pinning all our country’s aspirations on the illusion of collective triumph.
I remember my first article for UP’s weekly student publication. It was a school day, but I was up at 5 a.m. to cover a picket of 200 workers against the Advan Shoe factory in Muntinlupa. They were fighting against union busting and sexual harassment at the hands of their boss.
I remember my reaction when I read through the edit marks of my first-ever draft. I had exchanged drafts with my editor about 10 times before she gave me the okay, only to have it proofread and massacred, yet again, by the editor in chief herself. Still, I was lucky. Horror stories about editors burning drafts in front of their writers, or tacking incompetent works on the corkboard for all to see; these were the images on my mind as I furiously scrambled to complete the legwork and polish my drafts.
Today, the process still runs pretty much the same, no-nonsense way: Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are reserved for section meetings — news, features, kultura and graphics, handled by their respective editors. On Thursdays, the whole paper has a general meeting courtesy of the editor in chief, currently the brilliant Ma. Katherine Elona. Her job every Thursday is to check the lineup of each section, and conduct an assessment of the previous week’s issue. According to the Collegian calendar, Thursday is the holiest day of the week. I remember that gen-meets are never cancelled.  
Friday to Monday is the actual presswork, which explains a lot about my (lack of) social life back then. Ideally, writers should pass a first draft every Friday, and go through the motions until the section editor is appeased. Only after that is the draft passed to the graphics section for illustration, and then to the EIC. To sum up in Kat’s words: “Iche-check ko, kikinisin, kapag may comments and questions pa ako ibabalik ko sa writer. Kapag satisfied na ako FINAL na ang draft, at pwede nang ilapat.”
Although working for the Collegian may paint a rigid, pseudo-depressing picture at times, one can hardly tell from the outset. The press office is usually a hotbed of festive pandemonium: editors nagging (or affectionately bullying) their writers to finish a draft; people chasing each other in and out of the knob-less doorways; the occasional intrusion of senile Mang Romy; people smoking, drinking, or singing in the humble conference room; graphic artists busily painting the peeling walls of the office; writers fighting each other over use of the single working computer; our news editor setting up posters of borderline porn as “Christmas decoration”; indeed, when life gives you lemons — you make lemonade.
I remember marching in a rally, handing out copies of the paper to fellow demonstrators, smiling secretly to myself when people would come up to me and ask for “Kule.”
I remember a section meeting conducted on the Vinzons Hall rooftop, under the clear night sky, where I learned that objectivity was a myth, and that the Collegian would always be biased in favor of the student body, of the marginalized sectors of society, of the people who had no voice to speak out.
In 2010, I remember going to Bacolod for the yearly College Editors Guild of the Philippines conference, where I received the award for “Best Campus Paper” on behalf of our editor in chief. I remember hefting the trophy in my hands and comparing its weight to the great history of the paper, with the likes of Reynato Puno, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Renato Constantino, Franklin Drilon, and Sheila Coronel having written for the Collegian.
My stint with the now 90-year-old paper lasted for only two years, but in those two years, I felt I had scaled unimaginable heights: gaining new experience, talking to people from all walks of life, and learning from inspiring, dedicated, and otherwise selfless writers.
No one simply “writes” for the Philippine Collegian. That would be a severe understatement.