UP turns 100!

To be exact, the University of the Philippines is 100 years and 1 day today. Allow us to give way to certain portions of the beautiful historical write-up of Juaniyo Arcellana which we received by email yesterday morning which we are sure the iskolar ng bayan, the UPians will be very happy to read as well.

 "Created by an act of the Philippine legislature in 1908 during the American period, the State University has come a long way from its early halcyon days along Padre Faura, the original campus, where the first seven colleges were constructed of sawali and galvanized iron.There are now seven constituent universities located in 12 campuses throughout the country.

Act 1870, otherwise known as the UP Charter, created the university to "provide advanced education in literature, philosophy, the sciences and the arts; and to give professional and technical training to every qualified student irrespective of age, sex, nationality, religious belief or political affiliation, " a statement from the Diliman Information Office said.

In those days that section of Ermita was like a mini university belt, with nearby schools Ateneo and Assumption also located there. Many of the streets were named after the states in the US: Florida, Colorado, Indiana, spilling all the way to Malate area, the exception being Isaac Peral, now United Nations Avenue, names only the oldtimers would likely remember.

When the Centennial Year was launched last January, celebrations began early in the morning in UP Manila, the template campus that houses the College of Medicine, precursor of the 1908 university charter, and wound up in the evening with a bonfire on the main campus of Diliman across town…

The Faura campus survived the war years, with the Conservatory of Music (Villamor Hall) being turned into a headquarters by Japanese occupying forces where the indios were supposed to surrender whatever firearms they had, as documented by author Benito Legarda in his book "Occupation '42." On the upper floors of the Conservatory, the intellectuals of the day were detained and interrogated, including the American editor of the Free Press magazine.

In 1948 UP held its last commencement exercises on Padre Faura, before transferring to Diliman the following year. Emerenciana Yuvienco, the lone summa cum laude of that batch, recalls that President Manuel Roxas was the commencement speaker. An April downpour gave them all a good drenching and Roxas himself refused an umbrella being provided by an aide. Two days later he was dead, after suffering from a heart attack in Clark Field…

Of things UP there are many, consisting of a random enough timeline that varies with each person who walked - maybe even sleepwalked - through the groves of that academe… The General Education Program was introduced in 1959, which the university president of the new millennium, Francisco Nemenzo, sought to strengthen alongside the system's fiber optic backbone, and so better equip the UP graduate in the 21st century.

...Any history of UP would not be complete without mention of student activism, as it has been commonly known as a hotbed of radicalism and free thinkers…the Diliman commune in 1971…The student publication The Collegian …with its slogan printed in bold type near the masthead: Kung hindi tayo kikilos, sino ang kikilos? Kung hindi ngayon, kailan pa?... ( and, among others)…The Ikot jeep too has now a special place in UP annals, the ride round campus that started with a 5-centavo fare. There was subsequently a jeep that plied the opposite route, known as the Toki, because history too can run counter-clockwise.

 For sure, UP, now a national university, is not without troubles and problems …"Yet the bitterness and heartaches can be set aside for a day or two, for the sake of UP Naming Mahal…"

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