WHENEVER I see the tarpaulins for Michael Vincent Uy, our Architecture graduate who was one of the Ten Most Outstanding Students of the Philippines, hanging around UST, I cannot help but think if the University has done enough to honor its distinguished alumni besides issuing streamers.
Last June, Thomasian literary scholar Bienvenido Lumbera, together with Ildefonso Santos, the father of landscape architecture in the Philippines, became National Artists. More recently, Thomasian journalism stalwart Eugenia Duran Apostol received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts.
If UST would like to create stronger ties with its alumni and make its quadricentennial celebrations a success, officials should University officials should also seize the opportunity to introduce these exemplary alumni and their achievements. The students need paragons of excellence like them.
During my stint as news writer, I interviewed Santos and found out that one of the reasons for the gap UST and its alumni is the University’s lack of support to students after they graduated.
Most of today’s award recipients like Apostol and Lumbera played an important role in the fall of Marcos’ dictatorial government. If it were not for them who cared enough to do battle with the government we had back then, we would not have enjoyed a free society like what we have now. Although UST have given honors and awards to them, who led the march toward greater moral and intellectual freedom, not much happens after they give awards to them.
Our alumni do not need tarpaulins, they deserve continuous recognition and support from their alma mater.
