A Quiller remembers
The Quill, the official student publication of Southwestern University (formerly of the Aznars, now owned by the firm Phinma), just turned 70 recently. I was invited by the current staff members and SWU-Phinma as the celebration’s keynote speaker and I gladly obliged. I have fond memories of the publication when I became a staff member more than three decades ago.
Joining the publication was one of the plans when I enrolled in chemical engineering in the university in the late ‘70s. I found out in high school that I loved writing but in the SWU high school department where I transferred after dropping out in first year from the Cebu City National Science High School, the publication had closed. I wrote nevertheless, but only for my consumption. In college, I finally sought an outlet for it.
Joining the Quill became a life changing moment for me for what happened while I was there. Our adviser, Cris, recruited me to a group that would campaign for four independent bets in the 1978 Interim Batasang Pambansa elections. There I met two former student activists--Manny Lumanao and the late Job Tabada--who were already working as journalists for a local paper. The elections didn’t win me over. Activism did.
Back in school after the elections, I formed my own student organization, Positive Thinkers Society (Posts), guided by a document that Manny gave me. I formed a core group of five people before going on a recruitment binge. In a short time, Posts would make its presence felt especially in student protest activities. My rising level of awareness of the society beyond the four walls of the campus made me look differently at my role as a student journalist.
Those became tumultuous times for the school, with students questioning school policies even as they were doing the same to the ways of the dictatorship established by then president Ferdinand Marcos. We ended up questioning the manner the Quill was run and eventually demanded for an accounting of its finances. Then we decided to do a Simoun in Rizal’s novel El Filibusterismo.
Together with our adviser, we schemed not to come out with any issue for one year. The purpose was to make the students notice the loss and prod them to start asking for the output from the publication fee they paid every semester. Then we led a petition signing demanding an accounting of the publication funds.
The administration hit back by forming another set of staff members that worked in the summer to publish an issue of the publication. We were essentially eased out. The other staff members pushed for their return by talking with the school administration. But by that time, I already had enough. I quit the publication and eventually quit college altogether to pursue a higher cause outside of the classroom.
Student activism continued to flourish in the school even when I was no longer around, exploding into a university-wide boycott that had the brother of one of the student leaders killed. When everything eventually calmed down, the school administration allowed the restoration of the pre-martial law supreme student government and for the Quill to be run by the students independently.