While coming to high school, there was a feeling of like a frog in a big pond, it was a sense of being a big fish in a small pond coming to college. The four year Jesuit education in high school imbued a confidence level of a crusader out to conquer the world. At Xavier University – College, there was just overwhelming sense of confidence that we were better educated in high school than the rest.
Well, that sense motivated me to be active in extra-curricular activities, and devour the books of great minds available at the main library. The historical crusader of the past had sharpened sword; the current one must sharpen his mind, so I thought.
I was fortunate to be grouped in an experimental class known as the Inter-disciplinary Pilot Program founded by the revered Fr. William Malley, S.J. Education cannot be learned in compartments. Education ought to be holistic, with one discipline being inter-related to the whole body of knowledge.
That set the tone of my tertiary education : holistic and rooted in reality, a kind of education that needs to feed the brain, but must be immersed in society.
While I breezed through my first year college, the second year saw me confronting and confused with the contrasting philosophies of the Western and Eastern civilizations. Western philosophy in general teaches action as the path to liberation; the East urges inaction as the true path.
It was during my second year in college dabbling in both Philosophy and Philippine studies that I dashed the hopes for Latin honors upon graduation. In one of my religious classes, I argued and contradicted against the tenets of christianity that our professor who was a Jesuit priest got so mad. I got a miserable grade of D in that religious class.
The atheist philosophers and the agnostic professor in Philippine Studies, notably John Burton, saw me throwing away the fundamental precepts of Roman Catholicism. What I learned in high school about Roman Catholicism was suddenly under searing scrutiny.
For awhile, I did not believe in God as Christianity describes it. I was slowly having a different concept of a Divine Being.
In one religious campus publication, I wrote about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In that write-up, I basically challenged that christianity institutionalized the spontaneous compassion of the Samaritan and created institutions of charity, and in the process, lost the true meaning of compassion, that which is something real and experiential. That raised quite a stir in the campus.
In high school, I can only recall joining one organization, the Bibliophile club. In college, I was all over the place, from student government , College Editors Guild of the Philippines, debating society, Junior Jaycees, and others that listing them all here might bore the readers. But my contemporaries would remind me that I was the editor-in-chief of The Crusader, the official university student publication.
The four years in college, 1982 – 1986, saw spiritual and intellectual ferment. But the political turmoil in the national landscape hugged the national, local, and campus agenda.
During the last years of Marcos regime, it was mainstream to be an activist. After Ninoy Aquino was assassinated in August 21, 1983, there was no stopping of the student radicalization. The student government at Xavier University was being organized. I recall joining the convenors group to campaign for the restoration of the student government after it was banned when Martial Law was declared on September 21, 1972. We went into room-to-room campaign without the approval by the university administration.
When we campaigned for the restoration of the student government, there were only few souls who showed-up, and dared the warning of the school officials. But when it was finally restored, the opposite group who was just a fence-setter initially, jumped into the bandwagon immediately. Do you see similarity in politics, both local and national?
During this time, the red-tagging was rampant. Later in law school, I came to know from a law enforcer cum law student, that my name showed-up in the Order of Battle of the military. The truth being, I was never, and will never be convinced with communism. For almost a semester, I read all the books of Karl Marx, including the philosophers whose ideas were the precursor of Marxism.
The fundamental flaw of Marxism is that from among the proletarians, there would inevitably rise charismatic leaders who would rise to power. History has proven that. Marxism does not equate to equality. It gives rise to dictatorship.
Steeped with the knowledge on communism, I was never convinced to join the red group. I remained to be an activist without being a communist, and not even a sympathizer.