A SMALL group of volunteers cringe at the apparent lack of maintenance and shabby state of University of the Philippines campuses nationwide, especially its main campus in Diliman, Quezon City, and a movement is now being stirred to create real change.
"Nowhere to go but UP (University of the Philippines)" is a blurb that became the battle cry of a group of UP-Diliman alumni who decided to give their support to the UP Varsity members and bring back the glory days of the school in the hotly-contested University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP).
Thus, came the establishment of the #nowheretogobutUP Foundation Inc. It is described as a volunteer group composed of the university’s alumni, which aims to support and implement the development and advancement projects of the varsity program of the UP.
It didn't start as a foundation right away. It started as how the foundation name looks like, a hashtag. The hashtag was used for social media posts just over two years ago to generate support for the UP Fighting Maroons Men's basketball team.
Today, its official Facebook page has 41,861 followers and 42,102 likes, and its support has extended beyond the basketball team but all the other UP sports team, and while the Fighting Maroons still has to grab a championship the teams are no longer in the doldrums and are consistently winning games and challenging the champions.
Perking Up
Now the anonymous group of volunteers and alumni are looking at another aspect of UP that has been left to fester, the campus, and they have found an ally in one of the members of the new Board of Regents, lawyer Angelo Jimenez, a former student regent as chair of the UP Diliman Supreme Student Council chair in 1992.
In a gathering of friends in Quezon City last week, it was a common consensus that the main campus needs regular maintenance to make it feel like the center of education excellence that it is supposed to be, the same with the other campuses, actually. The whole Diliman campus has the general feel of being unkempt, and there are areas that are rundown, like the UP Cooperative, which for many generations of students was a favorite place to be able to eat as much on a very meager budget. This should not be, Jimenez said, pointing out that national universities worldwide are looked up to by visitors and UP is thus sitting on its potential as a major tourist attraction.
"UP is a national university and a national university is automatic tourist draw because foreigners make judgment on a country based on their national university," Jimenez said.
As it is, Mindanao artist Rey Kudjahid Millan, a graduate of Fine Arts from UP-Diliman, said that the campus itself has major art installations and works that has not even been given reverence these deserve.
National treasures neglected
The Parish of the Holy Sacrifice or one is the only church in the country that has the works of four national artists as its fixture and structure.
National Artist for Architecture Leandro Locsin was one of the four architects who designed the church.
The 15 murals of the Stations of the Cross are by National Artist for Visual Arts Vicente Mansala. The cross in the middle of the circular church is by National Artist for Sculpture Napoleon Abueva, while the tilework design is by National Artist for Visual Arts Arturo Luz. Even at its entrance, art treasures dominate.
The Oblation is by the first National Artist for Sculpture Guillermo Estrella Tolentino. Just before the Administration Building, however, are the twin sculptures by Abueva entitled Tribute to Higher Education.
The human form in concrete and adobe on the twin sculptures are by Ildefonso Marcelo, himself a famous sculptor, who was mentored by Abueva.
There are several works scattered all over like the Carillon, the only one in the country, and the Engineering sun dial, and many more that needs to be documented properly and curated.
"What UP needs is proper curation so that all these national treasures are made to tell a story that people will appreciate," Millan said.
"As it is now, they are just there, ignored," Millan added.
Broken windows theory
Jimenez said he already raised the idea of making UP a tourism zone to his contemporary Tourism Undersecretary Benito Bengzon Jr., from whom he learned that Quezon City is actually outside the route of tour operators in Metro Manila because tourists believe that there is nothing to see in that city.
"I feel I need champions and allies, external, kung internal lang walang nagpepressure sa atin. You have to introduce a fourth element to really shape the body politic inside," Jimenez said, seeing it in tourism aspect.
"I want UP to be a tourism zone. Are you interested sculpture and the arts? We have it. Are you interested in human genome, we also have that. Even sports," he said.
Once things get going in the main campus, then all the other campuses will get the same push, through its alumni, through its communities.
Jimenez points to the broken windows theory that earned renown when this was applied by the New York Police Commissioner William Bratton that former Mayor Rudy Giuliani hired to tamp down on the crime that has by that time overwhelmed the city.
The broken windows theory was proposed by James Wilson and George Kelling in 1982, using broken windows as a metaphor for disorder within neighborhoods. This theory links disorder and incivility within a community to subsequent occurrences of serious crime.
"If there's a broken window, we fix it right away," Jimenez said, such that the community will soon imbibe the awareness that there should be no broken windows in campus. Jimenez said, the starting point can be the most basic: to clean up.
"We should do something. Ang pinaka simple, maglinis tayo. Once you start them (UP community and alumni) doing something together, there is no limit," he said.