Our Silliman
Lucid Interval
First posted 00:12am (Mla time) Aug 30, 2005
By Rowena Guanzon
INQ7.net
NO ONE who went to Silliman University ever forgets Aug. 28, its Founder’s Day, just as no one graduates from the University of the Philippines without memorizing her student number. Aug. 28 is celebrated by all Sillimanians all over the world like a holiday, like Thanksgiving. Once a Sillimanian, always a Sillimanian, the folks would say before they chorus the line, “where the white sands and the corals, kiss the dark blue southern sea.” My parents Sixto and Elvira, both Sillimanians, probably took an oath that they would send their children there, and true enough all seven out of eight of us went to Silliman before we moved to other universities.
Silliman Institute was founded on Aug. 28, 1901 by Protestant missionaries Dr. David Sutherland Hibbard and Laura Crooks Hibbard under the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. It was an elementary vocational school for boys started through a donation from Dr. Horace Brinsmade Silliman, a Christian philanthropist from Cohoes, New York. Dr. Hibbard traveled in the sugar-producing province of Negros Occidental looking for a suitable location, visiting Manapla town in the north and Ilog town in the south, near Kabankalan. But it was only in idyllic Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental province that he and his companions decided to settle because the people were warm and hospitable. When they reached Dumaguete they found a marshland, set up their makeshift school buildings and started a vocational school for 13 boys. Eleven years later, girls were admitted to the school. In 1938, Silliman became a university.
In 1957, the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (New York) assumed responsibility for channeling all American aid to the University. The United Board is an interdenominational organization supported by 10 Protestant mission boards. The policy-making body of Silliman University is the Board of Trustees, composed of 15 members coming from the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), the alumni and the general community at large.
My parents went to Silliman in 1946 along with other young men and women in the Visayas region and Mindanao when the country was just recovering from the destruction of World War II. This was a time when there were few buses and passenger boats, and other students from southern Negros Occidental took six by six trucks used for hauling canes to get to Dumaguete. They sat on their “baul” [trunks] throughout the long journey, but the war taught them endurance, and no amount of inconvenience or hardship could prevent these young men and women from going back to school. My mother rode a bus that took them one day and one night to reach Dumaguete from Cadiz, a journey that nowadays will only take less than five hours in an air-conditioned bus. They would stop at La Libertad to wait for the high tide so that their bus could be loaded on a barge which was pulled by a cable wire at the other end of the river. When they reached Dumaguete they were largely on their own, because there was no telephone, no telegram, and the Philippine National Bank took ages to remit money.
The other students who were there after the war were Helia Mallare-Philips, Alexandra Reyes-Banas, Mercedes Estampador-Gomez, Eugenio Sanicas, Maeng Serfino, Rose Lamb.
In 1946, Dr. Arthur Carson, then the president of the university, moved around on a bike. People walked or took the “tartanilla,” a horse-drawn carriage, and the 56-hectare campus full of acacia trees was more than enough space to only about 5,000 students. Everyone spoke English, because aside from the fact that it was a school run by Americans, the students came from all over, including the southern archipelago of Sulu and even Thailand. All persons of any religion were welcome but the Bible was and still is, part of the curriculum. Many of the young men wore US Army surplus clothing, but for picture taking, they all wore white suits. Their swimming pool was Silliman Boulevard, where there was a diving board and where the sunrise can be seen from the university church. During physical education classes, the women wore bloomers, which were black cotton shorts with garters at the knees. Just to show you that traditions do not die easily in Silliman, my generation had to wear this style in the 1970s although in shorter length, and “tartanillas” still roamed the town as they do to this day.
For 15 pesos board and lodging, the women stayed in Oriental Hall, while the men were in Guy Hall, which was partly destroyed by Japanese forces. Women could not go out with men without a chaperone, and their conversations were always in English, even their arguments. I believe this because when I first arrived in Silliman in 1970, I saw two grade school children arguing in English. Later however, the students, when the teachers were not looking, took to speaking Visayan English, and the most common phrase was, “I went there ‘baya,’ but you were not there ‘man,’ so I went ‘na lang.’” But I have a high school classmate who will best be remembered for his famous line in Spanish and Visayan, “mi maestra es muy guapa, fuera buyag!”
I was in Silliman during equally interesting times in 1970 to 1974. After Martial Law was declared in September 1972, the campus, which was the hub of activists in the south, was closed for three to four months. Even before the announcement of Martial Law, student activists had dispersed or went underground. The military was unforgiving, and even our good pastor, Dr. Harry Pak, was deported to Korea.
I am proud that I was there together with very interesting and strong women. Among them were Victoria Justiniani, who was the spokesperson of Makibaka in 1970, Lisa Polotan, now a cardiologist in the U.S., her sister, Lina Polotan-Sison, now an enterprenuer, and Junice Demeterio-Melgar, Executive Director of Likhaan, Inc., a nongovernmental organization working on women’s health and family health. The brilliant Victoria Justiniani from Canlaon, once charged but not convicted of Rebellion, is now a peace advisor in Africa.
We did not live quiet lives, and although our political ideas and convictions were strengthened in the University of the Philippines and elsewhere, we have much to thank Silliman University for educating, protecting and encouraging us.
