Elevating PUP to National Polytechnic University status

Conferring National Polytechnic University status on PUP is about committing to a vision of education that is inclusive, excellent, and the embodiment of national aspirations.

- SONNY COLOMA

t was while serving in the editorial staff of UP’s Philippine Collegian at the onset of the 1970s that I became acquainted with student leaders of the Philippine College of Commerce, now called the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

The president of the PCC at that time was Dr. Nemesio Prudente, and during his watch student activism flourished — just as it did at the University of the Philippines where Dr. Salvador P. Lopez, a respected educator and a diplomat was president.

We considered our friends from PCC as kindred spirits. Whenever we worked overnight at the then Liwayway printing press in Sta. Cruz, Manila, we went to the Manila Times building where we met and talked with senior editors like Amando Doronila, Eddie Monteclaro, and Antonio Nieva.

In the book “Doc Prudente”, my esteemed friend, the late Nelson Navarro, who was a Philippine Collegian editor, wrote: “(Dr. Prudente) was renowned for his progressive leadership, standing shoulder to shoulder with faculty and students during protests and pickets on a variety of subjects, from pressuring Congress to increase school funding to encouraging students to engage in critical discourse on sociopolitical concerns.”

Among those who stood at the frontlines of student activism during the First Quarter Storm and through the imposition of martial law in the early seventies were editors-in-chief of the PCC student newspaper, Ang Malaya (previously called The Businessman) — namely, Jimmy Flor Cruz, currently Philippine ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, and business entrepreneur Angie Tocong Castillo.

I write this piece to lend my voice to the appeal of PCC and PUP alumni that Congress revisit the proposed law conferring National Polytechnic University status on the PUP. Allow me to quote substantially from a paper entitled: “So Much for So Little: The Quiet Heroism of PUP”: