Two quite unrelated stories have been bothering me these past few weeks– and both have to do with fences, one literal, the other, figurative.
I live in a subdivision with my sister’s family. It is named after one of Cebu’s most revered religious icons.
There are nearly 500 residences here with less than 200 declared members of the village association. I was tasked to look for a house to buy in this subdivision in 2004 because it was reputed to be one of the few upper middle class neighborhoods that was extremely cohesive, cooperative and friendly to one another.
And for a time, everyone seemed to be on friendly terms and very active as members of color-coded neighborhood clusters called “tribes” that competed on friendly terms during our annual fiesta.
That veneer of cooperation and neighborliness was rent asunder early last year when, after the annual elections, cases were filed between two opposing groups of homeowners. Since February last year, we have been the passive recipients of printed or photocopied memoranda from two camps fighting over the presidency and the board of directors.
Attempts have been made to reconcile or at least ease tensions between polarized homeowners, including a Valentine’s Day Mass with no less than His Eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal as celebrant. About a week later, concerned homeowners even gathered at the village club house in a quite contentious informal meeting after Mass because rumors were rife that our water service would be cut off if the association would not pay electric bills.
Apparently the fence-mending has not worked and two presidents, one claiming the upper-hand for now, purports to run the homeowners association even as I write. This actually makes for an interesting aside on Philippine society, with this village as a microcosm and quite an interesting take on Philippine politics and the Filipino personality.
If this fence-mending has not worked, there is an even sadder tale about fences just a few hundred meters from where I live. I refer to the grand old fences of the University of San Carlos Technological Center, the old name of USC Talamban Campus, which finally disappeared this week. In 1964-65 this huge building called USC-TC started rising out of what was once a sugarcane field when German president Heinrich Luebke dropped by to break ground and spend a few hot and humid hours here to hobnob with masons, carpenters and SVD priests.
Even before this building, home to the USC College of Engineering, was finished a uniquely-designed cement concrete fence was built beside what was then a dusty road marked by one jeep going to Carbon in the morning and the same one returning home in the afternoon. The building is named after Fr. Lawrence Bunzel, SVD, who used his inheritance to buy chunks of property in Nasipit that later SVDs would continue to buy until it reached the gargantuan size today of 83 hectares.
Unlamented is the rapid destruction that began late last year of the fence and the two old pedestrian portals of USC-TC that marked their 50th anniversary last year. The USC administration had to give way to the demands of urbanization in this part of Cebu, which, well to be blunt about it, was due largely to the very existence of this campus. For had USC chosen not to expand its campus in what was in the 1960s a wilderness, I doubt if rapid urbanization would have impacted this place in proportions that we see today– which in turn made a lot of residents and children of farmers here extremely wealthy when they converted their lands to boarding houses and eateries for the 10,000 college students who study at USC-TC.
Such is the lesson at play ripe for learning by urban planners: that where universities expand and open new vistas for further learning, development and urbanization follows.
And fences, no matter how unique and no matter how old, eventually have to go. I am reminded of a solitary gate standing forlornly beside the street at the sprawling campus of the Singapore Management University. The gate, preserved by the National Heritage Preservation Board, is all that remains of a girls’ school built in the 1910s that had to give way to development and progress.
At least in Singapore’s civic center, the gate stands, complete with a heritage marker. At USC-TC perhaps only my lament will remind future generations that once a unique gate and fence stood here where German President Heinrich Luebke came to Talamban to break ground for USC-TC.
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
